Uncharted 2: Mastering the Cell

By Richard Leadbetter Published 19 October, 2009

Digital Foundry explores the bonus material.

Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the game that just keeps on giving. In addition to the gameplay, there's a wealth of bonus material on the disc that is well worth a look. Amongst the various goodies are eight behind-the-scenes mini-documentaries concentrating on the developers and their work. The one we enjoyed the most is entitled "Mastering the Cell", an intriguing glimpse into the ways and means in which Naughty Dog has created what must surely be this generation's defining technical achievement.

The documentary is interesting in a number of regards, not least in that it appears that one of the core philosophies behind Naughty Dog's rendering tech is to offload as many tasks as possible from the GPU and stack them up on the SPU satellite processors of the Cell chip. In the case of Uncharted 2, post-processing techniques such as the game's phenomenal depth-of-field effect (pretty much the best seen on console to date) are hived off to the SPUs. It's an intriguing way of using resources. Presumably the GPU would be able to carry out the same task a lot faster, but if the RSX is otherwise engaged in a computationally more expensive task, it just makes more sense to use the SPUs to do the same job.

It's a little frustrating to get such a short and often obscured glimpse of the performance tools in action, but at at around 23 seconds into the video, you should be able to discern on-screen that five SPUs are being maxed out: an impressive feat of parallelisation.

Nope, the game hasn't crashed! Those differently-coloured bars on-screen represent usage of different aspects of the PS3 hardware. Presumably the bars are colour-coded according to the task being performed at that point.

Other bite-sized snippets of information we learn from this video: firstly, the game appears to be achieving throughputs of up to 1.2 million triangles per frame, effectively 40 million per second. Secondly, some of the debug info shown on-screen is literally quite illuminating - the cascaded shadowmap and translucency lighting elements indicate that transparent alpha effects, such as smoke and atmospheric haze, can be affected by the current lighting scheme.

Also worthy of comment as something that's not immediately apparent to the eye, but technically very clever, is the concept of procedural animation, or blended motion. Drake's movement flows more smoothly due to the fact that the game takes its predefined animations and uses the SPUs to figure out intermediate motion to easily move from one to the other without having to wait for a particular animation to complete - this means that the response from Drake to controller commands is that much faster.

The net result is that Drake moves more realistically, and the animators don't need to predetermine every single move possible. What we'd really like to see is this kind of technology moved on to the next level in order to bring some level of innovation to the moribund 3D fighting genre. [Tsk, you and your moribund 3D fighting genre. - Ed]

Returning to the here and now, taking a look at this video, particularly after playing through the Uncharted 2 single-player mode, really puts into perspective its landmark technical achievements.

Picture of Richard.

About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

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Comments (72) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • cianchristopher #1 2 years ago

    Nice job ND! Great game and phenomenal graphics!

    The 360 certainly has the best cross-platform games, but when it comes to exclusives - the PS3 is the one to beat!

  • peterfll #2 2 years ago

    I guess developers are always trying to come up with content that can be unlocked to reward us all, but I really wish this sort of stuff wasn't locked content. The original had some really interesting documentaries and that had to be "unlocked" too. Until they started popping up as downloadable videos on PSN!

  • oreillymj #3 2 years ago

    IIRC The original PS3 spec used a CELL as a GPU. It was a late decision to replace it with RSX, so it's surprising in some ways that it's taken so long for devs to make use of the SPU's for rendering. Presumably the system software just wasn't ready on time and CELL was more expensive/yielding badly compared to the nVidia chip.

    It'll definitely be intersting to see the PS4 spec in 2-3 years time. A 4 core CELL with 32 SPUs hooked up to a more recent nVidia part with 32Mb of e-DRAM ala Xenon (or the GFX synth in PS2) would be an animal of a machine. It would also allow devs to re-use the tech they've invested in. But I can't see Sony risking huge sums of money on PS4 after the PS3 debacle.
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/09 @ 16:56

  • SeesThroughAll #4 2 years ago

    Naughty Dog certainly is showing everyone that almost irrespective of SDK and hardware design, talent (read that as very hard work) will always result in amazing looking games.

  • Darren #5 2 years ago

    I "bought" all the making of videos in the game last night but forgot about them as I was having way too much fun with the game itself.

    Interesting article though. I always assumed the PS3's RSX graphics chip was pretty weak, effectively its a crippled GeForce 7800 GTX which by today's PC standards is three generations old, and that developers used the Cell to make up for those weaknesses, such as having anti-aliasing and HDR lighting.

  • SeesThroughAll #6 2 years ago

    @ oreillymj:

    It was once rumored that Sony would just stick with a similar design, certainly with a beefier GPU, but with a newer generation Cell, which could make the next PS automatically backwards compatible with PS3 games. Just a rumor though.

  • aphexstwin #7 2 years ago

    peter - its just something else to unlock, the trophies are hardly interesting, as with gamerscore, but they do give you targets to achieve.

    loving this game and im only 2 chapters in: loved the prolog chapter especially, its very tense with sweet playable cutscenes. but this is a nice bit of analysis from df. i hope that whatever nd have learnt can be passed to other devs and spend time getting to grips with it.

  • grizzzlybear #8 2 years ago

    now after seeing this video I think all staff at valve should sit down and take notes cos these guys have made an amazing game by putting lots of effort in and valve cant be bothered to put any effort in to give the ps3 left for dead which it deserves

  • Darren #9 2 years ago

    @evilfoxhound - But the Cell hasn't really delivered has it? It seems that it is too complex for many developers hence the reason why so many multiformat games still look inferior on the PS3 compared with the Xbox 360. The exclusives admittedly look fantastic but then they tend to be first party games with full committment and support from Sony as they want them to look stunning.

    I still get the sense that the PS3 hardware was thrown together last minute and that no-one really sat down and thought about how all the different bits were going to work together efficiently so that developers would find it easy to code for but still have plenty of future potential. It's something I've gleaned from reading developer comments over the years; most have said it's a bitch to work with (much like the PS2 was). Hell if Valve don't want anything to do with the machine then you have to wonder why... right?

  • lcmnick #10 2 years ago

    "But I can't see Sony risking huge sums of money on PS4 after the PS3 debacle. "

    I don't think they'll need to. They can stick with the shruken Cell, and just place a beefier GPU with more RAM and they're good to go again. Lack of RAM is pretty much the main problem for the PS3/360.

    The only other problem will be what GPU chip to use, what with Nvidia seemingly abandoning high end chips. Although if the PS4 is to be backwards compat., it'll probably need a NVidia chip.

  • Rodchenko #11 2 years ago

    Maybe a dumb question, but how do you apply the bonus modes (such as the flipped maps)? Do you have to start a new campaign?

    Edit: Thanks for the downvote, but it was actually a serious question. Anyone?
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/09 @ 16:47

  • cianchristopher #12 2 years ago

    The Cell certainly is shit, though! And the PS3 is a waste of everone's time ;-)

  • jaywalker3010 Verified Mastering Manager, Square Enix #13 2 years ago

    The animation thing is interesting. Finished the game at the weekend and whilst loved it totally the animation was a part of it that actually disappointed me the most.. The cutscenes were great but we know they motion captured the actors for those, but the ingame animations were quite jumpy between certain actions, swinging from a pole and jumping looked pretty poor to me.. it didnt stop me playing the game at all, as i said i loved it, but slightly jars when you watch it back and go oh wait it kinda skipped bits to get it to do that.. oh okay.. fairy nuff.

  • zuljin #14 2 years ago

    @Rodchenko
    When you buy the option, you go to the same location the option was in, but instead of buying it, you now enable/disable it with X (works for the filters, I imagine the flipping works similarly).

  • ChromeMud #15 2 years ago

    Congrats to Naughty Dog for getting a lot of performance out of the PS3, I may just get Unchartered2 this time round.
    Can't see many other developers trying as hard though.I wonder if Sony will bet on CELL in the next Playstation iteration.
    Far better IMO to just punt a 6/8 core pc spec processor with a good graphics card and let the developers out there sigh with relief than bother with the complex nightmare of programming multiple CELL's.
    Considering that you have to rely on third parties creating games equivalent to the competition, allowing Microsoft to pummel it in most head-ons in the next console war would be a serious kick in the nads all over again!
    My wish would be for Sony to develop the hardware and Microsoft develop the software and creation tools to power a beast where both companies cash in and halving development costs in the process.It'll save me buying 2 consoles next time round too :))

  • oreillymj #16 2 years ago

    One thing the inner geek in me would love to know. The end credits for Uncharted 1 mention guy called RJ Michal. Amiga fans will know that this guy was a legend behind that machine.

    I'd love to know what he's up to at Sony. Maybe Eurogamer could swing an interview.

    [link url=http://e n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Mical
    ]http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._M...[/link]

  • miiiguel #17 2 years ago

    "It'll save me buying 2 consoles next time round too :)) "

    You don't want that, nobody wants that. One system = no competition. You probably wouldn't have PSN if it wasn't for Live; you probably wouldn't have Live/Xbox it wasn't for PS2's massive success; you probably woudn't have Natal if it wasn't for Wii...

  • cianchristopher #18 2 years ago

    Fucking took 'em long enough though didn't it?

  • jimbo118 #19 2 years ago

    Naughty Dog are so far ahead of most developers on utilising the PS3 graphically, even first-party companies. Take inFamous, Resisitance 2 - nowhere near as good. Only Killzone 2 can come close to it. Even MGS4 looks pretty average compared to Uncharted 2.

    Seems cooperation between the various first-party devs is paying off:
    http://ga mer.blorge.com/2009/10/18/first...
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/09 @ 17:23

  • kangarootoo #20 2 years ago

    "with sweet playable cutscenes"

    The pedant in me can't help pointing out that there really can be no such thing :)

  • kangarootoo #21 2 years ago

    @zuljin

    "When you buy the option, you go to the same location the option was in, but instead of buying it, you now enable/disable it with X (works for the filters, I imagine the flipping works similarly)."

    Good call. I bought a bunch of filters, and then had no idea how to turn them on.

  • freakzilla #22 2 years ago

    I've seen these a few days before the game came out. Nice, but I'm still skeptical of the PS3's capabilites. Sony have a habit of making marketing vids which contain almost no truth. (HOME)

    Edit: Oh dear! I seemed to have pissed off a few people, I'll try harder to please you next time.
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/09 @ 19:59

  • freakzilla #23 2 years ago

    @Darren

    RSX is supposed to be equivalent to 2 7800s.

  • kangarootoo #24 2 years ago

    @freakzilla

    "Nice, but I'm still skeptical of the PS3's capabilites."

    Well, surely the proof is in the pudding. And this particular pudding is available in any games shop you care to choose.

  • 5h1nj1 #25 2 years ago

    "moribund fighting genre" made me laugh. :D

  • uglygamer #26 2 years ago

    Naughty dog do make some really enjoyable games. Crash Bandicoot series went downhill after tehy left it to someone else. It could have being as big Mario. In actual fact at one time it was probably bigger in the PSone days
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/09 @ 17:37

  • Machiavellian #27 2 years ago

    When you think about what Valve said about the PS3 you can see that as a 3rd Party developer, getting the most out of the Cell is probably not cost beneficial. I remember when the first Uncharted game came out and a question was asked ,what did they least like about the development of the game. A developer stated that they did not like how long it took to develop the engine which took 3 years.

    There are very few 3rd party developers that have 3 years or better to create a game engine let alone create a game after that time. You look at the two most visually outstanding games on the PS3 which is Uncharted1/2 and Killzone2 and you look at the development time and resources spent on those games and you start to realize that not many developers have that kind of luxury.

    For Valves business, it was not cost beneficial for them to devote that kind of time and resources to the Cell since they are not that big of a company and their main platform is the PC. Valve is not a Engine developer like Epic or ID. Even today, you see companies continue to struggle with the PS3 and that's not limited to 3rd Party developers either.

  • ChromeMud #28 2 years ago

    I agree with you miiiguel that competition is good.
    I only bought two consoles this time round because I wanted Blu-Ray and Xbox LIVE.
    GT or Forza, Halo or Uncharted, seems to be good times for both consoles lately.
    I'm a fan of both systems but I plan to buy just one console next time round.

  • miiiguel #29 2 years ago

    @ChromeMud : Even if you want to play/own just one console the sole existence of a credible competing brand/system, is good for you (us).

  • MeBrains #30 2 years ago

    darren: I still get the sense that the PS3 hardware was thrown together last minute and that no-one really sat down and thought about how all the different bits were going to work together efficiently so that developers would find it easy to code for but still have plenty of future potential.

    really? my opinion is that it was very very thoroughly researched and engineered, in-line with a certain vision. we can argue about that vision having been the correct one...

  • Machiavellian #31 2 years ago

    @evilfoxhound
    Didn't they create the Source Engine?

    Yes, Valve create their own engine but I do not create a multiplatform engine like Epic and ID or do they create their engine as a platform like the other two as well.

  • MeBrains #32 2 years ago

    hmmm... another one of those threads uniquely and solely about PS3 being filled with crap from MS fanboys.

    donnie080203: why the hell did you register an account being one mere digit away from donnie080208 - another prized addition to the EG community and use it only to post inflamatory childish remarks?
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/09 @ 18:48

  • twilight72 #33 2 years ago

    I can say that i've been disappointed by many games lately but Uncharted 2 is not one of them. I think this game should be in contention for game of the year.

  • LilithsCurves #34 2 years ago

    donnie080208 does not troll, he believes in what he says (no matter how ****** it sometimes sounds). donnie080203 needs some fish as a bribe to cross the bridge.

  • Bagpuss #35 2 years ago

    The fact they are having to use the SPU's for something that should be done on the GPU, shows just how weak the RSX chip is.

    128bit memory interface and 24Gb of Bandwidth....poor,very poor.

    Of course the ATI chip in the 360 isnt much better, but the 10mb of onboard EDRAM really has allowed the 360 to punch above its weight...



  • freakzilla #36 2 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    I'm not saying that bullshots and flat out lies are unique to Sony, but they have been going on and on about the PS3's capabilities for a long time now, games like KZ2 only came about after huge effort, you have to wonder if this was just learning to master new tech or optimising a relatively average piece of hardware to produce something that can be considered worthy of Sony's hype

    And please don't accuse me of being a fanboy or having some sort of agenda, (I can't believe I'm saying this) I only have a PS3 and the reason I don't have a 360 is because I don't want to hand over cash to a company that already screwed me with windows.

  • Retroid #37 2 years ago

    evilfoxhound: "Withought GT5 Prologue, Forza 3 probably wouldn't have had cockpit views."

    PGR3 & 4 would like to say hello.

  • SeesThroughAll #38 2 years ago

    Btw its a bit obvious that the 360 cannot replicate this game. This is not just the RSX at work but its also using the cells graphical power. The 360 has no such feature and its GPU is not exactly able to match both the cell and the RSX in performance.

    While I'm absolutely no expert, nor did I ever code for either, I think such a claim is hasty to say the least. The graphical code was in this case custom made and optimized to run on the combination RSX+Cell, but surely very similar results could have been obtained on the 360, with the appropriate optimizations.

  • SeesThroughAll #39 2 years ago

    @ semitope: My impression on how both machines work, based on what I read online:

    Both the Xenon and the Cell are based on PPC architecture, so I don't think that that's any kind of indicator of inferiority. As for the shared memory issue, while on the 360 there is a single 512MB RAM available to both the CPU and GPU, on the PS3, the memory is split, although both the Cell and the RSX may access the 256MB VRAM. The Cell does do it slower than the RSX though.
    Both the PS3 and 360 CPUs benefit from parallel processing. The Xenon is a triple core general purpose processor, while the Cell is a single core general purpose processor, with some overclocked DSPs (the SPUs) competing for execution time. Symmetric versus asymmetric then. Multiprocessing on the 360 is much easier in theory, but as far as graphical tasks are concerned, DSPs are more suited for geometry and filtering than general purpose cores.

    Please correct me where it's wrong, as I'm curious to really know about how each machine works.

    Too many similarities to be sure about what one can do that the other can't, that's all I'm trying to say.
    Edited by 4 at 20/10/09 @ 00:15

  • SeesThroughAll #40 2 years ago

    And still, none of this means that a similar looking game couldn't be done through the strengths of Xenos alone either. By any team as capable as Naughty Dog.

    Because I don't know the actual numbers either, let's just leave it at the fact that ND worked hard to get the most out of the hardware they had available.

  • JHuxley #41 2 years ago

    I'd say this is roughly the pinnacle of current gen gaming from a purely technical standpoint, but honestly I'm intrigued to see what Team ICO can come up with. They pushed the PS2 harder than any other dev, I think.

  • zztopp #42 2 years ago

    Good stuff. It will stay a landmark achievement until Gears of War 4 comes out late next year on the new Unreal Engine (there are some sharp cookies at Epic as well).

  • busboy33 #43 2 years ago

    @sparkplug:

    "This shows that if used in the right way the PS3 hardware can deliver stunning games."

    I don't think that anyone disputes that the PS3 is an excellent piece of hardware, or that its capable of awesome results. The problem has been that using it "the right way" has been extremely labor intensive, and that means money. Forcing developers to spend more effort and money for top-notch results was (IMHO still is) a dangerous strategy. I can get great results as a development house easier and cheaper on the rival syhstem, and that means there's a greater likelyhood of profit in foregoing PS3 development.

    People complain about Valve's attitude, as if Gabe Newell and crew deliberately want to lose money. Valve didn't make the PS3 a risky platform, cost-wise, for developers . . . Sony did. And they've been suffering for that so far this generation.

  • Zomoniac #44 2 years ago

    Drake's movement flows more smoothly due to the fact that the game takes its predefined animations and uses the SPUs to figure out intermediate motion to easily move from one to the other without having to wait for a particular animation to complete - this means that the response from Drake to controller commands is that much faster.

    Cool stuff. Maybe if EA and Konami could use this in FIFA and PES to avoid the dreaded NO I DIDN'T WANT TO SPRINT THAT FAR LET ME TURN AROUND FFS mechanic that still plagues them both then I would be less frustrated.

  • Retroid #45 2 years ago

    semitope: "My point is the xenon can't perform GPU tasks as it only has the ppc part and not the SPEs."

    They're all just computing calculations; how else do you think we had 3D games on machines which had no GPUs in the past?

  • ukgamer #46 2 years ago

    Remember when Valve complained about coding for dual core PC CPUs? If Gabe Newell was a hardware designer we would still be stuck on single core CPUs lollololol!

  • SeesThroughAll #47 2 years ago

    They're all just computing calculations; how else do you think we had 3D games on machines which had no GPUs in the past?

    Sure we did, just with a lot less polygons to begin with. By 3D games, you mean like Quake 1?

  • Bigglesworth #48 2 years ago

    @ #57
    I wouldn't go that far... Valve can obviously produce quality software, but their attitude is unusual and frankly disrespectful to potential customers. The issue is that Gabe Newell simply has an agenda to push, and Valve is currently making enough money from the PC/360 platforms to allow him to push it.

  • oreillymj #49 2 years ago

    #55
    In terms of producing better results, optimising the U2 code further, the video mentions that the SPU's are running assembly.
    Only Naughty Dog know if that assembly can be further optimised. Perhaps the GFX shaers can also be improved, but when you're down to the bare HW the way ND are, and keep all the SPU's busy, there's probably not much you can milk from the machine.

    You can probably also guarentee that this game will not run on PS4 hardware unless it's architecture is very similar to PS3.

  • GreyBeard #50 2 years ago

    Performance improvement is always possible with better code, NDI just try to keep the SPE's busy at all times in U2.

    Given that managing all those threads without stalling the system is far and away the hardest part, I'd expect to see their next title being significantly more efficient as they'll have gained valuable experience about what runs best on the SPE's and how to optimize all-round performance.

  • funkateer #51 2 years ago

    "You have to ask yourself this though, is it worth the countless shoddy MPlat games for the odd outstanding exclusive."

    'Countless shoddy mplat games' is a bit stretching it, don't you think? Most multi-platform games are virtually identical, unless you put them under the microscope side by side.
    So yeah, having immensely enjoyed the absolutely stellar PS3 exclusives like MGS4 and Uncharted et al, it was absolutely worth spending a pixel or 2 on some multi-platform games.

  • CHAZBIGPOTATO #52 2 years ago

    Surely the RSX core and the cells and direct x and stuff is relative to the clockspeed of the overclocked GPUs plus the physics cores minus the f-...is...erm...oh fuck it!
    Edited by 1 at 20/10/09 @ 13:50

  • Calgon #53 2 years ago

    @Semitope can you please stop talking absolute bobbins? You clearly aren't technical minded, almost everything you say looks like uninformed nonesense.

    Xenos is actually stronger than RSX, firstly just in raw fillrate terms quite a few devs have gone on to say that realworld fillrate(ie none theoretical) is higher on Xenos but not only that, the overall throughput(after adding things like texture layers, since there are some key differences in the way these are handled between the two) with all the bells and whistles added is higher on Xenos. Its also more advanced with features like hardware tesselation and mem-export which will mean 360s GPU has the best chance of atleast attempting to keep up with DX10 and 11 tech in games.

    "My point is the xenon can't perform GPU tasks as it only has the ppc part and not the SPEs."

    Your point is wrong, fact one is CPUs can do pretty much anything you ask them to unlike GPUs, the difference is the speed in which they do them.

    Fact two before you say it would be too slow because its just a PPC part like the Cell has remember there are 6 hardware threads each with 128 registers of a gaming enhanced version of VMX, VMX128(something that CELL doesnt have, both MS and IBM worked on this). These can be thought of as very fast specialised processors, ideal for the same tasks that the SPEs have been doing, theyd have major coding differences obviously but the same principles of heavy parallelization would be there.

    There is some additional technology in the 360 for Xenon to Xenos communications, cache-locking to bypass main memory and buffer data for xenos direct through the highspeed FSB(21.6 GB/s aggrigate or in other words 10.8GB/s up and downstream simultaniously) there is also an added facility of sharing compressed data formats between Xenon and Xenos which would offer at least 2x effective bus bandwidth for typical graphics data(43.2GB/s aggrigate), they call this XPS(Xbox Proceedural Synthesis *note: Proceedural Synthesis is what was in mind but its not limited to just to that function*) .

    MS did put the technology in there but as of yet I've still to hear of a dev fully exploit it, atleast not in the way ND have done with the PS3, maybe its too little too late for that now though considering it took ND 3years on to lay down their first PS3 engine to build a game on. I did hear roumers of an engine by the XNA team that was said to do all of this called the X-engine, but its been so quiet Im starting to think it was a cruel hoax. If we havent heard anything from it by the next E3 we can assume it was bogus.

  • Geordiemp #54 2 years ago

    @ zztop.

    Do you work for Epic games, nobody bit at your post its so laughable, unreal are probably 2 generations away from being even close to naughty dog, and I dont think they ever could.

    What about Cryengine on the consoles, maybe they will bring more quality games to xbox and Ps3 that can at least be spoken of in the same sentence as Uncharted 2. At the momemnt nothing comes even close unless its a fanboy comment, and usually most people who have seen UC2 cant even be bothered to reply.

    All I want is UC2 2 quality games on both consoles please, and lots more of them.
    Edited by 2 at 20/10/09 @ 17:35

  • Murton #55 2 years ago

    Uncharted and Uncharted 2 are the key pieces of evidence to quote when arguing the case for single platform development. When you focus your efforts on a single platform and optimise your game properly you can pull off a masterpiece. Take the path of least resistance in the initial development and then run off a lazy port to PS3 and PC and you get mediocrity.

    Hopefully games like these will cause the rest of the industry to wake up and see just how high the bar has been placed, the developers who are willing to put in the effort and step up will go from strength to strength while those who refuse, will hopefully end up in the failbin.

  • Calgon #56 2 years ago

    Semitope no you simply dont understand it... for a raw *measured* performance figure, thats what you have (for a traditional pipeline such as the RSX's especially) fillrate is what it is(the best you can do is what PS3 exclusives devs do, try to take out as many of the fillrate and time sapping operations from the equation... but you'll never get more the max measured fillrate). The irony in your statements is, if theres any GPU that they would beable to eak out more efficiency from, it would be Xenos. The shaders are relitively new, devs are becoming more familiar with them now, which may eventually start to benifit 360 development even moreso, ditto with hardware tesselation.

    "I would assume from your statement that you agree that rsx has a greater theoretical peak performance than xenos."

    Its not easy to answer that because since they have the same clock speeds(500MHz) the ALU comparison(given that being unified some of Xenos' ALUs would have to be doing vertex operations) would seem to give the RSX the edge but the only time even talking theoretically would be with no textures, all modern games require quite alot of texturing there wont be any examples that dont use any whatsoever, adding in texturefetch would tie up quite a few of the ALUs and thus Xenos gains a greater advantage.

    "you are claiming that the xenon is capable of the same processing as the cell and just as quickly?"

    I noticed you've changed tack because that wasn't your original arguement, you claimed Xenon couldn't be used with Xenos for the same operations that the SPEs have been doing for RSX, it can.

    To be honest we have no idea how close this would bring Xenon to CELL, but the perfomance increase relitive to 360 development at the time I heard the XNA discussion on it, was several hundred percent(for the types of operations they and indeed the SPUs excell at). It was IBMs and MS's answer to the SPEs, this is the logical explanation for the decision to include it(remember CELL was no sercret to IBM or MS at the time they were designing the processor).

    On paper/thoeretically CELL's SPE's are faster, thats where those raw flops figures come into play, in practice/realworld is a whole different matter(remember the GPUs?). The sooner you realise that theoretical specs and figures aren't normally acheiveable in the real world, the sooner you realise the devs themselves will find out just how efficient the HARDWARE is, this is seperate from software efficiencies... you seem to be confusing the two quite alot.

    Id say, overall the sensible conclusion is they are both pretty damn close, once you weigh up the strengths of each console properly.
    Edited by 2 at 23/10/09 @ 16:39

  • Calgon #57 2 years ago

    "unified shaders were new how many years ago? Familiarity with the rsx would most definitely be less than with the unified shaders of the xenos as thats pretty much the standard now."

    Are you for real? You do realise you have that completely backwards there don't you? RSX is basically a stripped down PC part(G70), its a traditional pipeline... they couldn't be more familiar with the RSX! The Unified Shader Archetecture came along with DX10 level hardware, perhaps DX11 will make even heavier use of it if possible, who knows. It could be that there's not much more to be done with it since its handled chipside and devs arent allowed to tinker with it, I was just saying out of the two Xenos is much more likely to have extra efficiency left to eak out of it because its newer, more advanced and more custom.

    Unified Shaders are relitively new compared to RSXs architecture, even if it's possible, most devs probably haven't felt the need to go too deep into opimising for the Unified Shader Architecture because the majority of GPUs dont have it(plus it could be that it works good enough on its own, so again haven't felt a strong enough need to).

    It's quite obvious that you are desperately trying to convince yourself 360 doesnt have any advantages, the problem is you seem to be frantically reading through beyond3d forum posts, not only not understanding what I've just said but not understanding what they are saying either.

    I am reading on beyond3d and seeing nothing saying the efficiency of the xenos definitely puts it ahead of the rsx.

    Isnt there? How about the fact that RSX actually needs all the help it can get from CELL to compete with Xenos? According to you RSX is more unfamiliar than Xenos is... I suppose thats because you think it's "more advanced and newer and custom and stuff"?

    As for the fillrate comment it's come from an ex Harmonix employee(who blogged about it after talking to some of his team members) and Ive yet to hear a developer say anything to the contrary, it seems to just be how it is(looking at multiplatform games especially, it appears devs started out not using the SPEs much and thus RSX couldn't keep up with Xenos).

    Will continue reading and would be nice if you provided links about xenon being able to match the cell spes

    There wont be any specs there's not even realworld specs for how far they've gone with CELL published(personally I think CELL probably does still edge it but its alot closer than we were originally led to beleive, with Xenos trumping RSX and 360 having the more optimal memory architecture... it looks like although they do things differently they are quite evenly matched overall), also there isn't a 360 engine in existence yet that I know of that actually uses all the XPS functions... unless of course the X-engine roumer is true(here's hoping). This isn't a discussion that can be "won" with a Beyond3d quote, the best you can have is informed opinions... yours doesnt seem to be.

    Now I've grown bored of humoring you because there's not much left to say on the matter and I know most of it you will ignore because you only have eyes for anything that makes you feel that the PS3 is the bee's knees. Don't expect another reply, you were uninformed on alot of points you made earlier in the thread and I've addressed them quite nicely.
    Edited by 2 at 20/10/09 @ 19:38

  • zztopp #58 2 years ago

    @Georgdiemp

    If you think the Epic programmers are sitting on their arses and doing nothing, then you are sadly mistaken. Remember, it was Gears of War 1 which truly ushered in next-gen quality graphics for this generation while PS3 fans were ooohing and aaaahing over Resistance 1 (which looked piss-poor even back then). The new Unreal engine is in development for sure, and you can bet it will once again graphically blow away everything else (recall that it was Epic which requested Microsoft to add extra texture cache to the 360 hardware so they know how to make it sing). Its just a natural process...Uncharted 2 can't be the best looking console game evah forever (and it sure as hell isn't the best multiplayer game even now). In the end the winners will be the consumers who will enjoy this back and forth of programming skill come uppance between Naughty Dog and Epic.
    Edited by 1 at 21/10/09 @ 04:55

  • Les #59 2 years ago

    "Epic will put out a new engine but its unlikely it will topple proprietary optimized engines."

    Exactly. I personally dislike UE's horrible lighting, but that's subjective. If you look at the games that have used UE so far however, only those that adapted the game to the engine were successful. IMHO it should be the other way around: The game dictates the engine.

  • des #60 2 years ago

    Crappy article...stick to the interviews

  • Calgon #61 2 years ago

    @semitope Im honestly gobsmacked at your utter ignorance and stubborness to keep burying your head in the sand in the face of all logical reasoning.

    Are you honestly telling me that you beleive theres more PCs out there with GPUs made in the last 3 years than not or that PC devs/multiplatform devs only cater to the most up to date hardware? You are completely deluded my friend!

    "Since then the significance of your "traditional" pipeline has been unique to the rsx."

    Oh my word! Are you forgetting YEARS AND YEARS of development time spent before 2006... does that evaporate just because newer cards are on the market? Thats very convenient for a PS3 fanboy who's desperate to beleive in its superiority.

    "You also have admitted that USA inherently might not need developer optimization"

    I have yet to hear a developer comment deeply on this but I was just humoring the notion that maybe it could be done, maybe... whether it would be worth it is anyones guess.

    "have admitted that USA inherently might not need developer optimization and you have to admit that the architecture of the rsx requires more attention than that of xenon which ATI have said "handles itself"."

    More attention isn't because they are "learning how to use it", they already know it, theres nothing but learning how to overcome its limitations... i.e. it is weaker than Xenos on its own and Xenos *would* beable to do more with the help of Xenon, is something you seem not to grasp. Of course the USA is handled by the chip but that doesnt mean that devs cant intervene/tinker manually to improve efficiency, ATI havent said its not possible.

    As far as the RSX is concerned you seem to be trying to overcomplicate something as simple as a pixel shader... the things they've been doing havent been "coding for the pixel shaders" theyve been taking out parts of the equation which would normally have consumed time and bandwidth where possible. This CAN also be done on 360 too and it would benifit performance in a similar way(i.e. free up time and processing power on the GPU side).

    "Look at it like this- you are saying because automatic cars are newer they have a lot more to be learned than standard cars. Majority of ppl can use an automatic car but fewer can use a standard and even fewer can use a standard well. "

    No you look it like this; you are trying to convince yourself that the standard shader pipeline, thats had years and years of use by devs, is some ancient forgotten technology that devs dont know how to fully exploit yet, it's laughable. :D lol!

    "So right there we have tesselation using 1/2 of a cell spu."

    Ah brilliant another peice of information you dont understand and have made a worthless comparison with, thats just tesselation on a CPU = nothing new(btw theres no such thing as half a SPE... you either use a whole one for a task or not at all). Hardware Tesselation is a GPU hardware feature; when we say "hardware " that means something that isnt done on the CPU side.

    "Ever consider multiplat developers simply took advantage of the unified architecture mainly and are using the setup of the rsx inefficiently?"

    No because I consider that a stupid notion(the core is a well known one thats also to similar to dozens *just* like it, that multiplatform devs will be VERY well acquainted with, I keep telling you this but you keep looking the other way) and I'm not forcing myself into a state of denial about either machine > You are!

    "Even if it did these are complete systems"

    No shit sherlock... Xenos is stronger than RSX, memory achitecture is more optimal on 360 and CELL is stronger than Xenon and as complete systems they are about even overall... your "reading" should have shown up that this is what the majority of none partial(those *not* under Sony's wing or those who have been in the past) devs who've given their opinion on the matter have agreed upon.

    By how much in each area we will likely never know for sure even if its possible to measure fairly(most likely isnt). We'll probably only have circumstancial evidence and a few quotes because theres NDAs in place and when they are allowed to talk its mostly because they are 1st or 2nd party with mostly good things to say... both sides of the fence will call bias when faced with that. Your problem is you only have eyes for what you want to hear and you will disregard anything else, which is why I know Im wasting my time attempting to have a discussion with you. You dont seem to even understand half of what *you* post, whats the point in me taking you seriously?

    Please give up for your own sake, theres nothing worse that someone who is utterly clueless yet has the brass to be condesending in his attitude from start to finnish(mr "inconclusive"... lol you little douche), even when its quite clear he's been proven wrong on most of his statements. I have no burden of proof on me for my opinions other than what I have said about the way in which the hardware works(which I'll gladly do if theres anything you'd like to question in particular), since Im above making up figures.
    Edited by 2 at 21/10/09 @ 18:52

  • busboy33 #62 2 years ago

    @bigglesworth (#64):

    "The issue is that Gabe Newell simply has an agenda to push,"

    What is his agenda? And are you saying that he (and Valve) want to lose money/profits to advance that agenda?

    Is there money to be made in PS3 development? Sure. But there's money to be lost, too. Valve apologized for the PS3 Orange Box, saying that they don't want to put out or put their name on crappy products. They saw that as damaging the Valve name. They were apparently willing to sell software on Sony's system -- how does that advance their agenda? If they were able to get high-quality PS3 versions of their software made cost-effectively, do you think they wouldn't do it?

    I'm not saying that Newell's/Valve's approach is "correct". Perhaps investing the time and resources would be a good move for them. But from their perspective it's not worth it, and for a business "not worth it" in my experience always means "financially risky". They have two platforms (360 and PC) that they can develop on for far cheaper. They already have the skill, knowledge, and infrastructure in place. Even with all that, it costs millions of dollars to make games. I just can't imagine that in the Vale boardroom, they looked at the cost/benefit for PS3 development, decided that they sttod a good chance of making money . . . and chose to forego that profit for another reason.

  • Calgon #63 2 years ago

    @Semitope

    "The majority of gaming cards around should in fact be using the unified architecture."

    No they wont be, common sense would tell you that the majority *aren't* because not everyone with a PC that they run the occasional game on has a GPU from the last 3 years... it's common sense that infact those without would probably dwarf the numbers of those with them(how many graphics cards do you think ATI and Nvidia and co have sold in the last 3 years?). Even if there were no more Standard pipeline cards to cater for, the arguement that this is now forgotten and something to be learnt by devs is still idiocy on your part(as I said you are deliberately trying to overcomplicate something as simple as pixel and vertex shaders, theres no special coding done on them to magically get more fillrate, tasks are diverted elsewhere to free up time and bandwidth... thus fillrate saved)... it's a weak arguement and you should stop trying to spin it because you are embaressing yourself.

    "Are devs given detailed hardware specs or do they really only see the system through the engine/tech they use? "

    Errrm you are telling me you've not even seen the system specs and papers on the chips which are publicly available? *rolls eyes* On their own theoretical specs arent much use to devs or anyone attempting to say just how much a machine can do. This is why I say you need to know theres always a seperation from "real world" performance from "theoretical" performance, the percentage of theoretical performance thats actually acheivable differs from machine to machine(bottlenecks, efficiencies and so on).

    "Again where is your information coming from? I havent said anything is definitely better or worse but you keep pushing that little information of yours... "

    The developers? John Carmack and a number of other impartial dev sources.(no Im not going to tread back and fish them all out for you.. because you wouldnt admit it if Sony themselves told you it, I've seen your sort before and I wont waste my time on you)

    Listen its like I said without figures and statistics(which isnt always enough to satisfy everyone) the best you will get is *informed opinions*, I listen to what the devs say(their opinions), look at the multiplatform situation(which I did pretty fairly) along with my knowlege about the hardware itself to form my own opinion. You on the other hand have scraps of information and quotes that you obviously dont understand in a desperate attempt to convince yourself(or others Im not sure what your deal is) that PS3 is superior. Would it be that painfull for you to admit that 360 is just as capable? Maybe you just need to get yourself out of the bitter fanboy mentality before attempting to have a mature discussion without putting your fingers in your ears so to speak whenever it looks like PS3 doesn't have the advantage. If you prefer to beleive PS3 is more powerfull go right ahead but dont bother talking about the hardware(especially 360 hardware) when you obviously dont know it well enough to be doing so like you did earlier in the thread and maybe you can avoid arguements like this one. Your ignorrance and denial was reason enough to use the word "douche", you are trying to argue that up is down and black is white and that someone should prove this to you(its not going to fool anyone).

    Really, I will just have to let you have the last say since you are obviously immature and obsessive about having it, no matter how worthless your posts have been. I will just leave you with this, one of us has proved ourselves to be well informed and the other uninformed, guess which one you are Semitope? ;)
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 17:25

  • ant72 #64 2 years ago

    ND have always been amazing. Jak & Daxter was optimised by hand, but writing assembly on the PS3 just makes me sick. Or is that LD vomit,1?

  • funkateer #65 2 years ago

    Bar the condescending and insulting tone, I have say that I agree with Calgon about the Xenos having the edge over the RSX. I thought that was rather a commonly accepted fact.

    This made me laugh, though:
    "I've seen your sort before and I wont waste my time on you"

    Well, Calgon, after writing about 3 books worth of bickering that's a little bit too late, don't you think? ;-)

  • Calgon #66 2 years ago

    I did say I wasnt going to reply again but since you asked a question and ignored the part where I said its my informed opinion about where I place each peice of hardware. Need I remind you that you made incorrect statements about 360s hardware earlier in the thread which I corrected and can back up with proof if you wish and also remind you of the fact that for the rest of the power debate you haven't any proof either. All you have is theoretical specs which you havent read into deeply enough(ie the GPUs... granted you might not understand how they work enough to do that and are calling it how you see it... exactly how Sony intended it to be) and guesswork, problem being you dont seem to be well informed enough to attempt being condescending with me so dont try it.

    "Xenos doesnt win in raw power but ppl assume that its efficient enough to make up for that."

    Actually they are even in terms of raw pixel fillrate, it was thought at first that the RSX's clockrate would be 550MHz but Sony decided on 500Mhz in the end. So some of the early comparisons might be off,(besides pixel fillrate may be pretty important in GPU power terms but Xenos is also stronger in other areas too vertex, particle performance, Vector5 shader ops versus RSX' Vector4 and so on) but even talking purely theoretically Xenos looks stronger. Some simple calculations adding in texture layers for example and things start to become clearer, again as I said Xenos has seperate texture units that handle texture fetch and what not, a certain amount of RSXs pixel ALUs will always be tied up doing texture fetch operations thus even theoretically its correct to say Xenos is stronger.

    http://ww w.pcvsconsole.com/comparisons/x...

    "I meant workings of the hardware and detailed specs of the RSX and Cell inards. Yet again you cant rebut that without being condescending. Simple answer to a question - is that available to them or are they using their engines and working with the capabilities of that instead."

    If you are asking what I think you are then I've already answered it, there are documents publicly available detailing the "innards" of both chips(same goes for 360's chips too). The system spec list will tell you what they are theoretically capable of, real world performance is difficult to judge and usually kept under wraps.

    Your bandwidth comments are right Unified does mean shared, whereas the PS3 memory pools aren't but there are many advantages to a UMA for both bandwidth and footprint. 32GB/s is plenty enough considering stuff like AA is handled on the daughter die itself, in other words the operations themselves are eating up the bandwidth not the instructions(it really does save alot of the bandwidth that would be available to RSX for the frame buffer and tasks like z-buffering, alpha blending, and antialiasing, granted its not perfect, should have been larger for one but they scrutinise over every penny spent on mass produced electronics like consoles). Looking at developer comments and multiplatform games again though it really does look like 360s memory architecture is more optimal, before you say it the PC side isnt developed as a UMA either.

    You seem to beleive that every shortcoming the PS3 has is down to devs only thinking about the 360, thats totally wrong. Theres only CELL that caused those sorts of difficulties(which is being addressed more frequently now by multiplatform devs) and needed that kind of attention the rest is pretty standard Im afraid... especially the GPU.
    Edited by 9 at 23/10/09 @ 17:19

  • funkateer #67 2 years ago

    "The cpu and GPU in the 360 actually SHARE the bandwidth"

    Hm yes, good point, as far as I know the Xenon accesses memory through the GPU so it sounds indeed logical that sharing memory also means sharing bandwidth. Not sure if it's an apples-to-apples comparison, but these Intel GFX chipsets found in some PCs that use main RAM for VRAM are typically bottom end graphics chips because of the bandwidth implications.

    However the eDRAM is imho kind of a big thing because it can give large fill rate advantages, which allows for things like higher resolutions, faster alpha blending, better AA etc. You know, the things that DF measure ;-)
    And in my experience, limited fill-rate is usually that brick wall that rendering engines typically spend most time to 'optimize around'.

  • Calgon #68 2 years ago

    I agree it seems pretty pointless arguing the power debate, they are obviously closer than we've seen in the past because the power debate as raged on longer than ever before but we cant forget that the most powerfull platform by far will be the PC even a fairly decent spec'd PC would have both machines beat by a much more significant margin.

    Saying that though Im glad both MS and Sony put the effort in(both have their weaknesses, things that could have been done better sure but on the whole theres plenty to like about some of the ideas from both), aside from reliabilty(which there are concerns for both machines now) console gamers have had it better than they have ever had in the past, the reason is because two giants(which they are compared how the industry was in the past) are competing for the market and wanted the edge in tech. I think it would be a shame if because of the Wii they feel that amount of effort spent on processing power is not necessary anymore next gen, might even turn to PC gaming if that happens.
    Edited by 1 at 23/10/09 @ 17:34

  • hiddenranbir #69 2 years ago

    Is it me or did they sacrifice a bit of the texture quality for all this?

    Of course, that is a worthy sacrifice since a lot of textures aren't so bad at lower things.

  • mkreku #70 2 years ago

    I just want to mention I played Uncharted 2 for the first time last night. It blew me away. Absolutely gorgeous. That is all.

  • CatWeazle #71 2 years ago

    @oreillymj

    I thought that Sony had actually left the CELL consortium, making a cell-equipped PS4 look unlikely..

    My bet is that Sony will hold off on a next generation Playstation until a Larrabee-style solution is ready.

  • Zword #72 1 year ago

    "It's a little frustrating to get such a short and often obscured glimpse of the performance tools in action, but at at around 23 seconds into the video, you should be able to discern on-screen that five SPUs are being maxed out: an impressive feat of parallelisation."

    The bars do not represent the power usage. They are showing the time in milliseconds per frame for calculations being performed. This does not tell us if the system is maxed or not. If you look at the bottom of the display you can see the tool clearly showing 30 ms. The math for 30 fps means you must on average 33.3 ms per frame rendered. That is why they went with 30 ms keeping true to the 30 fps goal with optimum quality.