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Nvidia RSX Chip for PS3 @ E3

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FanATIc

Gawd
Joined
Apr 29, 2005
Messages
718
Sony also unveiled the PS3's graphics chip, the RSX "Reality Synthesizer," which is based on Nvidia technology. The GPU will be capable of 128bit pixel precision, 1080p resolution, some of the highest HD resolution around. The RSX also has 512MB of graphics render memory and is capable of 100 billion shader operations and 51 billion dot products per second. It also has more than 300 million transistors, larger than any processor commercially available today. It will be manufactured using the 90nm process, with eight layers of metal. The RSX is more powerful than two GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards, which would cost roughly $1,000 total if purchased today.

The power of one of the next-generation consoles was shown today as Sony and Epic Games showed off Unreal Engine 3 running in real-time on the PlayStation 3. GameSpot had the opportunity to see Unreal Engine 3.0 at this and last year's Game Developers Conference, and while undoubtedly gorgeous, one couldn't help but notice that the then-cutting edge PC hardware struggled to run it smoothly. The PlayStation 3 was the first time GameSpot editors have seen the graphics engine running in beautiful, smooth motion, and it's undeniably impressive.

The demo was given by Tim Sweeney, Epic cofounder and chief technology officer. A quick synopsis is as follows: the demo began with fiery explosions, one of which hurled an Unreal-style soldier clad in metal armor through the air. Sparks flew when the soldier slams on a metal walkway as he aims his weapon at the sinister looking robot chasing him.

The soldier then fires his weapons and drops the robot, gets up and limps to the walkway's edge. However, the perspective changes to the robot's point of view, and one sees it reactivating and getting back up, then charge at the soldier. The soldier, sensing the danger, turns around and tries to raise his weapon, but the robot gets to him first and tackles him over the precipice. They fall to the platform below, and they both get up and stare at each other. Half the robot's head is shot off, and you can see the metal glowing around the shot-off area.

Somehow, the soldier's rocket launcher is thrown into the air, where it begins to slowly tumble. The robot slams into the guy and tries to crush him, but the soldier gets leverage and tosses the robot over another edge. He then catches the falling rocket launcher, and then pumps three rounds at the falling opponent, which explode and destroy it finally.

As a movie, it was a spectacular technological tour de force, and just to show that it wasn't a pre-rendered movie, Sweeney replayed the demo, then paused it and zoomed in and out, showing off various technological details.

The engine was running in 720p on a high-definition screen, about the equivalent of a PC's resolution, giving everything a sharp look. The engine also had perfect lighting and shadowing, with shaders that are approximately 200 times more complex than in the previous console generation.

What was most impressive is that the engine takes advantage of high dynamic range lighting, which allows for a very realistic simulation of real light and shadows.

The engine also uses per-pixel lighting and shadowing, to capture the little details that, when taken together, are most impressive. It's no understatement to say that the industry has reached a new plateau in graphics, and we're looking at games that are on par with Hollywood movies.

Unreal Engine 3 is also a very interesting choice for Sony to demo, as the engine is extremely multiplatform. Epic is primarily a PC developer, and the company is already using Unreal Engine 3 in its game for Microsoft's Xbox 360 Gears of War.

The early screens of Gears of War, as well as early gameplay that we saw at Game Developer's Conference in March, indicate that Unreal Engine 3 will look as impressive on that platform as it does on the PS3. And as PC graphics and CPU power inevitably improve over the next year or so, we'll be able to see that level of graphical prowess on desktops.

So the good news is that Unreal Engine 3 looks good to go on next-generation consoles and PC's, and gamers will be better for it by a large margin.
Click to expand...

While a driect comparison vs the R500 cant be done, still sounds very very impressive.
 
i was very impressed, i think in terms of hardware specs, the Sony wins against the xbox 360. Though yet there was nothing to compare, but from what i have read, from a gamespot article about PS3, the GPU is better than 2 6800 Ultras, so for people who have sigs with SLI, tough luck u wasted your money :p. But GPUs can't be compared yet since we know nothing of what ATI's new chip is scaled to. For CPU and amount of memory available Sony wins.
Sony CPU " The cell" is able to do 2 Terafop whereas the xbox's CPU is 1 teraflops. It doesn't matter anyways, how developer companies do u all the resources that r available to them and make a great game. Inn terms of RAM avaialable in each machine, I was really disappointed to hear that the xbox has only 10 MB for VRAM and 512 for its system, whereas the sony made it 256 for the system and 256 for the VRAM, soit hard to tell who is gonna win, but i would rather have a GPU with more RAM in it dedicated for the vdeo. Till now it's hard to decide. I know i will buy the PS3 when it gets launched coz they release the games that i want to play, unlike xbox 360.
 
timeless said:
i was very impressed, i think in terms of hardware specs, the Sony wins against the xbox 360. Though yet there was nothing to compare, but from what i have read, from a gamespot article about PS3, the GPU is better than 2 6800 Ultras, so for people who have sigs with SLI, tough luck u wasted your money :p. But GPUs can't be compared yet since we know nothing of what ATI's new chip is scaled to. For CPU and amount of memory available Sony wins.
Sony CPU " The cell" is able to do 1 Terafop whereas the xbox's CPU is 1 teraflops. It doesn't matter anyways, how developer companies do u all the resources that r available to them and make a great game. Inn terms of RAM avaialable in each machine, I was really disappointed to hear that the xbox has only 10 MB for VRAM and 512 for its system, whereas the sony made it 256 for the system and 256 for the VRAM, soit hard to tell who is gonna win, but i would rather have a GPU with more RAM in it dedicated for the vdeo. Till now it's hard to decide. I know i will buy the PS3 when it gets launched coz they release the games that i want to play, unlike xbox 360.
Click to expand...

I am exceptionally disatisfied with their chosen shape though. They curved the top so that it must be on the top in a home theater rather then allowing people to place something ontop of it such as previous Xbox, Xbox360, and PS2. May not matter to people but that was the very first thing i noticed. Not too sure about the boomerang style controller either.


 
timeless said:
i was very impressed, i think in terms of hardware specs, the Sony wins against the xbox 360. Though yet there was nothing to compare, but from what i have read, from a gamespot article about PS3, the GPU is better than 2 6800 Ultras, so for people who have sigs with SLI, tough luck u wasted your money :p. But GPUs can't be compared yet since we know nothing of what ATI's new chip is scaled to. For CPU and amount of memory available Sony wins.
Sony CPU " The cell" is able to do 1 Terafop whereas the xbox's CPU is 1 teraflops. It doesn't matter anyways, how developer companies do u all the resources that r available to them and make a great game. Inn terms of RAM avaialable in each machine, I was really disappointed to hear that the xbox has only 10 MB for VRAM and 512 for its system, whereas the sony made it 256 for the system and 256 for the VRAM, soit hard to tell who is gonna win, but i would rather have a GPU with more RAM in it dedicated for the vdeo. Till now it's hard to decide. I know i will buy the PS3 when it gets launched coz they release the games that i want to play, unlike xbox 360.
Click to expand...

That's 10Mb of embedded RAM. Doesnt sound like much, but its extremely extremely extremely high bandwidth there. Helps an amazing amount on AA and things like that.
 
OMG y did they change the controller
noooooooooooooooooooooooooo, i hope the plug is still the same so i can use my old PS2
 
timeless said:
OMG y did they change the controller
noooooooooooooooooooooooooo, i hope the plug is still the same so i can use my old PS2
Click to expand...

The new controllers are wireless (Bluetooth).
 
I hope nVidia will be able to have some RSX chip GPUs for us after Sony gobbles up their
share. Then again...I wouldn't hesitate on pulling the trigger on $100 6800GT's (just making
a guess on the price adjustments).
 
NeoGodzilla said:
The new controllers are wireless (Bluetooth).
Click to expand...

correct, and it will support 7 of them....no idea why its an odd number. Will also have wi-fi function with the PSP.

CPU: Cell Processor PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
--1 VMX vector unit per core
--512KB L2 cache
--7 x SPE @3.2GHz
--7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
--7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
--*1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
--Total floating point performance: 218 gigaflops


GPU RSX @ 550MHz
--1.8 TFLOPS floating point Performance
--Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
--Multi-way programmable parallel Floating point shader pipelines (look familiar?)
--Sound Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-based processing)

MEMORY
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
System Bandwidth Main RAM-- 25.6GB/s
VRAM--22.4GB/s
RSX-- 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Processor Custom IBM PowerPC CPU
Processor Clock Speed 3.2GHz (3 Cores)
L2 Cache 1MB
Processor Clock Speed (2nd) 3 Cores, 2 Hardware Threads per Core


Graphics Processor Custom ATI Processor
Graphics Core Clock Speed 500MHz
System Memory 512MB, 700MHz DDR
Vector Units 1 VMX-128 unit per core (3 total)
CPU Math Performance 9 Billion Dot Product Operations per Second
System Memory Bandwith 22.4GB/s, 256GB/s to EDRAM
Memory Architecture Unified Memory Architecture
Shaders 48-way Parallel Floating Point Dynamically-Scheduled, 48 billion Operations/s
Video Memory 10MB Embedded DRAM (512MB UMA)
Fill Rate (pixels) 16 Gigasamples/s using 4X MSAA
Fill Rate (triangles) 500 Million/s
Resolution 480p, 480i, 720p, 1080i


Main Memory Bandwidth 22.4GB/s

.
 
timeless said:
For CPU and amount of memory available Sony wins.
...Inn terms of RAM avaialable in each machine, I was really disappointed to hear that the xbox has only 10 MB for VRAM and 512 for its system, whereas the sony made it 256 for the system and 256 for the VRAM, soit hard to tell who is gonna win, but i would rather have a GPU with more RAM in it dedicated for the vdeo.
Click to expand...

I was under the impression that the 512 MB RAM was available to both the system and the video card, with the 10 MB of the special superfast RAM being used as a frame buffer or to apply AA without a performance hit.
 
HOT DIGGITY

console gaming will be changing in the next few years, xbox 360 looks to try to storm the towers, but it looks like sony just made those towers made of grease!
OH NO Which one to buy?!!
 
Canon20d said:
HOT DIGGITY

console gaming will be changing in the next few years, xbox 360 looks to try to storm the towers, but it looks like sony just made those towers made of grease!
OH NO Which one to buy?!!
Click to expand...

uhh duh!! BOTH! :D
 
I'll certainly be looking to get both...the PS3 for sure (because I'm an nVidiot) but I'm hoping
that by the time the PS3 rolls around, the Xbox 360 will have dropped down by $100.
And as far as a price drop on nVidia's current GeForce 6 series...since consoles are sold
with a lose in money thats made up in the sale of the games...I wouldn't hold my breath
on 6800GT's being less than $200 retail anytime soon...unless ATI's prices drop in accordance.
 
guys, the 360 essentially has available to it up to 512mb of video ram (yes i know in the real world itll be more like half-half between the GPU and system, but thats still the same as the PS3)

the 10mb is EDRAM...which is insanely fast ram used as a cache for the GPU to be able to render with AA with no performance hit........this is ON TOP OF the potential 512Mb GDDR3 ram available to the GPU
 
cell is VECTOR and anyone who doesnt know what that means by now dont go ranting about the cells flop rateing,R500 is 2-3times faster then X850XTpe in shader preformence. the nvidia gpu is very very very impressive on paper i must say,but so is the R500. we seem to have more details on the R500 though so its not really fair to call a winner yet. 2teraflops of TOTAL SYSTEM POWER NOT CPU ALONE!!!!!this helps because basically ever processor in the ps3 is completly vector sending its Gflop rateings through the roof. vector processors have to predict what type of data will be thrown at them abd if its something it doesnt expect it can waste up to 15cycles to try and process it making the thing cry. this will be more along the lines of AI an realtime physics that can be randomly used at any time. GPU's are vector based and far far more powerful then the top of the line processors today techniqually. but you dont see a gpu being able to process just anything do you?thats why they are never manufactured for cpus they are vector and just are fit for the job
 
What's BS is that they can put more than 2x 6800 ultras in a $250-350(retail) system and then charge us $400+ for one ultra. I know its not the same, but come on...Total BS. Rip offs.
 
Skrying said:
That's 10Mb of embedded RAM. Doesnt sound like much, but its extremely extremely extremely high bandwidth there. Helps an amazing amount on AA and things like that.
Click to expand...

As others previously mentioned the 10MB are embedded. This ram will be running at the same speed as the GPU.

All this information is also all talk.

XBOX 360 hasn't even been fully decided. Sony will probably make some adjustments too to make it buyable and improve somethings that they might have issues with.

I do not think any of the specs that have been mentioned are firm. Something will have to change. None of these consoles will be released next month and none are in production.
 
BBC News said:
CPU Cell Processor running at 3.2Ghz with 2.18 teraflops of performance
Click to expand...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4554025.stm

This means that only the Cell processor gives out 2.18 TFLOPS. I'm wondering if the CPU on the XBOX is the one that only produces 1 TFLOP.

If that is the case, why the hell do you need all that power? We are playing games not folding :p. Unless they pre-install Folding software so they can get first place.

CHEATERS!!!!

Can't wait to see all the hacks that will be used to enable folding on those machines. :D
 
From the specs given on THG and AT, here's a GPU comparison only for the 360 and PS3:

Code: 
Xbox 360                                           PS3
500MHz Custom ATI Graphics Processor               550MHz NVIDIA RSX GPU*
10 MB embedded DRAM                                N/A(?)
48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines    ??? (probably 24)
Unified shader architecture                        independant vertex/pixel shaders
500 million triangles per second                   ??? (probably "550 million", FYIW)
16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X MSAA   ???
48 billion shader operations per second            74.8 billion shader ops/s (136/cycle @ 550MHz)
512MB GDDR3 RAM @ 700MHz                           256MB GDDR3 local memory + 256MB system memory**
Unified memory architecture                        256MB GDDR3 local + 256MB XDR system memory
22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth           22.4GB/s local 256MB GDDR3 @ 700MHz
256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM                 N/A(?)
21.6 GB/s front-side bus                           36GB/s Cell to GPU link (20GB/s write, 15GB/s read)
* RSX is based on the G70
** RSX GPU can render to/read directly from system memory
 
It's able to do 1920X1080 and support 2 HD displays. That's some powerful sh**.
 
PRIME1 said:
It's able to do 1920X1080 and support 2 HD displays. That's some powerful sh**.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the back of the PS3 has 2 HDMI out ports. :eek: If it can do multiplayer on 2 separate screens at once (@ 720p or 1080p/i), that would be incredible.
 
Everyone keeps mentioning the 10Mb embedded dram on the Xbox. I haven't heard anyone mention that half of the 512 on the PS3 runs at full clock (3.2Ghz).
 
logo29a said:
Everyone keeps mentioning the 10Mb embedded dram on the Xbox. I haven't heard anyone mention that half of the 512 on the PS3 runs at full clock (3.2Ghz).
Click to expand...
The 256MB of "full-speed" XDR only has a 64-bit memory interface, limiting bandwidth to 25.6GB/s (3.2GHz * 64-bits * 1-byte/8-bits).

The RSX can use main memory like the 6200TC does, increasing the total available bandwidth to 22.4GB/s + 25.6GB/s* = 48GB/s. The embedded RAM in the 360's GPU has over 5x that much bandwidth (256GB/s), plus 22.4GB/s external memory bandwidth.

(* could be 22.4GB/s + 20GB/s write or 22.4GB/s + 15GB/s read if the RSX has to go through the Cell processor for main memory access since those are the link speeds between RSX and Cell)

Both the 360 and PS3 have advantages and disadvantages with each memory strategy:
The RSX has a lot (256MB) of dedicated memory that allows the Cell processor full use of a massive amount of memory bandwidth (256MB XDR), but lacks ultra-fast embdeded memory (which could be used as a 5x faster framebuffer/scratchpad).

The 360 has a monster GPU with an ultra-fast 10MB framebuffer/scratchpad, but has to share 22.4GB/s of bandwidth between most GPU use (reading/writing most textures) and all 3 CPUs' use.

IMO, neither of those pros/cons are far ahead or behind the other and i haven't decided which one to get. I'd be pretty happy with either if the PS3 games look as good as the 360 demos shown so far (which it should). :D
 
i think these companies and some gamers are getting the specs confused. Total computing power may be at 2 whatever or 1 whatever teraflops
but it is not correctly "advertised" i guess is the word to use. The processors for these systems are all on 1 chip being either the cell or 3 cores . But i dont think its properly being advertised. Nonetheless, it is a huge break at least in console gaming as they get nearer to pc gaming. I read a while back though that the ps3 cell core. and even the xbox 360 will still encounter the same roadblocks that pcs have come to know and love which is the bottleneck of properly getting the most out of the Ram and each cores FSB. Obvously its faster than last gen consoles. But in no way are they running at 2 or 1 teraflops. I think thats a misinterpreted statements that i know !!!!!!s will pick up and run with. Ive already seen a few peeps on [H] thinking thats the case. anyways.. im out. I hope to see some great games. I plan on getting the box and ps3. Might just go for the revolution also.
 
palindrome said:
^ They are sold at a loss and then make the monehy back on games.
Click to expand...
yes, but as he was saying the loss seems like its going to be so great with the amount of power these things are claiming. That it seems to me these things will be at least 500-700 dollars, just to expensive equipment in these things to warrant a 300 price tag.
 
DiNkMe said:
yes, but as he was saying the loss seems like its going to be so great with the amount of power these things are claiming. That it seems to me these things will be at least 500-700 dollars, just to expensive equipment in these things to warrant a 300 price tag.
Click to expand...

People shouldnt compare the cost of a graphics card to the cost of a console graphics core. Quite different. They dont have to manufacture a board for each core to sit in since its integrated onto a main board. This cuts out one of the biggest costs to make graphic cards. Cores literally cost dollars to manufacture and the fact that its in 90nm will help. Power wise it sounds like a huge deal but resource wise they're using far less material.
 
Crazystick said:
i think these companies and some gamers are getting the specs confused. ....
Click to expand...


There's a huge difference between pc's and consoles

1) You can upgrade
2) You can upgrade
3) You can upgrade
4) PC's will always cost more
5)You can upgrade
6) PC's are generally used for 1 player or multiplayer over a network.
7) You can upgrade
8) You can use old parts in new systems
9) My name is Mohammed Taha
10)You can upgrade without voiding a warranty
 
well sony has blue ray... so if that format of HD movies takes off, they will get a certain portion of every single blue ray dvd sold... So if releasing a badass console with blueray support helps propogate their format in the format wars... well, they'll easily make their money back in the next 10 years


microsoft is supporting HD-dvd... which is not in the xbox... so i don't know what the fuck microsoft is thinking ?
 
FanATIc said:
People shouldnt compare the cost of a graphics card to the cost of a console graphics core. Quite different. They dont have to manufacture a board for each core to sit in since its integrated onto a main board. This cuts out one of the biggest costs to make graphic cards. Cores literally cost dollars to manufacture and the fact that its in 90nm will help. Power wise it sounds like a huge deal but resource wise they're using far less material.
Click to expand...
Im not following, as your telling me it costs an arm and a leg to put the core onto some pcb board? How does that justify the such hike in price? Its not like pcb is super expensive.
 
TheLonelySwedish said:
I'm buying all 3....so there.
Click to expand...
I hear you on that one.

I will own a XBOX 360, PS3, Nintendo Revolution, Also I will get a nice new TV to make all this look pretty. AND, I will get whatever video card is better for my PC... R520 or G70... Maybe even 2 of them depening on the SLI situation.

Im glad i work for a living huh :)
 
Now people like me will stop bitching about XBox ports. As far as graphics are concerned. The XBox port gameplay is still blah.
 
We'll as far as pure power is concerened I think the PS3 is going to be a far more powerful unit as the Cell chip has 7 total core's each running at 3.2Ghz...hello!!....that's 22.4Ghz which is just unheard of...The xbox only supports 3 total cores and the PS3 has 1.7Mb's of L1 cache omg!! They've said in the past that the cell processor itself is a 1000 times more powerful than a p4 3.2c and their currently developing the chip for large mainframe and networking computers as I understand.

Sony,Toshiba and a few other big names are also going to use the cell chip in a ton of other electronics such as HDTV's,digital camera's,cell phones,pc's,home appliances and who know's what else they'll come up with.....I'm with several others stating that I will buy all 3 consoles, new pc graphics cards and enjoy all the great games coming out on any of the platforms available.

When it comes down to it all this really means is better games, graphics and products and competition which will hopefully keep the price range in the $300-450.00 price range. As far as the controller goes for the PS3, I just don't know if I like the change and will have to just wait and see.

I know that their also going to release wired controllers,keyboards,mouse and other peripherals that plug into the front of the unit in one of the 4 usb ports that are on the front. It's also nice to have use of all the different types of flash memory availabe to choose from to store game saves and media too instead of having to buy a special memory card like microsoft will have you do!! :confused:

Why microsoft why do you not include HD-DVD, portable media already available and free online Xbox Live?? :mad: The PS2 is free to play online and looks to be the same for the PS3 so Sony wins again which is fine with me b/c I love Sony and their products and I think they continue to push the industry. Sorry for such a long post LOL :D
 
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