CodecSys CE-10: PS3 Cell Faster than Core i7 965 XE

That is scary! Once again, Sony has proven that it was worth putting its money into future tech!

goes to show how far technology has gone..

Sony has done it again ! :tup:

Definitely NOT a surprise!

The PS3... No more need for comment.


No more need for praise.


Sony Rulezz. :chill:

impressive though surely the hour or so needed to convert a film would overheat the cpu? (im guessing it would be running at 100% full out)

if only there was some way to use this power on my pc, my old core2duo just aint what it used to be :wonky:

Then again this show the power of it... Developers should find a better way of rendering graphics with the cell... i know that they can take more juice from it.

my PC already have CELL to do h.264 encode/decode , it encode fast x4 time than my MacPro.

Explain how you got your PS3 to do your encoding? (other than using Linux/OtherOS)

This is hardly a surprise due to the fact that the cell is designed for number crunching hence how well it does in f@h, but in everything else the Core i7 is way more powerful, and it will even do much better in gaming than the Cell.

Well, we have to remember that the PS3 is actually a "cheap" system.

If you go out and build any PC today (let alone a Core i7), you are definitely going to stick more than 256MB worth of ram inside.

If the PS3 was jazzed up a bit, its advantages could shine so much more - stick 2GB of system ram (at least), stick in something newer than an Nvidia 7000 series.

It does show how scalable the system is though, its successor could simply be the same system with a beefier chip (more cores), some additional memory, and a new graphics chipset and it would be set for years to come. The CELL is a powerhouse, I just wish we did not get the short end of the straw back in 2006 - but there is always more to come in the future!

Well, there is no doubt that the current generation of video game hardware are powerful. Unfortunately, the limits of the RAM really affect the system performance. I was hoping to see at least 2 GB of RAM in the system (PS3 or Xbox 360). Oh well. Hopefully PS4 or Xbox720 will come with at least 4 GB but preferably 8GB.

Even Windows need at least 4GB to make the system hum. Resolution war is over. Processor war is going but I think memory (system and video) will be the deciding factor to win the console race.

Ram has little to nothing to do with games on top of that the PS3 uses XDR rapped around the cell to make it run the fastest it can. XDR is very expensive that's why it only has 256 MB of it.

Now the Cell is a super computer microprocessor. It was built for super computing, so it doesn't really surprise me that it beat IBM.

With the graphics cards companies letting you create your own apps to run on the gpu`s now eg password cracking how would a video encoder written to run on the gpu fair against the ps3 in this case ?

It is only going to be time before the PS3 shows its true power just like the PS2. I, for one am happy I bought one.

Wow sounds incredible, but sony needs to give us Linux devs access the power of the ps3..

Yep, that would be nice.

It is really cool to once again see how powerful of a machine the ps3 is!!!

... but can it run Crysis?

nope :(

Different architectures are better at different things; I'd prefer to see how it does on many other tests rather than just one. It's like comparing a workstation video card to a gaming video card, one does a certain thing better than the other but loses out to many other things as well so to call it "faster" is a rather blunt statement.

yes, i registered just to say this.

Crysis should not be used as a benchmark there are alot of games that look better than it, the only reason Crysis requires a top of the line PC to play is because it was coded by a bunch of morons, the original concept photos of Crysis made it look great but the final product was not even close to the concept. In theory the PS3 could play Crysis its not really down to the processor its down to the video card, if the PS3 has something with a little more power it could play Crysis fairly well.

The architecture of the cell is really only designed for super computing not gaming. In my opinion the choice of the Cell as a processor for the PS3 was a bad one, it seems like as if they thought to themselves '8 cores should be good, lets choose this one since more is always good and let the developers worry about the tricky architecture'.

The "...but can it run Crysis?" was a joke moreso than anything else... I just had to say it... the PS3 Cell seems to have the power of a 7900GTX which back in the day was hot tech until the 8800s came by in 2007.

The final release of Crysis didn't look as great as the alpha but it still beats any game out there in terms of graphics, physics, and special effects; I wonder what CryEngine3 has in store for the PS4 as I'll be looking forward to that.

The Cell architecture is great like you said, but it shines in certain other parts much better than it does in gaming which is kinda of ironic being a gaming console and all... it would probably be easier to port games between 360, PC, and PS3 if it had used a standard CPU and GPU like everything else does.