PS3 - 4GHz PPC?

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?threadid=19805

I heard about it before, and sure it sounds cool... Lets hope that PS3s arent faster than PowerMacs though... Apple would look bad

The PS3 will not use PowerPC chips, since they use some other type of RISC chip (a NEC chip I think). If they used the PowerPC chip the PS3 would not be able to run PS2 games without emulating, which would make them too slow.

The only console to use PowerPC is GameCube. Also the next gen consoles are coming out in time for Christmas 2005 and I doubt the PowerPC will be at 4Ghz by then. Consoles always use old proccessors with very fast graphics cards. So we can expect the the PS3 to be at about 2Ghz, the GameCube to at about 3Ghz and the Xbox to have a P4 4.5Ghz (unless Microsoft cancels xbox which is lossing them billions every year).

Originally posted by Chaszmyr
I heard about it before, and sure it sounds cool... Lets hope that PS3s arent faster than PowerMacs though... Apple would look bad

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The PS2 is already faster than current powermacs at somethings, mainly 2D/3D graphics.

The PS2 is already faster than current powermacs at somethings, mainly 2D/3D graphics.

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well thats not surpriseing considering its a gameing system built for 2D/3D graphics.

Originally posted by hvfsl
The PS3 will not use PowerPC chips, since they use some other type of RISC chip (a NEC chip I think). If they used the PowerPC chip the PS3 would not be able to run PS2 games without emulating, which would make them too slow.

The only console to use PowerPC is GameCube. Also the next gen consoles are coming out in time for Christmas 2005 and I doubt the PowerPC will be at 4Ghz by then. Consoles always use old proccessors with very fast graphics cards. So we can expect the the PS3 to be at about 2Ghz, the GameCube to at about 3Ghz and the Xbox to have a P4 4.5Ghz (unless Microsoft cancels xbox which is lossing them billions every year).

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Actually, the PowerPC is most likely entering the console market. Sony has commissioned IBM to make a processor, the Cell, for the upcoming Playstation 3.

Plus, the Cell is actually 4 1GHz PowerPCs running at the same time with, I believe, a total of eight vector units. Arstechnica had more information on the technical aspect of it.

Heck, even at 1GHz, the Playstation 3 could easily emulate the Playstation 2 through an architecture change. The PS2 runs rather slowly, and a 1GHz 970 (or rough equivalent) could easily destroy the PS2's Emotion Engine.

The Playstation 3 is likely going to be a great console, and will likely top PCs in game appearance, at least temporarily. The new PS3 will be a great console that will easily find its way into my budget.

From the looks of it it will be PPC cores, the only thing up in the air is what are the vector units? I think they might be altivec (because of the 970), but I'm not really sure. The playstations "emulation" of a previous system is by hardware, the PS2 did it by having the PS1 chip on the motherboard. I am assuming Sony will do the same for the PS3 just that there will be the new cell chip with it (Sony in the middle of the PS2's lifespan shrunk the die size of the PS2 and PS1 chips). Besides it wouldn't be too hard to emulate the emotion engine- you got a very nice cell processor to do it

And the PS2 has to only render TV size frames which is less than 640 x 480. Maybe PS3 will offer High-Definition.

By late 2005 they will need to do HD video out. The XBox can do that already on some games as far as I know.

The CELL is a freakin monster of a chip. IBM, Sony, and Toshiba (iirc) have teamed up to work on it. It has *eight* vector units per core. eight. There's going to be a seperate chip just for handing out tasks to the main multi-core CELL chip. It also sounds like it's going to be serious trouble to program for. I mean, Altivec is bad enough, trying to get 32 way vector parallelism (as opposed to 4 way on Altivec) is going to be a nightmare.

The cell chip is insanity. I've heard numerous reports that the PS2 is massively hard to program for, and that it's next to impossible to get the program optimized.

The GC and XBox are a different story because they both run established platforms, PPC and x86 which already has a lot of expertice behind it.

If the cell turns out to have a PPC core, then that might make things easier because there are plenty of PPC specialists.

Speaking of consoles, is it possible to make your own NES/SNES/Genesis games for an emulator? If so, that could open up a great shareware market. Think of all the cool games that people could make, and they wouldn't have to worry about making a mac/pc/linux version, they just use the ROM file and the end user finds an emulator that works for them

*end crazy idea*

i know that the dreamcast is built on windows ce so thats why it has loads of emulators that can be run on it, divx and vcd players and everything. Now thats the way to go. And yes i still dislike micro$oft