Cell and GPU work better together than either alone

Its always been well known the Cell could go the GPU work, that was sony's initial plans until they realised it just wasnt powerful enough to do both the CPU and GPU work.
 
It sounds promising, but all this fancy technical jargon doesnt mean anything untill we start seeing some games that take advantage. Hopefully that'll be soon.
 
Sony need to stop bragging about their console, something they've been doing since day 1 - and concentrate on the gaming side of things for once. One of my mates bought one last week from a competitor and has already gone back to his Wii.
 
I'd say the developers on beyond3d will probably discuss this with some meaningful explanation..

I think it's well known that developers are using some of the SPE's to offload graphics work already, this paper is to me a bit of a theoretical exercise, it's quoting loads of throughput using 5 SPE's, well what's the rest of the game going to run on, 1 SPE?

Clearly developers are already using some of the SPE's time to help some of the graphics calculations, which is a good thing, but there is a balance of how much resource you can steal from the CELL before the rest of your game engine runs out of steam..

The 360 already has programmable shaders, so it's possible to actually do some of this in those.. but how much, I don't know..

It's interesting, but only in an educational sort of way..
 
Demon said:
I'd say the developers on beyond3d will probably discuss this with some meaningful explanation..

I think it's well known that developers are using some of the SPE's to offload graphics work already, this paper is to me a bit of a theoretical exercise, it's quoting loads of throughput using 5 SPE's, well what's the rest of the game going to run on, 1 SPE?

Clearly developers are already using some of the SPE's time to help some of the graphics calculations, which is a good thing, but there is a balance of how much resource you can steal from the CELL before the rest of your game engine runs out of steam..

The 360 already has programmable shaders, so it's possible to actually do some of this in those.. but how much, I don't know..

It's interesting, but only in an educational sort of way..
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you got the PPE as the main processor and then the 5 spes.
 
they needed a GPU card after finding out that the Cell couldn't hack it, now they saying we don't need all the power of the GPU because now its been discovered that the Cell can actually do something usefull
 
johnnyfive said:
you got the PPE as the main processor and then the 5 spes.
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Yeah but whereas the PPE is a single 3.2 ghz if all other SPEs are being used for graphics it doesnt leave a lot of CPU power considering the 360 has 3 proper cores running at the same speed but with 2 threads per core all for CPU work.

To be honest i think the cell is very interesting but from what ive read it just wasn't made to be a gaming chip, it was created for media purposes like LCD TVs etc.

But hey what do i know! Some of the PS3 games are beginning to look quite nice.
 
If thats the case. How come do PS3 games barely looked any better than 360? I'm not saying 360 is better but all the technical talks of CPU/GPU is a bit pointless, isn't it?

Its just reminded me of all the technical talk of PS2 yet it was an inferior console to the original xbox and GC.

At the end of day, it's the games that mattered.
 
It does seem Sony are masters at the theoretical numbers game..

I trust my eyes far more then any 'big numbers in an impossible scenario' report..

Saying that, I'm not disappointed with the PS3 graphically, it's a good match to the 360, and we all know both have strengths and weaknesses to keep developers on their toes..
 
McManicMan said:
they needed a GPU card after finding out that the Cell couldn't hack it, now they saying we don't need all the power of the GPU because now its been discovered that the Cell can actually do something usefull
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No they're saying they can use the full power of the GPU and add to it by using the Cell.
 
With the PS3 people often make a terrible assumption. They say the RSX can't do AA and HDR at the same time, but that isn't to say that the PS3 can't do HDR and AA at the same time. Look at Heavenly sword for example.
I read that the best way to use the RSX is for post processing, as that is what it excels at. So the trick is to offload some of the rendering onto the cell, and use the RSX to do the post processing effects.
It is all interesting, but then again, it seems like a cumbersome maner to do things, and as such will only increase the amount of people/devs/bloggers saying that the PS3 is a [female dog] to program for. But it may not actually be that it is difficult, just more different.
And as someone mentioned earlier people are using the cell for shading purposes. There is an article here which some of you may be interested in regarding the SPU Shaders.
 
Psyk said:
No they're saying they can use the full power of the GPU and add to it by using the Cell.
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Sounds like something they want to sound impressive but won't actually offer anything in practice.

Can't say I'm surprised that a processor works better with a graphics card TBH. Anyone who didn't know that is a numpty..
 
barnettgs said:
If thats the case. How come do PS3 games barely looked any better than 360? I'm not saying 360 is better but all the technical talks of CPU/GPU is a bit pointless, isn't it?

Its just reminded me of all the technical talk of PS2 yet it was an inferior console to the original xbox and GC.

At the end of day, it's the games that mattered.
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PS3 games look worse than 360 games.
 
Jihad said:
Sounds like something they want to sound impressive but won't actually offer anything in practice.
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Well I'm sure developers would prefer it if the graphics chip were just better so they didn't have to use both together to achieve the graphical umph that the Xbox 360 has. So yeah they want it to sound impressive, but it doesn't sound like a particularly good architechture to me.

Jihad said:
Can't say I'm surprised that a processor works better with a graphics card TBH. Anyone who didn't know that is a numpty..
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The point is that most processors would be completely useless at this type of graphical work, so they wouldn't be able to supplement the graphics card. But because of the nature of the Cell's SPEs it can do similar calculations quite well. That way if they want to achieve graphical effects that the graphics chip can't handle alone, they can set aside some of the SPEs to do some of the work instead.
 
Psyk said:
The point is that most processors would be completely useless at this type of graphical work, so they wouldn't be able to supplement the graphics card. But because of the nature of the Cell's SPEs it can do similar calculations quite well. That way if they want to achieve graphical effects that the graphics chip can't handle alone, they can set aside some of the SPEs to do some of the work instead.
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I'll believe it when I see it tbh, Sony have spouted quite a lot of crap in recent years with their consoles.

Still waiting on them Toy Story 2 graphics from the PS2.
 
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