PS3 hardware slow and broken In words and picturesBy Charlie Demerjian in Taipei: Monday 05 June 2006, 03:35 AFTER BREAKING THE news to me about PS3 RSX speeds earlier on the flight to Japan, my row-mate said 'if you think that's interesting, wait till you see this. Cell is hurting, badly'. For those of you that believe in religions with karmic tendencies, scoops like this meant one of two things, the wings of the plane are about to fall off and I am going to die in a fiery ball, or worse yet, the movie selection will be worrisome. Cell memory access appears to be broken, RSX has half the triangle setup rate of the ATI chip in XBox360, and the true horror, Big Momma's House 2 and a Queen Latifa movie.With the movie selection still making my brain throb from the glances I caught, I furiously took notes on what the source was saying. He started out saying that the RSX can only write about half as much vertex data as it can fetch, not an ideal situation by any stretch, but survivable. Then came the horrible news, RSX appears to be limited to setting up 275 Million triangles/second, anemic compared to the 500+ million in XBox360. When asked about this apparent thumping dished out by MS, the reply from one notable ISV relations boffin was a terse 'What a Piece of Junk'. Talk about a steak in the heart.Half the triangle setup capability in the PS3, could things get worse? Yes, far far worse, how about another disparity of three orders of magnitude? No, I am not joking, looking at Sony's own figures, Cell appears to be pretty badly broken.For main memory, it looks like Cell has about 25GBps of main memory bandwidth, and RSX is about 15-20GBps. Achievable bandwidth is between about two thirds of that and nearly 100%, clearly the elves in the caves surrounding Rambus central did something right with XDR. That is the happy news.For local memory, the measured vs theoretical bandwidth is missing, I wonder why? RSX is at a solid 22.4GBps for both read and write, good job there green team. Then comes the blue team with Cell. Local memory write is about 4GBps, 40% of the next slowest bandwidth there. Then comes the bomb from hell, the Cell local memory read bandwidth is a stunning 16MBps, note that is a capital M to connote Mega vs a capital G to connote Giga. This is a three order of magnitude oopsie, and it is an oopsie, as Sony put it "(no, this isn't a typo...)".If you can write at 250x the read speed, it makes Cell local memory just about useless. That means you do all your work out of main memory, and the whole point of local is, well, pointless. This can lead to contention issues for the main memory bus, and all sorts of nightmarish to debug performance problems. Basically, if this Sony presentation to PS3 devs shown to us is correct, it looks like PS3 will be hobbled in a serious way.The next slide goes on to say "Don't read from local memory, but write to main memory with RSX(tm) and read it from there instead", and repeats the table numbers. This is very very bad. The number of times the presentation goes on to say that it is correct, and the lack of anything like "this will be fixed by production steppings, so take measures X, Y and Z" say to me that it is not a fixable snafu. Remember at E3 when I said that the PS3 demos there were object sparse? Any guesses why?Someone screwed up so badly it looks like it will relegate the console to second place behind the 360. All the devs I talked to were lukewarm on the 360 architecture but universally negative on the PS3. Revelations like this go a long way to explain why you keep hearing about simmering problems from the Sony devs.You end up with a console with half the triangle setup rate of the 360, a crippled CPU that is a bitch to program, and tools that are atrocious compared to the 360. To make matters worse, you have an arrogant set of execs telling us that twice the price is worth it for half the power, a year late. If it isn't already too late, Sony had better do something about this recto-cranial inversion or it may very well sink the console.
More problems beset the PS3 Kotaku spills the beansBy Charlie Demerjian in Taipei: Monday 12 June 2006, 09:15 LOOKS LIKE THE PS3 is getting to be a better 'value' every day according to Sony's slightly reality-tangential maths. Rumours heard by the site Kotaku back up several of the things whispered in our ears over the past month or three and add a few more.We were told that the PS3 components were way too large to fit into the case, and the fact that there are no betas, and serious talk of an external PSU don't do much to harm the faith I had in my source. As a note to the twits who still insist that they saw a 'working PS3' at E3, you were taken for a ride, get over it. Next time, learn the basics of conning the stupid, and look for them. Either way, I get this sneaking suspicion that we may see a PS3 case 'upgrade' before the ship date.Then they go on to say the clocks may be reduced to 2.8GHz. Gosh, who would have ever thought that would happen? Yep, 'horrible' yields mean high defectivity or low specs, and it looks like the low specs are rearing their ugly heads. 2.8 with 7 SPEs it is, for now anyway. Ugly part II.As for the RSX performance, I have already weighed in on that one, so no more beating a dead horse. I don't think there is anything wrong with it, just that it is underspecced compared to the ATI chip. It is a G7x with some chipset functionality welded on, and NVidia should have little problem delivering this part on time and on budget. If there is any problem, it is because Sony asked for the wrong set of numbers.Whatever the case, my sources back up Kotaku almost perfectly. Sony looks to have one heck of an expensive Zepplin launching in the jet age. If they toned down the arrogance a notch or 12, and started engaging the parts of the press that aren't sycophantic suck-ups, they might be able to either get their side out, or blunt the oncoming storm. Sadly, in typical fashion, they go charging ahead while large chunks of the spec sheet peel off and land in the gutter behind their victorious advance. I did so want this console to be good. µ
Why people hate Sony Comment The usual: Ego, arrogance, lies, delaysBy Martin Lynch: Wednesday 14 June 2006, 11:32"We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it [the PS3], whatever it is, even if it didn't have games." David Reeves, CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. LIKE A cartoon character, my mouth fell open this morning when I read this quote from a recent interview in CVG. The words that spilled out are not fit for a family audience. In that one sentence was all the proof needed to show that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Sadly though, it doesn’t make Reeves wrong, since the maths will prove him correct. We will prove him correct. When I say 'we' I’m speaking of the collective console cattle that will buy the PS3 regardless of cost, performance, delays, lack of games, etc. Not the discerning, informed, cynical, back-stabbing and frighteningly knowledgeable INQ readers. It's just the arrogance of the statement, regardless of truth, that has a growing number of people seriously looking for any reason not to buy another Sony product. A real “love the product/hate the company” attitude is building. I own four Sony products. I’m telling you this before some Sony groupies start flaming me as a "Sony is the Devil" advocate. It is not. Merely a minor Demon Lord with ambitions, a sharpened knife and a well-thumbed copy of Julius Caesar tucked behind its pointy tail. Over the past five years I have bought a Sony AV home cinema receiver, a small hi-fi, a PS2 and a notebook. With regard to the first and second products, they were the best in their class according to numerous reviews in consumer electronics publications. I tend to buy according to performance, not brand. The PS2 is two years old and was bought for my son but then sneakily, er, re-acquired by me. Research, you know? The Vaio notebook was – shock, horror - good value in a Christmas sale. Let’s look at the basis for the arrogance though because it’s all based on fact. You probably saw some of the console sales figures yesterday but, if not, here’s the shocking update. The PS2 is kicking the Xbox 360’s ass. That’s right, the six-year old console is still outselling the brand spanking new, next-gen 360 – at least in the US. But since that market is so damn big, it’s a good general indicator. Since the launch of the Xbox 360, sales have averaged 246,000 units per month. During the same period, PS2 sales have averaged more than 470,000 a month. That’s an astounding stat but the fact is that the PS2 is still the key development platform for games and will remain so for some time. It is Sony’s cash-cow, something it freely admits. And, it will have to remain so since the whopping price tag on the PS3 rules it out as a mainstream console for at least a year after launch – maybe for good? Truth aside, back to that damned quote. It leaves a bad taste and it perfectly illustrates the kind of arrogance permeating everything that Sony has done on the consumer front in the past few years. From Blu-Ray to the PSP to the DRM scandal to the PS3, Sony has pretty much steamrolled punters. Still, most people vote with their pockets and Sony knows it. But has it stopped listening to its fans, its customers – the rabid, bleeding-edge customers that will make up a massive part of the shopping vanguard for the PS3? It certainly looks like it. A scan of some of the leading Sony fan sites shows a dangerous level of disappointment. One of the biggest gripes is that the PS3 has lost its shine. Much of the excitement they once harboured for the PS3 has been replaced by dejection because most of the news surrounding the PS3 is bad news. From delays, changing hardware specs, dodgy public demos and a ludicrous price tag, they want to know when Sony is going to announce something good. And that’s just it. Sony is hiding in its fortress. Microsoft is having a field day comparing the PS3 to Betamax. While veracity has little to do with the ‘war of words’ the general negativity is spilling over into the ‘real’ world. Lazy tech reporters on mainstream newspapers, sites and news programmes are now airing the mistakes and lies us nerds have been tracking for years. Sony fans are jaded while marginal gamers and potential high-definition customers are taking a wait-and-see approach. Sony’s not listening to its fans because it doesn’t have to. A large number of gamers are resigned to the fact that their PS2 will remain their platform of choice for at least another 18 months. And why not, it’s cheap as hell and the games keep on coming. Sadly, not enough people will know or care about Sony’s indiscretions to stop good, but not great, PS3 sales. The cattle will take their wallets and kids to PC World when the new Playstation hits because that’s what they have always done. But underneath the sales, all is not well in paradise. The Sony crown has lost its shine and the company’s shoddy treatment of customers and fans, coupled with its unhealthy fascination with copyright protection technology, spells long-term trouble on way. µ
After your illustrious CEO David has basically said you guys are DUMB and will buy the product if it works or not... how does that make you feel? Ah well buy away I suppose :p
Sony spokesperson Jonathan Fargher told Eurogamer: "The PS3 downgrade story is categorically not true. Advertisement "Developers have been working with PS3 dev kits for anywhere between eight and 12 months, and to suggest that we'd now take the decision to downgrade the hardware at such a late stage, is, well, ridiculous. "Worse still is the suggestion that we couldn't fit all the technical components into a plastic box," Fargher continued. "Granted, whilst all products are not perfect, we do have over 40 years of experience making consumer electronics equipment, and therefore, extensive experience in making things fit - PSone and Slimline PS2 being just two examples of that."
