Playstation 3 Secrets

If you think you know all there is to know about the PS3, read the following and you might learn a thing or two that you didn't know before. It is updated as new information is uncovered, so visit often if you wish to keep up to date on the latest secrets.

[resistance100]

Why have they listed a 20GB/80GB PAL model. They don't exist, plus theres no PAL 40GB Model

[zambrota]

PS3 has 2 buses

1 --128 bit GDDR3 to main

1 --64 bit ultra fast XDR to main

PS3 also has 32 pixel shaders not 28 ( 4 temporarily disabled dont kno why. could be enabled by now though) (beyond3d forum)

ps3 is not based on g71/g70

RSX has a dimension of 258 mm^2

G70/G71 based cards have highest dimensions of 196mm^2/160mm^2.

[Gorgon]

Zambrota:

The bigger size of the GPU chip in the PS3 is because it has 4 modules of memory in it. If ypu open the chip cover you can see the four 64MB mem chips plus a normal sized GPU chip that could perfectly be based on a GF 7800.

Resitance:

I have a 40 GB PAL version. You see, we in Europe use PAL and we have the 40GB models.

[resistance100]

@Gorgon

I live in europe and know that, you've done no more than misread what i've said.

Look at the table theres NO PAL 40GB On it

[novaIS350]

Zambrota. You do some good research brosef.

[deadshark1]

soooooooo..................... ... nutin new i thght wen it said top secret it was gony tell u wen home was out or a new firmware update or somin but this is nothing new, sorry resistance100 we all know this apart from newbies to the ps3 so i have no help here gd submit tho for newbies nice :D

[heyheyhey]

"one SPE is reserved for the hypervisor"

what is that? could someone please explain im not too sure

and could that SPE ever be implemented for gaming uses?

[TheIneffableBob]

One reserved for redundancy. If one of the cores don't work when the chip is tested, they won't have to scrap the whole chip; this saves them a lot of money.

[zambrota]

yes it could be used for gaming too.

CELL has 8 spes . 1 being reserved /disabled for use with OS and for yeild.

in the future you might see full synchronization of PPE and all the 8 SPES.

One of them is disabled for HEATING PURPOSE. It reduces heat. However since many ps3 games dont even use SPEs we dont even see overheating/heating despite playing ps3 for hours

[Gorgon]

You guys got it wrong.

The total os SPEs is 8 on the Cell. One is disabled because some chips come with a defective SPE out of the fab, so, for Sony not to loose money, they still use those PLUS they disable one on the Cells that have 8 OK SPEs. That way all of them only have 7 working SPEs and so it increases production yelds.

But of these 7 SPEs one is reserved for the OS. That means its not going to be used for games. That leaves 6 for games plus the PPE.

No, they wont be activating the 8th SPE on the PS3 because if they did that we would have people with 7 SPEs and people with 8 SPEs and that would make no sense since games have to work exacteöy the same way on all PS3s.

[Bonsai1214]

Gorgon has it sort of right. they disabled one spu in the beginning of production to increase chip yields. 7 correctly made on the same chip vs 8 correctly made on the same chip, odds are much better with 7. then 1 out of the 7 is reserved for OS security and that like, and the other 6 are for processing purposes. you won't see the one disabled one become enabled, and you won't see the os protection spu being used for gaming.

however, 4 spu's working the way they're supposed to creates FFXIII level graphics. imagine what 6 looks like.

[Ju]

SPEs are use in games. Of course. They're used for all kind of stuff, like geometry pre-processing, AI, physics, shader support etc. They are very good at arithmetics but not so good on conditional code. By very good, I mean x times what the PPU could do. The challenge, however, lies in utilizing all the power of the system, and that's where performance got lost (bandwidth, scheduling and synchronization problems). The tools and ways to handle the SPEs (e.g. thru middleware) are getting more and more efficient why we see constant improvements in games.

[TheIneffableBob]

That's what I said, Gorgon.

[TheMART]

Can anyone tell me how some sort of Wikipedia thing is NEWS???

Jees, this place is controlled by the Sony Defence Force that bring in anything related to the PS3.

BTW, what's up with so many different SKU's?

Model (Prefix) PS2 Compatibility SA-CD WiFi Cell Max Watts Display USB Ports Memory Card Readers Harddrive Capacity Chrome Trim
CECHA Hardware Yes Yes 90nm 2 00 NTSC 4 Yes 60GB Yes
CECHB Hardware Yes No 90nm 20 0 NTSC 4 No 20GB No
CECHC Software Yes Yes 90nm 2 00 PAL 4 Yes 60GB Yes
CECHD Software Yes No 90nm 20 0 PAL 4 No 20GB No
CECHE Software Yes Yes 90nm 2 00 NTSC 4 Yes 80GB Yes
CECHF Software Yes Yes 90nm 2 00 PAL 4 Yes 80GB Yes
CECHG No No Yes 65nm 140 NTSC 2 No 40GB Yes
CECHH No No Yes 65nm 140 NTSC 2 No 40GB Yes

How to confuse the customer: watch Sony!

[chrno6]

Don't worry, they all have a harddrive.

[gamesblow]

All have HDD's and HDMI out puts... Not to mention can all play Blu-ray movies and get on the web and browse. That once green grass of the xbox 360's sure looks brown this year. Maybe you should help water it.

[joemomma]

Oh do shut up....

[SquallSK]

Dude .. there are PAL and NTSC model (rest of world and america) .. therefor there are so many of em .. btw. 60 and 20GB are all out of stock .. 80GB is next to vanish .. so it'll be just 40GB and maybe 120-160GB deluxe model ..

[Jdoki]

Sony may have released a lot of SKU's, but there's only ever two on the market at a time - so not too confusing for most people.

Plus where's the confusion when all the core features are in every PS3?

MS really dropped the ball in this respect by not including an HDD in every model.

I think it's far more confusing for a consumer to have to choose which XBox360 will work with which games... Burnout Paradise err, no online without HDD. FFXI must have an HDD. This is a situation which is only going to get worse over the 360's lifetime.

You can criticise the hated PS3 all you want for multiple SKU's, but the fact remains that MS made a brilliant decision by including an HDD in every original XBox, then for some unfathomable reason they chopped it out of the 360.

[HarryEtTubMan]

...and TheMart comes out from his hole for one article again.... you've been getting pwned every since 2007... haven't you MART? I like it better when you hide.

[Vip3r]

Yeah because all the potential PS3 owners check this data before buying a PS3.

/sarcasm.

Idiot.

[Says you]

related with one of the graphics cards it cant! be nameless!.

[zambrota]

where it showed that basically the XDR and GDDR3 in ps3 are fragmented in such a way that each 256k cache of SPE corresponds to a particluar Block of XDR-GDDR3.

It could be possible since RSX has abnormal size and blocks are kept apart to prevent friction due to heat. RSX has the same register count as g70/71 but it has a much bigger dimension

a psu member mailed NVIDIA regarding this. NVIDIA responded that RSX is not based FULLY on any architecture???? RSX is still a mystery . It has the same programmable flops as g70/71 but it has more Non-programmable flops.

Its architecture is a mystery since it was touted before ps3's release that SONY indeed might have changed RSX

[Ju]

I would also speculate, because there is nothing like a AGP or pci-e in the PS3, that at least the interconnects between RSX and CELL are customized. Doesn't the RSX connect directly to the CELL ? In what way ?

[SilPho]

In a given country there will only be 1 or 2 different SKU's available to customers. In the UK for example we only have the 40GB model. In the US I believe there is the 40GB and 80GB. It's not that hard to pick between them since it's mainly PS2 compatibility and hard drive size that separate them.

A choice of two is easy. This "news" just makes everything seem more complicated, and on top of that some of the information is wrong.

[AIZEN SOZUKE]

the rsx and cell have several secrets not revealed in this article

[DJ]

The GPU has some wild features that will never be seen in any nVidia PC GPU, and I'm just talking about the ones we know about. On top of that, we still don't have a clear picture how advanced it is since it borrows from both proven chips (G70/G71) and from experimental ones that either never saw release or are planned for the near future.

Either way, we know it's a beast in shader calculations and high dynamic range (128-bit).

[Storm23]

What is SA-CD and why is it gone from the 40 gig? Have to do with backwards compatibility or something?

(probably a stupid question)

[Gorgon]

Super Audio CD. It probably needed a dedicated chip.

[Storm23]

Found it way lower in the article. Thanks though.

[tweaker]

this is really old news.

[sanjay09]

Im glad taht i got the 60gb

[khellendros1]

Wow just reading this article lets you know how much power is in this system. I didn't know it had a dual-core primary processor. I though it was a single core plus the 7 SPE's.It's going to be crazy to see how games run when they use all the SPE's.

[cputeq]

The PPE is a single-core. You can't actually equate "1 thread = 1 core", because 1 core might be able to do 2-3 threads, for example. The PS3's particular core does 2 threads at once.

---------------------

As for everyone else, you guys sound like you almost have sex with your PS3 ;-P

The thing isn't a "super mystery" and "omg awesome powerful." The graphics chip, while custom, isn't incredibly powerful such as man has never known.

It's basically a G70/71 hybrid, nothing more. The major advantage it has over a PC's Geforce 7800/7900 series is the fact that it's got 6 (effective) SPEs to play with.

Lots of people seem to talk like the PS3's graphics chip is the Holy Grail or something, when it's not.

*Yes* the PS3 is a powerful machine, especially when you take floating-point operations into consideration.

The graphics chip itself, though, is probably on the level of a 7900GTX or thereabouts, with maybe some custom stuff thrown in because it's mated to the Cell architecture.

Great gaming system, yes.

Mystical console that nobody knows about and has no idea what it can do, no.

(For the record I own PS3. High Velocity Bowling and SSHD FTW!)

[Armyless]

Care to share your SSHD score?

(PS. Since the update, has the game gotten more difficult?)

[cputeq]

I'm unsure about difficulty, as I haven't owned it very long, so I'm probably playing "post-update".

I think my arcade high score is around 118M. My planet mode score (level 1) is I think 10.4M.

[heyheyhey]

cputeq

holy sh!t you must be addicted to SSHD- i haven't played that much, but i only got up to 1.3mil

but the annoying this is that it didn't get saved because i had got logged out of the PSN

[nirun]

there's no chrome trim on any 40gb version, it's only on the 60gb and 80gb

[resistance100]

Umm..yes it does. The 40GB has crome trim its only the 20GB which doesn't

[nirun]

you're mistaken, its a silver trim on the 40gb not CHROME
it's more of a matte finish... look at pictures yourself i have owned both versions

[Rocko]

I feel really sorry for people who bought a 20GB.

...and nirun, the 40GB has the chrome trim.

[Rocko]

Anyone who got a 20GB got shafted.

[zambrota]

that you get away with SPAMMING even in the GAME ZONE

[Rocko]

You fangirls need to calm down. I HAVE a 40GB PS3 and 360 elite, but im not stupid enough to defend tard packs like the 20GB. It blows, get over it.

[sonyfanonly]

.............................. ............................... ............................... ...............USELESS

[Figboy]

*HOW did they get shafted?

what does the trim have to do with being able to play *EVERY GAME on the console?

and Wi Fi? that can be remedied with any USB Wi Fi adaptor. also, the 20gig *DOES come with an ethernet cable, so you can always, you know, just *PLUG IT IN.

things like memory stick readers can also be added using a USB adaptor.

all models of the Playstation 3 have a hard drive (so developers don't have to worry about an entire segment of PS3 owners not being able to access certain features of games).

all models of the Playstation 3 have a Blu Ray drive (again, so developers don't have to compress, or cut content from a game in order to compensate for different storage capacities for the PS3 SKUs).

all models of the Playstation 3 have access to the net, either through an ethernet cable, and in the "high end" models, Wi Fi.

no matter what SKU of the PS3 you own, you will still be able to play *EVERY SINGLE game released on the console, and you don't have to buy other parts (ie, an HDD, memory stick unit, or anything else), to enjoy said games.

your comment was a poor attempt at trolling, honestly.

the 20gig PS3 is *NOT THE CORE X Box 360, which didn't come with a hard drive (absolutely necessary for getting the most out of your 360, or else you'd have to have a *MAMMOTH collection of memory sticks, and if that was case, why didn't you buy a hard drive??), and is now forcing developers to pull back certain features, or release a product that could have been much better had that simple thing been included (i love Mass Effect; my fiance is playing it right now; but the excessive loading every few seconds, the irritating texture pop in, the atrocious framerate in random areas of the game, and the long @ss elevators could have *ALL been eliminated if Microsoft had just made the damn hdd standard across *ALL 360 platforms).

the 20 gig PS3 performs exactly like all the other units, and if extras like Wi Fi are important, you can add them later, but you won't be hurting with the 20gig.

i have the 60gig PS3, because i knew what i wanted, but i wouldn't have had any problems if i picked up the 20gig instead.

[tapdis]

i was looking at the firmware that was released, my ps3 was firmware 1.55, and the link showed 1.54-1.60 ?????????

[capjacksparrow]

Maybe E.A. Games should take a look at this, they make crappy PS3 games, that's why I don't buy their games.

[Yoma]

mohaha, agree :)

[syanara]

yea I pretty much knew all of that but since right now their is only 1 model on the market LOL I want to see what size the new SKU will be 120 or 160 and I think sony might have kicked B/C all together and are re-releaseing all ps2/ps3 titles at the store but thats what I think

[Jdoki]

I think there's a good chance BC is now a thing of the past on PS3.