Stringer: PS3 Only Using 20-25% of its Power

PS3 games like Resistance: Fall of Man and the upcoming Motorstorm already look fantastic. Sony CEO Howard Stringer (right) argues that these games are barely using 25% of the system's "bandwidth." He also thinks Sony can break even on PS3 costs at the end of this year.

[Sexius Maximus]

The Cell IS a great chip, so maybe it uses 25% of that, but I bet it uses 100% of it's GPU. The RSX just isn't that wonderful.

[MikeMichaels]

Isn't this the same dumbass who didn't even know when his own (remember he's the president of "all" of Sony) console was gonna launch in Europe?

[Antan]

ill wait for "clarification" from another Sony exec who will no doubt say something along the line of "he was only supposed to say 5% of the ps3`s power, not 25%".JK

[zonetrooper5]

I really don't think that Sony will break even with the PS3 by the end of the year and how does this guy know how much percentage the PS3 is really using. The PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii have so much more inside them then many people think. Just watch, by the end of this year you will see amazing games with great graphics, ie. Halo 3, GTA IV, Motorstorm etc etc.

[jerrell]

I am just waiting to see how good the games will get on this system. You can pack a lot on a Blue-ray. I just hope the developers of the games utilize this space and the power this system is capable of. It is nice to know you have a Blue-Ray player when you buy this though. I could never afford a blue-ray player alone. And I am getting a good gaming system. Playing Madden on the Xbox is not the same as playing it on PS. The PS is way better control wise.

[CyberSentinel]

If thats the case, make Motorstorm 1080p @ 120 fps. Lol.

Blind Lemmings, Sony Loves you.

[THWIP]

...well that's all that will ever be used then.

[power of Green]

WoW! is that all!.

[Dreamworker]

i am sure sony is doing this with purpose & surprise us in 3 years with 35% smile

[BIadestarX]

Wow, if developers are able to stimate how much power they are NOT using and Know exactly how much power the system can push. Why arent they using it? Are they making the games suck on purpose? Any progammer or computer eng. knows this kind of stimates are bull; there are too many variable that he can be refering to. Who knows maybe he is talking about blu-ray disk space which sony reps seem to think it's a "power".

[shysun]

The tools aren't out yet,they don't know how to really program for the system.I mean come on bro,look @ the Launch games for PS2.....fast forward to GoW2...see my point!They know there is more power, they just don't know how to harness it yet....the same goes for the 360 and to a much lesser dagree the Wii.

[Alymon]

MS made claims like this when the 360 was released. Now Sony is doing the same.

I do find it funny that Motorstorm isn't being released in 1080p when Sony made such a big deal out of 1080p being necessary for the next gen gaming war.

If it's such a vital component of next-gen gaming, why are so many PS3 games failing to include it?

[death monk]

true, Microsoft did do the same, but at least they said something that made sense by saying only one core of the CPU was being used. they didn't throw out some percentage. I guess I don't know if either is really justified though.

[Raist]

Even early games like kameo or PGR use the 3 cores

[power of Green]

So! lol. So did Geometry Wars i'm sure GW's taxed the 360's hardware(it used up all the resources that all three core's had to offer). lol (sarcasm)

[TheMART]

That's bull raist, the first game fully using 3 cores was Gears

[Raist]

http://download.microsoft.c... Study: Kameo (Xbox 360)

I hope you have powerpoint on your comp. ppt coming right from microsoft :)

Scroll down once and you'll see PGR

So where are the games using only 1 core huh ?

[THWIP]

...that's USED, not MAXED OUT. It says NOTHING of the % utilized of total resources, which is what Sony is attempting to do.

[Raist]

Chill dude. No need to be aggressive.
IF you look the first post i was answering, it said that the first 360 games were only using ONE core. It's wrong, since kameo or PGR for instance use the three. I never said they were FULLY unsing the three cores either.

[Captain Tuttle]

The PS3 would be released in April. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's not that kind of manager.

[likeaboss302]

The PS3 isn't using all it's power. However it's going to take a hell of a lot of effort to get that other 75%. Without a huge install base of customers many developers won't bother. I wish more games were 1080p native but it is what it is. Makes that whole dual 1080p HDMI 1.3 thing a joke when they first listed the specs. Can't even get most games to display one 1080p screen.

[nicodemus]

This is what he says, "the current games that are out there are only using about 20 percent to 25 percent of the [PS3's] bandwidth. Once the publishers' excitement reaches a level of intensity that they start using more of the bandwidth, that will create additional excitement."

What does that mean?

[PS3alltheway]

its hard to develop .
means more time = better games

[Bullseye]

20%-25% of power.Quite possible, but the other 75% isn't going to improve the graphics much.We all know by now the CPU/GPU problems of the PS3.Not a lie, just a con!

[Booneral]

Say hello to Ken Kutaragi Version 2. Daa PlahZtaooon will have 2 HDMI outputs! Daa Plahztaaatoon cann doo millionz oh terraflopz! Da Ztatooon will cause supernova and set atmosphere on fire! Same old BS if you ask me, just being KK V.2 here.

[TheMART]

Yeah my microwave also only uses 30% of it's power.

But still it can do more then the PS3 that one can only grill

[Shadow Flare]

Energy:

10% Games
90% Heat

[THWIP]

...if you used it once, that would be the most you'd ever get out of it.

[Tut]

Check this out, I can be clever, too!

Everything THWIP and theMART say is like a hot air balloon:

2.23% Rip-Stop Nylon/Acron (a.k.a. stuff that matters)
97.77% Hot Air

oooh lol. so clever!!!!!!

Have we progressed in the conversation yet?

[Shadow Flare]

THWIP

There's a similarity between the amount of cells your brain has and the amount of AAA titles the 360 has

Each only has one

[Marriot VP]

I'm not defending thwp by any means just want to say something.

If you consider Resistance an AAA game at around 88.6%. Than you've got to consider more 360 games to be AAA.

For example,
-oblivion
-rainbox 6
-graw
-gow
-cod2 (higher than RFOM)
-geometry wars
-burnout

All of those are above RFOM's score. So please stop tossing around the term "AAA"
http://www.gamerankings.com...

[tackleb0x]

There were reports back when the N64 was near the end of its life that no game on the system used more then 30% of the power of the console. The main reason being the ram restrictions which they tried to fix with the expansion slot. Ps3 has the same problem with ram restrictions. When will sony stop lieing to consumers and start playing it straight?

[mellowspaz]

Right........... like with the PS2 using only 25% of it's power on GT3. Nice try Stringer.

[spacetoilet]

I'm sure they have not bled every last drop out of this puppy so far with the early games and the $hitty 360 ports (2k7/madden etc), but I'ts hard to beleive they are only using 25% of power.
Games will get alot better, but I'm not buying those figures.

[PS3n360]

games will get 75% or 3x better? That is not that much better when you look at how bad the current games are. They would have to get at least 10 x better to come close to what the 360 has going. PS3 is a lame duck I think even the fanboys must be feeling a little dissapointed. But close minded fanboys tend to be dorks first and gamers second so games really dont matter to PS3 botzombiebugs they just want to say they have a PS3 look at me I am cool.

[Shin_Akakage]

Correct me if I'm wrong didn't Ken Kutaragi and Stringer both make these same statements during the launch of this console? The PS3 will probably max out at about 75%-80% of its "potential" so technically that 20%-25% number should be higher. Most Consoles max out at that number. Old article....same old song they been singing. Put up or shut up.

[addictedtogames]

I dont think the grapics will get 3-4 times better. But for the idiots, they will buy it just because they believe this garbage.

[mucho 99]

the graphics will get better, but using only 25%, I may love playstation, but I wouldn't beleive that BS

[mucho 99]

the graphics will get better, but using only 25%, I may love playstation, but I wouldn't beleive that BS

[mucho 99]

oops, double post

[SimmoUK]

PS3 games so far have been crappy 360 ports soon Motorstorm, F1 and GTHD will be signs of it's true power built from the ground up on PS3 hardware...

[marionz]

so now that the ports are thinning out we have some awesome games

[ApocalypseShadow]

had final kits until september,that no dev yet has used up the whole bluray disc,or that there is only one game that has 40 players online,or that the hard drive is underutilized,or that all games aren't 1080p max res yet,or that cell is still being studied.who's to say he isn't right?

2 months people.the system has been out for 2 months.remember shenmue1/2?remember how much detail that game had over every other dc game?how big it was?how it had things in the game you might miss the first or second time through?no one is going to max out a system at launch.use your brains.

bring on the games.

[Grown Folks Talk]

come out in june/july?

[Booneral]

When PS3 was first shown in E32005, they were giving the devkit to game companies like Epic and EA, so there were some stuff regarding Unreal 3 Engine and Fight Night Round 3. Not to mention SCEE must have had this for the longest time and should have been up with games which could at least unleash 50% of the console.

That means an extra year for developers, an extra year than 360 without worrying about releasing a game. So what is the wait all about? Still waiting PS3 to open up and release some kind of miracle? Sure it will, just wait till 2010 then the console will hit 110%.

[nice_cuppa]

cpu power may not all be being used.
hell gpu will give more.
but
i bet all the memory is so the only way forward is games that look worse but have better ai or physics.

its sad but true.

give it till christmas as i dont think we have seen anything from ps3 or 360 yet. gow is the best made so far but cliff already said hes got the engine doing monster things on the 360 only 2 months after finishing gow.
games are limited early so the main content of the game can be made over the rest of the dev time.
believe me bud ps3 and 360 will have some stonkers.
wii is pretty maxed now. i havent seen any wii game that looks as good as resi on cube...including zelda.

[ArmrdChaos]

anything out of the mouth of a Sony rep these days is only 20-25% credible...and that is being generous.

[Arkham]

Well then that's pretty much in line with an average 25% reader comprehension of fanboys who can't think for themselves.

[Arkham]

Stringer: Please STFU.

[DJ]

He said "25% of the system's bandwidth."

It's important to note that PS3 beta kits only had 2GB/s of system bandwidth, while the final PS3 hardware has 35 GB/s of system bandwidth + 48 GB/s of RAM bandwidth.

That's as simple as I can break it down. It's a little-talked about subject, but the PS3s big strengths are its Flex I/O architecture and split memory layout. What that means is more room to send data back and forth.

Since launch titles were built on hardware that had only normal PC bandwidth, it's understandable that the early titles didn't take full advanatage of the hardware. All that means is that we'll have to wait a while (probably until Spring/Summer) before we start seeing PS3 titles that really start to take advantage of that aspect.

-------------------------
Why Flex I/O?

Bandwidth is important, and while GPUs and CPUs in their own right are powerful, what limits that power is the amount of information that flows between the two. Instead of the normal two lane highway that current PCs run off of, imagine a 20-lane highway and you'll start to see why Sony, RAMBUS, and nVidia put this into the PS3 architecture.

Now imagine two cities connected by the two lane highway. They're great cities, but held back by how much traffic can flow between the two.

Flex I/O is a huge advantage that applies to the PS3 because of it's split memory architecture. Say that the RSX GPU needs to read information in XDR: it has plenty of bandwidth to do it. Say that the Cell CPU has rendered the oceans and clouds within a frame. All it has to do is send that to the RSX so other elements can be combined, and all of that is possible due to Flex I/O.

Those are just small examples, but you can start to see the growing advantages. And it'll become more apparent once they start multitasking the RSX for stuff like physics.

[testerg35]

Not questioning you, but if developers were developing using underpowered machines and the final dev kits were several times more powerful, then shouldn't that mean that the final products not have framerate issues? I understand if the original machines were more powerful and the final dev kit was less powerful and that would explain the framerate issues....

[DJ]

Framerate issues can be due to numerous problems, two of which I'll touch on: system power, and coding techniques.

Logically, it makes more sense that when you give a dev a stronger version of a console that their code should run better. The truth, however, is that whatever was causing it to run bad in the first place is still screwing up.

Ports aren't easy because what's ported are the game assets, but not the engine. The 360 and PS3 are 100% different, all the way from RAM setups, RAM type, GPU architecture, CPU architecture, etc. Developers actually have to spend a lot of time and money building platform-specific engines; it's not as easy as the old days.

What you saw with games like Tony Hawk and Call of Duty were ports that didn't have enough time for the team to build stable engines. It's bad enough having to worry about 3 processors, but 8? Dear god. Plus they make versions for other consoles as well. Realistically, the PS3 versions of those titles shouldn't have hit shelves till January at the earliest. FEAR is a great example of developers actually taking their time to figure the hardware out.

The Fight Night developers actually came out and stated that they had to haul ass for the PS3 version since the game engine had to be written from the ground up within a 9-month period. Bethesda? Same thing. Switching from PowerPC cores to SPU cores was probably a pain in the ass for them, as is the whole double-write strategy to cut down load times (though that's probably an automatic thing).

[CG]

Since when did the ps3 have 8 processors? last i checked the ps3 had 1 processor and 7 spu which 6 are available for games! the spu's are NOT processors!

STOP SPREADING BS PLZ

[lalaland]

The SPU's of Cell are indeed processors -- I believe IBM would know:

http://www.research.ibm.com...

[kornbeaner]

360 fans say it's BS when anybody claims that the current crop of PS3 games, only uses (x) amount of it's power, yet when MS cameout and said that Gears only uses Half a DVD and half of it's true power, then it's believeble. either way i dont care i just want better games for my PS3. March and april are not that far away for me to wait.

[no_more_heroes]

but this is what I think happens. Lets say the devs end up using what they currently think is 35% of (your console here)'s power.During development of a game on (your console here) the devs find a more efficient way to program for it and end up using the same amount or maybe even a little less power the next time around to get a better looking and playing game. As they start to demand more performance from the platform, they find even more efficient ways to program than their previous method. The amount of power they utilize with each game probably increases only by 5%, maybe a little more as they find out that the platform of choice is more capable than they originally estimated, therefore decreasing their previous power percentage estimate. But, again, I'm no tech expert so feel free to correct me wherever I'm wrong.
Now, good night to everyone. I'm going to pray to God that the Black DS Lite that I searched all over Florida for will come tomorrow (why do I want one so bad??? I'm still confused by it).

[MicroGamer]

Most consoles never use more than 70% of their available power within their life cycle. PS3 won't be any different.

[DC RID3R]

sony and the "PLAYSTATION" platform = gaming 'mecca' for the technically inept.

shogun

[Karibu]

Love the way people missquote.

Missquoted headline
"Stringer: PS3 Only Using 20-25% of its Power"

Original comment
"Howard Stringer, argues that these games are barely using 25% of the system's "bandwidth.""

Two totally different things.

[hardwood2001]

but remember folks that the ps3 will never use 100% of it's true power, lol.

[TheMART]

you wrote

"Framerate issues can be due to numerous problems, two of which I'll touch on: system power, and coding techniques.

Logically, it makes more sense that when you give a dev a stronger version of a console that their code should run better. The truth, however, is that whatever was causing it to run bad in the first place is still screwing up.

Ports aren't easy because what's ported are the game assets, but not the engine. The 360 and PS3 are 100% different, all the way from RAM setups, RAM type, GPU architecture, CPU architecture, etc. Developers actually have to spend a lot of time and money building platform-specific engines; it's not as easy as the old days.

What you saw with games like Tony Hawk and Call of Duty were ports that didn't have enough time for the team to build stable engines. It's bad enough having to worry about 3 processors, but 8? Dear god. Plus they make versions for other consoles as well. Realistically, the PS3 versions of those titles shouldn't have hit shelves till January at the earliest"

Oh wait, so the framerate issues in COD3 are from a port?

So tell me then why Motorstorm, a specific PS3 title has framerate issues???

That it was supposed to be 60fps @ 1080p and now it's 30fps @ 720p where the framerate goes down when too much is happening on screen? It's no port so... it should run @ 120fps according to Sony themselves right!

And 8 processors? They aren't all real processors with their own threads. Officially it's one main CPU with some subcores at it. And then it's not 8 of them, wasn't it 7 because one was disabeled because of the production process?

And wasn't one constantly in use by the OS of the PS3? So one down, six to go? As the OS has 100 MB or so in use constantly of the memory? (where the 360 only uses 3 MB WOW man)

So I bet, every so called 'subcore' has 2 threads, sounds cool. But the maincpu only has 2 threads. Bet there's your bottleneck

[DJ]

SPEs are independent cores, just like the PPE. Most devs use the PPE as the 'main core' because it's the only core that they're familiar with. Most have only done singe-core coding, so they're taking babysteps at the moment. Others however are being bold right from the start.

Interesting facts about Cell-
*Any core in the chip can be ignored by programmers, including the PPE.

*Any core can act as a 'hub' for data, including SPEs.

*You can have multiple cores acting as data hubs.

*You can give each core a series of specific tasks so that they can stream data to and from each other.

*You can even program the Cell Processor to mimic the Xenon CPU, albeit with faster bandwidth and more on-chip memory per hardware thread, as well as double the amount of bandwidth to System RAM (XDR).

P.S. Beg Harder

[solid snake uc]

so kojima will using 100% power for mgs4?

[Gears]

They would use 1.5% of the power, PS3 is seriously weak in the GPU department, I've had a stronger gpu in my pc for awhile now. 1900xtx anyone anyone

[KingZuca]

no wonder i find xbox fanboys so incredibly annoying.

seems like all they do is take a bit of bad buzz and try to transform it into this abominable fact, like a silver stake with wich to stab at Sony with. seriously, stop hating.

Look at PS2's first titles, they look like dreamcast games. now look at games like MGS3:Snake Eater... holy crap. you could have told me that was a next gen title and i would have beleived you.

the technical leaps and bounds developers were able to make with the PS2 were phenominal, so how can you possibly think that it wont happen again. It would be like playing college football, becoming an all american, get drafted into the NFL, then miraculously forget how to play football.

I don't know, maybe xbox fans are just mad we are going to get the ninja gaiden they wished they had, or maybe they fear the monster that is metal gear solid 4.

who knows why you guys try to get shots in all the time. It's ok i suppose, you can say anything you want, it wont ruin my experience when im playing more then five awesome games a year on my new system.

[sixaxis]

only 20%, more good news for ps3.