Console Hardware - Comparisons

I wanted to start a thread comparing the hardware of consoles mainly focusing on the processor aspect (hence the CPU forum) including the graphics processor as well. What sparked my interest was reading the tech-specs on the Nintendo Wii, it seemed to look rather underpowered on paper yet still manages to have decent performance.


North American Release Date ( Year / Month / Day ):
Microsoft XBox 360: 2005 / 11 / 22
Nintendo Wii: 2006 / 11 / 19
Sony PlayStation 3: 2006 / 11 / 11

CPU ( # of cores / frequency ):
Microsoft XBox 360: 3 / 3,200 Mz
Nintendo Wii: 1 / 729 MHz
Sony PlayStation 3: 7 / 3,200 MHz

System Memory: ( size and type / frequency )
Microsoft XBox 360: 512 MB GDDR3 Shared / 700 MHz
Nintendo Wii: 64 MB GDDR3 / ? MHz
Sony PlayStation 3: 256 MB Rambus XDR DRAM / 3,200 MHz

Graphics Processing ( type / frequency ):
Microsoft XBox 360: AMD(ATI) Xenos(R500) / 500 MHz
Nintendo Wii: AMD(ATI) "Hollywood" / 243 MHz
Sony PlayStation 3: nVidia G70 / 550 MHz

Graphics Memory ( size and type / frequency / other ):
Microsoft XBox 360: 512 MB GDDR3 Shared / 700 MHz / 10 MB eDRAM on 'daughter die'
Nintendo Wii: 24 MB 1T-SRAM / ? MHz / 3 MB texture memory
Sony PlayStation 3: 256 MB GDDR3 / 700 MHz / Access to system memory as well

Storage ( capacity / type / other ):
Microsoft XBox 360: 20 GB / detachable hard drive / not part of base system
Nintendo Wii: 512 MB / internal flash / slot for expansion via SD card
Sony PlayStation 3: 20 or 60 GB / internal hard drive / has flash card readers for many formats


Sources / References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad [...] ocessor%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_microprocessor
http://www.ps3source.net/content/view/17/33/

Nice mention of "Ana" - the scaling chip inside the 360:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/headstart.ars

The 360 has sold better this holiday then either the Wii or the PS3. The 360 is the winner and will stay the winner, im not going to play favorites to the WII because it is the under dog, I dont do that at all. WII is innovative, how ever the lack of good games for it atm really is a deturant. Personally im not the biggest fan of nintendo games. 360 is more powerful then the PS3 for rendering games, and I find it funney how the 360 is the ONLY console able to play games at 1080P a feature touted on the PS3 a year ago at E3, it was used as a tool to show its questionable hardware superiority. Now that it comes out you cant even play games at 1080P. Not so unpredictable of sony. I think microsoft took a great strategy by releasing Halo 3 later on, think about it...how many consoles do you think Halo sells, its a huge ammount. By the time sony and nintendo get out of their production woes, microsoft will be dropping halo 3 into their laps.

In the "number of cores", the PS3 should have 8, not 7.
In fact it has 7 SPEs and 1 PowerPC core.
But this is a very "apples to oranges" comparison for example the 3 cores of the X360 are all capable of running 2 threads.
The Wii, in terms of raw power is *not* surprisingly inferior.
Nintendo itself said it would be only 2x as fast as the Game Cube, and the latter was roughly as fast as an Xbox 1.
But the Wii is not an HD device, and anyway their focus since the beginning was to "reinvent" gameplay, not boost eye-candy.

not sure about the ps3 but the wii would have.

It will also do 1080p over component if the TV supports it (very, very few do).

sega saturn all the way newbsss

CPU: Two 28.6 MHz, Hitachi SH-2 32-bit RISC processors
RAM: 2MB, Video RAM: 1.5MB
Colors: 16.7 million
Polygons: 200,000 texture-mapped, 500,000 flat-shaded per second
Game Media: CD-ROM
Resolution: 704x480
Sound: 32-channel PCM, 8-channel FM stereo

well there is a problem with that, as the tv they tested on only does 1080i over component, so they cant have gotten 1080p to work on it.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Sony_KDS_R [...] 01228.html

"Xbox 360 testing: We hooked up the Xbox 360 to the Sony via our component-video adapter (we also tried VGA for fun, but issues with the VGA input led us to abandon that) and the results were mostly good. 1080p purists might complain that the set cannot accept 1080p sources via its component-video inputs, but we didn't think that was a huge deal since the games looked great in 1080i--and as we mentioned above, the Sony resolved every detail of 1080i sources via component video."

besides upscaling to 1080p is not the same as native 1080p on PS3, like NBA live 07.

i have a 1080p tv and a 360 and the vga cable, so i can go try it, but its not gonna look any better as its still 720p textures.

No, PS3 has one SPE (out of 8 ) disabled for yield purposes.
That makes 7 usable SPE + 1 PowerPC = 8 cores, as i said.

cores?? the ps3 does not have 8 processors.. it has 8 cells

as darkangelism has said upscaling is not natively outputting.

however, when this version 2 xbox with the HDMI connector appears we will se if it can support it.

also, i am a bit out of touch with this so can someone tell me if HD DVD can do 1080P now. i thought that for some full length movies it didn't have the capacity, is that true or not?

Not yet:

http://www.audioholics.com/ces/CEStechnology/HDDVDCESinterview.php

thx, my main wonder was whether theh had the capacity which it would appear they do.

First, your replies are off topic. There are discussions concerning this foing on over in the consoles section. I say that only to CMA. That said..

The consensus is because it does what PS3 forgot about and 360 doesnt do as good: Its fun.All the eye candy and techno-gizmodedry in the world doesnt replace fun.

See above. 1080P doesnt replace fun, and people in general, kids, dads AND EVEN moms are having fun on wii. I havent seen any mothers of 4 geting excited about 360 or PS3. I have seen them having fun on wii

ok sonic sucked.. u know y?? cuz the graphics sucked.. TRy to play that game now and then youll realize how dumb it is. just becuase you were six years old and therefore not intelligent enough to realize every level was the same sh*t. just a different color backround and diffrent shape monster to kill does not make sonic a good game. Children in their diapers felt sonic wuz a good game. not anyone over the age of 20 could take hitting one button to run in one direction an the other to jump over everything. Oblivion is a good game because of the graphics. simple as that

ok sonic sucked.. u know y?? cuz the graphics sucked.. TRy to play that game now and then youll realize how dumb it is. just becuase you were six years old and therefore not intelligent enough to realize every level was the same sh*t. just a different color backround and diffrent shape monster to kill does not make sonic a good game. Children in their diapers felt sonic wuz a good game. not anyone over the age of 20 could take hitting one button to run in one direction an the other to jump over everything. Oblivion is a good game because of the graphics. simple as that

Who says oblivion is a good game? Its graphics are great, but its just "morrow wind 2" or 3. Same old gameplay, fair but not good, certainly not great. If all you want is graphics, save the money on the console and games, and download trailers. All the graphics eyecandy you want---free.

Well, Im not going to respond as Im done crapping up this thread. If you want to continue the discussion we can do it in the games section, not this thread which TC did not intend to be 'this game vs that, or 1080P or what is fun'...


My appologies TC