"If you’re ready to get down, dirty, nitty, and gritty on the latest (and apparently not so greatest) generation of processors used in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, peep Anand’s analysis of some very insider information on the forthcoming systems by an unnamed game developer who’s worked on both boxes. If you’re comfortable making heads or tails of things like processor architecture, branch prediction, pipelining, etc., feel free to knock yourself out with the read, but straight up word on the street is that the Xbox CPU is only about twice as powerful as the 733MHz Pentium III used in the first Xbox in real world gaming situations, and supposedly Sony’s Cell isn’t all that much better. Of course, there are just so many factors in game system bottlenecks—and we’re not the kind of site to get gory on it here—but the bottom line is if you were super enthused about these two new powerhouse systems, prepare to get some of that piss and vinegar knocked out right quick."
This all got started on AnandTech website. Some insider expressed many griefs about the new platforms and their enigmatic development process. The original article was pulled Anand got a bit scared that MS might find out who his insider is. Below is nearly a retort, but the author does explain that he is never comfortable with passing judgement on unreleased hardware. That being said he does shed some much needed light on the Multi-Threaded debate.
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The Xbox 360 and the PS3: late bloomers or complete failures?
LOL, so it was only one developer's word that sparked the whole thing? classic. I think I know who it was. A freelance developer..
I'll say the obvious that the current SDK's aren't even complete as Hannibal at Arstechnica suggested. This is hardly news and every good hardware site out there have been saying the same thing. It's all about multithreading. To claim that developers have the bottom line at this stage without even scratching the surface is beyond idiotic. Alpha kits + stubborn attitude refusing to multithread and understand the chip architecture = rants.
Kudos for Anand's prime example of yellow journalism. He did the same thing in 2001 with his console comparison, so things haven't changed much.
The article itself contained some guesswork and quite a few misconceptions. Anand probably pulled it off because of the controversy it would create, leaving him on the loser's end.
The chips aren't even on the market, nor are the full specs. If I were to take one developer's word, it would be Epic's Mark Rein who had nothing but positive things to say about both consoles. And shocker.. he actually demostrated games for both at E3.
D.Vader
The original article now has been posted.