PS3 Smoothing Beyond that of High-end PC Graphics Card

[Digital-Nitrate]

While browsing some tech news I came across some articles on recent research done by Digital Foundry on the post-processing technology and performance of PCs and consoles which had some very interesting results. Here is one such article:

PS3 Smoothing Beyond that of High-end PC Graphics Card

The PS3 is truly an amazing piece of hardware that is surprising everyone as time passes. Digital Foundry recently conducted an interesting analysis on the tech used in the game Saboteur, which revealed that the PS3 is capable of producing something even a high-end PC graphics card has difficulty with.

As a software developer by trade, new and intriguing tech has always been like crack to me. I recall the mystery and awe when hyper-threading was first introduced and one of our major clients requested that we upgrade our latest version of the software to take advantage of HT.

In a similar vein, the Cell processor is cutting edge stuff. The Cell in conjunction with the GPU is capable of squeezing out 2.0 trillion floating point operations per second on the fly, which is super-computer worthy and out performs the Xbox 360’s 355 billion floating operation points/second. This is the type of tech running on the latest IBM Blades residing in our maximum security data centers near DC.

Digital Foundry recently did an analysis showing that the post-processing tech, once thought to be MSAA, on the PS3 apparently is far more advanced than anything seen. Anti-aliasing or edge smoothing has always been a challenge even on the PC front.

The Xbox 360 can do up to 4x MSAA via the built in graphics card. However, the PS3 has an NVIDIA card which really doesn’t do much in the post-processing department as it was initially intended to be left off the console. The Cell processor was originally supposed to handle all graphics processing, but due to concerns that it would be difficult for the developers to program on, a decision was made to incorporate a limited graphics card.

However, Sony’s intent was for the developers to utilize the Cell processors eventually leaning off the graphics card crutch. We have seen developers like Naughty Dog who have mostly moved off the graphics card in the PS3 and are now utilizing the SPUs fully in the Cell processor as seen in Uncharted 2. According to DF, the developers for Saboteur also utilized one of the SPUs to do the post-processing work resulting in edge-smoothing beyond the capabilities of a 16x MSAA found on high-end PC graphics card.

"The PS3 rendition of Pandemic’s The Saboteur is different though. It’s special. It’s trying something new that’s never been seen before on console, or indeed PC, and its results are terrific. In a best-case scenario you get edge-smoothing that is beyond the effect of 16x multi-sampling anti-aliasing, effectively delivering an effect better than the capabilities of high-end GPUs without crippling performance. Compare and contrast with Xbox 360 hardware, which tops out at 4x MSAA."

Note: DF made a correction, there are a few titles that have tried this but not to the level of success Pandemic has had.

With only a few studios attempting this tech, it will be interesting to see more developers relying on the Cell processor in the future.

This would certainly continue to help explain why some titles on the PS3 look significantly better than others and arguably better than anything we have seen on any other platform. While others can look quite poor. In the end it comes down to the ability and willingness of the developers to take advantage of what is possible with the PS3 and the cell processor's SPUs.

 

[Jay]

While browsing some tech news I came across some articles on recent research done by Digital Foundry on the post-processing technology and performance of PCs and consoles which had some very interesting results. Here is one such article:

PS3 Smoothing Beyond that of High-end PC Graphics Card



This would certainly continue to help explain why some titles on the PS3 look significantly better than others and arguably better than anything we have seen on any other platform. While others can look quite poor. In the end it comes down to the ability and willingness of the developers to take advantage of what is possible with the PS3 and the cell processor's SPUs.

It also answers why on some early PS3's that have the GPU overheating issues (weird colours, glitched textures and artifacting) have much less issues on exclusive PS3 games (like GT5P) than quick intense ported stuff (like GTA4).

Imagine what GTA would be like if it was made from scratch for the Cell rather than porting it using a great deal of the video card.

 

[Blitz187]

Very interesting read... thanks for the info! 👍

 

[kikie]

But the best race games are for pc. If only the Playstation was as powerfull as the most powerfull gaming pc and if only all race games/sims were also available for this playstation, I wouldn't hesitate to buy a playstation instead of a pc.

It seems that my wish has come true.

 

[vr6wantsr20det]

Very good read! I always had a feeling the ps3 was more advanced and a better piece of hardware than my xbox360. It makes sense that being newer and more advanced technology that a lot of gaming studio's haven't taken advantage of it. I hope they do in the near future and finally squeeze out the potential thats been hiding! This is just my opinion, but so far most of the multi-platform games seem to look better/smoother on the xbox360. The ps3 only games like Uncharted, GT5p, Metal Gear Solid 4 all looked amazing. 👍

 

[kjb]

They have looked better on the 360. Most multi platform games are developed on the 360 then ported to PS3.

 

[Joey D]

Which high end graphics card though? And do they consider a GeForce 9800GT high end or do they consider the GeForce 295GTX high end?

I have no doubt that exclusive PS3 games out do exclusive 360 games but out doing a high end PC? I'm not so sure about that. Although a high end PC will easily cost much more. The GPU alone could be more then a PS3, the 295GTX is something like $519.99 which is ridiculously expensive. However, it must be said that a PC is quite a bit more useful than any gaming console so maybe the cost is justified.

 

[WolfRacer543]

I think its a bit misleading. Its not saying "omg a PS3 is more powerful than a high end gaming rig", because it straight up isn't. It isn't as powerful as a 2 year old high end gaming rig.

What its saying is that they've developed a method of smoothing which is superior to the traditional 16x MSAA, which works well on the Cell's SPUs (which, from what I understand, work different to a regular desktop CPU, not necessarily better, just differently), however doesn't work well on traditional GPUs (though they dont go into detail about how they've attempted to implement it on existing GPUs, simply that its superior to 16x MSAA which is one of the traditional "hammer" approaches to smoothing).