More Playstation 3 RSX Downgrade Info >

	2006/08/29 15:24:07: Posted by DM
	According to poster xbdestorya over on the e-mpire forums, the RSX downgrade is true. You may be saying, who is this "xbdestroya" fellow? Well, he is a moderator at the e-mpire PS3 forum, a generally honest and knowledgeable guy who conducts interviews with PS3 developers etc, so we tend to believe him. Still though, rumor mill as yet. The important part is that he says the downgrade should not even be noticable. (Thanks, Optaviusx) >Link
	Labeled With  sony playstation 3 rumor Comments [18]  | Rate this article: -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  | Avg. rating of 6.7

So how big of a difference will that actually make?

in the long run slim to none

you guys ever think...that one of the reasons they downgraded,is because of the over heating issues.I can't help but to think that this system will have over heating issues just like the 360...we shall see

i dont have any heating issues with my x360 yet. the downgrade should not make a big difference , and yeah the world is agaist ps3 , more they hate more I love it.

Its not too big an issue as its only 50MHZ and to be honest they could still end up making that 550MHZ if they are willing to have fewer ps3's available at launch (I figured nvidia would have control of manufacturing this gpu by now on a 90nm process)

It wont prevent the ps3 from having amazing games that can look better than some 360 games or anything like that as its all up to how the developer uses the available power. The real issue here is if it remains at 500MHZ that represents a 10% decrease in rsx's clock speed what it does is affect shader performance and how much stress the gpu can handle (if even by a little) Microsoft is likely hoping this is true because even at 550MHZ xenos had it beat, but at 500MHZ its as if the 360 got an upgrade.

i read somewhere that microsoft is planing changing the manufacturing proccess of x360 to 64nm next year...did you more anything else about this opta?

*64nm , sory the mistake.

*65nm , sory the mistake.

this could reduce a lot of heating issues that some x360 onwers already reported. seems that is already late , next mounth I will instal a watercolling system in my x360. good buy to x360 owners in 2007(if is real true of course)

there is the site

hxxp://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/7494.cfm

@MAKAVELI

Yes in the early 2007 if there will be no problems there is planed 90nm to 65nm techology change.

Also about GPU downgrade - the most punishing will be 50Mhz MEMORY downgrade so from 550 GPU and 700 DDR3 Mem to 500 and 650 MHz.

Memory is most important for AA - and looking at new screenshots it doesn't look good....

Memory is quite possibly more important than raw clock speed so that hurts a bit yea, but the ps3 will have no trouble with aa regardless if it drops to 650 memory. Now its one thing for the clock speed to go down (no big deal really), but memory.. what in the hell are they putting inside the ps3 where they can't meet 700MHZ on the memory?

I think they have an internal power supply or something? They should really go external to avoid things like this.

"I think they have an internal power supply or something? They should really go external to avoid things like this." by opta

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is a good idea.

i wondet if in the future sony change is ps3 manucfacturing to 65nm too, it less heat gerenated it would be no great problems overclocking the gpu to 550 GPU and 700 DDR3 back or even more if is possible.

---ken kutaragi said that ps3 probrably will be updated with time....now are they thinking in change to 65nm?

"i wondet if in the future sony change is ps3 manucfacturing to 65nm too, it less heat gerenated it would be no great problems overclocking the gpu to 550 GPU and 700 DDR3 back or even more if is possible."

That would broke games relased before that time.

PS2 had 12 revisions and on the last the prosessor could be esy 10x faster than starting 233mhz [or so].

But doing so would make problems for all so NO CONSOLE to this day had done such thing.

And PS3 and X360 wont be exceptions.

*********

updated - bigger HDD , smaler version , more memory card slots , new firmware with better browser , etc.

NO changes in CPU/GPU/memory speed.

not even +50mhz?

Yea they can't make any changes at all to the core performance numbers of the console it wouldn't be fair to any of the early buyeres. Extras like camera, hdmi, hd-dvd add on, wireless network adapter are all things one can really live without even though the 360 will get hdmi in the future its a guarantee a guy I know pretty much confirmed it and he's never been wrong.

The 360 will be moving to 65nm early 2007 ps3 will be TRYING to move to it as early as late 2007 (they want to do this as soon as possible due to price, but I highly doubt if that will be achievable so soon especially when the cell cpu is a lot more complex than the 360's cpu)

Makaveli sony CAN make the rsx 550MHZ/700MHZ if they want there is no reason they can't, but I think they've maybe messed themselves up by making the power supply internal.

Nvidia has been building the chip that the rsx is based on since early 2005 so I think it has more to do with heating issues as opposed to them not being able to achieve the speed.

It probably has more to do with the fact that sony came to nvidia much too late. The original intention for the ps3 was 2 cell processors with no videocard (they overestimated the cell's ability to take care of the graphics)the ps3 should've had a g80 variant for its gpu, but according to nvidia's ceo nvidia didn't have the type of money at the time to do what ati did with the 360 gpu.

Processors are underclocked all the time for various reasons, its really no big deal folks.

Well its not exactly the "end of the world" for the ps3, but this isn't good news at all and I'm extremely pissed about it because I plan to buy the ps3 (and others who intend to get a ps3 should be pissed too because this may not be too bad a thing, but it affects the ps3 negatively)

Sony needs to suck it the hell up make sure they hit 550MHZ even if it means smaller supply of ps3s later this year. Then again if its due to the heating issues that may not be an option ( their only choice may be to completely redesign case and use external power supply, but that would take too long)

Xenos was alreaedy more powerful than rsx when it had the 550MHZ clock speed and things will be no better at 500MHZ we are paying for potential they shouldn't be downgrading such important aspects of the console. I seriously thought sony would finally deliver on their promised specs and now its not looking good.

Its not exactly a major performance killer, but I think everyone here will agree they'd rather have a 550MHZ rsx as opposed to a 500MHZ rsx. Xenos gets away with that 500MHZ clock speed and 128 bit bus because it has an extreme amount of video memory bandwidth, an revolutionary unified shader architecture which helps the gpu to achieve 95-99% of its peak potential so it doesn't need as much horsepower as far clockspeed goes to make it an amazing gpu.



Take for example all gpus for the pc right now that aren't using unified shader architectures they at best operate at like 70% of their peak performance not able to achieve their peak rendering speed nor sustain it hence their raw horsepower advantage on xenos is obsolete. All these things are why xenos can get away with this stuff. rsx like all other gpus like it will at best achieve 70-75% of its power so it needs all the horsepower it can get. Don't take any of this as me talking down the ps3, but this is a stupid move on sony's part and they need to do what they need to make sure it doesn't happen.

it's not going to be that big of a deal. now the two systems are almost the same if not the same :) now it all comes down to the developers and wich system is more cost efficient to develop for. wich one will it be hmmmmmmmmmmmm? i wound wich one ------------>XBOX360 :)

The xenos manages to beat on the x1900xtx in overall performance with not nearly as much raw power because its much more efficient and has the video memory bandwidth necessary to perform at its best at all times. (Of course not every developer will make it sing so well, but the potential is there just waiting to be taken advantage of.)

Xenos was always better barber, and regardless of that both consoles are very equal in power, but we know what advantages the ps3 has on the 360 and we know what advantages the 360 has on the ps3. If the final retail ps3 ships with a 500/650 rsx that means they took one of the 360's advantages and made it better.

I'm sure as hell the heavenly sword devs aren't liking this their nao32 method of enabling HDR + AA in their game takes away shader power to achieve this. With 50 less MHZ they now don't have as much extra shader power to spare and as a result their AA+HDR will be affected or another trade off may need to be made every little bit helps no matter how small I just hope sony takes care of it.

Doesn't Nvidia's silicon have more than just one clock speed? I remember reading that if you lowered or overclocked this series of chips from Nvidia that it would change not just one specific clock but shaders and so on. So this could be a bad move for Sony.

Optaviusx,

You have done a really nice job of stating the facts when comparing the Xenos Unified Shader GPU of the Xbox 360 to the RSX Non-Unifid Shader GPU of the Playstation 3. The bottom line is that the GPU was one of the key areas where the Xbox 360 always had an obvious advantage, but the fact that Sony is downgrading the GPU in the Playstation 3 is a BIG disappointment. A 10% double-digit reduction in performance is actually quite noticeable, and the memory loss is even more significant than just the loss of Playstation 3 clock-speed.

Comparing the clock-speed of the Playstation 3 to the Xbox 360 never really mattered anyways; it was like comparing apples to oranges, because the Xbox 360 uses the brand new Windows Vista era Unified Shader technology, whereas Playstation 3 still used Non-Unified Shader technology, which you did a great job of reporting on--it only operates at about 70-75% efficiency, whereas the Xbox 360 Unified technology operates at 95% or higher efficiency.

Bottom line: I thought you did a nice job of reporting on this. Personally, I think Sony could put an end to this sort of information if they would simply show us one of the PS3 systems that has supposedly already come off of the production line and is waiting in an inventory room, ready to be shipped when the system is officially launched. But that won't happen, because Sony hasn't started production yet. I just know with all my heart that the Playstation 3 is not going to have backward compatibility like Sony claims it will.