This applies here too:
I stole this from Kenny K at gamersreports.com:
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QUOTE(optaviusx @ Nov 1 2006, 02:41 PM)
The 360 has more ram to work with than the PS3.
The ps3 uses its 256MB of GDDR3 for textures (which is the ram for rsx) Its possible for RSX to texture from XDR, but it would need to travel over the cell's flexio and as a result there is a penalty for texturing from XDR. Or they could use the XDR sorta like a fast cache and stream it all in.
The ps3's os reserves 32MB of ram from the GDDR3 ram and 64MB from the XDR. The 360's os only takes away 32MB of ram from the unified 512MB GDDR memory. Not only that the 360 uses memory much more efficiently than the ps3. For example for a 720p resolution with 4XFSAA the ps3 would require to use 28MB of ram. The 360 accomplishes this with just 16MB a lot of valuable memory being saved there.
Many other memory saving features I wont bother going into right now, but the 360 has more RAM to work with than the PS3 no matter how we look at it.
your close optivious on some of your numbers. the OS for the ps3 actually takes up a little bit more then 96MB of memory, i cant go into specifics because of restrictions but trust me its a bit higher.
also on the 360 the 32MB quote is including the sound from games, not just the OS. the OS for the 360 only takes a little less then 16MB of memory.
here is the OS breakdown for the two systems to put it all together:
PS3:
-1 SPE used for OS 24/7
-1 SPE on stand-by, can be taken over by OS at any moment (game code will NOT run to this SPE)
-96+ MB of memory used by OS
-leaves 1 thread on PPE and 5 SPEs for game development code and execution.
360:
-.5%-2% of the second thread on cores 1 and 2 reserved for OS (cores are labeled core0, core1, and core2 in game development.)
-16MB of memory reserved for OS
to clarify, the OS in these systems includes the dash, guide, menues, OS kernal, and such.
so in total we have a little less then 416MB of memory in the ps3 and in the 360 around 496MB of memory; yes this DOES make a difference. Both systems are capable of handling 6 hardware threads at a time, this does not mean that it can not handle more then 6 software threads though.
as for the question of accessing the XDR memory for RSX, it can be done but its so bottlenecked and not efficient enough to be used in real world programming.
dev quotes on the memory differences:
QUOTE
"Further to the Edge comments this month about how much better Call Of Duty 3 looks on 360 in comparison to the PS3 version, I noticed this in GamesTM this month On Rainbow Six Vegas.....
'' .....a chat with the Ubisoft development team shed a little light on he matter."All I'm able to say is that we're looking to ship on PS3 as well but we're not having specific content.....we're developing with 360 as our main development platform and porting to PS3 means that there's less memory available for us to use, but we're trying to minimise any drop in quality"..Such comments sugget that the gap in performance between Playstation3 and Xbox 360 is nowhere near as powerful as some would like us to believe and that the console may even be less able than Microsoft's..."
They also go on to say that only the 360 version will feature the face mapping technolgy and that their are no plans for PS3/PSP linkage or to use the sixaxis tilt technology."
http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=10742
QUOTE
GI: What do you like about working on the PS3? How about the Xbox 360? Will there be any major differences between the two versions?
Högdahl: So far the two versions look pretty much the same – quite unsurprisingly, since we use the same shader source code and content for both platforms. They will be identical gameplay-wise. There will only be very minor cosmetic differences, such as the PS3 will have better quality video for the in-game TVs and on the Xbox 360 we have a bit more room for textures in memory.
http://www.gameinformer.com/Magazine...1042.51750.htm
hope this answers your question. if you would like to know anything else please ask and i will answer what i could without getting any associate or myself in trouble "