PS3 as a PC = Slow, not good at all. Don't bother.

[FudgeNuggets]

I was wanting some benchmarks on the PS3 running Linux to see how the "great and glorious saviour of CPUs", the Cell, performs and........

Well, it looks like those hoping the PS3 would be a FOLDING powerhouse or even a decent Linux PC might have their hopes crushed.

The Cell flat out sucks for PC usage. Sure the programming isn't taking advantage of the SPEs, but will they even make that big of a difference? I mean, after some research I found that the cell was built off of the PPC G5 architecture but somehow manages to get THRASHED in benchmarks by 2ghz slower G4 and G5 MAC computers. This means that in order to get ANY performace out of the Cell, then the programmes have to be specifically written to take advantage of the SPEs. I know they'll probably do that it games which may make it a good gaming machine but IF the cell EVER even catches on in the PC world, then it's going to get HAMMERED by the Intel and AMD chips without special coded applications.

Also by this logic, if somebody gets Linux running on the 360 then it too should totally POUND the Cell powered PS3 in Linux as it has 3 3.2GHZ PPC G5 cores to the PS3's 1.

Conclusion: It may yet turn out to be a good gaming/movie machine but a PC it is not and shouldn't be used as one unless some mad mad Linux loving men write a version that can take advantage of the SPEs, but who knows then if that'll even help that much?

Benchmarks are listed in the post below:

 

[FudgeNuggets]

http://www.geekpatrol.ca/2006/11/playstation-3-performance/

http://rian.s26.xrea.com/
translated:

Well, today you try probably to keep looking at the efficiency of PPE which is the main core of Cell.

As known, PPE, PowerPC 970 (PowerPC G5) in the base, is compatibility in instruction set.
However, architecture of content seems that differs considerably.
The number of respective computing elements decreasing, it reaches, the number of per 1 clock executive orders decreases and reaches, reverse execution of order is not possible.
So, pipeline stage number increasing, the operational clock rises markedly, Cell of PS3 operates with 3.2GHz.
23 steps it probably will put out the stage number of the pipeline, is. The ぇ ぇ, it may remember the nightmare of Pentium4 being, the shank. . .
So, because it does not become the problem, regarding the game and multimedia use, unless there is a problem, it is thing, but
We is the case that Cell would like to use as a supercomputer! If or, Linux moves, with just that www

Well, the efficiency of Cell talked PS3 Linux release before being done, as a reputation.
With the ゆ - with reason, doing benchmark on PPE, it keeps verifying efficiency.

By the way value of all benches below
As for the optimization option of gcc only -O3
3 the times executing, the best value
The thread dividing, increase it is. It becomes efficiency of the processor core single unit
As for Pentium4 3.2GHz Prescott
32bit coding
With it depends on the condition for saying.


Dhrystone v2.1
PS3 Cell 3.2GHz: 1879.630
PowerPC G4 1.25GHz: 2202.600
PentiumIII 866MHz: 1124.311
Pentium4 2.0AGHz: 1694.717
Pentium4 3.2GHz: 3258.068

Dhrystone is benchmark of real number value operation. With front reputation 1 of several parts of Pen4.
When so, you look at value, don't you think? as for Cell it is found that it is slower than PowerPC G4. Be disheartened is. . .
Efficiency is somewhat better than Pen4 2.0AGHz.


Linpack 100x100 Benchmark In C/C++ (Rolled Double Precision)
PS3 Cell 3.2GHz: 315.71
PentiumIII 866MHz: 313.05
Pentium4 2.0AGHz: 683.91
Pentium4 3.2GHz: 770.66
Athlon64 X2 4400+ (2.2GHz): 781.58

It is efficiency of double precision floating point arithmetic, but therefore as for Cell the for game double precision when it is weak, was front reputation. Efficiency of half rank of single precision.
When so, you look at the result, like PenIII. . . Being uneasy in scientific calculation, don't you think? Good Heavens. . .


Linpack 100x100 Benchmark In C/C++ (Rolled Single Precision)
PS3 Cell 3.2GHz: 312.64
PentiumIII 866MHz: 198.7
Pentium4 2.0AGHz: 82.57
Pentium4 3.2GHz: 276.14
Athlon64 X2 4400+ (2.2GHz): 538.05

It is single precision floating point arithmetic lastly. When with front reputation it forces single precision and seems.
When you look at the result, putting out the value which is much higher than Pen4 now the shank. As expected, it seems that is lower than Athlon64 but.


When with well, you look at the result above, with efficiency of according to of front reputation, using SPU, you think that it is found that densely it is the Cell.
Because object application 3 and is little, everything of Cell PPE you cannot declare this, but as for tendency is not to have been visible, probably will be?

As conclusion, if just we want the Linux machine, cheap PC is bought the one which profit.
If Cell would like to touch, it probably is the place such as PS3 Linux?

 

[hUMANbEATbOX]

not surprising.

 

[Oni]

Gee . . . a machine made for gaming absolutely sucks as a PC . . . I never would've thought of that.

 

[FudgeNuggets]

Gee . . . a machine made for gaming absolutely sucks as a PC . . . I never would've thought of that.

Although I agree with you, that's not what all the fanboys and Sony was saying beforehand though.

 

[Elif Tymes]

There is a guy running his PS3 as a web server...

http://ps3.shimpinomori.net/index_en.html

Which has been digged for the past few days and still not crumpled under load...

 

[twEEkerAreUs]

Although I agree with you, that's not what all the fanboys and Sony was saying beforehand though.

Can you ever stop bashing Sony? Seriously every single thread on Anti-Sony is by you lmao! We get it you hate them, everything about the system sucks and you will never buy one.

 

[tenchi86]

The Cell is not meant to work as a desktop. It is designed to run either as a server/supercomputer crunching away at specific applications which are optimized to run on it or in the case of a PS3 it is meant to run games that are optimized for it. As for it folding, with the right optimizations and a client built just for it the PS3 could still deliver very impressive numbers. Really though this is kind of like the MDGrape-3 supercomputer. It is said to be the fastest in the world, however it is not designed to run desktop applications and therefor is unable to be properly benched and remains no more then an unranked research computer.

 

[ziggo0]

Right...but when all the fan boys mob up...they try to claim that Cell owns PC CPUs lol...its funny because they think they know what their talking about?

 

[FudgeNuggets]

Can you ever stop bashing Sony? Seriously every single thread on Anti-Sony is by you lmao! We get it you hate them, everything about the system sucks and you will never buy one.

Don't like it? Don't read it. I'm only reporting the facts. There are plenty of 360 and Wii threads here by me too you know. Gee look at the one I just posted 5 minutes ago about the botched Xbox Live movie/TV rollout. By the way, I WILL buy one in a year or so. Snootch to the Nootch....

 

[zexmarquies01]

Can you ever stop bashing Sony? Seriously every single thread on Anti-Sony is by you lmao! We get it you hate them, everything about the system sucks and you will never buy one.

i viewed his post as less of a Anti-sony post, and more of the lines of the truth...

Sony kept boasting how powerfull the cell processor was. how far ahead it was, compaired to whats currently on the market.

Though, not all that said good things about the cell should be concidered a fanboy, either way, fanboys were saying that the cell was going to plow through the 360.


though, it would be nice to see a client fully optimized to run on the cell processor. that way we can get a REAL comparison.

i mean, if i take a client designed to run on intel, and slap it on an AMD, and do a comparison, it isn't right to say " SEE, INTEL IS BETTER!!". While these numbers given are interesting and all, i'd still like to see a client which takes use of all the SPU's(or whatever their called, i forget ) , and the full architecture of it as well. then we can get a real view of how strong/weak the cell is compaired to the newest processors out for desktop computers.

 

[tenchi86]

As I mentioned before though you really cannot fairly say that Sony has lied about the Cell as it is not meant to be a regular desktop CPU. Just as with MDGrape-3 the Cell cpu is specially designed and requires applications to be completely optimized for it if you want to actually see the real power of the Cell. If you type into google Cell based Supercomputer you will get many results. There is a reason people are picking Cell over a G4 and that is because when it is used for it's purpose it is rather powerful.

 

[Trombe]

Not many $600 web servers can remain at 95.5% idle during the digg effect.

 

[blueswitch]

It was always my understanding that the Cell was originally ment at first for server deployment but no one adopted it because the theoretical power on paper looks awesome but it's actual real world performance was not all that stellar. And bashing Cell is not necessarily bashing Sony. IBM, Toshiba, and Sony jointly developed it it's just Sony is the only one to want to use it so far, it's not the god send they make it out to be.

 

[Oni]

The CBE is also used in MRI machines, and for military uses.

 

[rainless]

Well it's the truth... But not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

For the moment OS X will run like absolute crap on an X6800 PC with 3 gigs of ram and overclocked to the Max.

That's only because OS X is designed to run on a completely different platform. But would you then say that the X6800 sucks as a PC? I should hope not.

I have a 20mbs internet connection, but when using an onion proxy I feel like I'm back to a 56k connection. Is it because my internet connection is slow? No it's not.

Still you could say that the X6800 is "Slow, not good at all. Don't bother." and you would be alright... but you wouldn't be qualifying that statement. Same with my internet connection... without mentioning that I'd be using an onion Proxy.

So it's not "just the facts." It's the facts plus extremely negative and constant color commentary. Though you gotta love the Dora Aquapet...

Edit: http://www.amazon.com/gp/discussion...ISM3W&asin=B000IM15QI&cdThread=TxA8OWYIQF62KK

The hell with this... I'm buying one for "that special someone" this holiday season... We'll take this thing down to Vegas on New Years and have a BLAST!

 

[Elif Tymes]

WTH? I've ran OS X on a macbook, which is a core duo, not even a core 2 duo, and it runs quite amazingly.

My dear rainman, you appear to be confusing running windows xp on a machine with 64MB of RAM and running OS X on an X6800!

Of course, the XP analogy would be more fitting, simply because the PSIII doesn't have the raw actual power. It's like RDRAM. It looks all "Oooh! Fast!" but in reality it was significantly slower and more expensive than DDR.

Anyway, the $600 webserver is definately an option. More storage space would be nice, and do we know if it has built in gige?

 

[FudgeNuggets]

For $600, I think I'd rather use a Mac Mini for a Webserver or a desktop assembled with an X2, a bunch of ram, decent hard drive and crappy vid card.

To resummarize what I meant to say in my post: The Cell processor NEEDS specific programming to take advantage of the SPEs in oder to run well. There is really no use outside of novelty to run Linux on a PS3 as nothing will perform very well, may as well buy an old used Mac if a sub 2ghz G4 or G5 will run cirlces around it. That's not really bashing Sony, it's just saying that the PS3 is not good for PC/Linux stuff right now until some programming genius recodes Linux to take advantage of the 7 SPEs.

 

[rainless]

WTH? I've ran OS X on a macbook, which is a core duo, not even a core 2 duo, and it runs quite amazingly.

My dear rainman, you appear to be confusing running windows xp on a machine with 64MB of RAM and running OS X on an X6800!

Of course, the XP analogy would be more fitting, simply because the PSIII doesn't have the raw actual power. It's like RDRAM. It looks all "Oooh! Fast!" but in reality it was significantly slower and more expensive than DDR.

Anyway, the $600 webserver is definately an option. More storage space would be nice, and do we know if it has built in gige?

I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE FRIGGIN' MACBOOK! Jesus...

And the ps3 DOES have the raw physical power. But for the exact same reasons that a PC... not a friggin Macbook running on a completely different architecture... but a **PC** runs OSX slowly... XP would not be optimized for the PS3

 

[FudgeNuggets]

I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE FRIGGIN' MACBOOK! Jesus...

And the ps3 DOES have the raw physical power. But for the exact same reasons that a PC... not a friggin Macbook running on a completely different architecture... but a **PC** runs OSX slowly... XP would not be optimized for the PS3

To clariy things a bit Rainman, the Cell runs PPC code so when you run a Linux PPC version on the Cell it is running natively, it just isn't taking advantage of the SPEs. You're running Linux PPC on 1 3.2ghz PPC core. If you were to run in on the 360 however you'd be running it on 3 3.2ghz PPC cores. That is the main difference in the PS3 CPU and the 360 CPU: 1 3.2ghz PPC core and 7 SPEs vs 3 3.2ghz PPC cores. Can the 7 SPEs make up the difference between the 2 extra cores on the 360? I don't think so, unless we're talking about a dedicted program that was written to take advantage of using those 7 SPES to a dedicated process and then it'd only be faster for that process. Let us say we were using a PS3 and a 360 to render an animated movie. The Cell could use its' 7 SPEs to help the 3.2GHZ PPC core render the animation while the 360 used 3 3.2GHZ PPC cores to render the animation. Are those 7 SPEs powerful enough to add up to or be greater than 3 cores? We don't know yet, but I'd be VERY intersested in finding out.