Staredit Network

There's a lot of baseless system flames going on, and then alot of fanboyisms slapped back. Cite sources. Can't find sources? For those to lazy to look at the Wikipedia articles these are copied from, just look here. (Note, there may be ctrl+v errors.)

EDIT > Since I'm aware that the info for PS3 and Wii will keep changing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ps3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii

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Consoles

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Nintendo Wii

Processors:

* CPU: IBM PowerPC processor codenamed "Broadway" (made with a 90 nm SOI CMOS process[2])
* GPU: ATI "Hollywood" (made with a 90 nm CMOS process, [24])

Memory:

* Amount of RAM unknown

Ports and peripheral capabilities:

* Up to Four Wii Remote controllers (connected wirelessly via Bluetooth)
* One SD memory card slot[2][24]
* Two USB 2.0 ports
* One Sensor Bar port
* Four Nintendo GameCube controller ports
* Two Nintendo GameCube memory card ports
* Compatible with optional USB 2.0 Ethernet LAN adaptor

Storage:

* 512 MB built-in flash memory
* Expansion available via SD card memory and USB mass storage[11]
* Slot-loading disc drive compatible with:
o 12cm Wii optical disc (4.7 GB Single layer or 8.7 GB Dual Layer)
o 8cm GameCube optical disc
o DVD Video (dongle required)
* Virtual Console games accessed from flash memory

Built-in content ratings systems:

* PEGI, ESRB, CERO, and OFLC

Networking:

* Wi-Fi by Broadcom
* Standardized Bluetooth by Broadcom

Video:

* Up to 480p[25] and will work with a computer monitor as well as any TV or projector[25]
* Component (including Progressive scan), composite or S-Video output
* 16:9 support

Audio:

* Main: Stereo - Dolby Pro Logic II-capable[26]
* Controller: Built-in speaker

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Sony Playstation3

Central processing unit (CPU)

3.2 GHz Cell multi-core processor: 1 PowerPC-based "Power Processing Element" and 8 3.2 GHz Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). The PPE has a 512 KB L2 cache and one VMX (AltiVec) vector unit. Each of the eight SPEs is a RISC processor with 128-bit 128 SIMD GPRs and superscalar functions. Each SPE has 256 KB of L1 cache/software-addressable 4.8 GHz SRAM.

Only seven SPEs are active; the eighth is redundant, to improve yield. If one of the eight has a manufacturing defect, it is disabled without rendering the entire unit defective. Additionally, one SPE is reserved for use by the system's OS, leaving six SPEs directly available to applications.

Graphics processing unit (GPU)
The rear of the 20GB PlayStation 3 as it was shown at E3 2006. AC IN, AV MULTI OUT, DIGITAL OUT and an RJ-45 network port are visible.
Enlarge
The rear of the 20GB PlayStation 3 as it was shown at E3 2006. AC IN, AV MULTI OUT, DIGITAL OUT and an RJ-45 network port are visible.

Custom RSX or "Reality Synthesizer" design co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony:

* Based on NVIDIA G71 architecture, otherwise known as NV47
* Clocked at 550 MHz
* 128-bit DDR memory interface
* 211.2 GFLOPS programmable (384 FLOPS per clock)
* 1.8 TFLOPS
* Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
* 136 shader operations per clock
* 74.8 billion shader operations per second (100 billion with CPU)
* 24 2D texture lookups per clock
* 1.1 billion vertices per second
* 128-bit pixel precision offers rendering of scenes with high dynamic range imaging
* Full high definition output (up to and including 1080p)

Memory

500 MB, though it is split into..

* 256 MB Rambus XDR DRAM clocked at CPU die speed (3.2 GHz)
* 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 MHz


Theoretical system bandwidth

* 204.8 GB/s Cell Element Interconnect Bus (Theoretical peak performance)[22]
* Cell FlexIO Bus: 35 GB/s outbound, 25 GB/s inbound (7 outbound and 5 inbound 1Byte wide channels operating at 5 GHz) (effective bandwidth typically 50-80% of total)[23]
* 25.6 GB/s to Main Ram XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz / 8 bits to a byte
* 22.4 GB/s to GDDR3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) / 8 bits to a byte
* RSX 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)
* SB 2.5 GB/s write and 2.5 GB/s read


Audio/video output


Video

* Supported screen resolutions: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
* Multiple AV outputs
o Composite
o S-Video
o Component video (output up to and including 1080p)
o HDMI port (Digital video output; 60 GB model only)


Sound

* S/PDIF optical output for digital audio
* Dolby TrueHD 5.1 minimum (Blu-Ray movies only; compatible sound equipment required)[citation needed]
* DTS-HD
* LPCM (DSP functionality handled by the Cell processor)
* Dolby-HD

Storage

* Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-R, BD-RE. 2x (9.0MB/sec)
* DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW. 8x (11.0MB/sec max)
* CD: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW. 24x (3.5MB/sec max)
* SACD: SACD Hybrid (CD layer) SACD HD. 2x
* Hard Drive: Pre-Installed 20 GB / 60 GB (depending on package), 2.5", detachable/upgradeable, with Linux pre-installed.[24][25]
* Flash memory interfaces (60 GB model only):
o Memory Stick
o CompactFlash
o SD/MMC

Communications

* One Gigabit Ethernet Port
* USB 2.0 (x4)
* Bluetooth 2.0
* Wi-Fi (60 GB model only)
o IEEE 802.11b/g

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Microsoft Xbox360

Central processing unit
Xbox 360 CPU with some thermal paste left on it
Enlarge
Xbox 360 CPU with some thermal paste left on it

The CPU, named Xenon (Microsoft) or Waternoose (IBM) is a custom IBM triple-core PowerPC-based design.[23]

* 90 nm process, 165 million transistors (65 nm process SOI revision in 2007[24])
* Three symmetrical cores, each one SMT-capable and clocked at 3.2 GHz
* One VMX-128 SIMD unit per core
* 128×128 register file for each VMX unit
* 1 MB L-2 cache (lockable by the GPU) running at half-speed (1.4 GHz) with a 128bit bus
* 34 GB per second of L-2 memory bandwidth (256bit x 100 MHz)
* dot product performance: 9.1 billion per second
* 98 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance
* ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys

Graphics processing unit
Xbox 360 GPU; note the smaller eDRAM die to the left of the main Xenos die.
Enlarge
Xbox 360 GPU; note the smaller eDRAM die to the left of the main Xenos die.

The "Xenos" GPU is a custom chip designed by ATI. (Developed under the name "C1", sometimes "R500")[25] The chip contains two separate silicon dies: the parent GPU and the daughter eDRAM.

* 315 million transistors total
* 500 MHz parent GPU (90 nm TSMC process, 235 million transistors)
* 300 MHz 10 MB daughter embedded DRAM framebuffer (90 nm process, 50 million transistors)
o NEC designed eDRAM die includes additional logic for color, alpha blending, Z/stencil buffering, and anti-aliasing.
o 8 render output units
* 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines
o Unified shader architecture (each pipeline is capable of running either pixel or vertex shaders)
o Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0
o MEMEXPORT shader function
o 2 shader ALU operations per pipeline per cycle (1 vec4 and 1 scalar, co-issued)
o 160 programmable shader operations per cycle (48 ALUs x 2 ops + 16 texture fetch + 32 control flow + 16 vertex fetch)[26]
o 80 billion shader operations per second (160 ops per clock cycle x 500 MHz)
o 240 GFLOPS programmable[26]
* 16 filtered or unfiltered texture samples per clock
* Maximum polygon performance: 500 million triangles per second
* Texel fillrate: 8 gigatexel per second fillrate (16 textures x 500 MHz)
* Pixel fillrate: 16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X multisample anti aliasing (MSAA), or 32 gigasamples using Z-only operation; 4 gigapixels per second without MSAA (8 ROPs x 500 MHz)[25]
* Dot product operations: 24 billion per second or 33.6 billion per second theoretical maximum when summed with CPU operations


Memory

* 512 MB 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM (Total system memory is shared with the GPU via the unified memory architecture) produced by Samsung.


System bandwidth

The system bandwidth comprises:

* 256 GB/s eDRAM internal logic to eDRAM internal memory bandwidth
* 32 GB/s GPU to eDRAM bandwidth (2 GHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle on a 64 bit DDR bus)
* 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth (700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) on a 128 bit bus)
* 21.6 GB/s front side bus (aggregated 10.8 GB/s upstream and downstream)
* 1 GB/s southbridge bandwidth (aggregated 500 MB/s upstream and downstream)


Audio

* All games must support at least six channel (5.1) Dolby Digital surround sound using optical output
* Support for 48 kHz 16-bit audio
* 320 independent decompression channels
* 32 bit processing
* 256+ audio channels
* No voice echo to game players on the same Xbox console; voice goes only to remote consoles
* Voice communication is handled by the console, not by the game code. This allows players to communicate online even if they are playing different games.
* Uses XMA codec (based on WMA Pro)

Video

Although all games were once required to support a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a HD resolution of 720p with 2x full scene anti-aliasing enabled as a minimum, those requirements seem to have been dropped. An anonymous developer was quoted as saying that "even 2xMSAA is not required by Microsoft anymore,"[27] and Project Gotham Racing 3 has been shown to be internally rendered at a resolution of 1024x600.[28] The GPU can cross convert the native game resolution to other display resolutions (480i SDTV, 480p, 720p, and 1080i) depending on the native resolution of the display it's connected to, and dynamically crop or scale 16:9 to fit 4:3 screens.

Supported resolutions
Resolution Aspect Ratio Megapixels Standard Output (RGB via VGA connector or SCART)
640x480 Interlaced 4:3 0.31 interlaced 480i Composite video / S-Video / Component video / RGB
640x480 4:3 0.31 VGA / 480p Component video / RGB
848x480 16:9 0.41 WVGA / Widescreen 480p RGB
1024x768 4:3 0.79 XGA RGB
1280x720 16:9 0.92 720p Component video / RGB
1280x768 5:3 0.98 WXGA RGB
1360x768 16:9 1.04 WXGA RGB
1280x1024 5:4 1.31 SXGA RGB
1920x1080 Interlaced 16:9 2.07 interlaced 1080i Component video

Supported codecs

* VC-1 at non-HD NTSC and PAL resolutions
* VC-1 or WMV will be used for streaming video
* VC-1 or WMV HD supports DVD quality and high definition quality video
* Bink Video is licensed for games like Project Gotham Racing 3
* Additional MPEG2 decoder for DVD video playback


DVD drive

A 12X DVD-ROM SATA drive, capable of reading DVD+R/DVD+RW discs and DVD-R/RW, is part of the console, with game titles shipping on single or dual-layer DVDs. Only 7GB of the 7.95GB capacity of a dual-layered DVD is available for developers to use for game content.[29] The disc drive also supports the CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R/RW, WMA-CD, MP3-CD, and JPEG Photo CD formats as well as DVD movies. There are two known suppliers of these drives for the Xbox 360: Hitachi-LG and Toshiba-Samsung. The Hitachi-LG drive is considerably noisy, so the Toshiba-Samsung drive has replaced it in the new shipment of consoles and is reasonably quiet.

Bill Gates has confirmed during his keynote speech at CES 2006 that an external HD DVD drive will be released for the 360 during 2006.[30] However, Peter Moore has stated that if HD-DVD loses the format war, Microsoft may also release an external Blu-Ray drive. This was later denied by Microsoft.[31] According to Japan's chief of Xbox operations Yoshihiro Maruyama, Microsoft will not release Xbox 360 games in the new disc formats.[32]

The price for the Xbox 360 and the HD-DVD bundle will apparently be lower than the price of the Premium PlayStation 3.[33]

Cooling

Both the GPU and CPU of the console have heatsinks. The CPU's heatsink uses heatpipe technology, to efficiently conduct heat from the CPU to the fins of the heatsink.[34] The heatsinks are actively cooled by a pair of 60 mm exhaust fans that push the air out of the case (negative case pressure). Active cooling makes the Xbox 360 considerably louder than a passively cooled console would be, although much of the noise produced by the 360 is actually a product of the DVD-ROM drive rather than the thermally controlled fans. There have been third-party modifications that watercool the console.[35]

Physical characteristics

Console

* Weight 3.5 kg (7.7 lb)
* 30.9 cm (L) x 25.8 cm (W) x 8.3 cm (H) (12.16 x 10.15 x 3.27 in)

Power supply

* 21.3 cm (L) x 7.6 cm (W) x 5.7 cm (H) (8.4 x 3 x 2.25 in)

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Controllers

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Nintendo Wiimote

The primary controller for Wii uses a one handed, remote control-based design, which, when turned on its side, can be used like a NES gamepad. The controller communicates wirelessly with the console via Bluetooth with the possibility to operate up to four controllers as far as ten meters from the console. Using internal sensors and an external sensor bar placed near the display screen, the movement and orientation of the Wii Remote, informally called the Wii-mote, can be sensed. The controller has vibrational force feedback functionality and an internal speaker for audio.

The Wii Remote features an expansion port with the possibility to augment the controller with various shells and add-ons. Nintendo has announced several such expansions, including a Nunchuk [sic] controller featuring an analog stick, a Classic Controller for playing games that require more traditional gamepad functionality (such as Virtual Console games), and a "Zapper Style" shell for traditional shooting gameplay. The Nunchuk controller will also have motion sensing capabilities.

Competitors' reactions have been muted. While Sony revealed the PS3's "Kinetic" controller that can sense movement and orientation in all 6 degrees (fully internal sensing of rotational orientation and translational acceleration) of motion at E3, representatives have denied that it was in response to the Wii's controller. Bill Gates stated that "moving that controller around -- it's something that's not mainstream for most games," giving an example of what might happen if someone just wanted to put the controller down but instead caused an undesired movement in a game because of the controller. Keita Takahashi expressed a disinterest in Wii because of Nintendo's emphasis on the freehand control interface over the classic control interface.

In an interview between Shigeru Miyamoto and Kotaku, Miyamoto revealed that Nintendo hopes to allow Wii controllers to be personalized for each gamer. Applications would include different game settings determined by the preferences of the controller that turned on the console.

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Playstation DuelShock 3

At Sony's 2006 E3 press conference, a new PlayStation 3 controller design was revealed. The design was superficially very similar to a wireless version of the DualShock 2 controller, as opposed to the wireless "boomerang" prototype design showcased a year earlier.

The PlayStation 3 controller features a USB mini-B connector terminal at the top of the controller for charging the internal battery through USB, and also for wired play. There are four numbered LED indicators, to identify and distinguish multiple connected wireless controllers.

In addition to the basic design, the other major feature revealed at the press conference was the ability to sense rotational orientation and translational acceleration. A special version of the game Warhawk was used to demonstrate these new capabilities during the presentation of the new controller.
The 2005 "Boomerang" or "Banana" controller was officially abandoned.
Enlarge
The 2005 "Boomerang" or "Banana" controller was officially abandoned.

The announcement of having a motion and tilt sensitive controller followed Nintendo's announcement of similar functionality in their Wii Remote controller at the Tokyo Game Show 2005. Sony executives have spoken on the matter, saying they are happy to admit they have not started the wave, but have jumped onto the wave, because they believe it will be one of the defining characteristics of next-generation gaming. Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has called the similarity flattering, but unconcerning.
The rumble capability of the previous controllers was omitted, according to Sony, to prevent interference with motion sensing. This has resulted in a lighter controller. Immersion Corporation, who previously won a lawsuit on the DualShock 2's rumble functionality, has stated that they are certain that rumble features could be integrated with motion-sensing in the PS3 controller. They have offered to work on the technology pending an end to litigation.Some developers were not notified about the lack of rumble in the controller until late in development.

Some minor refinements have also been made to the controller. In place of the "Analog" button and light found on previous PlayStation controllers, a button with the PlayStation logo has been added to the center of the controller face, similar to the Guide button of the Xbox 360 controller. Some of the buttons have been raised from their previous versions, to enhance their pressure-sensitive analog functionality. In particular, the L2 and R2 shoulder buttons have been redesigned to allow for a much deeper depression range, making them more trigger like. The analogue sticks also have a wider range of motion and finer analog sensitivity—at 10-bit accuracy, an improvement upon the 8-bit accuracy of the previous models.

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Microsoft S-Type 360

The Xbox 360 gamepad design is similar to the Type-S gamepad from the original Xbox. The black and white buttons have been replaced with the right and left bumpers and an Xbox Guide button has been added to the center. Wired gamepads feature a nine foot (2.74 m) long cord with a break-away feature. They can be used with any USB and Windows equipped computer. Wireless gamepads have a range of about 30 feet (~9 m) and use either two AA batteries or a NiMH rechargeable battery pack. When a gamepad is plugged in, or - in the case of wireless gamepads - turned on, a quadrant of the LED "Ring of Light" around the power button is lit up, indicating connection and ordering (1st player corresponds to the upper-left quadrant, 2nd player to upper-right, etc.). The "Ring of Light" also adorns the Xbox Guide button; it will flash in case of a low battery warning on the wireless gamepad.

As a first for console controllers, the wired version can be used as a PC gamepad out of the box without the use of any converters. Regardless of the green Xbox 360 packaging or the red PC packaging, it is the same controller either way- the only difference being that the PC package comes with a driver disc included, while the standard package requires users to download the PC drivers. The downside is that the Xbox Guide button is currently inoperable, but future driver updates are expected to support it. At E3 06, Microsoft announced a wireless adapter, which would allow wireless gamepads to be used on PCs.

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Pictures

Very nice. I don't have the time to read over all of it now, but I'll do it later to check for inaccuracies. Which I doubt will exist, because it looks like you copied this off the internet.

The first sentence states that I copied it from Wikipedia.

I'm pretty sure it's "DualStick"

i know why do you even post stuff on wikipedia... that site updates alot. why not just give us a link there... I see no point of this post to tell yout he truth...

Where are your sources? Links plz

Well at least they changed the ps3 controller. I was always thinking the reason why they made it into the boomrang shape is that when you lose a game and throw your controller onto the floor it would come back around and smack ya!

...? Clearly states I copied them from wikipedia.

ADDITION:


The first 2 were DuelShock, this one doesn't have a name yet, but the others aren't official either.

Yep its like the same thing for wikipedia, and he stated on top XD why is everyone asking?

And its better to just go into wikipedia and check for yourself becuase it got other information and keeps updating...

And wikipedia isnt 100% correct, they can have false information. And i have no clue why you posted this and made it into a sticky...

Again, read the first post. It's because alot of people are gonig OMG MY SYSTEM BETTER! This makes it look much worse for them and takes away the possibility of an "I didn't know" defense.

The only thing you can discredit Wikipedia for is that real people submit it. But even so, most articles cite their sources at the bottom of the page. So almost all the time it's correct according to today's information.

yea, but the thing is internet source as well is not 100% correct. And if you have some kind of website just as a source then you can sumbit stuff to wikipedia. But the site does get check a lot, by fanboys and otehr people... So its hard for some odd information to get on the site, but some false information can be on the site...



no one even knows which system is better, sure on spec sheet you might say ones better, but in actually hardware testing one can come out better than the other.

It was abandoned and discontinued.

Yep people didnt like it, even though I think it looks better with the PS3. i mean designe wise. Like the 360 controller looks like a 360 controller. now the PS3 controller looks like a ps2 controller... When the boomerange look somewhat like a PS3 controller but little odd desgine.

Tilt function is just stupid, but you never know they might end up doing pretty good with it... But seriously wow i can tilt...

Nothing is, even if the owner of the entire company says it like:
"Halo 3 will launch the same day as Playstation 3" ~Bill Gates
And like I said, they only post true facts by today's knowledge. If Playstation 3 radically changes it's name to "The Big Power House 3000" then it'll be updated on Wikipedia a few minutes after it's confirmed to not be a joke.

ok true to that... but im saying it might be less correct than other source.

However, internet itself is not really correct, so much rumors and false information flying everywhere...

so yea meh... lol

Wikipedia is a source in itself. But they go for the most reliable ones, you can't say anything bad on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is montired, and if a rumor is on it it will either:
A) Be removed
or
B) You'll be notified it's a rumor and not a fact

i know thats what i said... but it still could have false information.. but i know they monitor it and stuff, and they have to name the source if they want to post something in it...



its sometime hard to tell, what if like 4 site posted rumors. They might not be the most reliable 4 sites, but like some decent 4 site posted rumors and you post that in wikipedia they might not do anything with it... Becuase it is the interent...

they are very trustworthy but it can have false information... espeically on stuff thats not heavly monitored and etc.

You don't think the next gen systems are heavily monitored? ...

I vandilized my SCHOOL page and it took 3 mintues to be reverted.

Because you vandalized it. I'm not so sure that the people who fix this stuff will know the exact numbers and all of that technical stuff.

I wonder how Wikipedia works anyway ;\

where did you get next gen system aren't heavily monitored... i said some information are. were kind of going off topic, but i said some infos are...

i never said next gen stuff wasn't...

i'm just saying wikipedia can have more false information... i mean everything can, but i expect wikipedia to have more than a book or something, because its the internet...




wikipedia makes lots of money i guess through the ads.. So they have lots of monitors, i bet it shows which information was edited. so pretty much the mods job is just to read if the information is correct and source is reliable and its not crap... And the information the people actually edits it in. if you go to wikipedia there is like a edit bar...

its a internet community made encyclopedia, so false information can go on there if the source is false... its sometime hard to tell when rumors are flying, and no one really knows its exactly a rumor or not...

What's the point of this topic anyways?
If people want their views to be accepted, they'll need to cite them. It's not like this is serious discussion or anything. This is discussion of games and people can talk about rumors, facts, or whatever they want. Most of the discussion here is going to be opinion and you cannot argue opinion.

I think too many stickies is not a good thing. I don't even think the "Next Generation Debate" topic should be stickied because it'd stay on the main page and people would still see it. We could just lock every other topic they make/merge and link them to the main one.

I agree that this forum is pretty much about opinions on games. I however, like to look at the techinical aspects of games, different gaming styles, more analytical stuff.

I guess it could be time for the next gen thread to be taken down as there are too many replies, so new people won't bother reading much of it. Krazy did put some hard work into it however...