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- Ark7, on 10/12/2007, -9/+70Looks like what was once supposed to be a PS3 exclusive is actually be turning out to be better on the Xbox 360.
- Ark7, on 10/12/2007, -6/+42No one said it would "totally suck." The Xbox 360 version will have better AI than the PS3 version, though.
- haelios, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34AI in general requires more general threading than DSP like processors. Since the SPEs aren't general purpose, devising complex procedural branch happy AI algorithms on them isn't particularly easy. When you have 3 general purpose processors (I know there are 6 threads in total, but I don't know enough specifics on the Xeno's SMT implementation to say how good the hyperthreads are) it's a whole lot easier. Potential is nothing if you can't realise it...
Personally I don't think the PS3 is more powerful than the Xeno. As a processor architect, however, I'm far more excited about Cell than Xeno.
EDIT: I do appreciate that SPEs would be useful for more complex AI such as those found in support vector constructs etc. but for game AI, I think a general purpose processor is more useful mainly in order since the AI needs to interact with gameplay elements which are often (I think at least) more complex than straightforward vectors/matrices etc. - SimonX314, on 10/12/2007, -2/+31"Considering that the PS3 has about 1 Teraflop of indisputable power ontop of the Xbox 360"
The PS3 processor does have more special purpose processing power thanks to its one PPE and 6 SPEs, however SPEs are limited to running special purpose code. The 360s triple core processor can run 3 simultaneous threads of general purpose code, which is more useful when running the branching code of games. Sony's floating point performance is very impressive, but not as important as conventional processing power. - miketuck3r, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27A great mathematic (the ps3) has no relevance to AI, which is not number calculations but logic statements (branching) the 360 is better at this..
- latova, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25But thats an extra 100 dollars you're paying for something that isn't better, but in fact worse. If the PS3 and 360 were the same price, I would agree that the difference is nothing so it shouldn't matter, but with that 100 dollars you're sacrificing another two games or something that you could get for the console that does the same thing. So yes, it really does "such".
- iluvatar, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25I'm really surprised at this. I thought for sure that the PS3's 8 cores would help improve AI in games. From the sound of things it seems like it still has the highest potential in that regard, but has proven so hard to develop for that the end result really isn't worth it.
- yuravian, on 10/12/2007, -4/+24yes, because everyone who owns a 360 is a fan boy.
you, my friend, are an ass.
-_- - Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -7/+27"Wow this game sure will totally suck on the ps3 without that extra CROWD AI."
Funny that, but your sarcasm isn't that far from ringing true. If you actually knew anything about the game, you'd know that the crowd AI is incredibly important to a large portion of the gameplay they are pushing forward. (Social stealth - hiding in crowds by matching your behaviour to others in the crowd and not sticking out.) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21I have a theory as to why Ubisoft switched sides, not only revealing that AC was not a PS3 exclusive, but also saying that the 360 version will have better AI. My theory is that Ubisoft must have asked SONY for some money in order to hold back the game a couple of months after it was released for the PS3 so the 360 would look bad and SONY get all the glory. I think SONY must have told them to ***** off (similar to what they did with Rockstar). And since the game wasn't going to be released until next year, they had plenty of time and incentive to release the game not only at the same time, but also release it with a few improvements. I mean why else would both SONY and Ubisoft claim exclusive only to later blow that out the water with "the 360 version makes the PS3 suck ass" type *****? I'm not a hater more of an analyzer. But give your feedback anyways. Oh and remember SONY payed Rockstar some cash to hold exclusivity right to their GTA:SA tittle?
- Emasoft, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19
You are underestimating the problem. SPE cores have NO BRANCH PREDICTION at all. They are an inferno for AI programming. - haelios, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17"maybe deep down inside u know the 360 isn't all that great and ur trying desperately to justify last november's purchase on ebay."
And with that sentence, you just lost all credibility. - sakuraz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17it was better on xbox because xbox had better specs than ps2
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19Ironic! I was expecting the same response from Sony ***** smokers. :)
- MouseCircus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17It's not necessarily bad coding. The 360's CPU and the PS3's Cell Processor are two very different processors. But you shouldn't attribute the difference in crowd AI to "bad coding." There's more to it than just numbers. I'd get into detail, but I don't know enough about the subject. I'm sure someone here on Digg can provide a better response.
Oh, and are you trying to put a negative spin on this story, just because Ark7 isn't a supporter of the PS3? Don't be so immature. It's not like he's insulting the PS3 in this story. Sure, claiming that the 360 version will be better based on crowd AI is a bit much, but other than that, I see nothing wrong here. - ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Haven't Sony consoles always been more difficult to program for? The PS2, for example, was a virtual grab-bag of chips.
- haelios, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16Sound like MS employees? Maybe cos MS hasn't done many things wrong with the Xbox 360 and their marketing push for the device. How well has Sony fared? Isn't it natural that MS is attracting customers and followers?
- nklnch, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18Is there a quote of her saying this? The linked article just says:
"While the PlayStation 3 and 360 versions of Assassin's Creed are virtually identical, Raymond did say that on the 360 the team is putting a special emphasis on achievements. The hardware also allows for improved threading, which will improve even further the crowd AI."
That's a vague paraphrase at best. I watched the video and didn't hear anything like this. - Jimtac, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17When AC was exclusive to the PS3 I was holding off on my "next-gen" console purchase choice, but now that it'll be on the 360, I really don't need to wait anymore. Plus hearing an Ubisoft rep stating that they feel that it will be even better on the 360 (not that it would be somehow crippled on the PS3), due to the the superior threading capability of the 360 CPU, makes it all that much easier of a choice.
- haelios, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Dude, you do mention the kind of things that one often things about when thinking about AI. However, you're well behind the times (neural networks have largely been superceded, check out on support vector machines -- which are also kinda old now), and, more importantly, the AI you're talking about hasn't got much place in a real time game. Game AI is quite different to classical AI you may have learned in college.
- Rayonic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13> "The 360s triple core processor can run 3 simultaneous threads of general purpose code, which is more useful when running the branching code of games."
Six simultaneous threads. (2 hardware threads per core, 3 cores.) - Buelldozer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10That would be correct.
- dobesov, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15Maybe Digg, the democratic news site, actually gives an accurate representation of popular opinon... maybe microsofts overwhelming dominance in the PC market actually means that hord of people like their products... Maybe, just maybe the majority of people actually like and respect microsoft.
Just a crazy theory.
lol - miketuck3r, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12"My theory is that Ubisoft must have asked SONY for some money in order to hold back the game a couple of months after it was released for the PS3 so the 360 would look bad and SONY get all the glory. I think SONY must have told them to ***** off "
Well maybe they should treat a huge publisher like ubisoft properly the main reason is lack of communication from sony... no online api's as yet..
Yeh splinter cell 5 is excluisive to 360 now so you may be right lol, 2K seem to be getting on quite well with MS aswell - haelios, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Webgod, do you even know WTF a FLOP is? Do you know about things like memory architecture, bus speeds, intrstruction specialisation, context switch overhead etc.? I didn't think so.
Read up on it. It will not only stop you getting dugg down for looking like a git, but it's also quite interesting :) - DreadPirateWes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Dude this is why you got duped:
You: People Who Have Befriended This User (0)
Ark: People Who Have Befriended This User (1)
Ark's 1 Friend's Friends (70)
It's Digg's fundamental flaw. Those of us who don't play the little Friends game don't get to the front page. Simple as that. - PercyKittenz, on 10/12/2007, -8/+15I doubt the problem has anything to do with the PS3's architecture versus the 360's architecture. If you're already doing multithreaded programming, 3 CPUs versus 7 CPUs isn't a huge deal and I'm certain that it has nothing to do with Ubisoft crippling their own game to get money out of Sony.
The problem is that the developer is having the same issues that a lot of other PS3 developers are right now (and the problem that they had with the PS2 when that launched as well) which is managing the PS3's API. The reputation is that it's pretty sloppy and if it takes Ubisoft six times as many people to figure out the PS3 APIs as it does to figure out the 360's APIs, at some point they just have to say it's good enough and move on so they're not spinning their wheels and blowing money for no good reason. - MordechaiCohen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Wow. I'm happy that the 360 is performing well. I mean, it was out before both the Wii and PS3 and performing just as well (if not better). Maybe it wasn't such a worthless investment after all ... (Oblivion can only keep you entertained for so long.)
- haelios, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8@ Emasoft: Finally someone who knows something about the PS3 Cell other than that it has 7 cores and 1 controller core! Digg must be growing up :D However, does the Xeno have branch prediction? I think it doesn't... It relies on the compiler to minimise pipeline flushes.
The main problem is this:
Xbox 360 - HOMOGENOUS processor
PS3 - HETEROGENOUS processor
Read up a bit on the adv/disadvantages of heterogenous computing if you want to know better why coding for the PS3 is going to be hard. You might need to look at distributed processing literature or supercomputing literature (multicore has mostly been confined to these fields until recently). - Emasoft, on 10/12/2007, -7/+12Raw floating point performance means nothing. Cell's SPE architecture is only good for decoding mpeg streams. General pourpose code (like AI and all game code that requires integer performances and thread comunication, like occlusion culling and octree navigation) is slower on those SPE than on the Xenon cores.
AI on the 360 will be light years ahead of the AI on the PS3, that's for sure. - Stevethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Then again the PC version would be better than both... By the time AC will be out x360, even PS3's hardware would look unimpressive in front of the sheer computing power of the PCs (4 CPU cores, 64+64 unified shaders crossfired).
Some talk about gaming experience ..... - Cerberus047, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Jade Raymond = Babe!!!
- mprobins, on 10/29/2007, -0/+3A FLOP is the singular form of FLOPS (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS). Maybe you should educate yourself before acting like a dumbass in the future.
- P5ycHo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Regarding your cache claims:
"Cell’s on-die memory controller is a blessing for game performance; it most definitely will keep the PPE fed far better than the Xbox 360’s external memory controller. Even the cache size advantage of the 360 won’t be able to offset the reduction in memory latency thanks to an on-die memory controller." - http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2453&p=13
One of the conclusions of the article is that it all comes down to the developers and how much effort they are willing to put into each console. - gwolf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I question Sony’s decision to use SPE’s instead of general purpose cores. The rest of the computer building world is going the way of multicore general purpose processors. What is the future of the cell processor? Xbox 720 could have 6, 8 12 general purpose cores and it would be perfectly backward compatible. They could do it within a couple of years from now with very little effort. The 360 is also inherently compatible with the PC and the games that are made for it. The cell seems to me to be a tech dead end. The PS4 will not be a cell based system.
- NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm no fan of Sony, and I don't plan on buying any products of theirs any time soon, but I have to say that the average gamer is almost certainly not going to be able to notice any significant difference between the AI of the 360 and the PS3 in these terms. We're probably talking microseconds of difference between the different processes, and that may eventually add up and make a difference when crunching the numbers, but if the improved crowd AI really made that much of a gameplay difference, they'd either be dumbing down the 360 version, or figure out a way to beef up the PS3 version.
I'm guessing they tossed both situations at the PS3 and 360, and found that the 360 processed the necessary AI faster, and that's all. - NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@javip -
So if it seems that the majority is against you, you're not allowed to like something anymore? He's allowed to be a fan of the PS3, and we're allowed to provide opposing viewpoints. - staticneuron, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6@PercyKittenz
I am a die hard Playstation fan but it was well known that integer based processing and branch prediction would be better on the 360. The PS3 is entirely based on open API's unlike the PS1 and the PS2.
"You are underestimating the problem. SPE cores have NO BRANCH PREDICTION at all. They are an inferno for AI programming."
Yes the crowd AI is better on the 360 but that doesn't mean it is non-exsistant on the PS3. The PS3 still handles branch instructions but has to go about them in different ways. What was said earlier about resources and expending time and resources may also play a factor in this. Seriously they have no need to work harder.
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell4_v2.html
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.arch.innovation.html
As you can see people are well aware of the issue and there have been work arounds albeit slight cumbersome to use the cells power to spec.
"The PPE does have some branch prediction hardware but the SPE has none. To get around this the SPE includes a “branch hint” instruction which the compiler can use. In addition to this in some cases instructions can be used which remove the need for branches altogether. Developers using GPUs for general purpose programming have more constraints than the SPEs and have developed techniques for reducing the costs of branches. It’s quite possible that at least some of these can be applied to SPE programs."
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell3_v2.html - JimJams, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Not entirely - back in the Playstation 1 vs Saturn days - the Playstation gained alot of favours amongst developers because it was far easier to develop for than the Saturn....
- shaselai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Its probably developer's limited time on the PS3 like you said.. or they are doing it on purpose. Think about it... AC went from PS3 "exclusive" to X360 with better AI. Thats a big jump. I dont think anyone here doubt that MS threw a large amount of money to Ubisoft... and I bet they also threw a lot more to Ubisoft to make their version "better". It might be really that the developers arent used to PS3 yet or they are getting paid not to. Guess we will never know..(of course fanboys will digg me down)
- dragonopolis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Another thing to take into consideration is that the 3 core CPU are working harder than the 1 PPE in the PS3. The PPE is hardly used when it comes to graphic/physics/sound. The Xbox 360 3 cores doesn't have the luxury of passing work on to other processors - PPE, on the other hand, doesn't need to worry about because it has 7 SPEs to do the dirty work for it.
The question remains then is what percentage of processing power is left for AI on the Xbox after all the other stuff is being processed.
Remember that the SPEs can aid in AI so if you combine the very little used PPE (main CPU with 1 or 2 SPEs dedicated to AI you still have 5-6 SPEs and the RSX to work with for sound/graphics/physics.
PS3 fans don't need to worry to much. Even if AI is slightly better its not a PS3 limitation but a developers limitation. In other words, developers of Assassin's Creed are not familiar enough with the new Cell/SPE/RSX combination to get the most out of the game.
I'm sure we will see games with great AI on the PS3
"We need more gamers not haters"
Peace - Ark7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You mean like the game's producer saying exactly what was quoted, that the Xbox 360's AI will be better than the PS3's?
- slickriven, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sigh, all this fanboy bickering is ANNOYING... point is just this - if you own a 360 you're happy it's doing alright... if you looking to get a PS3 you have valid excuses for PS3s misstep... if you looking to get a Wii then you think this is funny... and if you've not completely decided on what system to get then this is only mildly interesting. It's not like this game was the make-it/break-it title for either the 360 or PS3 and if it was then you're prolly a fanboy and just don't know it.
- DreadPirateWes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm pretty sure I just did.
- y2tattle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2^sakuraz..I understand that xbox has better spec then the PS2 but, Ubisoft titles didn't do well with PS2 owners while they're arguably one of the xbox's top 3rd party developer.
- dwight, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6The PS3 doesnt have 8 cores. It has 8 specialized coprocessors. There is a huge difference.
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Emasoft:
What do you mean they have no branch prediction? They just stop at the branch and wait for it to resolve before proceeding?
Single-issue cores like in the 360 are not great at branches. Without a complex completion buffer/unit they can only progress a few cycles down the conditional path before having to halt and wait for the condition to resolve. - skerg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I know I've got my moneys worth out of that white box of joy.
- SPARTACVS, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Cool thing is ps3 army of fanboys are mature"
It's funny, because whenever I come across a really hardcore Sony fanboy, they can't spell and act like they're 12. - Krush, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2While I didn't buy my 360 on Ebay, my purchase is justified every time I pick up the controller and play one of the dozen great (IMO) games I have for it. To make a statement like "ps3 army of fanboys are mature enough not to be spinning negative spin of the 360 all day" shows you're one of that army. As soon as the 360 launched you and your army proceeded to drag it through the mud. Remember all the "space heater" comments you and your buddies made? If all of what your army said was true, my 360 would have surely burned down my house by now, but it hasn't, it's run with out problem sense the day I plugged it in. Fanboys are fanboys, no matter what side of the console fence they're on. I hope to be a "fan" of all the consoles, because as a gamer, that's the greatest result I can hope for.
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