ATI's Xenos GPU (Xbox360) beats Nvidia-Sony's RSX GPU (PS3) even MORE ?

ATI's Xenos GPU, also known as C1 and R500, the graphics processing heart of
Xbox 360, beats the Nvidia-Sony RSX 'Reality Synthesizer' GPU for
Playstation3 even more now, apparently.

Xenos is *now* ahead of RSX by roughly 80 million transistors, seemingly.


how so you might ask?


because, probably the best website on 3D graphics says that Xenos has,
likely, 382 million transistors, according to information from ATI. (
the PS3's RSX has slightly over 300 million according to Nvidia)


Xenos, as you may or may not know, has two dies (chips) on one package. the
main GPU shader core and an eDRAM module that has additional logic for
processing.

the main GPU shader core has 232 million transistors. the eDRAM module,
according to Beyond3D, likely has 150 million transistors: 80m taken up by
the eDRAM, and probably about 70 million in logic.

total: ~382 million transistors, give or take.


http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/xenos/index.php?p=02#c1

quote:
" One element that has been reported on is the number of 150M transistors in
relation to the graphics processing elements of Xenon, however according to
ATI this is not correct as the shader core itself is comprised from in the
order of 232M transistors. It may be that the 150M transistor figure
pertains only to the eDRAM module as with 10MB of DRAM, requiring one
transistor per bit, 80M transistors will be dedicated to just the memory;
when we add the memory control logic, Render Output Controllers (ROP's) and
FSAA logic on top of that it may be conceivable to see an extra 70M
transistors of logic in the eDRAM module."


read carefully. although it never says 382 million transistors, we know
that 232 + 150
-or- 232 + 80 + 70 does equal 382 !


question is, will the Nvidia RSX GPU for PS3 suddenly get 'upgraded' to
counter the eDRAM-laiden Xenos for Xbox360.

hey I thought PlayStation3 graphics was supposed to trounce Xbox 360
graphics. the Sony hype-machine said so

 

I agree that more transistors doesn't always mean more power / speed.

look at ATI's R300, R350, R360 (Radeon 9700 Pro, 9800 Pro, 9800 XT
respectively) at 107 to 110 million transistors, they spanked Nvidia's
125 million transistor NV30 (GeForce FX 5800) and ~130 million transistor
NV35 (GeForce FX 5900). More recently, ATI's ~160M transistor R420
(Radeon X800 XT) has been able to keep up with the much larger 222M
transistor NV40 (GeForce 6800 Ultra)

ATI's designs are more efficient and more powerful, transistor for
transistor, than Nvidia's designs. well, that was the case for the last two
PC GPU generations. will it be the case with the upcoming console GPUs?
we'll see. but ATI has yet to put out a bad GPU design for many years now.