14 DAY TRIAL // First the PS3 had worse graphics than the 360, now they say visuals on PS3 are much better. What are we to believe when each day brings more contradictory statements? Recent evaluations do show that the PS3 is winning ground to its rivals. Now that everyone is starting to gain some faith in the poor PS3's potential, after its rough start some good publicity wouldn't hurt.
It appears that comparing the two consoles (PS3 and Xbox 360), visually speaking, PS3 does a slightly better job than Microsoft's machine. According to IGN, graphics and performance improvements of the PS3 consist of loading time, texture quality and draw distance, as well as new shaders dedicated to rendering the foreground cleanly with sharper details, making rocky landscapes have craggy appearances instead of smooth. Also, the PlayStation 3 adds the ability to multitask such as listening to music while surfing the web or looking at pictures.
As for the graphics processing unit, it is based on the Nvidia G70 (previously known as NV47) architecture, which focuses on maximizing per-pixel computation in favor of raw pixel output. The GPU makes use of 256-MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 MHz and the XDR main memory via the CPU (for those who speak alien), while the Xbox 360 uses a chip called Xenos, designed by ATI, which was developed under the names C1 and R500 and contains 48 unified shader units, capable of both vertex and pixel shading operations. This is a big improvement as older versions of graphics processors utilized separate specialized units for these tasks.
So even if the differences are more name related than performance related, the PS3 seems to stand a little taller than the 360 concerning graphics and use of RAM memory, but is that enough to call Sony's console a winner? Surely there are aspects where the Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Nintendo's Wii do much better.