The Inquirer is reporting that an nVidia spokesperson was quoted in PlayStation Magazine saying that the RSX GPU used in Sony’s upcoming console is slightly less powerful than a GeForce 7800.
This puts paid to the rumours that the RSX was basically an off-the-shelf 7800 chipset, though the big news is in the “RSX is slightly less powerful” part of the statement. If one was to do some quick graphics card math, this would mean that the RSX chip powering the PlayStation 3 is less powerful than two GeForce 6800’s running in SLI mode – as the 7800 is – and according to Microsoft and ATi, the Xbox 360 GPU is more powerful than the same SLI combo.
It’s all awfully confusing we know, though it is an interesting tech mystery to try and get to the bottom of. Of course Microsoft and Sony engineers all know exactly what’s in the difference between the two consoles, but the marketing people want to tell us that their console is twenty times better than everyone elses, so we must wait until someone rips the two boxes open and benchmarks them, at which point we can search through our archives and head off to get the “Well what we really meant…” speeches from the PR folks
Let the pre-release console flame wars commence!
[b]Update:[/b] This article on the TeamXBOX site seems to debunk the rumor.
[quote]NVIDIA contacted us today after we published the “PlayStation 3 GPU Less Powerful than GeForce 7800” story based on a report found at The Inquirer. Derek Perez, NVIDIA’s Director of Public Relations, was kind enough to provide us the actual paragraph from the September issue of PSM. Here is the information from the blurb in question:
There’s no doubting that NVIDIA’s new 7800GTX is the ultimate in PC graphics technology. The card’s G70 GPU, which is more than twice as powerful as two of NVIDIA’s previous top-of-the-line 6800 boards, shares a lot of similar workings with the PS3’s RSX chip – only it isn’t as fast. Oh, and it retails for $599.
The article actually says the GeForce 7800 GTX is not as fast as the RSX graphics processing unit that NVIDIA developed for the PlayStation 3.[/quote]
Source: The Inquirer
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