60GB PS3 Hardware Specification
A
lot of people have been griping about the price of these next generation
consoles. Traditionally, a few months after release games consoles have
been sold at around £100. The Xbox 360 Premium was priced at £280
on release and stayed at that level for a long time after. Many people
said they simply wouldn't pay this much for a games console. Now the price
of the top spec PS3 console is rumoured to be even more than the Xbox
360 at £425. This is a massive hike in price from what people are
used to paying for a games console and something Sony need to address
if they're to sell these consoles in any volume. The key point to remember
here is that you're not just buying a games console, the Sony PS3 is much
more than that.
Manufacturer subsidies
Games console buyers have always been shielded from the true price of
the console by the subsidy that the manufacturers have provided. In a
nutshell what Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are doing is making a loss
on the console and a profit on the games. The theory is that you may only
buy one console, but you could potentially buy hundreds of games.
PC gamers know the true price of these components, a top end graphics card alone could easily cost over £300. If you look at what goes into making these games consoles, they are leagues ahead of their predecessors. These are multi-processor systems with stacks of memory, high end HiDef graphics cards and hard disk storage. The PS3 even includes a HiDef Blu-ray player, this alone could set you back £600. If you were to look at building the equivalent gaming PC, you could easily spend over £1,500. It's been estimated that it will cost Sony anywhere from $700 to $880 to produce one console, which could mean a loss of around $200 per console.
CPU (Central Processing Unit)
Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @ 3.2 GHz
1 x VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @ 3.2 GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
Total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
GPU (Graphical Processing Unit)
RSX @ 500MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HiDef (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
Sound Sub System
Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing)
Memory
256 MB XDR Main RAM @ 3.2 GHz 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM
@650MHz
System Bandwidth
Main RAM 25.6 GB/s
VRAM 22.4 GB/s
RSX 20 GB/s write / 15 GB/s read
SB< 2.5 GB/s write / 2.5 GB/s read
System Floating Point Performance
2 TFLOPS
Storage
1 x Detachable 2.5" HDD slot (40GB drive available)
I/O
2x USB2 Front
2x USB2 Rear
1 x Flash memory card slot
Communication
1 x Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) input x 1 + output x 2
1 x Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g
1 x Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)
Controller
Bluetooth (up to 7)
USB 2.0 (wired)
Wi-Fi (PSP)
Network (over IP)
AV Output
Screen resolutions: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI: 1 x HDMI out
Analog: 1 x AV MULTI OUT
Digital audio: 1 x DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL)
Disc Media
CD: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R,
CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio
side), DualDisc (DVD side)
DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM,
DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
Blu-ray: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE
20 GB Budget version: (Replaced
by the 40GB PS3)
If the budget 20 GB PS3 console is ever released in the UK it will probably
lose several features that are included in the 60 GB home entertainment
console. What is most surprising is that Sony are going to include a Blu-ray
player in both versions of the PS3 console. If they were looking at cutting
costs, you would have thought this would be the first thing to go. The
Blu-ray / HD DVD format war should be in full swing come November time,
perhaps Sony has another agenda here.
PS3 20 GB Specification - As above apart from - No WiFi, no HDMI connection
and none of the extra IO slots listed above.
Updated 22/09/2006: The 20GB model will come with
a HDMI connection
