Why is the PS3's Cell processor considered so legendary?

Dorian Breh

Veteran
Joined
Jan 14, 2016
Messages
20,862
Reputation
13,125
Daps
107,315
The way people talk about this shyt makes it sound like some mythical beast, exactly how powerful was it potentially?
 

DaSk8D00D

Superstar
Supporter
Joined
May 16, 2015
Messages
6,087
Reputation
1,795
Daps
26,830
Reppin
Phoenix, AZ
I don’t think it ever was considered “legendary” lol

Basically it was powerful for its time so in-house devs knew how to get the most out of it, but it was harder for third party devs to develop for compared something based more on PC architecture. Some multiplat games had various issues because of that

One of the more famous ones was the skyrim save bloat glitch. Due to how the ps3 handled saves at the system level, and how skyrim “saves” the world state, it basically caused your save file to continuously grow until after about 35-40 hours where your load times slowed to a crawl because your game is loading a 300MB save file. Took bethesda a lil bit to fix that at the time.
 

Dorian Breh

Veteran
Joined
Jan 14, 2016
Messages
20,862
Reputation
13,125
Daps
107,315
I don’t think it ever was considered “legendary” lol

Basically it was powerful for its time so in-house devs knew how to get the most out of it, but it was harder for third party devs to develop for compared something based more on PC architecture. Some multiplat games had various issues because of that

One of the more famous ones was the skyrim save bloat glitch. Due to how the ps3 handled saves at the system level, and how skyrim “saves” the world state, it basically caused your save file to continuously grow until after about 35-40 hours where your load times slowed to a crawl because your game is loading a 300MB save file. Took bethesda a lil bit to fix that at the time.

In an interview with Gameinformercelebrating the brand’s 25th anniversary, van der Leeuw had some interesting thoughts to share:

“Even desktop chips nowadays, the fastest Intel stuff you can buy, is not by far as powerful as the Cell CPU, but it’s very difficult to get power out of the Cell.
“I think it was ahead of its age, because it was a little bit more like how GPUs work nowadays, but it was maybe not balanced nicely and it was too hard to use. It overshot a little bit in power and undershot in usability, but it was definitely visionary.”

From 2019
 

Pure Water

Superstar
Joined
May 12, 2014
Messages
11,777
Reputation
1,621
Daps
57,416
Did matter in the end. The separated memory in the system caused the PS3 to have a lot of games that looked and performed worse than it's counterpart. Sony really fukked up with the PS3. They learned their lesson going into the PS4.
 

Rice N Beans

Junior Hayley Stan
Supporter
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
10,276
Reputation
1,341
Daps
20,889
Reppin
Chicago, IL
It was legendary in complexity and the low ram was a good kick to the nuts dealing with those cores. The APIs and documentation were also poor from what I remember. It ran hot and Sony skipped out on some cooling.
 

Womb Raider

movin' thru the city streets
Joined
Aug 23, 2014
Messages
25,454
Reputation
6,998
Daps
86,989
Reppin
Fo Nem
Legendary? It’s the reason 99% of games ran better on 360. It’s the reason all our digital ps3 games were sent to the shadow realm, never to be playable again with bc.

Fukk teh cell :pacspit:
That’s actually crazy :mjlol:


I never realized Sony shot themselves in the foot with that cell processor shyt. I just know all my ppl had 360s.
 

Gizmo_Duck

blathering blatherskite!
Joined
Aug 15, 2018
Messages
66,706
Reputation
4,870
Daps
140,299
Reppin
Duckburg, NY
I don't think legendary is the right way to describe it. It was a bytch to for developers to use, but it was pretty damn powerful. MGS 4 still doesn't look bad to me :yeshrug:



Raiden Break dance swinging around those mini-cow metal gear was peak kojima nonsense :russ:
 
Top