PS3 Fanboy

Looks like the 80GB Core PS3 may be more energy efficient than ever. A user at the Slickdeals forum connected his brand new 80GB Core system to a Kill-a-watt and discovered a slight energy savings. For example, the 40GB model used 155.2 watts when playing MGS4 -- the 80GB model used only 130 watts. The 40GB used 125.8 watts when idle on the XMB, while the 80GB used 111.9 watts. The popular theory is that Sony has secretly switched to new 65nm RSX chips: these are cheaper to manufacture, and are considered more reliable. Sony has not yet responded to these claims, but we wouldn't be surprised if each new SKU introduces new savings for the costly PS3 manufacturing process.

[Via Joystiq]

Sony's Kaz Hirai confirmed to reporters that 65nm Cell processors have been used in PS3s since the "last holiday season." Launch PS3 systems used a more expensive, and more energy-hungry 90nm process. The graphics chip for the PS3, known as RSX, will also be getting an upgrade this Fall. The move to a 65nm process will once again lower manufactuering costs for the Japanese electronics giant, and will also make the system much more energy efficient.

Sony is focused on restore profitability to its games division, especially after it revealed the significant $3 billion loss it has incurred on the PS3 so far. Investors will undoubtedly cheer at this news.

[Via Joystiq]

Nikko Citigroup upgraded its rating on Sony's stock this morning, predicting it will break even on PS3 costs much earlier than expected. With a Blu-ray drive, Cell chip and RSX graphics technology, the PS3 is an incredibly expensive system to manufacture: one that Sony currently sells at a loss to customers.

Analysts are now predicting August will be when the smaller chips will be used in the PS3. There are no details as to why August has been chosen as the date, but switching over to a smaller Cell processor and RSX graphics chip will undoubtedly lower costs for the Japanese electronics giant.

[Via Engadget]

No, we're not kicking Toshiba while they're down. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. When you read up on Toshiba's purchasing of some Cell manufacturing plants, you might start to imagine Sony and Toshiba have been in talks for quite some time. See, right after Toshiba announced its plans to drop HD DVD, they turned around and finalized a major business deal with Sony -- buying microchip processing facilities in western Japan for the advantageous price of $835 million USD.

Basically, starting in April, Toshiba is going to assist Sony in producing Cell and RSX chips. Take note that in days past, Toshiba didn't really sing praise to either of these technologies and wouldn't put them in their own products. Now they sing a different tune. Sony and Toshiba were in talks since last October about these facilities but couldn't agree on a price -- the fall of HD DVD may have led both to find a resolution and we're glad to have Toshiba on board.

Sony has officially announced a deal where they will sell Cell production facilities to Toshiba. The Cell chip, which was developed in part by IBM and Toshiba, is regarded as the main reason why PS3 is so powerful. Production facilities for the chip will be sold to Toshiba in a deal that's worth an estimated 130 billion yen ($1.1 billion US).

Due to the sluggish sales of the console, Sony will need to reduce losses from the games division to something more acceptable. Osamu Hirose, analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center, notes that this is a good step in the right direction for the beleaguered electronics company. "In this context, the spin-off of the chip business, which requires continued and heavy investment, is positive for Sony," he said.

Sony will also sell RSX (the graphics chip of the PS3) manufacture to Toshiba. Sony stock rose 0.6 percent after the announcement.

A few days ago we posed the question how much Sony was actually losing on each console, or, how much each PS3 cost Sony to manufacture. Apparently, it's approximately US $200. That's a pretty harsh blow, considering, right? Not so! Sony executive VP Nobuyuki Oneda commented on such things, saying that Sony aims to break even by the end of this fiscal year (end of March '08). Is this so unbelievable? We don't think so -- there are so many heavy-hitting titles coming out before then, our fingers can't count that high.

But wait, you say, selling games won't help Sony break even! Lowering manufacturing costs would. Yes, you are right and Oneda said the negative margin will be removed when steps have been taken to lower the cost of the Cell, RSX chip, and Blu-ray optical components. All of the chips are working on getting moved from 90nm to 65nm, starting with the Cell then moving on to the RSX chip. Combine these cost reductions with our aforementioned game sales and what do you get? The possibility to break even. Best of luck in this endeavor, Sony!

Scott Kirkland, the Technical Director behind MotorStorm, sat down with Beyond3D recently to talk about some of the more technical details of developing the intense off-road racer. They cover a pretty wide range of topics, from Evolution's contributions in developing the Havok 4.5 physics middleware, to culling unseen vertices in order to increase rendering performance. Here are a couple highlights:

On SPU usage:
"MotorStorm only uses between 15 and 20 percent of available SPU resource, so we're aiming to achieve a 5 fold increase in SPU performance, which should allow us to do some awesome stuff!"

On using the SPUs and RSX for cooperative rendering:
"The leap in performance provided by [the SPUs] gives us the bandwidth to significantly reduce RSX time spent processing vertices that don't contribute to the final scene. The favoured approach is to use SPUs to generate minimal scene/instance specific index and vertex buffers from compressed data."

It is a fantastic read, and well worth checking out. It gets EXTREMELY technical at a couple points, so don't feel bad if your brain catches on fire. I set off the fire alarm twice.

Really, if it weren't for the rumor, there's no reason to read the Inquirer. They really need to... well... read the article and you'll see why it's a worthless read aside from the rumor. Anything reporting "news" and utilizing leet-speak really tends to speak wonders about professionalism and character. Anyway, onto the rumor. The NVIDIA RSX graphics chip was previously scheduled to do its thing at 550MHz/700MHz as core/memory but now a rumor has started that the capabilities have been slightly reduced to 500MHz/650MHz.

So? Perhaps it's a bigger downgrade than it looks on paper (forgive the technology mumbo-jumbo illiterate) but that really changes nothing in respect to people's desire to snag Sony's new console. In addition, it's just a rumor (at least, the Inquirer fails to cite any sort of source... indicitive of rumor in PS3fanboy's book) and should be treated as such. Honestly, does this change anyone's mind about the PS3? Were you banking on that 550/700? Oh well, even if it's true, is it really that major of a difference?