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Hardware specifications
According to a press release by Sony at the May 16 2005 E3 Conference, the specifications of the PlayStation 3 are as follows:
Central processing unit
3.2 GHz Cell BE multi-core processor: PowerPC-based 'Power Processing Element' and 8 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs).
The PPE has a 512 KiB L2 cache and one VMX (AltiVec) vector unit.
Each of the eight SPEs is a RISC processor with 128-bit SIMD and superscalar fuctions. Each SPE has 256 KiB of software-addressable SRAM.
Only seven SPEs are active; the eighth is redundant, to improve yield.
If one of the eight has a manufacturing defect, it is disabled without rendering the entire unit defective.
Graphics processing unit
Custom RSX or "Reality Synthesizer" design co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony:
Clocked at 550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS (trillion floating point operations per second) theoretical floating point capability
Full high definition output (up to 1080i) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
136 shader operations per clock
74.8 billion shader operations per second (100 billion with CPU)
33 billion dot products per second (51 billion dot products with CPU)
128-bit pixel precision offers rendering of scenes with high dynamic range imaging
Memory
256 MiB Rambus XDR DRAM clocked at CPU die speed (3.2 GHz)
256 MiB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 MHz
Theoretical system bandwidth
25.6 GB/s to Main Ram XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz
22.4 GB/s to GDDR3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge)
RSX 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)
SB 2.5 GB/s write and 2.5 GB/s read
204.8 GB/s Cell Element Interconnect Bus (Theoretical peak performance)[11]
Cell FlexIO Bus:35 GB/s outbound, 25 GB/s inbound (7 outbound and 5 inbound 1Byte wide channels operating at 5Ghz) (effective bandwidth typically 50-80% of total)[12]
Audio/video output
Supported screen sizes: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
Two HDMI (Type A) outputs (Dual-screen HD outputs)
S/PDIF optical output for digital audio
Multiple analog outputs (Composite, S-Video, Component video)
Sound
Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS, LPCM (DSP functionality handled by the Cell processor)
Storage
Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE.
DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
CD: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer) SACD HD
Detachable 2.5" hard drive accessory- *sold separately* available initially in capacities of 80 and 120GB, according to an interview with "Ken Kutaragi in Nikkei Business Magazine". (original Japanese), (translated) --NOW PS3 40GB only.
Memory Stick standard/Duo and standard/mini slots
CompactFlash Type I and II slot
SD/MMC slot
Communications
Three Gigabit Ethernet ports (Sony has indicated that because of cost reduction there is a possibility that the PlayStation 3 may act only as an accessory interface and hub and perhaps not as a router, as originally planned.)[13]
IEEE 802.11g Wi-Fi
Bluetooth 2.0
USB 2.0 (four front and two rear ports)
Controller
SCEI's press release indicates that controller connectivity to the PlayStation 3 can be provided via:
802.11g Wi-Fi. Integrated for mesh networking and connectivity with the PlayStation Portable
TCP/IP networking (wired ethernet)
USB 2.0 (wired)
Bluetooth 2.0 (up to 7 controllers)
Overall floating-point capability
In a slide show at their E3 conference, Sony presented the "CPU floating point capability" of the PlayStation 3's Cell CPU, and compared it to other CPUs. In their official press release, the same statistic regarding the PS3 as a whole was reported to be 2 TFLOPS[10] . The figures are rounded estimates based on addition of the theoretical maximum floating point performances of the processing units in the Cell CPU and those of the RSX GPU. Inevitably, real-world performance for both systems will be lower. Additionally, programmers may find it difficult, initially, to optimize their game engines to make the best use of the highly parallel architectures of both systems, further reducing real-world performance.
According to an in-depth report compiled by IBM[14], the theoretical peak performance of a single SPE is 25.6 GFLOPS. The seven SPEs in the PS3, in addition to the VMX unit in the PPE, would yield a total combined single-precision floating point performance of 218 GFLOPS (the same figure quoted by Sony). It should be noted that this figure is an estimate based on ideal, 100% efficient operation of the processor. The floating-point capacity of the PS3 will significantly exceed that of the Xbox 360, although it should be noted that Microsoft's console, due to its 3 symmetric fully featured processor cores (which are very similar to the Cell's PPE), may fare better on dynamically branching code, like that used for artificial intelligence.
It should also be noted that floating-point performance is a single-dimensional metric for comparing computers, and that many other considerations (including integer performance, memory size and bandwidth, etc.) determine the "overall" performance of a computer system. Floating point calculations are very important for graphics, multimedia, and game physics, but considerably less important for other tasks such as artificial intelligence.
Finally, whether the PS3's advantage in floating-point performance will be readily apparent in games depends entirely on whether developers are able to effectively make use of the system's unique architecture.
Physical dimensions
52 cm (L) x 24 cm (W) x 4 cm (H)[15]
Controller
The Playstation 3 controller has done away with the rumble feature to make way for the new sixaxis feature! You can now control your games by literally just moving your controller around! The controllers are wireless with USB connection to re-charge them.
Miscellaneous
. The ability for the PlayStation Portable to connect to the PlayStation 3 as a video-enabled controller.
. Two simultaneous High-definition television streams for use on a title screen for a HD Blu-ray Movie.
. High-definition IP video conferencing.
. EyeToy interactive reality game, Eyedentify.
. EyeToy voice command recognition.
. EyeToy virtual object manipulation.
. Digital photograph display (JPEG).
. MP3 and ATRAC download and playback.
. Simultaneous World Wide Web access and gameplay.
. Hub/Home Ethernet Gaming Network.
. Parental Controls
. 7 controllers at once
--- Please note that the above stats are a GUIDE ONLY for the PLAYSTATION 3 as Sony continue to evolve the models / versions of the hardware.
Good luck with finding the cheapest playstation 3 in Australia using the vast resources of the Internet, and I hope you enjoy playing the cheapest ps3 in Australia for many years to come once you buy it!
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