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The Cell processor will also be powerful enough to drive a new class of gameplay physics impossible to run on older console hardware. The PS3 will be able to simulate cloth and fluid, as well as large-scale rigid-body interactions with hundreds and thousands of objects colliding on screen. Today's PCs in comparison will need a physics add-on card or find a way to tap the GPU for physics processing to run PS3-level physics effects. Additionally, developers will also be able to use the Cell's SPEs to give games new audio effects previously only available on the PC with dedicated audio processing.The end result of that collaboration is the PlayStation 3 RSX "Reality Synthesizer" graphics-processing unit, a massive 550MHz, 300-million-transistor graphics chip based on advanced GeForce graphics technology. According to a written statement from Nvidia, the RSX transistor count is "more than the total number of transistors in both the central-processing units and the graphics-processing units of the three leading current-generation systems, combined." During the PlayStation 3 E3 2005 presentation, Nvidia CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang explained that "the RSX has twice the performance of the GeForce 6800 Ultra, the highest performance GPU in the world today. Each of these GPUs retails for $500. There will be two of them, equivalent horsepower, in the RSX." The PS3 will jump out ahead in hardware performance, but the PC isn't far behind. Nvidia replaced the GeForce 6800 Ultra with the much more powerful GeForce 7800 GTX last summer. It turns out that the RSX and GeForce 7800 GTX share a similar architecture, but the RSX is still slightly faster. Nvidia has since released its GeForce 7900 GTX refresh part, but the PlayStation 3 still has an advantage in that the entire system is built specifically for gaming instead of general processing. The PlayStation 3 has 256MBs of Rambus XDR memory and 256MBs of GDDR3 memory dedicated to graphics. Nvidia also claims that the RSX can take advantage of the combined 512MBs of memory, since it is capable of writing directly to system memory, but the 256MBs dedicated to graphics memory should be plenty for now. The increased graphics memory bandwidth and storage space will let developers use high-resolution textures and enable antialiasing for incredibly detailed, jaggy-free graphics. The programmable shader capabilities greatly increase graphics efficiency, letting game developers create advanced effects such as subsurface scattering and other advanced lighting effects. We expect most game developers to target native 720p and 1080i HD resolutions, as 1080p screens are still fairly rare.
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