both Playstation3 and Xbox 360 have 128-bit main memory busses. every highend PC GPU since ATI R300: Radeon 9700 Pro (2002) and Nvidia NV35: GeForce 5900 Ultra (2003) have had 256-bit memory busses. it seems like a HUGE downgrade for next-gen consoles to have the same main memory bus width (128) as PS2, Xbox (and Cube too, I think).
with Xbox 360, it should be much less of a problem because of the awesome "daughter die" and its 32 GB/sec link to "parent die" and the daughter die's internal 256 GB/sec bandwidth.
still, I think Xbox 360 should have had a 256-bit main memory bus so that when combined with GDDR3 memory, it would have had main memory bandwidth at or approaching 50 GB/sec.
the Playstation3 has several busses, for a total of close to 50 GB/sec, but it's graphics bus is only 128-bit, and only provides 22.4 GB/sec bandwidth from RSX to GDDR3 memory. and no eDRAM to help out and take away the rendering bandwidth burden this time.
so my question is, the fact that PS3 and Xbox360 have only 128-bit busses to GDDR3 memory, is this going to be a problem, and was it a mistake in the long run ? I feel that, cost and pin-count aside, PS3 and 360 would have more potential, longer lives, more headroom, etc, with 256-bit busses.
with Xbox 360, it should be much less of a problem because of the awesome "daughter die" and its 32 GB/sec link to "parent die" and the daughter die's internal 256 GB/sec bandwidth.
still, I think Xbox 360 should have had a 256-bit main memory bus so that when combined with GDDR3 memory, it would have had main memory bandwidth at or approaching 50 GB/sec.
the Playstation3 has several busses, for a total of close to 50 GB/sec, but it's graphics bus is only 128-bit, and only provides 22.4 GB/sec bandwidth from RSX to GDDR3 memory. and no eDRAM to help out and take away the rendering bandwidth burden this time.
so my question is, the fact that PS3 and Xbox360 have only 128-bit busses to GDDR3 memory, is this going to be a problem, and was it a mistake in the long run ? I feel that, cost and pin-count aside, PS3 and 360 would have more potential, longer lives, more headroom, etc, with 256-bit busses.