PS3 and Xbox 360 OS Usage

PS3Portal have written an article on the differences between the operating systems in the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. Specifically, they discuss the amount of console power that the O/S takes up in each of the consoles. This is especially important in this generation because on the 360 you will note that the O/S is constantly running in the background and it is expected the same will occur in the PS3.

They claim that the O/S on the Xbox 360 uses 32mb of the 512mb available RAM, and also 3% of the CPU time on Core 1 and Core 2.

“Everything that one wants to do involving software on a game console, specifically while the user is playing games, comes at a cost. In the case of the Xbox 360, this cost is approximately 2% of total CPU time and 6.25% of the Xbox 360’s total available RAM. Balancing these out, one could argue that MS has removed a total of 4% of the Xbox 360’s total available system power in order to provide these features and more which were not mentioned. They also left room, CPU and RAM wise, for future features. In other words, they are not entirely using all of the CPU Time and RAM that they have reserved to date.�

They also have information on the PS3 O/S running costs, which are 32mb of the 256mb available GDDR3 memory on the RSX chip, 64mb of the 256mb available XDR memory off the Cell CPU, and 1 SPE (Synergistic Processing Elements) of the 7 available is constantly taken, with another available if needed.

“In the case of the PS3 this equates to 25% of the available cores on the CPU and 18.75% of the available RAM in the system. Balancing these out, one could argue that Sony has removed a total of 23% of the available system power in the PS3 for these features as well as others that are not mentioned here or will be added in future updates to the PS3 Operation System.�

PS3 Portal don’t claim to have the technical knowledge to properly decode their figures, and neither do we! Interesting nonetheless.

Source: MAX PS3

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