[Ray-- @ Sep 25th 2007 3:17PM]

Does anyone have a site with benchmarks for, say, the fastest quad-core intel vs. a cell processor? Is it really a big deal to use these stupid things or is IBM just trying to promote (read: giveaway) it's chips since Sony doesn't need as many as they thought they would since PS3 isnt doing very well???

[dj-kenpo @ Sep 25th 2007 3:35PM]

my understanding is they are better for the sort of calculations you would use in research calculations vs the calculations you would need for say doom or ms word.
I could be wrong though

[Andy @ Sep 25th 2007 3:42PM]

You cant really benchmark it the same way because you have to write code specifically taking advantage of its capabilities.

You cant just throw XP or Vista on there and say, hey lets run some benchmarks. It may run, but like any multicore processor and computer, it only works at peak capacity if the software is optimized for the hardware.

[Andir3.0 @ Sep 25th 2007 6:57PM]

You couldn't through XP on there anyway. The kernel only supports x86 processors.

And the Cell was made explicitly to to streaming floating point calculations (which games can get a great benefit from if used right, since pretty much all 3D done today is floating point.)