Every time I try to report on the technical angle of gaming — how many triangles are being squirted per second out of a console's positronic sphincter and what not — ten thousand of you instantly email me to point out that I got it all wrong. So I'm not even going to try this time. Read for yourself why the PS3 is "slow and broken."

For local memory, the measured vs theoretical bandwidth is missing, I wonder why? RSX is at a solid 22.4GBps for both read and write, good job there green team. Then comes the blue team with Cell. Local memory write is about 4GBps, 40% of the next slowest bandwidth there. Then comes the bomb from hell, the Cell local memory read bandwidth is a stunning 16MBps, note that is a capital M to connote Mega vs a capital G to connote Giga. This is a three order of magnitude oopsie, and it is an oopsie, as Sony put it "(no, this isn't a typo...)".

The author claims that the PS3's hardware is inferior even to last year's 360... not necessarily surprising, considering the mediocrity of the demos we saw at E3. A more important question is: if the games are fun, does it matter? I'm tempted to say no, but at this point, even the most credulous gamer has to ask themselves at this point what they are spending $600 bucks on. The answer? Blu-Ray with a subpar, underpowered game console grafted to the side. FLORIAN ECKHARDT

PS3 Hardware slow and broken [The Inquirer]

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