PS3: What I like about this year's E3

When E3 comes into life tomorrow, it's soooo damn surreal when the Playstation 3 is announced this morning (Malaysian Time). With Microsoft's strategy to unveiled their Xbox360 in MTV b4 E3, comes Sony's turn to unveil their new console, PS3 in E3.

Honestly, personally I think the PS3 has garnered more response from the public rather than the Xbox360. The specs on paper are definately better than Xbox360 but still, we need to see it perform side by side.

What I really like about this specs is that it can output High Definition at 1080P at 2 channels! Current top game of PS2 which is GT4 can only output HD at 1080i at one channel. *sweat* It is even Backward compatible so that we can play old Playstation and Playstation 2 games. With it's PS3 - PSP buddy up feature, imagine what you can do with your PSP when you link it up with your PS3. All of this will be released in Spring 2006!!! Cheers~

Below are the specifications of the Playstation 3:
CPU
Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS

GPU
RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines

Sound
Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing)

Memory
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz

System Bandwidth
Main RAM 25.6GB/s
VRAM 22.4GB/s
RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB< 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)

System Floating Point Performance
2 TFLOPS

Storage
Detachable 2.5" HDD slot x 1

I/O
USB Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0)
Memory Stick standard/Duo, PRO x 1
SD standard/mini x 1
CompactFlash (Type I, II) x 1

Communication
Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2)
Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)

Controller
Bluetooth (up to 7)
USB 2.0 (wired)
Wi-Fi (PSP)
Network (over IP)

AV Output
Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI: HDMI out x 2
Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1

Disc Media
CD PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)
DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE

PS3 Sites:
SCEA Press Release: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050516/sfm178.html?.v=2
Official Pics: http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/050517_e.html
Gamespot Article: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_6124681.html
Cell Processor Explained: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379
http://ps3.ign.com/
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/index.html

Here are the pictures: