Sony unveil Playstation 3 at pre-E3 conference

Written by Tim Smalley

May 17, 2005 | 01:11

Tags: #bluray #cell #nvidia-rsx #playstation-3 #ps3

Companies: #blu-ray #e3 #rambus #sony

Just minutes ago, Sony unveiled its next generation console, now officially known as the Playstation 3, at a press conference held in Los Angeles before the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which starts tomorrow.

The Playstation 3 has several state-of-the-art technologies under the hood, including the heavily touted Cell processor, which will be clocked at 3.2GHz. There will be 256MB of Rambus' XDR memory running at a massive 3.2GHz, delivering bandwidth in the region of 25.6GB/s.

The graphics are powered by an NVIDIA-developed GPU, known as RSX, which is believed to be twice as fast as a GeForce 6800 Ultra. It is understood that the GPU core is manufactured on a 90nm FAB process and is clocked at 550MHz, which implies that there are at least 24 pixel pipelines to give it enough processing power to have twice as much performance as GeForce 6800 Ultra. We believe that there will be 256MB of video memory clocked at 700MHz, delivering 22.4GB/s of memory bandwidth.

That is not all though, the console has a BD-ROM drive, supporting the latest Blu-ray Discs that have a maximum storage capacity of 54GB, which will enable the development of content for the system in full High-Definition quality. With this in place, it will not surprise many for us to say that the console supports the high-quality 1080p resolution, which is of a higher quality than both 720p and 1080i.

There's also support for 802.11b/g for wireless connectivity, along with a gigabit Ethernet port for those who don't have a wireless network. In addition to this there are various memory card slots, and support for up to 7 Bluetooth devices. Could the controllers be Bluetooth-enabled? It's possible.

Sony have also stated that the Playstation 3 will offer backwards compatibility right through the Playstation 2 era, and all the way back to the first version of the Playstation, launched all that time ago in 1994. We understand that preparations are underway for launch of Playstation 3 some time in Spring 2006.

We will bring you more information as we get it.

Discuss this news in our forums
Discuss this in the forums
YouTube logo
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04

TOP STORIES

SUGGESTED FOR YOU