PS3

Lately ive been so interested in ps3 that i feel so so so damn like buying 1 and play it on a dell 24" lcd wth HDMI output Hehe. Here are some of the research ive done about it.

Confirmed: what we know
Specs: The PlayStation 3 will be the first commercial device powered by the ballyhooed Cell processor, a 3.2GHz chip that Sony developed with help from IBM and Toshiba. But it's not the Cell's clock speed that has Kutaragi billing his console as an "entertainment supercomputer"--it's the chip's seven synergistic processing elements (SPEs), which work in parallel to churn out a staggering 218 gigaflops, or 218 billion floating point operations per second. In practice, that should make the PS3 especially adept at such processor-intensive activities as upconverting video and emulating past PlayStation games. Which leads us to...

Backward compatibility: This was one of the first PlayStation 3 features to be confirmed, when the ever-loquacious Ken Kutaragi promised it way back in 2003. So whether this is something that Sony planned all along or a feature it scrambled to implement once Kutaragi bragged about it, the result is the same: you'll be able to play your PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, right out of the box, on the PlayStation 3. On the minus side, the PS3's backward compatibility will not extend to hardware, so you won't be able to access your saved games unless someone figures out a way to transfer data from a PS2 memory card to the PS3's Memory Stick Duo.

Graphics hardware: Remember how the Cell processor turns 218 billion flops? Well, the PlayStation 3's graphical processing unit (GPU) will crank out 1.8 trillion of them. Dubbed the RSX (short for reality synthesizer), this GPU has a 550MHz clock and pushes its billions of pixels through dual HDMI ports, which output a high-definition signal at up to 1080p. At E3, Jen-Hsun Huang from Nvidia--which designed the RSX for Sony--claimed that the RSX was as powerful as two Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra cards, which is perhaps one reason that speculation on the PS3's price tag has reached, at last count, the stratosphere.

Hard drive: One of the latest details to be confirmed for the PS3 was that the console's hard drive will be an optional accessory instead of an out-of-the-box feature; Ken Kutaragi cleverly spun the omission in Sony's favor by rationalizing that "no matter how much [space] we put in it, it won't be enough." When the hard drive does arrive, it'll carry a Linux-based operating system, which we imagine will coordinate the console's nongaming capabilities.

Blu-ray: Surprise! Sony's next-generation console will use the company's own Blu-ray discs to store high-definition content for games. That means PS3 owners will be getting a "free" Blu-ray player so that they can enjoy movies in full high-definition once they become available. The PS3 will also play standard CDs and DVDs, though it won't accept competing HD-DVD discs. While the Blu-ray format gives the PS3 a leg up on the Microsoft's Xbox 360 (which will store its games on standard DVDs), the future-friendly decision will be yet another excuse to drive up its price.

Peripherals: Like the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Revolution, the PS3 supports multiple wireless controllers. Sony gets props for supporting up to seven simultaneous gamepads, as well as for using the Bluetooth wireless standard. By comparison, Microsoft's console supports only four controllers and uses proprietary wireless transmission, while Nintendo's controllers still lack a final design.