To HDD or not to HDD

Don't do it, its just a FAD

HDD will not change Frames Per Second. If a game relied on the media speed for FPS we'd be at 4FPS gaming right now. The media is the slowest part of any tech to date, thus, we try to avoid it whenever possible. The only thing the HDD requirement would give us is larger DLC, the ability to cache date to a higher degree and thus speed up load times (Oblivion for example). Any developer that hits the disk during active game play can't code. That's why GoW required 512MB of RAM instead of the lower value the PS3 has (and the 360 almost did). That investment in higher ram means better games. For sheer graphics and horse power, I'd take 512MB of memory over a hard disk of any size any day of the week (or weekend).

I agree with Codemonkey. But I think most serious gamers think the core is stupid and nothing more than a marketing tactic.

The other thing, which I was talking with brokendesign offline (IM) is the 360 design is 512MB of "shared" memory at 700Mhz. The PS3 is 256MB of memory and another 256MB of video memory running at 3.2Ghz. That speed is required because you have to "copy" from one memory region to the other over a 3.2Ghz pipe. Technically, the 360 version is "faster" even though its at a slower rate because I can load up 300MB of video textures and the GPU has instant access (albeit slower) to them. In the end, if the 360 is a big slower it can make up for it because it can load more then 256MB of data into the GPU. On the flip side, the PS3 can access its own memory at lightening fast speeds and sling data across the memory regions very quickly. Six of one, half dozen of the other, right? The only difference is the cores on the PS3 have their own memory protected areas that require skill to juggle and use correctly. On the 360, you can do memory locking (software wise) when needed but that's up to the developer to handle...in the end, its not a bad system. Laptops have used shared memory for ages and this has traditionally been why the video cards suck so much. Mainly because that memory isn't 700Mhz, its like 250Mhz or lower. In terms of a PC, having non-shared memory is better because it means you can upgrade components without risk of hardware issues, but how many graphics cards updates do we do on the 360? :)