So the past couple weeks have been abuzz with this "Project Cafe" thing. Speculation is abundant, it's tough to tell what's a reliable source and what's not, and it's really kinda been crazy. One big question that's been brought up since the beginning is the system's "power" and how it would compare to the Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of technical ability. IGN recently ran an article that reported on the current specs, but other than a bunch of numbers, to most people it doesn't really mean anything. Note that additional info about Project Cafe can be found here and that a large portion of the reports come from 01net.com, a French website. Also, all my numbers about the PS3 and 360 are courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

So I decided to dig a bit deeper and see just where Project Cafe stands right now on a technical level, as well as compare it with the competition. First off the GPU. Here's a list comparing the Xbox 360 and the PS3 and what we know about Cafe.

Architecture PS3: Nvidia G70 (Nvidia 7000 series) 360: ATI Xenos R500 (ATI X1000 series) Cafe: ATI R700 (ATI Radeon HD 4000 series) -the ATI 4000 series is slightly above the Nvidia 9000 series

Memory PS3: 256 MB GDDR3 360: 512 MB GDDR3 (shared with CPU) Cafe: possibly 512MB-1 GB GDDR5 (complete conjecture based off the ATI 4000 series specs)

Core Speed PS3: 700 MHz 360: 500 MHz (2 dies) -Also has a third "daughter" die for specific effects Cafe: ~750 MHz

I'm just going to assume you know nothing about what these numbers mean, so I may gloss over some detail. First, just looking at the general architecture, the Cafe's GPU is looking to be about 2 generations ahead of the PS3's on the Nvidia scale and more than 3 generations above the 360's on the ATI scale (the 2 companies release new cards on very different schedules so it's impossible to have a standard). To put this in layman's terms, this is a fairly size-able increase, though perhaps not all that cutting edge for 2012. The 360 and PS3's GPUs were released within a year before their respective systems did. Cafe's alleged GPU has been around since 2009. So Nintendo has certainly not left it's policy of adopting tech when it becomes affordable.  However, if Sony stays to it's word and keeps the PS3 on the market for 10 years, it's definitely been beat. The 360 almost as much, though it's slightly harder to compare since it has a dual GPU with an additional "extras" one.

One note is that I've approximated the about of video memory and the core clock of the Cafe to what the GPU's desktop counterparts have. It's a modified version so who knows what it will actually be. If there is a change, I'm guessing the memory will be lower while the core clock is increased.

Now on the CPU:

Architecture PS3: Cell microprocessor 360: Xenon (aka "Waternoose") Cafe: based on the Xenon

Frequency PS3: 3.2 GHz 360: 3.2 GHz Cafe: "faster than the 360"

Cores PS3: 1 main core, 6 supporting cores, 1 OS dedicated core, 1 spare core 360: 3 equivalent cores Cafe: allegedly 3 equivalent cores

Performance PS3: 230.4 GigaFlops with single precision; 100 GigaFlops with double precision 360: Theoretical 96.0 GigaFlops Cafe: We'll see...

Memory PS3: 256 MB Rambus XDR DRAM 360: 512 MB GDDR3 (shared with GPU) Cafe: "At least 512 MB"

This is a hard one to compare because the PS3 did things so differently, using the very different Cell processor architecture. Plus, all we know is that the Cafe's will be based off the 360's processor, whatever that means. Taken at face value, I'm guessing around 3.5 GHz frequency, simply because you can't get much faster without too much heat and around 512-768 MB of RAM. If we're lucky, they'll put a whole 1 GB, but that's kind of unnecessary for a console. Since it is based on the more traditional architecture that the 360 uses, I'm also guessing it will be below the PS3's GigaFlops. For those of you that don't know, "FLOPS" stands for "Floating Point Operations" (usually per second) and is thus used as a typical benchmarking tool. Floating point just means "decimal number" in English and the precision (single or double) is how many decimal places are kept. However, most Flops test are highly theoretical and have little implication on game performance, so it really must be taken with a grain of salt.

However, I think the more important info is that which we won't get until the system is basically launched. Things like cache size, bandwidth within the processor, and how the processor will interface with the RAM, etc. are what will set the CPU apart from the 360 of which it is based on.

In the end though, none of this is finalized. Little numbers like processor speed, GPU memory, etc. could fluctuate as the launch approaches, even after Nintendo officially reveals everything. Thus, it's fairly difficult to say "how much better with Project Cafe be?" I'll try though. First, Crysis isn't going to suddenly appear on this system (a single 4870 GPU on a standard gaming rig gets ~12 fps on the highest settings). It's not that mind blowing-ly modern (as noted before, the components are at least 2 years old already, closer to 3 when it launches). At the same time, it's looking to be a good deal more powerful than the 360 and the PS3. Expect better draw distances, larger textures, much better shadows, and definitely less pop-in. It's not a huge jump, but I think it will be noticeable. In any case, I guarantee you that developers that are always looking for the latest tech to use for their games will be quite interested in this system, and it will be interesting to see how cross-platform titles end up. All in all, I'm quite excited to see the first video of games as it's sure to impress. E3 can't come soon enough!!

And if you missed the last entry in my favorite characters countdown, you can check it out here.