PS3 vs PC? What's the "real" difference?

nah, PS3 is a totally different architecture around the CPU. It uses a "cell" concept. I read about it once, it has like 7 small CPUs connected to one central CPU that synchronizes between them.
I think xbox is much closer to a PC then a PS3 is.
I think one of the consequences of this different architecture is that the PS3 games cannot be run on PC without a loss of performance, because the PC will need to "translate" the instructions for them to work on the PC CPU (Intel).
But in theory you can run games from a console on a PC with an interpreter, that is a program that translates instructions for them to work on PC. There are already PC interpreters for PS2 games. Keep in mind, that console makers do efforts to forbid users from copying their games, like using special CD/DVD formats, keeping the details of the hardware and the IDE secret, and lots of other measures which make writing an interpreter on PC much more difficult, especially for modern consoles.

Now for performance, PC can actually do better then consoles, like the PS3, with a good hardware. But it also costs more and takes more time to assemble and to configure. Also, most PCs (except the one with expensive cases) dont look that good in the living room next to the console... and a console is lighter and can be transported, is also cooler...

The PS3 has a completely different architecture to the PC.
CPU
CELL B.E can achieve a whooping 200GFLOPS while your Quad core cpu can achieve about 60-70GFLOPS, bare in mind that the coding must be optimized to achieve this.
The 7 SPE are actually vectorized processors that can help the RSX in gfx calculations most notable Vertex, the PPE which is actually the same as the tri-core CPU on X360 is a general purpose CPU,it is Super-Scalar, like a normal Pentium 4(with a little difference because it is actually Power-PC).
To know more about the CELL Broadband Engine check the official Sony release.

GPU
The RSX is like any other GPU and it is based on G70(Geforce 7800) with 136 shader operations per clock. It also contains 24 pixel and 8 vertex independent pipelines, so basically it is limited to this number while the X360 can use up to 48 pipelines for either vertex or shader. No info regarding Floating point performance but lets just stick to the slides by Nvidia during E3 that it can do 1.8 TFLOPS(?).
The main difference from the PC is that the RSX has access to CELLs RAM XDR(i know it is present in PCs as Turbo Cache) but XDR is a high performance RAM that is used in high end GPUs, the interface that links them is called FlexIO. To make things easier you can say that XDR is between DDR3 and GDDR4.

You cant actually compare the PS3 to the PC because the PC has hardware that you can actually configure to suit your taste but of course on the PS3 you cant, thats what puts the PC at an advantage because if you can afford a high end PC that can run games at 1080p and in 3D then of course it is clear that the PC wins. But if you have an old PC that is like 4 years old then of course the PS3 will run the games better.

In theory or you can say in a highly optimized scenario for the PS3 you can use the Blu-ray to have uncompressed textures in it at 720p (so less stress on the GPU) and CELL helping in vertex shaders as well as using every SPE for something like AI, video, logic, sound....etc. Achieving all this will lead to games such as Uncharted 2 and God of War III.
EDIT: Welcome to the Forums.

yes, a new name... welcome!

@kareem_nasser: according to screenshots I have found online, a PC can be made more performant then a PS3, and display higher level of details, for a lot of games which are available on both the PC and PS3.
It can be argued that this is because programmers are not writing the PS3 games in the best way possible.
But I'm pretty sure that nowadays, you can build a PC that will have more potential then a PS3. But it can also be much more expensive.

EDIT: this is not very far from what you said :-) Sorry if I am repeating what you said.

Sony has its own library called PSGL in the old PS2 days it wasn't used by third party developers but now they embedded it to OpenGL ES and Cg so it is the only library used, but some ppl compare it to DirectX 9.0c.

You can get pirated games for the PC . The PS3 well no .
You can play online on the PS3 . The PC depends if you have pirated games ,well no .

Nemesis-301 wroteso you guys agree that the pc has better graphics then concoles?

1 other thing for the ps3:
pc cost 2000$ + 30 games for 30$= 2030$
ps3 cost 550$ +30 games for (60$*30) 1800$=2350$

see!!! its the same thing the diffrence will catch up over time...

Yeah I agree but piracy is killing pc games, many developers left pc game development because of piracy, I mean we haven't seen an exclusive high quality game on PCs since Crysis1 and that was almost 3 years ago,
3 years without an exclusive killer PC game there must be really something wrong, wheres half life, Doom or any new pc title??

anyway you don't need a 2000$ to build a pc better than a console, 700$ is more than enough to slaughter current consoles in terms of performance..

IMO the difference between PS3 and PC is..., well first of all consoles will never be like pcs, you have your computer you can have fun playing games, browse the internet and troll people, work, edit/create anything you want in terms of graphics or programming, while a console is basically limited to being just a gaming platform, when it come to video games PS3 have exclusive titles PCs will never see like ratchet,God of War, Katamari Damaci, FFXIII, MGS4, Gran Turismo5 and lots of other games, + main advantage= Blu-Ray = win for PS3 in gaming and HD Movies...
But I still prefer PCs for shooter games and the ability to custom your graphics in a game..

MegaCool wrote

Nemesis-301 wroteso you guys agree that the pc has better graphics then concoles?

1 other thing for the ps3:
pc cost 2000$ + 30 games for 30$= 2030$
ps3 cost 550$ +30 games for (60$*30) 1800$=2350$

see!!! its the same thing the diffrence will catch up over time...

Yeah I agree but piracy is killing pc games, many developers left pc game development because of piracy, I mean we haven't seen an exclusive high quality game on PCs since Crysis1 and that was almost 3 years ago,
3 years without an exclusive killer PC game there must be really something wrong, wheres half life, Doom or any new pc title??

anyway you don't need a 2000$ to build a pc better than a console, 700$ is more than enough to slaughter current consoles in terms of performance..

IMO the difference between PS3 and PC is..., well first of all consoles will never be like pcs, you have your computer you can have fun playing games, browse the internet and troll people, work, edit/create anything you want in terms of graphics or programming, while a console is basically limited to being just a gaming platform, when it come to video games PS3 have exclusive titles PCs will never see like ratchet,God of War, Katamari Damaci, FFXIII, MGS4, Gran Turismo5 and lots of other games, + main advantage= Blu-Ray = win for PS3 in gaming and HD Movies...
But I still prefer PCs for shooter games and the ability to custom your graphics in a game..

ok but lets not forget the pc exclusive games that neither the ps3 or xbox 360 consoles have, like starcraft 2, supreme commander 2... all startegy games like warcraft 3/dota and also let me remind you that games sometimes have expansions that cannot be added to the consoles like fallout 3 had 5 expansions(operation anchorage, broken steel, mothership zeta...) you can simply add these expansion to your pc but you cant put expansions in the consoles, and lets not forget the mods that you can add, with so many mods the game turns into something completely different and you can multitask on the pc =D

Aj_BlaZ wrote

kevork wroteYou can play online on the PS3 . The PC depends if you have pirated games ,well no .

i totally disagree with you on this statement , pirated games can be played over the internet for one condition If the game is popular if not it won't for example MW2 is cracked over lan + internet and many other games ...

Well every game I have on the PC don't allow me to play online , exept originals .
I mean I have modern warfare 2 and I can't play online.
If there's a way can you tell me how