Actually the 8th SPE is disabled completely to increase yields in manufacturing. One of the remaining 7 is running background tasks.

Also, the number of MHz they're running at is irrelevant when comparing the console CPUs to normal desktop CPUs. They're completely different beasts. In much the same way a 2GHz Pentium 4 would have its ass handed to it by a 2GHz Core 2, the PPE on the Cell chip would get royally spanked by any moderately recent x86 processor. The fact that is runs at 3GHz+ (it does) doesn't mean much for its actual performance.

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

@ PB, my mistake about dividing the cpu into 8. I know it came across wrong, but my point was that LFS will most likely use one of the cores (if its even possible to run it on the ps3) and so unless one of the cores use's most of the mhz, then that core that LFS will use will be significantly less than the total 3.2ghz.

Aye I know what you meant man, and yer you're right. I was just in a jippy mood earlier :P

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

PS3 has an 8 core system, but only 7 are used while playing a game. The other one keeps the OS and stuff like that running in the background.

@ PB, my mistake about dividing the cpu into 8. I know it came across wrong, but my point was that LFS will most likely use one of the cores (if its even possible to run it on the ps3) and so unless one of the cores use's most of the mhz, then that core that LFS will use will be significantly less than the total 3.2ghz.

As wien just explained, clock speed is and always has been meaningless when comparing completely different architectures.

Also, the fact that a program is running on just one core doesn't change the clock speed of that core. If the CPU runs at 3.2GHz, then each core runs at the full 3.2GHz. Two 2GHz cores on one die don't suddenly make it a 4GHz CPU. There are circumstances where the clock speed of the other cores may change due to being idle but that just complicates the discussion.

Quote from scoobyrbac :

Could put an older version of LFS on there...but I doubt anyone is playing them...

How would that help?

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

suspose i should have been abit more clear.

LFS is only able use one core, as i am sure you know. Now, the xbox's processor is 3ghz, and the ps3's is about the same, yet granted a little higher. The xbox's processor is a 3-core system, and the Ps3's is a 8-core system. Now, divide 3ghz into 8 cores, and get the total of ONE core. Then you will see why i said it wont run. As said before, the ps3 will handle the graphics part of LFS no problemo. As for the processing part, its a no-go im afraid!

That might be true if the CPU was x86...

not to mention that the graphics are apparently the most cpu intensive bit of lfs and not particularly brilliantly coded... not for todays cpus and apis anyway