quite the contrary actually - I suspect Nvidia will be quite a beast simply because Sony will be using their fabs to produce them, giving them probably a process advantage (if they use 65nm that is).
Potentially, they could be using 65nm for the PPE(s) and the Nvidia GPU. ATi on the other hand should be around 90nm at the best from what I\'ve heard.
In all likelyhood, PS3 will sell regardless of how many PPE make it into the final system... which is why I\'m inclined to believe Sony will go with a less expensive system (1 or 2 PPE depending on the process) and break even in shorter time. Only time will tell though.
The more interesting topic at Beyond3d at the moment isn\'t exactly how many PPEs, but what conifguration we\'re likely to see. Will it be 1 PPE and 512 MB of memory - or 2 PPE with 256 MB? The more powerful the CPU is to be, the less money will be available for other stuff like memory. It\'s all about the perfect balance... and that is the big unknown factor.
Personally, I think textures will only take so far - I\'m more interested in number crunching for great physics and have games like Metal Gear Solid 2 or ZOE2 that have little texture variety but amazing effects like wind, rain etc making up for it.
