External USB Video card for PS3? RSX workaround?
I have a PS3 that I “won” for talking at Office 2.0. I don’t really play games - no spare time. And their’s no emulator to let the PS3 run Wii games, yet. So what do I use the PS3 for? Running Yellow Dog Linux as a general purpose home print and file server and web station.
Thing is, the PS3 is one powerful beast, sporting 10 cores,making the highest value (processing power/$) terraflop computers available today. This is extremely useful for the demands of 1) games and 2) number processing hungry apps. The PS3 is sold at loss, estimates reckoned $250-$300 per unit, which on launch prices of $700 (40gb) were substantial. Sony get their revenue from game sales. Now I don’t play games, but I’d like to run the full host of Linux stuff. But, I can’t. You see, Sony blocked the use of graphics acceleration chip, the RSX, so you can’t do decent video playback in linux mode. This is really annoying.
So I’m thinking, why not run an external USB video card? Turns out that Nvidia made the RSX card for Sony and according to http://gear.openflows.org
“RSX was said to be twice as powerful as two Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra chips, a claim also made for Nvidia’ next-generation GPU, the ‘G70?. That suggests that G70 and RSX are essentially the same beast.”
Anyhow, since Sony has been unresponsive to pleas and petitions to allow the RSX to be accessible from Linux, working around the restriction by having an accelerated graphics chip on USB would allow people to trial the use for opening up the RSX. Just a thought.
