Hot on the heels of the fanboy article comes this compare-and-contrast piece by AnandTech, thoroughly looking at the hardware of both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. If you want to learn how consoles are built architecturally, this is what you need. They also try to answer questions that definitely have a bit of mystery to them, such as "will Sony deliver on 1080p?"

Graphics-wise the 360's Xenos GPU and the PS3's RSX are fairly different in implementation, but may end up being very similar in performance. Treating Xenos as a 24-pipe R420, it could be quite competitive with a 24-pipe RSX despite a lower clock speed. The unified shader architecture of the Xenos GPU will offer an advantage in the majority of games today where we aren't very geometry limited. The free 4X AA support offered by Xenos is also extremely useful in a console, especially when hooked up to a large TV. ... In the end it seems that Microsoft was more focused on spending money where it counts (e.g. CPU, GPU, HDD) and skimped on areas that would have otherwise completed the package (e.g. more USB ports, built in wireless, router functionality, flash card readers, HDMI support in the box, etc...). Whereas Sony appears to have just spent money everywhere, but balanced things out by shipping with no hard drive.