What is all the more welcome is the fact that the PlayStation 3 code also retains all the intricate level detail of its more established sibling. This is quite an achievement considering the RAM differences between the Sony and Microsoft consoles: the Sony machine's GPU/system RAM memory split is well documented of course, but the PS3 also reserves much more system RAM for the OS in comparison to the 360 - well-placed sources estimate as much as 35MB (although Sony continues to work to decrease this footprint in each new firmware). This had a savage impact on incidental background detail in Splinter Cell: Double Agent, but doesn't appear to have been much of an issue at all with Rainbow Six: Vegas, which remains highly detailed and a good match for the 360 version from start to finish.

The more you play, the more compromises you can't help but chance across: background detail in every level has been cut back, textures and minor geometry have been re-used more frequently on the PS3 version, presumably an issue with the lower amount of system RAM available. For example, powering down the electrified fence in the first mission is achieved by cutting a cable on the 360 version. On PS3, Fisher cuts through thin air while a big on-off button is right in front of him - the result of an object reused from elsewhere in the level with the game code not changed to match.

While Microsoft mandates that all games should render at 1280x720 at the minimum, these titles actually work with a much smaller frame-buffer: in the case of THP8, 1040x584. So effectively, only 66 percent of the output resolution is actually being generated by the 360 - the rest is interpolated upwards to 720p by the Xenos GPU's scaler.
It's something of a canny move by developers Neversoft - although I'm sure the customer would've preferred a properly optimised 720p game engine. A 33 percent drop in pixel throughput means that the GPU resources can be re-directed to pumping out as many frames per second as possible. Secondly, having dumped the frame-buffer of the game (i.e. checking the visuals direct from the video RAM before the scaler gets its hands on them), there appears to be very little anti-aliasing going on. So the upscaling also serves to soften the harsh edges, albeit a tad roughly, and again save GPU power.