Is it me or the new-gen Xbox1/PS4 are underwhelming spec-wise?

[Zeze]

-relative to the general PC and consumer market.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6972/xbox-one-hardware-compared-to-playstation-4/2

I say this because of my impression of Xbox 360 & PS3 rolling out at 2005/2006 back then:

- The graphics were unheard of at the initial release. The PCs titles and your average 'gamer rigs' ($800-1200) weren't even close. Consoles games looked very impressive graphic-wise and seemed a leap ahead. It took few years for PC to catch on.

-Tricore? (xbox) Eight-core? (ps4) These were absolutely dreamy and absurd at the time, unless you were bleeding edge.

- HDTV & 1080p was just starting to penetrate the market with steep adoption. Lots of people's PCs had trouble running full 1080p video. Even the typical monitors didn't have 1080p. The consoles looked beautiful hooked up to the HDTV at the time.

- Bluray players were expensive. Buying PS3 was charming at the time because you'd spend the same $$ on the Bluray player alone anyway.

Now the new-gen:

- Your PCs are more powerful than ever. The glaring disparity of 2005's consoles seem to be minimal if any. Again, when compared to GENERAL average PCs.

- HD7850 is the rough equivalent of PS4/Xbox1 GPU. This has been released over a year and is about $180 currently. No wow factor compared to 2006.

- The graphics are nothing special either. I distinctly remember Xbox 360 looking ridiculous compared to PCs.

That Crysis 3 screenshot is a real in-game picture. I played it on my shitty $700 gaming rig at 1080x with high graphics looking JUST like that while yielding 40-50 fps.

That CoD looks like ass. And this is supposed to be next-gen.

Not really impressed. Anybody else feel the same?

I'll say this due to the nature of internet forums. I'm NOT a fanboy of either platform. I don't give a crap. I'm a casual gamer of both and I'm sharing my sentiment as an observer.

 

[zerocool84]

Yes they are. We've known since the first rumors started coming out a year or two ago that they would not have top of the line hardware to keep costs down. I'm fine with that, if I want bleeding edge graphics I can always play PC games.

 

[wirednuts]

wait, what? when the 360 came out it didnt look better then the top pc games... it was pretty similar, just as the xbox1 is now.

you have to remember they select the best value gpu's and cpu's, not the fastest ones. they can get away with it because the optimization is better.

finally, consoles are not supposed to beat pc's in graphics. theyre supposed to deliver a better overall experience, and they do.

 

[Zeze]

Yes they are. We've known since the first rumors started coming out a year or two ago that they would not have top of the line hardware to keep costs down. I'm fine with that, if I want bleeding edge graphics I can always play PC games.

I guess it makes sense since graphics mean little to attract mainstream market and that's where the money is (especially with the huge fad of light, f2p games making tons of $$).

I at least expected PS4 to have a bleeding edge as PS4 is perceived to be a gamer's console.

Did MS and Sony somehow agree to roll out similarly underwhelming specs?

 

[Zeze]

wait, what? when the 360 came out it didnt look better then the top pc games... it was pretty similar, just as the xbox1 is now.

you have to remember they select the best value gpu's and cpu's, not the fastest ones. they can get away with it because the optimization is better.

finally, consoles are not supposed to beat pc's in graphics. theyre supposed to deliver a better overall experience, and they do.

Without a doubt 360 and PS3 definitely looked prettier with crazy death-of-field effects, crazy particles and texture filtering ON RELEASE (and up to 1-2 years).

HL2 and Doom 3 came out for PC in 2005. In terms of pure visual, they were okay compared to these consoles.

Also I kept using the phrase 'general market / average PC'. The average PC of 2005/6 were nowhere near the power of 360/PS3.

 

[wirednuts]

uh... if youre talking anandtech, mainstream gaming pc's were just as powerful...

 

[DaveSimmons]

uh... if youre talking anandtech, mainstream gaming pc's were just as powerful...

Exactly. Cross-platform games like Half-Life 2, Oblivion looked much better on PCs, and also performed better thanks to the PC having 4-8 times as much RAM. Resolution and framerate were also poor in most games compared to a PC -- 540p - 720p resolution and 30 fps.

I think you (Zeze not wirednuts) are confusing nice art direction on some games with better graphics.

The 360 and PS3 had OK midrange graphics at launch and so will the X1/PS4

 

[Zorander]

I'll happily take whatever next-gen consoles MS & Sony offer if it translates to better graphics for multi-platform games on the PCs.

So sick of seeing yesteryear textures on today's PC games just because the devs have to cater to old console hardware.

 

[wirednuts]

Exactly. Cross-platform games like Half-Life 2, Oblivion looked much better on PCs, and also performed better thanks to the PC having 4-8 times as much RAM. Resolution and framerate were also poor in most games compared to a PC -- 540p - 720p resolution and 30 fps.

I think you (Zeze not wirednuts) are confusing nice art direction on some games with better graphics.

The 360 and PS3 had OK midrange graphics at launch and so will the X1/PS4

i think he has a point in that the 360 was a little higher end for its time compared to this xbox1, but its not a big difference. and i LOVE LOVE LOVE that the xbox1 has hdmi input! i cant wait for the hacking community to make use of it.

 

[wirednuts]

So sick of seeing yesteryear textures on today's PC games just because the devs have to cater to old console hardware.

i know the 360 and ps3 really killed pc gaming. not because they were better, but because everyone bought in....

 

[Saylick]

I don't think it's fair to compare Crysis 3 with Ghosts and expect that future XBO/PS4 games will be of the same level as Ghosts.

On one end you have a game that's infamous for pushing visual fidelity to the max and on the other end you have a game series that's ragged on for having the same graphics as the original MW.

Your $700 PC may run well but you have to compare price points. The XBO and PS4 are rumored to price somewhere in the $500 range. If MS/Sony decided to shove Tahiti into their next-gen game consoles, I would not be surprised if they would charge upwards of $700 for it.

Look on the bright side. If Sony lives up to their claims of making it a lot easier for developers to optimize games on their platform, you should expect to see games with great graphics coming out in the near future. If not, then at least the bar for console ports will be reset to a new high point.

 

[wirednuts]

its not about price. the top end pc's when the 360 came out cost a grand at least. its pretty awesome you can buy a top end pc today for 30% or less then that, but it doesnt change the reason why people buy consoles.

 

[futurefields]

The PS4 seems really good actually. 8GB GDDR5, 1152 shaders GPU. No funky cache setup like Microsoft decided to go with.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Xbox One (stupid name btw) games render sub-1080p, whereas PS4 looks primed to handle 1080p fairly well.

 

[dagamer34]

You can easily drop $4000 on 4 GTX Titans. A $500 box is never going to top that.

The question has always been and will always be "For X amount of dollars, can we build a box with a reasonable amount of performance that the average person will actually be able to afford?" And I think both boxes accomplish that goal. Anyone asking for the equivalent of $400 GPUs in a $500 box needs to rethink the purpose of a console as you will NEVER be satisfied. That is what PC gaming is for.

 

[Jimzz]

The PS4 seems really good actually. 8GB GDDR5, 1152 shaders GPU. No funky cache setup like Microsoft decided to go with.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Xbox One (stupid name btw) games render sub-1080p, whereas PS4 looks primed to handle 1080p fairly well.

Yea the Xbox is underwhelming IMO, while the PS4 looks like it could last longer due to the better memory and GPU.
I say that as someone that owns a Xbox360 and never owned any PSx.

 

[Doppel]

As regularly pointed out, even if the PS4 is substantially better than the Xbox One (IF), hardware-wise, the bulk of games will be on both systems, and although a significantly more powerful system may have the option to increase graphics over the other (assuming it doesn't suffer other drawbacks--which was a big reason PS3 was typically no better and sometimes worse than 360), it seems inevitable that the lifespan of these systems will overlap almost perfectly, just as this generation and the prior one did.

Proof is in the pudding. I suspect many will be wise over hardware specs alone and want to see genuine proof that one system handles a game better than the other.

 

[BladeVenom]

The Xbox One looks like crap. The equivalent of a 7770 GPU crippled by DDR3, that's low end.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

its not about price. the top end pc's when the 360 came out cost a grand at least. its pretty awesome you can buy a top end pc today for 30% or less then that, but it doesnt change the reason why people buy consoles.

In my case, where gaming is concerned, Xboxone will be for my son. Unless all his friends jump ship to PS4 and leave XBL. And I am going to build a new rig and go back to PC gaming by the looks of it. I will only get the one if it replaces my STB, so it can pay for itself.

 

[dagamer34]

The Xbox One looks like crap. The equivalent of a 7770 GPU crippled by DDR3, that's low end.

Would rather be the equivalent of a 7970 (a $400 card?). Do you want the system to cost $900? :whiste:

Even if it did, what is high-end today won't be high-end 3 years from now. If you got a 6970 2 years ago for $389, it's already been out-classed by a 7970 at $400 and you get double the performance in modern games. If you have an appetite for high-end gaming, why ever bother with a console.

What is good today will suck in 5 years unless you are advocating something silly like console generations become 3 years long or something.

 

[dagamer34]

its not about price. the top end pc's when the 360 came out cost a grand at least. its pretty awesome you can buy a top end pc today for 30% or less then that, but it doesnt change the reason why people buy consoles.

At launch, 360 games were running at 720p mostly. High end PC gamers surely were running games at higher resolutions than that. Plus, SLI barely existed in 2005 whereas today you can shove 4 GTX Titans into a system if you really want to. The definition of high-end is only limited by your wallet.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Would rather be the equivalent of a 7970 (a $400 card?). Do you want the system to cost $900? :whiste:

Even if it did, what is high-end today won't be high-end 3 years from now. If you got a 6970 2 years ago for $389, it's already been out-classed by a 7970 at $400 and you get double the performance in modern games. If you have an appetite for high-end gaming, why ever bother with a console.

What is good today will suck in 5 years unless you are advocating something silly like console generations become 3 years long or something.

Well stated. And the Wii proved graphics are not an impediment to success in the console market. You just need a killer feature that consumers will love it for.

 

[purbeast0]

i don't feel that way at all. but then again i'm not looking for the top of the line stuff because if i was i'd be gaming on pc not a console.

also we haven't even really seen any games yet. kind of hard to say anything without seeing the potential.

 

[MentalIlness]

-relative to the general PC and consumer market.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6972/xbox-one-hardware-compared-to-playstation-4/2

I say this because of my impression of Xbox 360 & PS3 rolling out at 2005/2006 back then:

- The graphics were unheard of at the initial release. The PCs titles and your average 'gamer rigs' ($800-1200) weren't even close. Consoles games looked very impressive graphic-wise and seemed a leap ahead. It took few years for PC to catch on.

-Tricore? (xbox) Eight-core? (ps4) These were absolutely dreamy and absurd at the time, unless you were bleeding edge.

- HDTV & 1080p was just starting to penetrate the market with steep adoption. Lots of people's PCs had trouble running full 1080p video. Even the typical monitors didn't have 1080p. The consoles looked beautiful hooked up to the HDTV at the time.

- Bluray players were expensive. Buying PS3 was charming at the time because you'd spend the same $$ on the Bluray player alone anyway.

Now the new-gen:

- Your PCs are more powerful than ever. The glaring disparity of 2005's consoles seem to be minimal if any. Again, when compared to GENERAL average PCs.

- HD7850 is the rough equivalent of PS4/Xbox1 GPU. This has been released over a year and is about $180 currently. No wow factor compared to 2006.

- The graphics are nothing special either. I distinctly remember Xbox 360 looking ridiculous compared to PCs.

That Crysis 3 screenshot is a real in-game picture. I played it on my shitty $700 gaming rig at 1080x with high graphics looking JUST like that while yielding 40-50 fps.

That CoD looks like ass. And this is supposed to be next-gen.

Not really impressed. Anybody else feel the same?

I'll say this due to the nature of internet forums. I'm NOT a fanboy of either platform. I don't give a crap. I'm a casual gamer of both and I'm sharing my sentiment as an observer.

The Playstation 3 GPU was somewhat of a Nvidia 7900GTX. Big leap to HD 7850 performance levels.

And maybe the consoles can support it..I mean, how do we know they cant ? Maybe blame the game developers.

 

[Illyan]

For those saying that the ps4/One hardware is the same relative to current gaming hardware as the 360/ps3 were:

The 360 had a sort of hybrid x1800XT/x1900 card which at the end of 2005 was going for $300. The ps4 uses basically a 7850, which is a $160 card, and the One uses a 7790 which is $120.

The ps4/One use a 1.6ghz AMD octocore which at the very best will give performance close to an intel i5 3570, probably closer to an i3. At their time the 360/ps3 used CPUs at least clocked similarly to their desktop counterparts (in the 3ghz range) even though they used the IBM power architecture. So the performance delta here is probably actually pretty similar to 2005.

The 8gb of RAM both systems use is actually pretty generous compared to the last release, I would say this is the only area where it's better than the last round.

 

[BladeVenom]

Would rather be the equivalent of a 7970 (a $400 card?). Do you want the system to cost $900? :whiste:

The 360 had graphics close to a high end graphics card, maybe the equivalent of a $250 graphics card. The Xbox One has low end graphics comparable to a $99 graphics card.

The 360 was only $299.99, for the basic model, not bad considering it's graphics capability.