Modern Graphics Cards vs. Game Consoles

[Red Hawk]

I'm wondering, how do modern graphics cards compare with HD game consoles (the 360 and the PS3)? It's my understanding that when they first came out, the 360 and PS3 could contend with high-end graphics in PCs. Now though, I can play Mass Effect 2 smoothly in 720p with my laptop's Mobility Radeon 5470, and I'm told that graphics card is shrimpy business-grade hardware. Would it be fair to say that even inexpensive computer graphics have reached or exceeded what the 360 and PS3 are capable of?

And then there's the Wii...from what I have read, it's just using a shrunk down and overclocked version of the Gamecube's 10 year old tech. Nintendo didn't even try.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Hmmmm? Consoles have never been ahead of GPUs at any point...

You realize, that as far as resolution, 720p is very low...

 

[happy medium]

A ps3/xbox 360 are about equal to a 7900gtx/x1900xt in graphic performance, as far as can remember.

 

[MentalIlness]

Yep, happy is totally correct. Several generations behind desktop GPU's.

 

[SickBeast]

For me I found that my 8800GTS could give me equivalent performance to the consoles, albeit at 1080P resolution.

I'd say modern cards like the GTX 460 are easily 4-6X more powerful than what the consoles can do.

In terms of how modern CPUs compare with the Cell, I have no idea.

 

[Red Hawk]

Hmmmm? Consoles have never been ahead of GPUs at any point...

You realize, that as far as resolution, 720p is very low...

Yes, I said that the 360 and PS3 contended with PC GPUs at the time of their release, not that they surpassed them.

And yes, I know, but it's still considered HD.

 

[toyota]

OP, I doubt you are playing too many games smoothly on a 5470 even at 1280x720. that gpu is weaker than what the 360 and ps3 have not to mention they offload a lot of stuff onto the cpu that the pc version doesn't. even doing that they still have to go sub 720 on most demanding games just to try and average 30fps. in other words your 5470 will give you a worse gaming experience than a 360 or ps3.

 

[Red Hawk]

The PS3's Nvidia graphics chip does offload some things onto the Cell, but the 360's ATI chip does most of its own tasks. And not all games on the 360 and PS3 actually run at 720p; many run at around 1024x600 and are upscaled to whatever resolution the console is outputting to the display (720p, 1080i, or 1080p). Mass Effect 2 does run at true 720p, though. I'll see if I can get a benchmark done with Fraps on my laptop.

 

[toyota]

The PS3's Nvidia graphics chip does offload some things onto the Cell, but the 360's ATI chip does most of its own tasks. And not all games on the 360 and PS3 actually run at 720p; many run at around 1024x600 and are upscaled to whatever resolution the console is outputting to the display (720p, 1080i, or 1080p). Mass Effect 2 does run at true 720p, though. I'll see if I can get a benchmark done with Fraps on my laptop.

for some perspective even a nearly 4 year old low end 8600gt is about 50% faster than a 5470.

 

[Barfo]

for some perspective even a nearly 4 year old low end 8600gt is about 50% faster than a 5470.

Pshhh stop putting down his baby :twisted:

OP: try running a wii game in an emulator at 1080p and watch the wii owner go green with envy.

 

[Red Hawk]

I know, I know, the Mobility Radeon HD sucks in comparison to anything decent over the past three years or so. Good thing I have a Radeon HD 5670 ready to go as soon as I get desktop with PCI-E ports.

As for emulating Wii games in HD -- hm, one of my roommates at college has a Wii. I might just try that. :twisted: My monitor's native resolution is 1366x768, not 1080p, however.

 

[0roo0roo]

assuming you pay a decent amount you get better graphic quality with a pc...super high fsaa and other quality settings are just things consoles have no access to. but consolle games have huge budgets and so the graphic/art direction can be rather impressive.

kinda doubt his laptop gpu was doin all that great either. you need 60fps on fps games on the pc, add fsaa and other things and you need even more power. but 720p is rather low so maybe...

console games don't need the same kinda responsiveness, the game pad is sh*tty and hides most low fps/lack of responsiveness since they have to essentially put training wheels on the controls to get them to work.

 

[Red Hawk]

60 FPS is good for multiplayer FPS, but I don't play anything multiplayer. I'm a single player kind of guy. 30-20 FPS does just fine.

 

[toyota]

60 FPS is good for multiplayer FPS, but I don't play anything multiplayer. I'm a single player kind of guy. 30-20 FPS does just fine.

30 fps may be okay in some games but 20?

 

[netxzero64]

60 FPS is good for multiplayer FPS, but I don't play anything multiplayer. I'm a single player kind of guy. 30-20 FPS does just fine.

playable gaming experience starts at 30fps.. below that, you'll experience slow downs, lag... crappy feeling though

 

[hawtdawg]

Newer smartphones are in-range of the ps3/360 in graphical performance.

 

[Aristotelian]

Newer smartphones are in-range of the ps3/360 in graphical performance.

Which ones?

 

[Ben90]

60 FPS is good for multiplayer FPS, but I don't play anything multiplayer. I'm a single player kind of guy. 30-20 FPS does just fine.

playable gaming experience starts at 30fps.. below that, you'll experience slow downs, lag... crappy feeling though

There is no hard number in which a game will be playable or enjoyable for everyone. I see no reason why he couldn't enjoy a game running at 20fps.

I myself am insanely super-anal about framerate. If even one frame in a first person shooter takes longer than 8.3ms, I will be lowering game settings to compensate. That however doesn't stop me from calling Diablo II one of my favorite games of all time despite running at 25fps. Just sucks that I need to run it in a VM because of how Windows 7 doesn't allow Vysnc to be disabled on D3D 6- applications.

Newer smartphones are in-range of the ps3/360 in graphical performance.

Definitely not. You may be thinking of the IGP in Sandy Bridge being roughly equivalent to the 360's performance.

People love to hate on consoles because of their limited hardware and (lots) of other reasons, but you have to remember the market for these things. The PS3 could have very well have launched with 8800GTX in Tri-SLI, but who would want to pay 1500+ for a casual gaming system?

 

[Gryz]

There's more to a system than just the speed of the GPU.

For me the biggest drawback of consoles is the small amount of memory. The XBox360 has only 512MB of RAM. And that RAM is used both as system memory and video memory. I have double that amount of memory just on my videocard ! Which is already 2-3 years old. I believe the prices of memory are now under 10 euros per Gigabyte of DDR3 ? Such a shame that those consoles can't make any use of it.

I like games where I can roam around through a huge world. Games with huge maps. Some engines use a "cell based" engine. Or load content on the fly. But even then, it is often noticable when an engine does that. Look at an old game like Thief-1 and Thief-2. They had huge levels. When Thief-3 was released, it was also available for consoles. As a result, the developer had to cut up the maps in 2 or more smaller maps, with loading screens between them. Terrible. And the maps were already a lot smaller than they used to be in T1 and T2. All thanks to lack of memory on consoles. Which then impacts multi-platform games.

Also the quality of the textures is an issue in multi-platform games. Textures use huge amounts of memory. So if you're limited on memory, you will re-use the same ones a lot. And you will use less-detailed textures. Oblivion is an example. The retail version has many low-detail textures. We need amateur modders to give us a decent set of textures. Those are a huge improvement of image quality. I wish more multi-platform games would adjust their games for PC a bit more. Melt some maps together to create a bigger world. And include larger textures for PCs.

 

[Bearach]

Definitely not. You may be thinking of the IGP in Sandy Bridge being roughly equivalent to the 360's performance.

I didn't know about Sandy Bridge's IGP being that powerful, and although I highly doubt it, could I have the links that show this?

 

[cmdrdredd]

To me it doesn't matter. I think Uncharted 2 was a beautiful game, I think Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is a great looking racer that runs smoothly and is fun. Honestly, I don't play the resolution numbers game when I am playing a game. I like playing on my 50" TV than my 24" monitor sometimes though. The real thing that makes this argument pointless is the fact that not many games are using the resources of a modern PC. SLI GTX 580 doesn't get pushed really hard for the most part. Maybe one or two games, but generally there's nothing to tax the system. Plus you have to remember that for every one PC gamer there's a few thousand if not more, console gamers who are potential customers. The way of things these days seems to cater to consoles and we get a port.

 

[JimmiG]

Console GPUs really are nothing special these days... Remember it's ancient by computer standards. It's a ~200m transistor chip at 500 MHz, originally designed for the 90nm process...

It does have 48 vector processors and Unified Shading Architecture, so it was ahead of the Geforce 7800 and R520 in 2005. But that was six years ago..

 

[taltamir]

I'm wondering, how do modern graphics cards compare with HD game consoles (the 360 and the PS3)? It's my understanding that when they first came out, the 360 and PS3 could contend with high-end graphics in PCs.

not really. The GTX8800 came out 3 days before the PS3, the 8800 series was much more powerful, producing better graphics, and cost less money. Since then the gap only grew, such that they are now pathetically obsolete. A 100$ video card will greatly outperform them.
And did you know that the xbox360 has only 512MB of ram? that is the same amount as modern CELL PHONES! (example, the nexus S)

Hmmmm? Consoles have never been ahead of GPUs at any point...

You realize, that as far as resolution, 720p is very low...

Yep.
PC games had greater than 1080p resolution since ~2000
and slightly greater than 720p resolution sometimes in the early 1990s.

@OP: Don't delude yourself to thinking consoles could ever compare to the PC in terms of graphics, or freedom of input (PCs don't FORCE you to use a mouse+keyboard, you can use a console controller or a joystick or whatever, I for example have an xbox360 controller for my PC for those console ports whose keyboard controls suck due to bad porting).
That isn't to say that consoles have no place at all, a lot of people are computer illiterate and "put disk in slot" is as complicated as they can handle, and plugging in a computer to a TV (or a projector) is a little too hard for them... so a console lets them get games on TV easily. Its not the best quality or price, but it fits their desires. You might consider 720p DX9 style graphics "good enough" while others desire more.

 

[digitaldurandal]

not really. The GTX8800 came out 3 days before the PS3, the 8800 series was much more powerful, producing better graphics, and cost less money. Since then the gap only grew, such that they are now pathetically obsolete. A 100$ video card will greatly outperform them.
And did you know that the xbox360 has only 512MB of ram? that is the same amount as modern CELL PHONES! (example, the nexus S)



Yep.
PC games had greater than 1080p resolution since ~2000
and slightly greater than 720p resolution sometimes in the early 1990s.

@OP: Don't delude yourself to thinking consoles could ever compare to the PC in terms of graphics, or freedom of input (PCs don't FORCE you to use a mouse+keyboard, you can use a console controller or a joystick or whatever, I for example have an xbox360 controller for my PC for those console ports whose keyboard controls suck due to bad porting).
That isn't to say that consoles have no place at all, a lot of people are computer illiterate and "put disk in slot" is as complicated as they can handle, and plugging in a computer to a TV (or a projector) is a little too hard for them... so a console lets them get games on TV easily. Its not the best quality or price, but it fits their desires. You might consider 720p DX9 style graphics "good enough" while others desire more.

My phone uses 1gb.

 

[taltamir]

My phone uses 1gb.

Heh, even more impressive (for the phone, pathetic for the consoles).
what phone is it?