Modern Graphics Cards vs. Game Consoles

[NoQuarter]

I am guessing that is the post processing filter that does "pseudo anti aliasing". It used to be available only on consoles, but beginning with the Radeon HD6### series you can now get it on the PC as well under the name Morphological Anti-Aliasing.
If anyone has an HD6XXX card they can test it with and share the results with us it would be great.

In theory it is lower quality than any other AA method, while being very cheap to apply (in terms of computational power) and has perfect compatibility (as a post processing filter it will work with anything, even pictures / movies).

I didn't think to test MLAA on it but I have used it before and I don't feel the 360 was using anything more than a blur filter rather than a smart edge-finding blur like MLAA does. When I used MLAA before it actually was very smart at finding edges and smoothing them rather than just blurring the image, resulting in a fairly sharp image and a definite improvement over no AA. With the blur filter on the 360 all edges were both jagged *and* blurry giving worse IQ than just the jaggies and no blur.

MLAA is also only relatively cheap compared to other AA methods, it still wasn't cheap at all on my system and in some games it wasn't any less intensive than just turning on AA for some reason. I suppose if a game is very shader heavy then there may not be enough free shader time to run the MLAA postprocessing effect, where other games may not stress the shaders enough to take away from MLAA. I don't think the 360 has enough power to spare to run any smart filter.

The blurriness of the 360 may look better when you are viewing from a distance on a TV screen since the dot pitch is so much worse so perhaps it helps obscure IQ issues, but looking at it from 2 feet on a sharp monitor it was clearly a degradation of IQ.

Actually it looked more like the muddied image you get when you run a monitor at non-default resolution even though my 360 was set to 1080p to match my monitor. So it may just be a very poor scaling algorithm the 360 was using since those games are internally rendered at less than 1280x720.

 

[nanaki333]

I was doing a side by side comparison of L4D2 on Xbox 360 and PC since I have 3 monitors for Eyefinity and one of them is also hooked up to my Xbox 360. To get the same graphics level on my PC I had to set every setting to the lowest, resolution at 1280x720, no antialiasing or anything, and all driver options to max performance (ie lowest quality).


I still had no way to match the full screen blur effect l4d2 uses on the Xbox 360 so I couldn't bottom out the PC platform enough to exactly match the 360 but I was really damn close. It's amazing how awful the console graphics look once you put it side by side with a PC and aren't sitting 8 feet away.

holy crap. he never loaded up the 360 version while i was there. he plays on a projector so i can only imagine how awesome the 360 version looked on there.

 

[Zap]

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?

Hit up the main AnandTech site for the Sandy Bridge CPU review. I believe Anand said so in that article. It was just posted today.

I'll play anything that is good.

Exactly! Regardless of all this console/PC back/forth bickering, don't most of us who own one also own the other?

 

[Bearach]

Hit up the main AnandTech site for the Sandy Bridge CPU review. I believe Anand said so in that article. It was just posted today.

He actually compares the IGP to the one in the XBOX360? I didn't see that.

 

[NoQuarter]

He actually compares the IGP to the one in the XBOX360? I didn't see that.

I wouldn't be surprised. When I did that comparison myself it was using an onboard Radeon 4200, and at the settings I needed to get equivalent image quality I would get about 24 fps average with dips down to 20 or so. Consoles run at 30 fps so, not far away from IGP's that perform equally to these consoles. But this is only because we've had 5 years for GPU's to advance.

 

[SHAQ]

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.

There were 3.4 million people on Steam this past weekend. By your estimate there should be around 10 billion console players. I'm glad video games have reached other parts of the known universe.

 

[Bearach]

I wouldn't be surprised. When I did that comparison myself it was using an onboard Radeon 4200, and at the settings I needed to get equivalent image quality I would get about 24 fps average with dips down to 20 or so. Consoles run at 30 fps so, not far away from IGP's that perform equally to these consoles. But this is only because we've had 5 years for GPU's to advance.

Yeah, for what I could see Sandy Bridge is okay for normal usages. Not really any good for gaming, and that's normal for IGP's really.

It does look to be a step in the right direction, but a step back in other ways. Like offering the best IGP for the top sector, yet it's more likely the IGP will be used on the lower chips.

Think they really should have just made the IGP the same on all versions of Sandy Bridge. Though it goes to show that if Sandy does match the XBOX (still skeptical) then consoles are way behind graphically now.

But the consoles are a far few years old now, and we can say how much better PC graphics are now but I'm sure they will catch up again and the cycle will start again.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

I wouldn't be surprised. When I did that comparison myself it was using an onboard Radeon 4200, and at the settings I needed to get equivalent image quality I would get about 24 fps average with dips down to 20 or so. Consoles run at 30 fps so, not far away from IGP's that perform equally to these consoles. But this is only because we've had 5 years for GPU's to advance.

I'm not surprised either, just by looking at the HD 5570 numbers. My HD 3850, in the cross-platform games, produces better IQ than the games I've seen and played on the 360 and PS3. Call of Duty, as one example, is pretty aliased in the consoles, while I can play it with far fewer jaggies and better textures on my PC.

 

[taltamir]

I wouldn't be surprised. When I did that comparison myself it was using an onboard Radeon 4200, and at the settings I needed to get equivalent image quality I would get about 24 fps average with dips down to 20 or so. Consoles run at 30 fps so, not far away from IGP's that perform equally to these consoles. But this is only because we've had 5 years for GPU's to advance.

consoles are SUPPOSED to get 30 fps... but many games cut corners for better looking graphics. I have had consoles lag on me in action packed scenes.
I know this is not exactly related to what you were saying, it just reminded me of this little tidbit.

 

[Skurge]

consoles are SUPPOSED to get 30 fps... but many games cut corners for better looking graphics. I have had consoles lag on me in action packed scenes.
I know this is not exactly related to what you were saying, it just reminded me of this little tidbit.

Yeah, I played Gears of War on the 360. I was getting horrible Framrate issues in that game. I couldnt play any further. Granted it was just the 1st part of the game and maybe it got better later in the game, but still. It was inexcusable as there isn't a way around it like on the PC.

 

[cloudzero]

For me the biggest drawback of consoles is the small amount of memory. The XBox360 has only 512MB of RAM.

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.

This. I have a pretty outdated computer now (E6300-the old one, HD4850, 4GB, 1680 x 1050). I went to my sister's house and was playing the original Gears of War or XBox360 and had fun, but I noticed the textures right away. I know that's an older game but it was really noticeable.

She is an artist at a game studio and said to me the other day that she hasn't heard of any replacements coming soon for the 360 or PS3. I think this is interesting because game designers will hit a limit with what they can do graphically in games and will focus on other aspects, which is fine, but it will effect games on PC as well.

One of her games just got ported to PC after a year on consoles and I've yet to buy it. It's that ATV vs. MX Reflex game you can get on Steam. I asked her if they keep hi-rez textures just in case of PC ports and she says they sometimes do but I wonder if the studio doing the port has to repaint a lot of the textures to allow for higher texture settings on the PC port.

But yeah, getting back to textures on PC vs. Console, it really seems that it's an area where PC is a lot better than consoles.

 

[-Slacker-]

Hey, so ... uh ... since this is a console vs pc thread, it seems like an appropriate place to ask what kind of horse power would a pc need in order to emulate ps3 or xbox 360 games (I know the internet is littered with these types of questions, but the answers are always something like "lulz u cn't, u need liek a 20 core 90ghz cpu with 5 terabytes of ddr7 ram and a 30gb vram gpu tht will only be available in 10 yrs minimumz lol" - I'd like to hear a more educated answer than that...

 

[toyota]

Hey, so ... uh ... since this is a console vs pc thread, it seems like an appropriate place to ask what kind of horse power would a pc need in order to emulate ps3 or xbox 360 games (I know the internet is littered with these types of questions, but the answers are always something like "lulz u cn't, u need liek a 20 core 90ghz cpu with 5 terabytes of ddr7 ram and a 30gb vram gpu tht will only be available in 10 yrs minimumz lol" - I'd like to hear a more educated answer than that...

even an 8600gt and fast dual core cpu can deliver the same or better performance performance and visuals at 1280.

 

[-Slacker-]

^Makes me wonder why an emulator hasn't been developed yet, even a crappy one ..

 

[byteman99]

I have a PS3 and a pc with SLI GTX 460. The PS3 I play it on a 50 inch plasma and my pc I play on a 30 inch Dell. The difference is pretty big. Console games just look too ugly by comparison. Though I must say that consoles at least make the most worth off their hardware. Where with pc, they have to resort to gimmicks such as eyefinity or physX to really push the hardware.

 

[Barfo]

even an 8600gt and fast dual core cpu can deliver the same or better performance performance and visuals at 1280.

I think he's asking what sort of hardware would be needed to emulate an xbox360 on top of a modern OS. If I remember correctly, you need something like a Pentium II at 700mhz to run a snes emulator with acceptable image quality, that's much faster than what an actual snes had in processing power.

 

[-Slacker-]

^Woah. That's about 200 times the processing speed...

 

[taltamir]

Hey, so ... uh ... since this is a console vs pc thread, it seems like an appropriate place to ask what kind of horse power would a pc need in order to emulate ps3 or xbox 360 games (I know the internet is littered with these types of questions, but the answers are always something like "lulz u cn't, u need liek a 20 core 90ghz cpu with 5 terabytes of ddr7 ram and a 30gb vram gpu tht will only be available in 10 yrs minimumz lol" - I'd like to hear a more educated answer than that...

this isn't an easy thing to answer. To create an emulator, you need significant reverse engineering, which takes time. Until its done its hard to tell what will be found.

With PS2 emulation for, for example, there is issue with it performing rounding in a way that does not conform to international standards on math, as a result, specific operations can take 10 times as long to work around it.

Do you have that specific kind of issue (non standard math) on the xbox360 and PS3? highly unlikely since both are based off of the powerPC platform (which does conform to international standards on math), but is still rather different to x86.

So we need a good amount of reverse engineering, following by writing code to run it from complete scratch, and without amazingly detailed knowledge (that must come from reverse engineering) and very skilled programmers you would probably end up with inefficient workarounds that cost performance.

One of the biggest hurdles is legal issues and popularity. You need some programming all stars to spend a few years on the project, that means either them needing a reason (ex: backwards compatibility being dropped by the company, and love of many games on the platform), or money being involved.

With a rather obscure gaming console called PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16 (depending on country), there is only ONE emulator that works quite right, a pay one thats called magic engine. Others just never got quite finished.
On the other hand, with PS2 emulation there has been amazing strides, thanks greatly to significant reverse engineering and work by programming all stars like gabest (check out just some of his work here https://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/files/ ) who did wonders for the GPU backend of PS2 emulation and some other very talented people (their new microVR units). As well as its dedicated reverse engineers.
Its playable, but you need a hefty system to emulate it (or rather, used to)... with every version system requirements go DOWN rather then up.

So to get back to the xbox360 emulation, it is limited by:
1. legal issues (made worse in recent years, what with the DMCA and the like)
2. the need to reverse engineer it rather then just getting spec.
3. How many of the worlds best can be drawn to work on it, either via paying them or because they really care about the platform's exclusives.

taking tens or hundreds of times the computational power is not a requirement of emulation, its simply that by the time some of the basic work gets done, moores law ensures that we actually HAVE that much computational power in an average computer, and it saves a lot of time, effort and skill to program something that is resource hungry; so why not use all that computational power that has since become available to make the life of an emulator creator easier?

The PS2 emulation though shows the future of emulation in general, older emulators will emulate an entire machine on the CPU. The PCSX2 emulator actually has an excellent DX9, 10, and 11 codepaths (DX10+ recommended) that leverages the GPU to help the emulation process. You don't need an obscenely fast future CPU thanks to the ability to use a GPU + CPU.

 

[Vdubchaos]

I remember back when 360 came out, my 1 year old ATI 800xl rig was about the equivalent.

When I upgraded to 7900gt oc, the difference was very noticeable...and has been since.

I've done # of side by side comparisons in MW2 and few other titles and 360 looks like crap compare to PC. I'm sorry but the difference in graphics is obvious.

My big beef with Consoles is simple control and lack of freedom. I don't like to buy into ANYTHING that limits me aka apple like.

Also most people fail to realize that PC gaming is not expensive at all. Most people already have decent PCs at home, all you need is a Video card. Games in general are MUCH cheaper.

Example, I just picked up Bad Company 2 for $7 bucks, Dirt 2 for $5, Company of Heros for $6......Flat Out Carnage for $2.

Console games hardly ever go down in price even after a year or 2.

Also paying monthly fees for service? Come on now, it blows my mind people actually pay it.

3 years of Xbox live usage = $360, that is a one sweet video card and MANY games.

 

[nanaki333]

I think he's asking what sort of hardware would be needed to emulate an xbox360 on top of a modern OS. If I remember correctly, you need something like a Pentium II at 700mhz to run a snes emulator with acceptable image quality, that's much faster than what an actual snes had in processing power.

not to nitpick, but there was no such thing as a p2 700

 

[Skurge]

I remember back when 360 came out, my 1 year old ATI 800xl rig was about the equivalent.

When I upgraded to 7900gt oc, the difference was very noticeable...and has been since.

I've done # of side by side comparisons in MW2 and few other titles and 360 looks like crap compare to PC. I'm sorry but the difference in graphics is obvious.

My big beef with Consoles is simple control and lack of freedom. I don't like to buy into ANYTHING that limits me aka apple like.

Also most people fail to realize that PC gaming is not expensive at all. Most people already have decent PCs at home, all you need is a Video card. Games in general are MUCH cheaper.

Example, I just picked up Bad Company 2 for $7 bucks, Dirt 2 for $5, Company of Heros for $6......Flat Out Carnage for $2.

Console games hardly ever go down in price even after a year or 2.

Also paying monthly fees for service? Come on now, it blows my mind people actually pay it.

3 years of Xbox live usage = $360, that is a one sweet video card and MANY games.

QFT, especially bolded.

 

[NoQuarter]

3 years of Xbox live usage = $360, that is a one sweet video card and MANY games.

Wait 3 years of Xbox Live is $105-$180 depending on if you bother to try to find any deals on the 1 year card.

 

[frumply]

Ever since I've gotten out of college I've been more of a console gamer. I know PC games still blow console counterparts out of the water graphics-wise, but it's been much easier to organize games for the 360 w/ friends. Had I still played with the people on the old CS servers I might still be having a blast on Steam.

I still get the itch to upgrade, but have mostly been pouring the money into other parts of the experience.

Console games hardly ever go down in price even after a year or 2.

Also paying monthly fees for service? Come on now, it blows my mind people actually pay it.

3 years of Xbox live usage = $360, that is a one sweet video card and MANY games.

I rarely pay full-price for games unless it's an import. There's the store overhead to consider so it won't necessarily go down to under-10 levels, but year-old games are oftentimes selling for 15-30; I'm usually at least a yr behind on the single-player games so I don't mind that at all. Big-name releases are typically 40 after Amazon's 20 off discount, and for me Live was 40/yr. I've paid much more for useful shareware software, and for the convenience it provides I don't find the price to be an issue. Just like PC gaming, it looks expensive on the surface unless you put a little effort into finding the bargains.

 

[Vdubchaos]

In general I believe PC games are cheaper than Consoles. They also go down faster....don't even get me started on Steam holiday sales.....

 

[Barfo]

not to nitpick, but there was no such thing as a p2 700

haha, I meant Pentium III.