PC be able to have graphics close to the Xbox 360?

[gate1975mlm]

Will a top of the line PC be able to have graphics close to the Xbox 360?

Like a Athlon 64 3700+ with the fastest Nvidia Geforce card?

 

[imported_Kensai]

Of course. The PC will probably beat the Xbox at full potential.

 

[Matthias99]

We won't really know until more specs are released about the XBox 360's video subsystem. It's described very vaguely as having a "48-way unified shader architecture" and running at 500Mhz with 512MB of GDDR3, but without more details on the architecture that's not real meaningful.

It's also hard to compare CPUs, since 1) it's not clear just how fast each of the Xenon CPU cores is, and 2) I don't know how much "stuff" (ie, sound processing, network processing, etc.) is being done by the CPUs, so not all of the CPU power may be available to the application.

 

[knothead34]

dont forget most companys try to get 5 years out of a console. new vid cards come out about every year. not even mentioning processors. so yeah at release its gonna be nice..after its been out a while next gen pc cards will be out or in the works and even newer processors.

 

[sandorski]

The PC will exceed the XBox2 very quickly, maybe even before the XBox2 is released. Where the difference will lie is in the features used in Games, that'll lag behind the XBox2 for some time.

 

[Bar81]

Not even close right now. First off, the Xbox 360 is a dedicated gaming console meaning it's highly optimized. Second, it uses a graphics chip not available on the PC until Q3 this year and third, it's running a triple CPU setup with six threads. It'll be a good couple of years before PCs will be able to compete.

 

[Sforsyth]

just lets hope there will be alot more games for it then the X-BOX damn don't know why I ever bought one, oh yeah it was because of the Spec's oh well I want be buying one just for the specs now.

 

[NiKeFiDO]

Originally posted by: Bar81
Not even close right now. First off, the Xbox 360 is a dedicated gaming console meaning it's highly optimized. Second, it uses a graphics chip not available on the PC until Q3 this year and third, it's running a triple CPU setup with six threads. It'll be a good couple of years before PCs will be able to compete.

they said 3 symmetrical Cores each with two threads each....does this mean 3 cpu's?

 

[Bar81]

Yup, 3 IBM CPUs running at 3.2Ghz a piece for a total of 1 teraflop (I believe is the correct term) of theoretical computing power No desktop CPU can even approach that.

 

[hippotautamus]

No, the 360 is going to be destroying the PC gaming world for at least a year or two. While PC hardware will catch up, Consoles have the advantage that developers can skip DirectX and write straight to the hardware...which means MUCH better performance, which means equal performance with more intense graphics. w00t!

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: Bar81
Yup, 3 IBM CPUs running at 3.2Ghz a piece for a total of 1 teraflop (I believe is the correct term) of theoretical computing power No desktop CPU can even approach that.

Wicked cool in theory. It's gonna be a while before developers take advantage of that kind of computing power.

This will at least force them to start thinking about how multithreading can benefit games.

 

[Bar81]

Definitely, that's what I'm most excited about. With CPUs going multiple core instead of straight increases in clockspeed the mandatory multithreading nature of all the upcoming consoles will require that PC games be coded similarly which will then make a dual core CPU actually make sense for everyone and not just the sliver of the market that does heavy multitasking.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: hippotautamus
No, the 360 is going to be destroying the PC gaming world for at least a year or two. While PC hardware will catch up, Consoles have the advantage that developers can skip DirectX and write straight to the hardware...which means MUCH better performance, which means equal performance with more intense graphics. w00t!

Exactly. There would be no point for Microsoft to release a console with a 1 year life span. If Microsoft let PC games jump ahead this early, they would fail miserably.

Console developers will have blazing fast hardware and they can use optimized code to make the most of it. Quake 4 will probably look better on the xbox than the PC. If they released Everquest 2 on the xbox360, you would be able to use maxed out settings. This is not because the xbox has better hardware but because they can heavily optimize the code and do things that would not be possible if they were trying to write for 1,000's of hardware configurations. Fopr this reason, games will look better on the xbox for a few years.

Look at Chaos Theory on the xbox. On paper, the xbox looks weak (700mhz cpu, very little ram) but devs can tweak the hell out of games and make the most of the hardware.

 

[danielmd3000]

The PC will beat the XBOX2 in a couple of years - as in 2 years if the multi-core, cell (PS3) like stuff goes forward, also remember that in less than a year we might get news about the physics processing units, that will improve realism in a way that the XBox will not be able to reach.

 

[albumleaf]

keep in mind that the xbox has to render stuff at only standard 320x240 (well, hdtv is coming) resolutions.. so it can run significantly more complicated stuff at higher framerates. I'll stick with my 1600x1200 thank you very much

 

[Bar81]

Remember HDTV also denotes widescreen and if you haven't experienced a FPS in widescreen (or a sports game for that matter) you have no idea how good gaming can be.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: albumleaf
keep in mind that the xbox has to render stuff at only standard 320x240 (well, hdtv is coming) resolutions.. so it can run significantly more complicated stuff at higher framerates. I'll stick with my 1600x1200 thank you very much

But it doesn't matter. 640x480 looks fine on a standard tv. The xbox360 is natively 720p and supports 1080i so I don't know what your problem is.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Actually, Xbox360 hasn't been released yet and it won't be for a while, so PCs will have a chance to surpass it.

 

[madara]

ROFL. From what we seen, especially DOA4 and PDO, PC has already trounced 360 pretty badly. Even if they manage to tweak alot more out of it, its at such a low point already dont matter much.

 

[Elcs]

Quite frankly, I dont think the Xbox1 had much of an impact on PC Gaming or graphically out shone it to any great extent. It only proved to beat the PS2 in terms of graphical prowess.

Comparing a dedicated games machine using a TV to a more general use machine using a monitor is apples and pears really.

Optimise code for a specific set of hardware exclusively and you are going to get something performing better than a non-optimised code. Thats the main reason why a console 'may' be more 'powerful' than a PC 'at its time of launch'.

 

[kobymu]

can some one please tell me how much difference in performance was between the Xbox(1) and PS2 to a top of the line gaming PC when they where launched?

and if the consoles where better then the PC at launche, then how much time did it take for the PC to gain equal/suppress the consoles in performance?

never actually owned a console, just curious.

/EDIT
and maybe a little bit of history can help the discussion in this thread

 

[Pocatello]

How much would it cost you to build a PC for gaming vs a console? To most people, excluding AT members (who think 5-15 FPS faster is worth $500), a gaming PC is just costing too much. If people upgrage every year for a CPU, every six months for a videocard, sure you will always have the fastest hardware, but it take game developers much longer to make quality games such as HL2 or Doom 3.

 

[apoppin]

Give it less than a year for the PC HW to catch up . . . games will have to wait longer until Unreal3 engine and DX10 where the minimum card will be the 6600gt . . . but the x-box will likely "keep up" for a year or two beyond that compared to the best PCs [the GPU after the r520/g70 will eat the xbox360's r500 alive and multicore CPUs will be MUCH faster]

i DO agree with bar81 that PC game developers will be forced to develop games [more quickly] for multicore CPU [and probably also physics processors].

we all win
:thumbsup:

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: hippotautamus
No, the 360 is going to be destroying the PC gaming world for at least a year or two. While PC hardware will catch up, Consoles have the advantage that developers can skip DirectX and write straight to the hardware...which means MUCH better performance, which means equal performance with more intense graphics. w00t!

Originally posted by: Bar81
Not even close right now. First off, the Xbox 360 is a dedicated gaming console meaning it's highly optimized. Second, it uses a graphics chip not available on the PC until Q3 this year and third, it's running a triple CPU setup with six threads. It'll be a good couple of years before PCs will be able to compete.

Originally posted by: PerfeK
Exactly. There would be no point for Microsoft to release a console with a 1 year life span. If Microsoft let PC games jump ahead this early, they would fail miserably.

I don't think any of these statements are accurate. Since games like Gears of War are coming to the Xbox 360 and the PC at the same time, I think that says that next gen consoles will be about as capable as a top end PC when they launch - they may have a small lead (1 year or less), but I don't think they'll really be able to out power a PC for long.

As I recall, NV30 made R300 look slow on paper too...

People are getting too hopped up over the white sheets when we haven't seen any real-world numbers. We'll see how things pan out, but I don't expect this console launch to be different than any of the past ones - rough equality at launch, followed by the PC pulling firmly ahead in 12 to 18 months.

 

[dcdude]

the xbox2 games so far look terrible and uninteresting. i couldnt care less about slightly lower graphics on PC(id be content if graphics stayed the same as HL2 or BF2) if the games are crap


i dont get why people would buy the new sports games on the systems just for better graphics