Poor console CPU performance, claim game devs

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biostud

Lifer
Feb 27, 2003
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7,037
136
Who needs a super CPU if the games are fun to play?

The only good is, that I as a strictly PC user can stop worrying about the console fanboys, talking bad about my CPU :p
 

obeseotron

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
1,910
0
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Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
It's obvious Anand talked to a few PC centric western dev houses and surprise, surprise- their generic code doesn't work well on either platform. Shocked, to be sure. Wait to see what TeamNinja and Polyphony release on these consoles.

Yeah, I hear Japanese developers don't use PCs when they write the code and create their models. North Americans and Europeans are also prone to lying anonymously with nothing to gain. Xbox1 and 360 don't run directx and cross-platform middleware is unheard of, making comparisons impossible. Out of order execution isn't a big deal that's why it's not on every cpu for more than the last decade. Wasting RAM on 1080p with AA for the 12 people that will have 1080p sets even a few years from now makes a lot of sense considering how limitless 512mb of shared RAM is. You know a lot more than Anand about these issues, thanks for sharing.

Seriously though, great article Anand. Disappointing though because it's pretty clear the PC will not see almost any AAA game exclusively any more, so bringing about a gaming revolution in physics is questionable at best.

The end of PC gaming is not exactly upon us, but unless there is a major shake up, it's going to be all ports plus whatever valve, blizzard and id want to do. Direct distribution and no license fees make marginal profit very high on the PC end, but there simply are not enough gaming PC's out there. For 80% of PCs and maybe more, intel integrated graphics is actually overpowered considering what they are used for. What exactly is going to change this?

 

HDTVMan

Banned
Apr 28, 2005
1,534
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I think the idea that on the current XBOX1 your able to play DOOM3 and its basically a P4/Celeron 733 with 64megs of ram speaks highly of specialized hardware platforms.

Compare that to what power is needed to even run Doom 3 on a PC smoothly and it makes you wonder what all the overhead is about. Granted the game is scaled back but not by much that Doom3 looks bad. Makes you wonder?
 

Drayvn

Golden Member
Jun 23, 2004
1,008
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Originally posted by: Todd33
Originally posted by: Drayvn
Originally posted by: Todd33
Interesting. They will either both suck or both be good. I'm not sure how they claim the Xbox360 is easier to program for, I thought the PS3 was going to be opengl/linux and it only has one CPU, but I guess there are no real devkits yet.

The Xbox 360 is easier to program for as the CPUs are closer to what desktop CPUs are.

While the PS3 CPU is completely and totally different which will take a lot of time for devs to figure out.


Did you read the article? Of course not... The Cell CPU is the exact core that the Xbox 360 has (but has more of them).

I dont need to read the article to know what the difference of the Cell is to the Xenon.

Cell has 1 3.2Ghz CPU, a bit like the Xenon with its 3 Cores of them.

But umm, Cell has 8 SPE cores, which are totally different from the CPU. They are pretty much very specialised cores, but are not general purpose cores like the PPE core.

So no the Cell is not the same (except 1 time, and that is only because its got nearly the same PPE core as the Xenon which has 3 of those), and doesnt have 'more of them'

 

Schadenfroh

Elite Member
Mar 8, 2003
38,416
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Originally posted by: biostud
Who needs a super CPU if the games are fun to play?

You should never introduce reason to a thread like this, they are so fun to watch.
 

gac009

Senior member
Jun 10, 2005
403
0
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cool fact: each of the three cores of the Xbox360 can run 2 threads theortically, kinda like HT on the P4 is supposed to do.

anyhoo what I really wanted to say was that sony and ms are both restricting the ability to use a keyboard and mouse as a control device while playing the games and focusing on having fewer pc ports. hmmmm why?

also go to ebgames or gamestop websites and see how many PS2 and XBOX games are coming out and see how many PC games are being released. about the same for each. what dose this mean? I think it means that some people play pc games and get exited about video cards and hardware and some people play console games and get exited about consloe relases. this happens only once every five years for conole gamers instead of twice a year for video cards so they get a bit more exited but in the end no one is wrong. why do we have to fight?
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Originally posted by: Avalon

1) Anand himself mentioned both the RSX and the R500 are somewhat similar to their G70/R420 counterparts, albeit with some noticeable modifications. That was all that I meant, and you should have known that.

I was saying that R500 in 360 has unified shaders and embedded ram on the gpu die. This means it is almost totally different in terms of design than R520 (which most likely wont have unified shader architecture and certainly wont have embedded dram for virtually free AA)

2) I dunno, twice as fast as a 733mhz P3/celeron hybrid sure sounds theoretically like what a 1.4 Tualatin would put out to me.

Fair enough. What I was trying to say is that game developers on a PC must target so many different configurations making it very difficult to program the games to run well on slow hardware. If you ever seen Ninja Gaiden or Need for speed underground or doom 3 on xbox with 733 celeron and geforce 3+ graphics, you'd realize that specs alone are only half the story. In fact Doom 3 on xbox looks about 80% of what it looks like on PC in my eyes. I have to play at 640x480 and it chops like crazy on a P4 3.2ghz and radeon 8500 (equivalent to geforce 3). Xbox does a much better job. So one shouldn't underestimate the potential of consoles. Sure they'll never be as good as top of the line PCs. But they'll certainly be better than gaming experience provided by A64 3000+ and 6600GT. Besides console games offer something totally different - it's a different gaming experience (ie fighting games, sports games, halo multiplayer).

With respect to bang for the buck, I understand that it depends on the person's budget and gaming preferences. But I find it hard to believe that most teenagers or game players would pick a $1000 gaming PC over 3 next generation consoles. You dont think if you bought every single hit on those 3 consoles, that the number of great games wouldn't exceed those on a PC in any given year? Well that depends what type of games you like of course. Then again consider that you'll have to upgrade your PC probably at least twice over the lifetime of those consoles. But given that console games outsell pc games like 5:1, unfortunately the majority aren't into pc gaming like us because it is simply too expensive. Personally, I think a true gamer will own both consoles and PC games. But if I was on a budget and had to choose one, I'd pick consoles simply due to the variety of games they offer at fraction of the hardware cost that PC gaming requires over the lifetime of those very consoles.



 

imported_Yonzie

Junior Member
Jan 20, 2005
11
0
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Ehh... The article disappeared while I was reading it (going to page 5), then I turned to this thread, and now the blog post is gone as well... WTF?!?
 

xtknight

Elite Member
Oct 15, 2004
12,974
0
71
He pulled it in fear of Microsoft or something...Kristopher Kubicki explains it in the comments of the Sun Dual-core Fire article.
 

Continuity27

Senior member
May 26, 2005
516
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Originally posted by: xtknight
He pulled it in fear of Microsoft or something...Kristopher Kubicki explains it in the comments of the Sun Dual-core Fire article.

We should probably stop talking about it for now then. ;)
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
3,003
126
I'm really not surprised. I mean who really expected these in-order processors to beat PC CPUs and still cost console prices?
 

PhlashFoto

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2003
3,893
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81
Is it just me or is the article pulled? I was in the middle of reading it and it is gone. I check the main page and its disappeared???

EDIT : I'm slow!! :p
 

Munky

Diamond Member
Feb 5, 2005
9,372
0
76
Damn, and I was just about to read the article... Anyone got a bootleg copy I can borrow ;) ?
 

Drayvn

Golden Member
Jun 23, 2004
1,008
0
0
Originally posted by: Continuity27
Originally posted by: Drayvn
Guys we better hide.

Microarse is gonna come down with the 'boys'!

:laugh: "Buy em out boys!" *thugs push over folding tables and computers*

And we click our mice as furiously as possible hoping something will happen :p

 

finbarqs

Diamond Member
Feb 16, 2005
3,617
2
81
someone paid anandtech to take the article out? take the article out!!!! now we know it's the truth!!!
 

fzaba

Member
Jun 15, 2004
173
0
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Please PM me the article anyone if you have it. I'll help pass it around for others to read if they ask for it....
 

sundev

Golden Member
Nov 2, 2004
1,092
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So the article was taken down because of "liability issues"? I don't get it. Someone puts an article on a website saying Xbox2 and PS3 suck. So what?
 

UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
25,579
10,265
136
Why don't Sony and MS just write their own game engine(s) for their own consoles and save developers a hell of a lot of trouble for 1st gen games? They should have internal developers working alongside the hardware engineers writing code as the system is developed. Then instead of just giving your 3rd-party licensees dev kits, hell just give them the fvcking game engine to boot (of course this only works for exclusive titles, but ensures the developer doesn't port it to another console!)