Question: Why is it that consoles can run games that more powerful PCs cant?

[ibex333]

Correct me if I am wrong, and I may be.... But aren't the current gen video cards by far more powerful than the GPU inside the xbox?

If so, why is it that the xbox can run so many modern games so damn well, when more powerful PCs cant? I heard something about how the consoles are "designed" for gaming and PCs are not. But that must be BS. Modern PCs have by far more power in every way. More ram, better video, cpu, etc... so what gives?

Maybe it's that the game devs are "optimizing" console games so they can run well on consoles? If so, why is it that PC games are not being optimized so well?

For example... GTA IV requires a monster of a PC to run well at high settings but a 360 can run it butter smooth with no issues. Sure it looks somewhat worse, but it runs just fine, and it will run on a big screen TV too, when the PC version will require a lot more to run on a monitor of the same size.

What is it about consoles that makes them so good at running modern games with mediocre hardware, and why is it that we cant have that something inside our PCs?

 

[aka1nas]

Consoles run games at ~1366x768, often w/o much AA or AF. Your GPU could run games really well too if you wanted to be stuck with that res.

 

[v8envy]

Try running modern games at 720p resolution with no FSAA and suddenly gaming PC requirements crash to the ground, hardware wise. That's the difference (plus the OS overhead), mainly. PC users expect to run at higher resolution with higher quality rendering options. When you do more work, it takes more time.

A "big screen" like my 65" has a top resolution of 1920x1080 if running at 1080p, and only 1280x720 if running at 720p. Even extreme budget machines can handle GTA IV at 1280x720 with low or medium quality rendering settings (read: $50 c2d, $75 4770 or 4850). Hook that up to a bigscreen TV and suddenly it's working exactly like the console version.

 

[AzN]

You put up a bad example. GTA4 is cpu dependent not GPU dependent.

 

[jimhsu]

Originally posted by: ibex333
.. Sure it looks somewhat worse, but it runs just fine, ..

That's your reason right there. Console-optimized games typically have:
1. Smaller textures and poly counts
2. Less use of advanced shader effects (simple things like reflection to complicated things like Fresnel reflections, caustics, and sub-surface scattering)
3. Lower resolution, no AA, no AF (your comparatively poor TV partly compensates for the lack of AA)
4. No operating system/background overhead

All that adds up to a significant performance improvement even over graphics hardware 10x as powerful. The beauty is how to optimize for performance while not compromising quality "too much".

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Originally posted by: v8envy
Try running modern games at 720p resolution with no FSAA and suddenly gaming PC requirements crash to the ground, hardware wise. That's the difference (plus the OS overhead), mainly. PC users expect to run at higher resolution with higher quality rendering options. When you do more work, it takes more time.

This.

Also, games are hardly ever ran in 1080P on consoles. It's just not actually capable of it. Generally it's just 640 and then pixel doubled with a little bit of AA.

 

[Elias824]

There is a reason why they dont have games like crysis on consoles

 

[Qbah]

What the others have said Consoles run at a low resolution without high details (the mode is usually 720p or less). Texture resolution, drawing distance and all that is substantially lowered on a console. Also no AA or AF.

Also, it's a lot easier to optimize your code for a console, as each and every one is the same. No driver issues either.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: Qbah
What the others have said Consoles run at a low resolution without high details (the mode is usually 720p or less). Texture resolution, drawing distance and all that is substantially lowered on a console. Also no AA or AF.

Also, it's a lot easier to optimize your code for a console, as each and every one is the same. No driver issues either.

That's the real reason. 99% of games today are written for the consoles and then just adapted ("ported") to run on PCs. The game devs know the hardware very well and can use all sorts of tricks to optimize for that exact hardware - something they cannot even begin to do for the PC market due to how different systems are.

Which is also why games are very slow to adapt to new standards. Even today, three years after DX10 was launched, there are very few DX10-only titles. Nearly everything out has both DX9 and DX10 support so that everyone with older hardware (or has not migrated to Vista) can still enjoy the games.

 

[vj8usa]

Originally posted by: Denithor
The game devs know the hardware very well and can use all sorts of tricks to optimize for that exact hardware - something they cannot even begin to do for the PC market due to how different systems are.

Exactly. Look at games from various stages of a console's life. As time goes on, better looking games come out even though the hardware is identical.

Also, some games are just ported poorly.

 

[Stoneburner]

Batman Arkham asylum runs and looks better on my HTPC than xbox

 

[TheSlamma]

That new Batman game runs like a dream on my junkie 8600GTS..

I'd love to see the PS3 run Crysis at 1920X1200 4XAA 8XAF

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: TheSlamma
That new Batman game runs like a dream on my junkie 8600GTS..

I'd love to see the PS3 run Crysis at 1920X1200 4XAA 8XAF

at what? 1024x768 and no physx maybe. thats not the stuff I would call dreamy...

 

[crisium]

Most console games are actually slightly less than 720P upscaled. They really don't look that great. When you consider that the PS3 basically has a GeForce 7900 family card it is very impressive. But even $99 video cards like my Radeon 4850 will make any PC game look much better than the console version.

 

[toyota]

also a lot of console games do have framerate issues. I know I have seen it mentioned during game reviews going all the way back to Quake 4 on the 360.

 

[plonk420]

because the 360 nor (my) ps3 will run many games AND look good at 1920x1080 @ 8xAA, 16xAniso

TBH, though, you won't really notice it during an intense game. it's just something you can smile at to yourself, knowing that you're better than consoles in that regard.

Shift 1 2 (thankfully i only plan on using 720p except for screenshots)
L4D 1 2
SFIV 1 2



can either aforementioned console do that?

 

[ibex333]

Thanks for the replies... What I still don't get is why doesn't console performance suffer as the resolution increases? I don't own a console but from what I saw and heard a console game will run just as good on a small TV as it will on a big one.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: ibex333
Thanks for the replies... What I still don't get is why doesn't console performance suffer as the resolution increases? I don't own a console but from what I saw and heard a console game will run just as good on a small TV as it will on a big one.

It's just being scaled (ie. upscaling) most likely and the resolution itself is not changing?

 

[plonk420]

-most likely. is. very few games run at native, and if they do, they've made sacrifices.

 

[alcoholbob]

As said previously, Operating System has a huge overhead. Windows is making hundreds of requests/reads/writes nonstop in the background, not to mention every device and background application requires the CPU's attention. Computers just happen to RUN games because of its modular nature, you can add discrete hardware, but its not designed from the ground up as a gaming platform.

A pentium 4D and a 7800GTX on a PC, even though it has similar performance characteristics, is not going to run half as fast as a console due to the OS dragging it down.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: ibex333
Thanks for the replies... What I still don't get is why doesn't console performance suffer as the resolution increases? I don't own a console but from what I saw and heard a console game will run just as good on a small TV as it will on a big one.

Upscaling, just like with a 480-line DVD.

The real resolution is as low as 540 lines, and almost never any higher than 720p, but that low-resolution image is then upscaled to 1080.

So again, set your PC's resolution to 800x600 or 1024x768 and see how blazingly fast even a $100 video card runs.

 

[ibex333]

This might be a dumb question but are there any video cards capable of upscaling?

 

[Itchrelief]

Originally posted by: ibex333
This might be a dumb question but are there any video cards capable of upscaling?

Upscaling isn't going to magically make a 640x480 image look identical to a 1600x1200 image.

The TV lets you use lower resolutions as they tend to be so big and you sit so far away from them.

Hook up your video card to a huge TV.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Originally posted by: ibex333
Thanks for the replies... What I still don't get is why doesn't console performance suffer as the resolution increases? I don't own a console but from what I saw and heard a console game will run just as good on a small TV as it will on a big one.

Performance can and does suffer (or improve) pending a few settings.

Perfect Dark on the N64 had options for hi-res and widescreen. Changing these settings definitely affected performance. It was noticeable because even at the most basic (lowest) settings, Perfect Dark was pushing the N64 extremely hard.

Most games don't really do that. A lot of times games are locked or capped at certain framerates, between 30 and 60. So, for example, if the developer locks a game at certain framerate you probably won't be able to tell any performance difference if you run the game at a lower resolution since the framerate is capped. And, of course, a lot of games are just upscaled like previously mentioned. They aren't running at native 1080p.

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: Azn
You put up a bad example. GTA4 is cpu dependent not GPU dependent.

its actually a little bit of both. GTA4 certainly needs a decent quad core for best results but once you have that the gpu can make a fairly big difference. a 4850 1gb is about the lowest I would want to go in GTA4 and at 1920 even that isnt really enough. http://www.pcgameshardware.com...efits/Practice/?page=3