Would a 660ti in a console be more powerful & efficient than a 660ti in a PC?

[poohbear]

Hey all, i'm reading that the next gen consoles are'nt gonna have cutting edge hardware, something midrange along the lines of a 660ti, and of course that will limit graphics development for the next 7 years in gaming.

But my question is would a 660ti equivalent GPU in a console that's dedicated solely to graphics and integrated in the board along with the CPU & RAM be more powerful than a 660ti in a normal PC? I recall reading back when the xbox 360 was released how developers were saying 1gb of RAM on a console would be equal to 2-4gb of RAM on a PC because that RAM's sole purpose would be gaming, hence its much more efficient. Following that logic, the next gen consoles might indeed be more powerful than people are making them out to be despite their mid-range hardware. Would that be an accurate assessment?

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Short answer. Yes.


Long answer. A 4870 equivalent in a console will come close to a 660ti in a PC for overall experience.

 

[ShintaiDK]

A 660ti in a console will perform like a 660ti in a PC.

However with that said, the console is usually optimized in the best way for that performance limitations. While you would ahve to tweak manually on the PC. And perhaps directly lack the abilities to tweak it to the same settings.

 

[dn7309]

I would say yes since consoles are standard design there will be more optimization and consistency and no fragmentation, this assuming the game is develop by first party and exclusive to specific console.

 

[brandon888]

A 660ti in a console will perform like a 660ti in a PC.

However with that said, the console is usually optimized in the best way for that performance limitations. While you would ahve to tweak manually on the PC. And perhaps directly lack the abilities to tweak it to the same settings.

+111111111111111111111

they will perform same

 

[Insomniator]

Short answer. Yes.


Long answer. A 4870 equivalent in a console will come close to a 660ti in a PC for overall experience.

You completely made that answer up didn't you?

 

[Deders]

If the programmers could code specifically for the GPU without having to worry about compatibility issues with other hardware or API layers (bare to metal) then you would definitely see better performance and possibly more experimentation with what you can do.

 

[Magic Carpet]

If the programmers could code specifically for the GPU without having to worry about compatibility issues with other hardware or API layers (bare to metal) then you would definitely see better performance and possibly more experimentation with what you can do.

3dfx Glide was faaaast

 

[MrK6]

If the programmers could code specifically for the GPU without having to worry about compatibility issues with other hardware or API layers (bare to metal) then you would definitely see better performance and possibly more experimentation with what you can do.

Exactly. PC performance suffers because of all the overhead.

 

[zebrax2]

It would be the same since its the same hardware that would probably mean any optimization that you do to the console can also probably be applied to the PC.

 

[Red Hawk]

Theoretically, the power would be the same. Effectively, game developers would be able to get a lot more performance out of a console with a 660 Ti than a PC with a 660 Ti. This is because they can code directly to the hardware without worrying about the overhead involved in the hardware abstraction layer. You can't do that on a PC.

 

[Deders]

This is because they can code directly to the hardware without worrying about the overhead involved in the hardware abstraction layer. You can't do that on a PC.

You can but it wouldn't be compatible with other hardware, or directX.

 

[SPBHM]

just look at the PS3, the GPU is slower than a 7800GT...

even the HD 7770 would be amazing on a highly optimized, closed platform...

 

[Grooveriding]

It would be able to be used for efficiently in a console than it can be used in a PC. It's a pipe dream to think the Xbox 720 or PS4 will be shipping with a GPU that powerful though.

The Xbox 720 development machines are already in the wilds and some have been leaked and offered for sale. They contain an AMD GPU and leaks say it is about 7770 class performance. The PS4 will most likely wind up with the same sort of hardware levels as the 720.

Console makers are not going to see machines that cost $800 to make for $400 again this time up. A 7770 level of performance will be enough to push native 1080p @60fps with graphics settings that will still be appreciably better than current consoles, but garbage compared to where PCs were five years ago...

 

[Red Hawk]

Yeah, after the huge uphill march that Sony and Microsoft did in order to make the 360 and PS3 profitable by themselves, we're not going to see anywhere near GK104 or Tahiti levels of performance. Hopefully GK107 or Cape Verde level.

 

[poohbear]

Exactly. PC performance suffers because of all the overhead.

yes that's what i was thinking, efficiency wise and optimization wise if the hardware is the same for that one system developers have a much easier time optimizing for it! So a 660ti in a console is NOT the same as a 660ti in a PC simply because its much more efficient and hence will yield greater performance.

 

[Eureka]

Well, you're not using the terminology correctly. Powerful and efficiency are metrics based on the design of the hardware. The 650ti in a PC is going to be the same chip as the 650ti in a console. In that case, they are both just as powerful and just as efficient. The difference is that on the PC, more of the processing power has gone into working overhead instead of game code.

Efficiency is typically determined by work/power in. Technically, both cards at 100% are doing the same amount of work using the same amount of power. It's just that one will be running optimized code, the other will not.

 

[greenhawk]

all hardware equal, I expect the dedicated coding to give the console a small advantage, which will be eaten up by newer hardware after a short period of time.

That being said, being a item that is trying to be better than it's predicessors, I suspect it is more likly the laptop/mobile version of the GPU that will be used, which means similar name, different hardware. So most likly slower vs the PC version.

I suspect the next consoles will not be aiming for that cheaper hardware / make the difference up in software approach they have been using. Add in people expectations and price points, I expected a more humble hardware at release.

What I will be looking out for is features that means the device can be upgraded as people buy "add ons", so extra ram and drive space and connectors for more devices.

time will tell.

 

[BrightCandle]

Consoles do get more graphical fidelity out of their hardware than the average PC, but its not because the overhead on a PC is massive. There is no direct to hardware interface anymore, all games use an api to talk to the hardware. So while a console doesn't need drivers in the same way it still has a software interface to the hardware.

What consoles do have however is complete knowledge of the performance of the platform. That allows them to optimise the game such that it performs consistently. There is no competition where one card has higher memory bandwidth and the other has high post processing performance to contend with. If its faster on your test console its faster on the customers as well. That means when trading off how to achieve an effect you can balance the usage with full knowledge.

That full knowledge is worth quite a lot of graphics fidelity, potentially as much as 2x the performance. But a console will only ever get entry level hardware so it has never competed with PCs of the day and likely never will.

 

[Erenhardt]

Console's GPUs are only based on desktop GPUs. PS3 has GPU based on nvidia 7800 G70 chip. But it is only based on that. They do their magic and boom...
RSX is much faster than 7800GT

 

[poohbear]

Well, you're not using the terminology correctly. Powerful and efficiency are metrics based on the design of the hardware. The 650ti in a PC is going to be the same chip as the 650ti in a console. In that case, they are both just as powerful and just as efficient. The difference is that on the PC, more of the processing power has gone into working overhead instead of game code.

Efficiency is typically determined by work/power in. Technically, both cards at 100% are doing the same amount of work using the same amount of power. It's just that one will be running optimized code, the other will not.

sure, so because of that efficiency it can do more, hence what i mean when i say its more "powerful", meaning it can do more because it lacks that overhead and compatibility issues that we find on a PC.

That full knowledge is worth quite a lot of graphics fidelity, potentially as much as 2x the performance. But a console will only ever get entry level hardware so it has never competed with PCs of the day and likely never will.

QFT. That's what i was getting at. So if it has a 660ti class video card with DX11 the potential for photo realistic graphics is there.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

At first they will be the same, later on as developers learn to use the hardware more effectively the 660 Ti in the console will look better running the same game on a 660 Ti in the PC.

Look at the 7800 GTX in the PS3. It can run games that a 7800 GTX in a PC isn't fast enough to run. That is because at this point they are coding games for the hardware and not having to code for many different configurations as they do on the PC. The advantage that consoles have is due to the fact that the hardware never changes and they know each game will run the same on any PS3 ever made.

 

[lehtv]

sure, so because of that efficiency it can do more, hence what i mean when i say its more "powerful", meaning it can do more because it lacks that overhead and compatibility issues that we find on a PC.

I believe that Eureka's point was that it is NOT actually doing anything more on a console than on PC. It's not being more powerful. Just that the optimized code allows for the SAME amount of work to translate into more frames per second.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that the many DirectX draw calls and other API calls, plus the intermediary driver layer, all take a lot of CPU time on the PC. If this could be eliminate, with a "thinner" driver layer, or direct-to-the-metal coding, then the console could easily make that GPU more efficient for gaming.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I'll agree with everyone else, and add:

Since most titles use a shared engine like Unreal, the engine creator can spend a lot more time optimizing the GPU code for the quirks and features of the single GPU that they need to support for the platform.

The PC version of Unreal would most likely have much more generic "nvidia 6xxx" or even just "nvidia" code that tries to get decent performance out of a family of cards, that would include different speeds, different amounts of RAM, etc. and it would be talking to the card indirectly through DirectX.

The PC engine design also needs to scale up and down for a variety of PC combinations of CPU, RAM, disk speed.