How can Xbox360's still be so powerful?

Jango

Jango

Jango

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Witney, Oxfordshire
What is completely beyond me is how the Xbox360's hardware is almost 5 years old and yet it can still play games with excellent graphics without low FPS.:confused:

A PC that has 5 year old hardware would surely never play new games with good graphics and FPS.

Apparently the Xbox360 will last for years from now, but my computer (which can play Modern Warfare 2 on highest settings + good FPS) will probably only last another couple of years, which does annoy me as us PC gamers have to update our systems every 3-4 years (costing hundreds of pounds). While an Xbox360 gamer can just spend £100-200 then be sorted for their gaming...:(

Is PC gaming really worth the extra hundreds of pounds? (I do prefer PC gaming very much)
 
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Because it uses a stripped down operating system and specialised hardware that can only run games with DX9. It's only a 3GHz Tri-Core... i'm sure your computer would last that long if you ran games like that, and had no way of looking at framerates (which if you ask me people are to obsessed over these days).
 
because xbox 360 games are specifically written to work on their exact hardware and not to scale well with lots of different hardware like pc versions of games.

when i had the battlefield bad company 2 beta running on my ps3 and pc side by side the difference in graphical quality was very apparent in the pc's favour.
 
I don't completely look at framerates, as long as the gameplay is smooth, then I am happy.

So how would my PC be able to last another 3-4 years? It only has a 2.33Ghz Core 2 Duo processor... :(

I know that PC graphics are much better than console graphics. :) But I know that in 3 years time the consoles will have much better graphics than my current PC, which is what really irritates me.
 
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try to get a second hand core2quad and it would breath some more life into your pc, if you overclocked it to over 3ghz then it would do you another year or more of gaming with a 5770 or similar gfx card.
in a couple of years a high end pc game will be so far ahead of what an xbox 360 or ps3 can produce that it would be like comparing xbox or ps2 games against them now.
 
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Because the 360 renders games at stupidly low resolutions (like COD4 at 1024x600), which is hardly HD gaming.
 
Here are the specs of my PC:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHz processor
4GB DDR2 RAM
GeForce GTX 260 gfx card
Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard

Here are the details on my PSU sticker:


(H.E.C) HIGH-QUALITY EVOLUTION COMMITMENT

HEC-550TD-PTE
__________________________________________________ _______
AC INPUT:..|...230Vac 50Hz 7A................................................ .|
__________|_______________________________________ _______|
DC OUTPUT:|.+3.3V..|..+5V..|...+12V1..|..+12V2.|..-12V...|..+5Vsb.|
__________|_______|______|________|_______|_______ |_______|
MAX.A:......|..30A....|.38A....|....18A....|..17A. ...|...0.3A..|...2A.....|
__________|_______|______|________|_______|_______ |_______|
....+5V8+3.3V COMBINED 185W...........TOTAL OUTPUT 550W..........|
__________________________________________________ _______|



I doubt that my PSU and motherboard would me any good for overclocking, I am thinking of getting a Q6600.
 
according to this link posted in another thread they used to make antec psu's so it may be decent - http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDArticles&op=Story&ndar_id=24

i've no experience of that asus motherboard so can't comment on how it will overclock i'm afraid, but your gtx 260 is far more powerful than the xbox 360 or ps3 gpu's which i believe are radeon x1800 (xbox 360) and nvidia 7800 (ps3) based.
 
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Hmm, so I suppose that all I need to do is just fork out £200-250 and I could get a better mobo, PSU, a Core 2 Quad and a decent cooler then overclock it. :)

In a few years I could be laughing in the faces of console gamers. ;)
 
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Jango said:
Is PC gaming really worth the extra hundreds of pounds? (I do prefer PC gaming very much)
Click to expand...

You answered your own question there!

It absolutely depends on what you value. Financially the PC will always struggle to compete with consoles. The flexibility of the PC platform generally, the ability to pick and choose settings to suit your system/preferences and of course, the ability to use a keyboard/mouse in FPS games are certainly worth the extra for me.

My worry is that PC games will gradually disappear in favour of console games. FPS games are already coming out as bad ports of console versions. The MMORPGs are probably the last great bastion of PC gaming.
 
Yeah, because so many people play popular games on consoles I guess, and no one wants the hassle of upgrading etc.

Out of all the people who I know have Modern Warfare 2, only 1 or 2 have it on PC and around 20+ have it on Xbox360...

Although, I don't see why they would want to stop making the popular FPS games for PC as it would **** so many people off (including myself of course) and the PC components market would rapidly fall as there wouldn't be as much point in gamers needing to upgrade their systems anymore and purchase new components if they did so.
 
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Jango said:
What is completely beyond me is how the Xbox360's hardware is almost 5 years old
Click to expand...

It isn't, In the last 5 years there has been 5 Different Motherboards, 4 different optical drives, 3 or 4 different power supply's, 3 different fans, various different heatsinks etc etc
 
Xbox has no anti-aliasing and low resolutions.
For new games, example BC2, there are even more graphical features xbox's won't be able to use, in the form of DX11 and HBAO.
 
xbox is ok on a big telly, pc gamers have had high res for years now, not enough players in a game on the 360, besides, if you have a decent pc, one minute you can be encoding a video, next minute your in a game with lots of players, for that game there can be user developed mods/maps, dedicated servers (cod mw2 for example, bloody joke), ive tried both the 360 and the ps3, theyre a poor substitute for a good pc.
 
OPTIMISATION !!! Xbox developers have a large market = large budget when compared to PCs.. so they have the budget and teams available to performance tweak the software
 
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