How can Xbox360's still be so powerful?

[xBLiNG]

I see it as, everybody needs a PC, if you take a reasonably nice prebuilt; Quad core, 4gb RAM ect and throw in a decent PSU at about £50 and a 5770 at £125, it works out cheaper than a 360 or a PS3.

Ok there are holes in the idea (people with laptops ect) but you get my drift, the parts of a PC that make it capable of gaming don't come to much if someone has a reasonable desktop.

 

[snowdog]

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.

Hahahaha, sorry, but that's your opinion, the framerates on some games are abysmal and the graphics are quite rubbish...

However, if you feel the need to ask if pc gaming is worth it, then it probably isn't for you.

To be fair though, console gaming isn't that much cheaper (if at all), you can keep your pc up to date for 35€ ( the price of 1 year xbox live gold) per year provided you pick your bits well and sell the old ones. And you'll probably buy cheaper games... The difference is a pc requires attention whereas your xbox doesn't.

I must admit to getting pretty sick of all this PC's are to expensive Baloney.
Yes they are expensive if you want to buy retail & have the latest hardware. If you are prepared to buy 2nd hand & choose New hardware carefully they are not expensive at all even compared to a 360 + extras + games.

I do Not want to get into a Flame war & Trust that readers will not bother going into one to try to convince me of this Untruth.

I agree...

 

[Tiamat21]

The PS3 will long out live that of the Xbox360.
Because the 360 already has hit its pinacle of hardware (am saying this including the Natal Project), so realy its not powerful at all. its "HD" gaming isn't HD at all. The games you play are only on a DVD no blu ray or anything of that sort, its just poor grade upscaling. And even on this, its still overheats and melts its own board. So its rubbish and not even that powerful.
So really, its not powerful at all.
What you have now, is what your stuck with, with a xbox.
The ps3 on the otherhand, is a blu-ray player, so that is what the title should be changed to "why is the ps3 so powerful"

 

[xBLiNG]

The PS3 will long out live that of the Xbox360.
Because the 360 already has hit its pinacle of hardware (am saying this including the Natal Project), so realy its not powerful at all. its "HD" gaming isn't HD at all. The games you play are only on a DVD no blu ray or anything of that sort, its just poor grade upscaling. And even on this, its still overheats and melts its own board. So its rubbish and not even that powerful.
So really, its not powerful at all.
What you have now, is what your stuck with, with a xbox.
The ps3 on the otherhand, is a blu-ray player, so that is what the title should be changed to "why is the ps3 so powerful"

Yeah, for ages it was a better idea to buy a PS3 than a standalone blu-ray player, not even getting into the fact it plays games

 

[IKMS]

Yeah, for ages it was a better idea to buy a PS3 than a standalone blu-ray player, not even getting into the fact it plays games

When the PS3 came out it was 400 pounds, and bluray players were 800!

I have a PS3 but it's worse than a PC in every way (except for the price).

 

[builder22]

I have demos of loads of games on pc and ps3, even some full games on each and apart from FPS (cos of the mouse and keyboard) I generally prefer the ps3 versions, the graphics are not as detailed on the ps3 but it just 'feels' better and more fun on the console somehow

 

[stifler]

If consoles started to use mouse and keyboards, dedi servers and their games had a MASSIVE price cut then i MIGHT consider using one.

Oh and came with a free t.v so me and the wife wouldn't argue about who's using the it.

 

[Lightnix]

The reason the 360 and PS3 can display seemingly comparitively high quality graphics is because developers use a lot of technical tricks and optimisations to make certain effects run faster. Another reason is because their hardware is designed in a way that targets gaming, and yes that is a reason, because they incorporate features that often won't be in mainstream PC use for years (the 360's GPU is packed full of such goodies, like hardware tessellation (DX11) and direct memory write access (DX10), Cell could be argued to be such an example in itself, as could the 360's tri-core CPU - at least back in 2005 it could have).

Of course as stated, the consoles do have some severe fundamental issues, one of which is low memory bandwidth. Both consoles have around 25GB/s VRAM bandwidth on a 128-bit bus, which means it's very difficult to get a nice looking game running at above 720P, which is why most console games run at terrible resolutions.

 

[cupofchow]

The PS3 will long out live that of the Xbox360.
Because the 360 already has hit its pinacle of hardware (am saying this including the Natal Project), so realy its not powerful at all. its "HD" gaming isn't HD at all. The games you play are only on a DVD no blu ray or anything of that sort, its just poor grade upscaling. And even on this, its still overheats and melts its own board. So its rubbish and not even that powerful.
So really, its not powerful at all.
What you have now, is what your stuck with, with a xbox.
The ps3 on the otherhand, is a blu-ray player, so that is what the title should be changed to "why is the ps3 so powerful"

Have you played rainbowsix vegas 2 on them both (Xbox 360 & PS3? i have and quite frankly discusted with the effort on PS3.
I seen the game on my mates xbox 360 and it was like a new game, loads more detail much better lighting and the Xbox live is a far better online experience than on PSN.

Needless to say i got rid of the PS3 and got a Xbox 360 and have never looked back.

Oh and the graphics hardware on the Xbox (ATI x1800-x1900) is better than the PS3 (Nvidia 7800).

 

[kingwahwah]

Consoles will hold back graphics for next 3-5 years. Sony and MS have no plans for console upgrade they are losing money as it is. Developers can not resist console market (large, easy to please and short attention span). Games are now developed for console then PC unlike a few years ago e.g. battlefield series. But fingers crossed for BF3.

A good PC now should last years. My old 2007 rig as of last week (core 2 2.66/8800 ultra) was still playing new games at 1920*1200 in med-high settings. Unless theres a PC bais game that you adore maybe e.g. a new total war.

 

[mame]

The reason the 360 and PS3 can display seemingly comparitively high quality graphics is because developers use a lot of technical tricks and optimisations to make certain effects run faster. Another reason is because their hardware is designed in a way that targets gaming, and yes that is a reason, because they incorporate features that often won't be in mainstream PC use for years (the 360's GPU is packed full of such goodies, like hardware tessellation (DX11) and direct memory write access (DX10), Cell could be argued to be such an example in itself, as could the 360's tri-core CPU - at least back in 2005 it could have).

So.... that's in favour of consoles? Can't decide

 

[james.miller]

The PS3 will long out live that of the Xbox360.
Because the 360 already has hit its pinacle of hardware (am saying this including the Natal Project), so realy its not powerful at all. its "HD" gaming isn't HD at all. The games you play are only on a DVD no blu ray or anything of that sort, its just poor grade upscaling. And even on this, its still overheats and melts its own board. So its rubbish and not even that powerful.
So really, its not powerful at all.
What you have now, is what your stuck with, with a xbox.
The ps3 on the otherhand, is a blu-ray player, so that is what the title should be changed to "why is the ps3 so powerful"

HAAHAHAHAHA.

The reason the 360 and PS3 can display seemingly comparitively high quality graphics is because developers use a lot of technical tricks and optimisations to make certain effects run faster. Another reason is because their hardware is designed in a way that targets gaming, and yes that is a reason, because they incorporate features that often won't be in mainstream PC use for years (the 360's GPU is packed full of such goodies, like hardware tessellation (DX11).

Hardware tessellation isnt exclusively a dx11 feature - even the radeon 8500's had it.

 

[xBLiNG]

So.... that's in favour of consoles? Can't decide

I don't see why he has to be on one side or the other, fact is PC is more powerful and has more of a use, but it is being held back by consoles, as they are the mainstream, people see PC gaming as expensive, nerdy, OTT ect. But both defiantly have their strong points. With a console you have less to worry about as far as upgrades go and so on.

 

[EsaT]

The ps3 on the otherhand, is a blu-ray player, so that is what the title should be changed to "why is the ps3 so powerful"

You forgot to conclude sentence: that Sony suddenly found itself in need to get actual GPU because that second coming off Jesus-Cell wasn't powerful enough to handle the number crunching of graphics like first hyped.

Actually if we look future potential X360's 512MB common memory allows more flexibility than PS3's fixed 256MB general memory and 256MB graphic memory. (memory is one of the things in short supply in consoles)

Another reason is because their hardware is designed in a way that targets gaming, and yes that is a reason, because they incorporate features that often won't be in mainstream PC use for years (the 360's GPU is packed full of such goodies, like hardware tessellation (DX11)

Ati has been messing with tesselation since Radeon 9700...

This is a very interesting article....
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/ps3/2009/12/14/is-console-gaming-dying/1
Raises some good points. The current console business model is unsustainable.

Even though console game sales are lot higher than PC games there are very good points in that.

If they want to make new console in any way comparable to capabilities of PCs manufacturing costs will be more like that of PC which would leave two choises:
- Trying to price it somewhere near real costs which would surely make huge number of people wonder why they have to buy again another closed box you can't upgrade and with very limited usage options compared to its price.
- Price it way below costs causing major losses (Sony took such from PS3 because hardware simply cost so much to make) trusting to manufacturing costs dropping enough in few years and have high license costs for taking money from sales of games which drives up developer costs and hinders especially those new/small/independent game developers who could make those startling new games differing from generic burger/sequel games.

 

[thepigf@rmer]

I would think programmers and coders who work on the 360 and/or PS3 will always surprise us with new tricks they can find, so i doubt if the 360 has reached it's limit just yet and i doubt anyone can even say when it will...even though it's not really doing a bad job right now.

It's like back in the day of the 8Bit computers, Speccy, Commodore...etc these all had a very long life due to new techniques in programming found by coders experimenting, whereas in programming terms it's most likely a tad easier to work with PCs as the mojority of games are programmed using the newest and fasted tecnology, whatever the latest version of DirectX is plus the multitude of game engines that are available....then remove abit of eye candy to make it run on lower spec machines.

Before anyone says i'm biased in any way shape or form, i'm not, I own a PC (Quad 9550 & 2x4890's) PS3, Wii and i have plenty of old consoles boxed in the cupbaord, maybe one day these years of gaming will pay off and my collection will be worth a small fortune.

I do have my preferred machine....which at the moment is the 360, but thats mainly due to the acheivements. A great little addition to get a little extra value from your games in my opinion, plus i prefer the 360 pad to the PS3's.

To be fair we're all abit spoilt for choice at the mo, lets all get along and enjoy the ride

 

[capriboy1978]

Interesting thread.

I built a reasonably well specced i7 rig last fall with the intention of using it to game on when it wasn't earning money. I haven't gamed seriosly on a pc for many a year, indeed I gamed much more on my a1200 030 than I ever did on a pc.

I've had consoles since the atari 2600 - it wasn't unitil the PS that I started to focus more on console gaming than amiga/pc. I natrually went to the ps2 and jumped ships initilly to the 360 at launch, getting a ps3 a couple of years later.

Aside from using a KB and mouse again (i'm getting there!) i'm still struggling to get into pc gaming. Why? Maybe it's just me.... There's something very attractive about sitting in the lounge in front of a 46" 1080p LCD and within a couple of minutes chainsawing some American kid on GoW3. I've recently bught FO3, one of my favourite games of recent years, to play on the pc and yet I've put in so little time i'm only just out of megaton. Sure it looks very nice with all the whistles on using one of the 2 4870x2's I've had but something is still not there. I've sold both x2's and gone back to a g92 8800 (which still does an ok job at 1920 x 1200). I'd got some cash spare this month to get a dx11 part but am so non fussed with it i've bought a new notebook.

A little off OP topic but relevant I feel non the less. This gen of consoles are starting to do much more than game I worry for the pc die hard what the next gen will bring.... lots of money to improve the proccessing / gpu side of things but how much to add a wireless KB and mouse and a streamlined OS capable of browding the web effectively and running email / word etc.....

 

[haroon]

The biggest thing is how much the 360 costs in comparison to a pc that plays the game at similar output.It would cost you around £300-£400 to build a tower than can play most 360 ports at respectful frame rates.

 

[capriboy1978]

The biggest thing is how much the 360 costs in comparison to a pc that plays the game at similar output.It would cost you around £300-£400 to build a tower than can play most 360 ports at respectful frame rates.

this argument doesn't really stand up. Start up costs with the pc are exponentially higher but the difference is marginal over time.

 

[xBLiNG]

A little off OP topic but relevant I feel non the less. This gen of consoles are starting to do much more than game I worry for the pc die hard what the next gen will bring.... lots of money to improve the proccessing / gpu side of things but how much to add a wireless KB and mouse and a streamlined OS capable of browding the web effectively and running email / word etc.....

Agreed, I do a lot of browsing on my PS3, only reason I don't do all of on there is typing isn't as good, even with the attached keypad, but browsing forums with a controller is very comfortable.

 

[haroon]

this argument doesn't really stand up. Start up costs with the pc are exponentially higher but the difference is marginal over time.

Don't really understand what you mean,but at the time of launch till 4 years later the 360 is still the best option for games if you don't have a lot of money to spend on a gaming pc no matter how hard to try to justify it.

Also anyway there a lot of games you cant get on the pc that you can only get on consoles,i couldnt imagine just being satisfied with what's available on the pc,most of the best games i've enjoyed over the years are only on consoles (final fantasy x,shenmue,jak and daxter,tekken...list goes on and on).

And there are the pc only titles that are also very memorable like the sims,spore,black and white,homeworld.Overall though I'd say consoles do get the better range and variety of games,it really isn't just the fact you can output 1080p and 80fps.