XBOX 360 and TDU

[Things change I've changed]

I agree with dirtydog to a point. A consistant smooth framerate does impact the gameplay for me. I do not care if it's 30 or 60fps locked, though obviously 60fps looks better for a racer, but it seems as though the 360 isn't up to running at 720p while chucking out high quality scenes and models at 60fps without jerking, so it's 30fps most of the time. I don't really have framerate issues with TDU, but I did with NFS:C, I just had to get that for the PC in the end, as my PC can run it far smoother than my 360 can, which is a shame, as I don't run Windows...

I'm sorry but that's rubbish, I wish people would stop blameing the console and start blaming the developers, if the 360 can run GOW perfectly fine and yet have frame rate issues with NFSC which quite frankly has poor graphics then does'nt the tell you something, look at HonyHawks for example, reviewers have said that on the PS3 version the frame rate drops right down to around 15fps sometimes, I'm not even a fan of Sony but I know for fact that it can run that game much better than that.

 

[LadFromWales]

It may be rubbish to you, but the fact remains that a year (of release) has gone by, and dev's had had the information required to write games much longer than this, yet games are still not up to the expectations of the hardware.

It may be the developers fault that they are not coding each and every game to work as efficiently as possible with the 360, and then spending an equal amount of time making it work efficiently on the PS3 (and the Wii etc). Is the 360 really that hard to write software for? I know the CPU can only execute tasks in-order, and that there is a chunk of on-die framebuffer memory on the GPU for 'free anti-alais'. I would have thought that developers would be coding with these shortfalls in mind by now.

Unfortunately they aren't, so for the timebeing, regular PC's with less processing power will be capable of graphics equal and exceeding the 360's current abilities, due to the PC's ability to execute tasks out-of-order.

Sounds like Gears of War is an exception to this rule, coded with these shortfalls in mind. I've not played it yet, so I'll leave my conclusion until I've played it

 

[Hedge]

Buy yourself Fight Night 3 too... that should impress you graphically. and its damn fun!

 

[dirtydog]

It may be rubbish to you, but the fact remains that a year (of release) has gone by, and dev's had had the information required to write games much longer than this, yet games are still not up to the expectations of the hardware.

It may be the developers fault that they are not coding each and every game to work as efficiently as possible with the 360, and then spending an equal amount of time making it work efficiently on the PS3 (and the Wii etc). Is the 360 really that hard to write software for? I know the CPU can only execute tasks in-order, and that there is a chunk of on-die framebuffer memory on the GPU for 'free anti-alais'. I would have thought that developers would be coding with these shortfalls in mind by now.

Unfortunately they aren't, so for the timebeing, regular PC's with less processing power will be capable of graphics equal and exceeding the 360's current abilities, due to the PC's ability to execute tasks out-of-order.

Sounds like Gears of War is an exception to this rule, coded with these shortfalls in mind. I've not played it yet, so I'll leave my conclusion until I've played it

I wonder if there is something to that. I seem to remember reading that x86 processors are tolerant of less-than-perfect code whereas for ppc CPUs it needs to be coded perfectly for performance to be acceptable. I read that in relation to Mac OS X on PPC vs x86 but the same principle presumably applies to the Xbox360 which is PPC based.

I wonder then if 360 games will continue to have performance issues throughout the console's lifespan.

 

[LadFromWales]

Regular PPC processors are out-of-order, the PPC core on the 360 is stripped of its out-of-order capabilities, to save costs I'd imagine.

For the 360, it means that the program it's running needs to be written with this 'flaw' in mind, to maximise efficiency.

Normal processors use a queueing system to organise threads more efficiently, the 360's stripped PPC cores are incapable of this, and just process the data as it comes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Order_execution is a good read

 

[dirtydog]

So the 360's CPU is quite crippled compared to an x86 chip of the same clock speed by the sounds of it. Or even a regular PPC chip.

 

[Metalface Mark]

When it came out i thought it ran a bit jerky in places, but i put it on last weekend and it ran much better, i dont know if it has been updates, or the fact im running at 1080i instead of 720p now instead.

 

[Spinal2k2]

It may be rubbish to you, but the fact remains that a year (of release) has gone by, and dev's had had the information required to write games much longer than this, yet games are still not up to the expectations of the hardware.

It may be the developers fault that they are not coding each and every game to work as efficiently as possible with the 360, and then spending an equal amount of time making it work efficiently on the PS3 (and the Wii etc). Is the 360 really that hard to write software for? I know the CPU can only execute tasks in-order, and that there is a chunk of on-die framebuffer memory on the GPU for 'free anti-alais'. I would have thought that developers would be coding with these shortfalls in mind by now.

Unfortunately they aren't, so for the timebeing, regular PC's with less processing power will be capable of graphics equal and exceeding the 360's current abilities, due to the PC's ability to execute tasks out-of-order.

Sounds like Gears of War is an exception to this rule, coded with these shortfalls in mind. I've not played it yet, so I'll leave my conclusion until I've played it

Year still isnt really that long, remember that alotho companies may release quite a few games in a year they wont all be by the same programmers. 1 year isnt really that long when you think about it - look at the PS1 and PS2 as an example and how over the years the games on the same system improved.

 

[djjuk]

When it came out i thought it ran a bit jerky in places, but i put it on last weekend and it ran much better, i dont know if it has been updates, or the fact im running at 1080i instead of 720p now instead.

Any reason why you changed to 1080i?

Still can't decide which looks\runs best

 

[Things change I've changed]

Agreed, 1 year is nothing, look at the PC for example, I can name hundreds of games that have ran poorly due to bad codeing and some of these games were made by people that have been developing games for the PC for over a decade, yet be don't all start blaming the hardware then do we, a few games run with 'slight' frame rate drops on the 360 and everyone blames the hardware, If there is just 'one' game on the 360 that runs smooth and has great graphics then that is proof enough that the console is fine, going back to the PC look at all of the Unreal Tournament games, Max Payne's, etc, these developers pulled thiers fingers out thier back side and proved that a fairly low spec pc could run graphically pleasing games fine, I'm sorry but I blame developers all they way, if one company can produce a game that runs well with nice graphics then thier is no reason why anyone else can't,

also the 360 has had no competition for the last year so as long as the games are produced at a playable standerd that 95% of people will accept then why should they care, why are they going to spend thousands/millions in keeping a game in development for longer tweeking it just to please the 5% of us tech heads out there that actually notice a frame rate drop and that a game does'nt have anti-ailising, thats just bad for business, that aside now the PS3 is on the scene and Microsoft are starting to have some direct competition you can already see some 360 games developers changing thier ways, Microsoft have already updated thier console to support 1080p and what with Sony keep going on about how all there games are 'supposed' to be running @ 60 fps 360 developers are already saying saying that some of thier new releases will be capped at 60 fps also so we know they can do it and tbh they could have proberbly done it from day one.

 

[LadFromWales]

dirtydog, just so you know, the PS3's CPU is held back similarly, by being in-order, and by only having one core. It's already been shown that the 360 is capable of graphics exceeding the PS3 which is nice, but I guess we'll have to wait a while to see what happens