Xbox 360 graphics

[melchy]

This thread is funny. All the people who love their 360s defending it to death.

The 360 is a powerful piece of kit, but to even consider it being able to beat a PC visually, & in general, is just ignorence of how the technology works.
The fact of the matter is that even now, the 360's theoretical graphical abilities are beaten with current gen gfx cards. Next gen will dwarf it.
Yes the 360 costs less. Yes developers can 'code to the metal' to get more out the 360, but at the end of the day, it is still limited in a lot of ways.
And yes, the PC does cost more. But it does FAR more. The 360 is a neutered media center, that plays games. A PC can do far more things. And thats why theres a price difference thats so big.

Exactly the same argument can be used in reverse for the PC. Graphics cards in PC's have so much untapped power but due to the non unified architecture its never achieved. The 360 has a much better chance of hitting its theoretical limits than any PC VGA card is likely to with the games being coded for the systems. The fact that a sub £300 console is chucking out visuals pretty much the same as a high spec pc should be seen as pretty amazing, but for some reason some PC owners seem very threatend by this. To be honest i dont actually care if the visuals are better than a high spec PC or not (this is all very subjective anyway), all i can say is that they are close enough to what my X1800XT 512Mb can produce, which makes the 360 quite an amazing little piece of technology on which i'll happily play games. I'll also happily play games on my PC. In fact i'll play games on pretty much anything, my Amiga's are still well used.

The 360 is designed foremost to play games and has some additional media capabilities. Why on earth people think gaming is somehow secondary to its media abilities is beyond me Its also not as if myself and many others dont have a reasonable or good spec PC to compaire the 360 to, we do so we should have a fairly reasonable impression of what it can do.

*edit* I though i'd also comment on Oblivion since it was mentioned earlier in the thread. I have both the 360 and PC versions and i've no problem at all saying that the 360 version looks better than the PC at similar resolutions. The 360 version supports both AA and HDR, something you have to choose either or on the PC, although AA and bloom on the PC isnt that disimilar. In my opinion Oblivion becomes pretty unplayable if you try to run it at much higher resolutions than 1280 x 1024 on my spec of machine (X1800XT, X2 3800+ @ 2500Mhz, 1Gb RAM), so the fact that the PC version may look better at higher res doesnt really matter as it isnt really playable.

 

[easyrider]

so the fact that the PC version may look better at higher res doesnt really matter as it isnt really playable.

on your PC maybe.

People are playing oblivion at higher resolutions with no problems.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

on your PC maybe.

People are playing oblivion at higher resolutions with no problems.

Theres also ppl with 2x 512mb 7800 GTX's in SLi getting about 25fps as well.

 

[BoomAM]

Long post Ahoy!

Exactly the same argument can be used in reverse for the PC. Graphics cards in PC's have so much untapped power but due to the non unified architecture its never achieved. The 360 has a much better chance of hitting its theoretical limits than any PC VGA card is likely to with the games being coded for the systems.

Your missing the point entirely there though.
I havnt said that the 360 cant hit its theoretical limit, nor did i say that PCs do hit that limit. Im saying that the pace that the graphics industry goes, and the speed that we see new game engines for the PC platform, means that we dont have to go anywhere near a gfx cards limit to provide visuals that put the 360 to shame.

The fact that a sub £300 console is chucking out visuals pretty much the same as a high spec pc should be seen as pretty amazing,

No not really. They are loss-leading on new technology. A few months down the line, and the 360 cant compete at all with a PC graphically.

but for some reason some PC owners seem very threatend by this.

Its no different to 360 owners, and then PS3 owners defending their precious console to the death is it?
No-ones said its a bad console. Nor have they said its underpowered. What they've said is the facts. That a console can never compete with a PC graphically for more than a few months.

The 360 is designed foremost to play games and has some additional media capabilities. Why on earth people think gaming is somehow secondary to its media abilities is beyond me

So your saying that games should come first, and other abilities later?
So why bother with a 360 when it doesnt have any good games on it, yet.

we do so we should have a fairly reasonable impression of what it can do.

But you dont though. None of you do. Nor will you ever do.
Your basically claiming that you fully understand the relationship between the theoretical performance of the hardware and the limits it imposes on the developers. Going off what you've seen in a few games and comparing is the most flawed comparison you can make.

*edit* I though i'd also comment on Oblivion since it was mentioned earlier in the thread. I have both the 360 and PC versions and i've no problem at all saying that the 360 version looks better than the PC at similar resolutions.

I'd say they look similar, but on the 360, anything past 20 virtual meters just blurs, where as the PC version does it further out, like 50m or something.
But thats due to memory constraints.
In all fairness though, Oblivion isnt the graphically impressive title that many would have you belive. On either platform.

The 360 version supports both AA and HDR, something you have to choose either or on the PC, although AA and bloom on the PC isnt that disimilar.

The option is there because developers must design a game for the lowest common denominator. If they designed the game for people who owned HDR capible hardware only, they'd be severly limiting their market.

Name a game on the 360 that looks as good as one of the top visually impressive games on the PC? There arnt any.
And by the time the 360 hits its theoretical limit, that limit will be so low compared to a PCs limit, that even a budget card on a PC will provide the same visuals. Without hittings its own 'limit'.

so the fact that the PC version may look better at higher res doesnt really matter as it isnt really playable.

At the moment.
Some systems run it very smoothly. While some of equal spec dont.
It appears to be X3 all over again, with inconsistant performance on the same hardware.

 

[Thing]

For the sake of argument let's say a 360 has the equivalent of a 1800XT under the hood.

It is a one-piece device. No variants or upgrades (other than a nonessential HDD). It's OS is as basic as they come.

This means that it's power is focussed on the game, allowing it to produce massively better graphics than a PC which must cater to thousands of variants and the OS running in the background.

The Xbox was a PC with a P3 and a Geforce 3. It's graphical power was a result of it's lack of deep OS as much as anything, freeing up the real power.

 

[BoomAM]

But the point is that a few months down the line, said 360 (X1800XT in your comparison), would be outperformed anyway, regardless of what extra the system has to do.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Its not equivalent to the x1800 though, its a bit better, i think its inbetween the x1800, and the x1900.

360's purely a games machine, where as the PC does games, but a whole host of other things as well which the 360 can't do.

 

[Thing]

But the point is that a few months down the line, said 360 (X1800XT in your comparison), would be outperformed anyway, regardless of what extra the system has to do.

Not really no. The Xbox was ahead of contemporary PC's for a year or two and even recently ran HL2 at fairly good levels.

From what I've seen the 360's processor is something of a weak link which will negatively impact it's performance.

As programmers familiarise themselves wih the system they will get better at squeezing every last drop from it. You can't do that with a PC beyond a certain (much shorter) point.

Either way, if I get one it will cost a similar amount to a Geforce 7900 GTX and be throwing out similar graphics. It won't cost anything like the amount a PC would but still be performing well graphically.

For me, increasingly these days I find graphics are a t a plateu where they don't matter as much. Everything beyond a certain point becomes gravy in a way.

(Note, I'm a Ninty fanboy so read that in how you will)/

EDIT - the PC does indeed multitask but to have one performing on a par with a 360 would cost something in the region of 1500 quid. I'll take that tradeoff.

(1500 quid was arbitrary BTW, doubtless you o/c mainiacs could do it for a fiver but you get my point right?)

 

[melchy]

But the point is that a few months down the line, said 360 (X1800XT in your comparison), would be outperformed anyway, regardless of what extra the system has to do.

Im not going to try and respond to everything you mention in your other post. As i said, its all very subjective. You've said theres no good games on the 360 so theres no reason at the moment to get one, i'd argue that there is at least 6 excellent games. I'd say PGR3 looks better than any racing game i've seen on the PC. I'd say DOA4 and Fight Night Round 3 are pretty much up there graphically with anything i've seen that the PC can do. Single card options at the moment in the PC arent miles ahead of the 360 in terms of graphical power and the simple truth of the matter is that we wont see the true power of the 360 graphics abilities until they start targetting the 48 unified pipes to specific tasks (we'll see this type of architecture in PC cards in time for Vista). You mention improving game engines on the PC will give better graphics than the 360 can manage. The same will occur on the 360, with a 360 game probably being one of the first games to market to use the Unreal 3 engine.

You also misunderstood my point about compairing the 360 and PC, i wasnt talking about theoretical limits or how the hardware works, i was talking about what i can see with my own eyes with a reasonably high spec pc and a 360 running side by side. Im in a good position to compaire the visuals in games on both platforms. Again though its very subjective, what i think is better others wont and so on.

I've played Oblivion through on the 360 and was playing only a short while ago on my PC, im sorry but in my opinion the 360 version is superior, although i entirely agree that its not the most visually stunning game ever and that it may very well be down to more optimisation on one platform. I think the FPS's are the worst looking games on the 360 and for once its almost a reverse situation with the 360 getting a port of a PC game rather than a console port to pc, so again i think lack of optimisation is in play a little there as well.

So effectively what is being said at the moment is that people think that an X1900 should just about beat the 360, so you upgrade to one of those for £300ish. You then upgrade to an X2000 in 6 months for another £300ish. Developers get a bit more to grips with the 360, both platforms use the Unreal 3 engine for games. Games may look a little better on PC but not a great deal better at this point, another 6 months later you buy the X2100 again games still use the Unreal 3 engine. Developement on the 360 gets a little better but has pretty much reached a peak as far as graphical improvements go. Games on pc are now visably better but not in order of magnitudes. The resolution people play at on the PC isnt going to change that greatly in that period of time (TFT Monitor limitations), so where is the quantum leap in graphics that the PC is going to get over the 360 in a 1 year period ? In that one year period some people may have gone through 3 VGA upgrades a £300ish a pop, never minding any other upgrades.

All this is going to do is go around in circles, with no one agreeing on anything and as such these type of threads are essentially useless.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Theres some excellent games for the 360, but everybody's tastes are different.

 

[BoomAM]

Not really no. The Xbox was ahead of contemporary PC's for a year or two and even recently ran HL2 at fairly good levels.

Your having a laugh arnt you?
It couldnt compete with the PC past the first 3-6months, never mind a year.
As for running HL2 well, if you call dropping the detail in the game so that it looks no better than the original HL running well, then...

As programmers familiarise themselves wih the system they will get better at squeezing every last drop from it. You can't do that with a PC beyond a certain (much shorter) point.

No-one has said you can.
What has been said is that a PCs limit is constantly changing, and by the time the 360 reaches its limit, the same visual quality could be achieved with a budget PC, using less than hundredth of its own limit.

For me, increasingly these days I find graphics are a t a plateu where they don't matter as much. Everything beyond a certain point becomes gravy in a way.

(Note, I'm a Ninty fanboy so read that in how you will)/

I agree with you.
Im a big Nintendo fan myself.
I personally dont see the jump in quality from current gen to next gen as being as big as it was from n64/PS1 to current gen.

EDIT - the PC does indeed multitask but to have one performing on a par with a 360 would cost something in the region of 1500 quid. I'll take that tradeoff.

It wouldnt perform anywhere near on par.
With 512Mb of shared memory, between 3 cores & a graphics chip. Not a chance.
But the 360 doesnt multitask in the same vain as a PC anyway, so thats a moot point.

Im not going to try and respond to everything you mention in your other post. As i said, its all very subjective.

Some of the points are subjective. Like the comment on 'good' games.
The points on the hardware however are not.

i'd argue that there is at least 6 excellent games.

I wouldnt say excellent games. Good prehaps. But no games that warrent the price of the 360. All of the current gen consoles, on launch, or near to launch, had games that warrented buying the system for it.
The 360 doesnt have that 'Killer App'. The games it has as the moment, excluding visuals, are no different to current gen games.

I'd say PGR3 looks better than any racing game i've seen on the PC. I'd say DOA4 and Fight Night Round 3 are pretty much up there graphically with anything i've seen that the PC can do. Single card options at the moment in the PC arent miles ahead of the 360 in terms of graphical power and the simple truth of the matter is that we wont see the true power of the 360 graphics abilities until they start targetting the 48 unified pipes to specific tasks. You mention improving game engines on the PC will give better graphics than the 360 can manage. The same will occur on the 360, with a 360 game probably being one of the first games to market to use the Unreal 3 engine.

Again your asuming that both platforms specifications remain the same. When they dont. The PC platform is allways improving, by big steps each time.
And again, by the time developers use the 360 to its potential, that potential will be nothing compared to what a budget PC could churn out.

You also misunderstood my point about compairing the 360 and PC, i wasnt talking about theoretical limits or how the hardware works, i was talking about what i can see with my own eyes with a reasonably high spec pc and a 360 running side by side. Im in a good position to compaire the visuals in games on both platforms.

lol.
The entire concept of visually fidelity is 90% dependant on the hardware & the game engines. If you cant understand the continusly changing nature of this concept then theres little point arguing at all really.
Because as much as you want to shout 'subjectiveness', at the end of the day, game visuals are not, at the technical level.

That in itself is a reason why the 360 will be able to compete graphically with the PC for some time yet.

But its not a reason though.

All this is going to do is go around in circles, with no one agreeing on anything and such these type of threads are essentially useless.

These types of threads are great ways to learn about things.

 

[melchy]

BoomAM, we are obviously looking at this from 2 conflicting points of view and therefor not entirely understanding each other. Im not worried in the slightest what a 360 can do in a years time in comparison to a PC if you keep up with PC hardware trends. We know that PC's can be upgraded, but that doesnt come for free and its reasonably obvious that an upgradable platform will surpass an non upgradable one as time passes and technology improves. Im simply compairing like for like at the moment. At the moment with current technology, the stuff we have in our machines, the 360 is visually up there with the pc and in my opinion it will be there or there abouts for around a year with the PC really pulling away after that. I know a lot of people have stated that they will stop upgrading their pc's and concentrate solely on gaming on the 360 at least in the short term, cant say im going to be one of them as i'll still use my PC heavily for gaming. I can see their reasons though.

We are therefor both actually correct as far as our point of view go, we are just looking at it from different angles.

The OP's original question was afterall about current VGA cards to match the 360. To which the answer would most likely be X1900 or 7900 series cards.

 

[XD-3]

Hi All

well i just thought i would say a little bit

the 360's GPU is an R580 with 48 unified piplines which put's it on pare with an X1900 but the X1900 has 48 full piplines which means it has more raw power as it does not have to share them. I myself have a 360 and a 40" HD LCD to go with and i love it atm.

I also have a fairly good pc FX55 7800 GTX 2GIG Ram 2405 etc and i would say that the 360 beats this setup purely on the fact its on a 40" screen and i also think that the fact it can have HDR and AA help's it abit as the AA will get ride of most of the jagies.

But around June time when we see DX10 GFX cards which have the unified architecture and the physx chips the 360 tbh will be blown out of the water and so will all of the other nextgen consoles.

and it's then i will be plugging my LCD into the pc and upgrading to SLI Xfire what ever the new card is and the 360 will probably take a back seat but for now its a great peace of kit.

But at the end of the day as most people have said the rate we get new GFX cards (every 6 to 8 month's) then no console will ever be able to keep up past the next GFX release until they are upgradable but that will never be the case.

I think the 360 is also good for the people who can't afford SLI rig's and have probably never herd of HDR and never seen HD visuals

i guess this post isn't really very informative but i thought i would post anyways

Thanks
XD-3.

 

[melchy]

Hi All

well i just thought i would say a little bit

the 360's GPU is an R580 with 48 unified piplines which put's it on pare with an X1900 but the X1900 has 48 full piplines which means it has more raw power as it does not have to share them. I myself have a 360 and a 40" HD LCD to go with and i love it atm.

I also have a fairly good pc FX55 7800 GTX 2GIG Ram 2405 etc and i would say that the 360 beats this setup purely on the fact its on a 40" screen and i also think that the fact it can have HDR and AA help's it abit as the AA will get ride of most of the jagies.

But around June time when we see DX10 GFX cards which have the unified architecture and the physx chips the 360 tbh will be blown out of the water and so will all of the other nextgen consoles.

and it's then i will be plugging my LCD into the pc and upgrading to SLI Xfire what ever the new card is and the 360 will probably take a back seat but for now its a great peace of kit.

But at the end of the day as most people have said the rate we get new GFX cards (every 6 to 8 month's) then no console will ever be able to keep up past the next GFX release until they are upgradable but that will never be the case.

I think the 360 is also good for the people who can't afford SLI rig's and have probably never herd of HDR and never seen HD visuals

i guess this post isn't really very informative but i thought i would post anyways

Thanks
XD-3.

The X1900 still only has 16 true pipelines

 

[venusflytrap]

some ideas (pc noober)

all people have to do to play games on a pc is to add a graphic card and mem to their exisitng pc which is about 300-350 pounds or something like that, as most people cant play pc games at high setting as they are missing these parts. (nearly all the people i know at collage have sparkly cpu and like massive hard drives but are missing the most vital parts to play games). This is already top end pc for gaming (considering the cpu is not limiting too much but it does not matter as most games dont use cpu too much i.e. f.e.a.r or COD2 as intel 2.5 gig or amd 3000 cpu will be enough)

300-350 pounds could get say an agp 7800gs or pci e x1900xt with a gig of ram. This is well within the cost of an Xbox and even more so if a new tv is required for the xbox 360. (so their is much more potential for pc owners they just dont know it) Also a consol cant have a physics card but the future will tell the imortance of that (but from the cellfactor video it looks to be a main feature in game play)

 

[Toryglen-boy]

all this really is a moot point

the xbox360 and the PC, although based around *similar* hardware, do very different things

i use my PC as a recording studio, keeping intouch with my mate in Australia, and also as public enemy number 1 to Blockbuster

"modern day" PC gamers tend to run thier res at a much higher rate than the Xbox, and although its hi-def compatable, the 360 doesnt ...


but like i said, it really doesnt matter. i would rather have a game that looked like it was drawn with an etcha-sketch and had great gameplay, take CS, by far still the most popular online game, although based on now ancient technology, on an ancient engine !!

i still play ELITE on a ZX Spectrum emulator, and MAME on my PC, why? because i couldnt give a monkeys how it looks, or if it uses PS 3.0, but because its immersive gameplay and enjoyable

 

[melchy]

all this really is a moot point

the xbox360 and the PC, although based around *similar* hardware, do very different things

i use my PC as a recording studio, keeping intouch with my mate in Australia, and also as public enemy number 1 to Blockbuster

"modern day" PC gamers tend to run thier res at a much higher rate than the Xbox, and although its hi-def compatable, the 360 doesnt ...


but like i said, it really doesnt matter. i would rather have a game that looked like it was drawn with an etcha-sketch and had great gameplay, take CS, by far still the most popular online game, although based on now ancient technology, on an ancient engine !!

i still play ELITE on a ZX Spectrum emulator, and MAME on my PC, why? because i couldnt give a monkeys how it looks, or if it uses PS 3.0, but because its immersive gameplay and enjoyable

You are quite right and i feel a bit bad about getting involved in this PC vs 360 argument. I try to avoid them usually. I never bought the 360 because i thought it was better than or to replace my PC, or any of my other consoles/computers for that matter. It was simply bought to compliment them, to give me something else to play on. I must say im having a thoroughly good time playing on it as well. The 360 was always going to draw comparisons to the PC simply because it it such a powerful console which is using a powerful ATi VGA card which is using a similar architecture to that which will make it to PC's in a generations time for DX10.

 

[v-zero]

For those who don't believe that the PC graphics will "last" the same way the Xbox 360 graphics will, please turn your attention to Crysis, being developed by Crytek and using the 2nd iteration of their Cryengine.
Crytek have declared that the game will: Have every single object casting shadows, uncontrolled weather patterns, clouds that change and move affecting the light and shadows in the area, all clipping will be gotten rid of, everything is a physical entity and will be interactive to an extent where it obeys the laws of physics. And in their head designer's words: "There are more affects on one person's face in Crysis than in the entirity of any current game."

Whilst the last claim must be taken with a pinch of salt, the greatness of this engine is becoming obvious... (It made the front cover of EDGE, PC games don't do that any more...).

Yet whilst this engine is hugely next-gen, they have it running on current gen systems and it looks beautiful so far. It is designed for DX10 but will support DX9.L in Windows XP, and will have a shader path that has a variation on all the effects available to the sm4 users, for use in sm3...

They say that Vista will actually improve the frame rates of games, and it will still work well with older SM3 hardware...

If you don't believe what I say about Crysis, go check out some early videos and screenshots.
This game looks truly epic, and is currently a PC exclusive!

 

[melchy]

For those who don't believe that the PC graphics will "last" the same way the Xbox 360 graphics will, please turn your attention to Crysis, being developed by Crytek and using the 2nd iteration of their Cryengine.
Crytek have declared that the game will: Have every single object casting shadows, uncontrolled weather patterns, clouds that change and move affecting the light and shadows in the area, all clipping will be gotten rid of, everything is a physical entity and will be interactive to an extent where it obeys the laws of physics. And in their head designer's words: "There are more affects on one person's face in Crysis than in the entirity of any current game."

Whilst the last claim must be taken with a pinch of salt, the greatness of this engine is becoming obvious... (It made the front cover of EDGE, PC games don't do that any more...).

Yet whilst this engine is hugely next-gen, they have it running on current gen systems and it looks beautiful so far. It is designed for DX10 but will support DX9.L in Windows XP, and will have a shader path that has a variation on all the effects available to the sm4 users, for use in sm3...

They say that Vista will actually improve the frame rates of games, and it will still work well with older SM3 hardware...

If you don't believe what I say about Crysis, go check out some early videos and screenshots.
This game looks truly epic, and is currently a PC exclusive!

I believe its also being released on the 360 Or its at least expected to be, probably PS3 as well. Obviously current cards and possibly even the next gen of cards wont run it all that well and certainly not with all the bells and whistles. Whether the console game turns out to be the same as the PC game is a completely different matter, the Xbox and 360 version of Farcry is not the same as the pc game. There's been suggestions and rumours that the 360 VGA is DX10 complient so it may fair alright with the new engine. It certainly looks impressive anyway whatever platform it makes it onto. Lets face it, for the type of game it is, most people with a good pc will buy it for that. I'd get the PC version over the 360 just because the game would be better suited to the pc. For the record though i think the PC and 360/PS3 versions will be different, with the console version being a "lighter" version.

Lets face it, our next series of upgrades is going to be expensive. DX10 VGA card, Vista itself and anything else that may be needed for compatibility, all to play the latest games at their best.

 

[Angilion]

This thread is funny. All the people who love their 360s defending it to death.

The 360 is a powerful piece of kit, but to even consider it being able to beat a PC visually, & in general, is just ignorence of how the technology works.
The fact of the matter is that even now, the 360's theoretical graphical abilities are beaten with current gen gfx cards. Next gen will dwarf it.
Yes the 360 costs less. Yes developers can 'code to the metal' to get more out the 360, but at the end of the day, it is still limited in a lot of ways.
And yes, the PC does cost more. But it does FAR more. The 360 is a neutered media center, that plays games. A PC can do far more things. And thats why theres a price difference thats so big.

There's another reason for the price difference - PCs are sold at a profit. 360s are sold at a loss. The price difference also drops when you buy games, as 360 games are more expensive than PC games. I mean, there's a post a few up in which someone was pleased to only be paying £38 per game for their 360.