Xbox 360 true power?

Kreeeee said:
I'm simply staggered that people think mass effect is the best we will see this generation
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If you mean me, I already told you once I didn't say that. Just that it runs like crap.

Personally I'd put it down to having only 256MB of shared memory in that case as it seems to be texture-related. The game stutters, slows down and snaps-in as textures are drawn. 512MB shared memory would've probably helped a lot.

Halo 3's lighting issues are obviously shader-related, the Xenos GPU doesn't have infinite shader power and is pretty old tech now as far as GPUs go on the whole if you look at the PC platform today (Xenos was based on a hybrid R500/R600 design).
 
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Kreeeee said:
I'm simply staggered that people think mass effect is the best we will see this generation given the 360's specs and it being a fixed platform. Unbelievable.
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When You play mass effect, you get slow down and juddering. I guess you could blame that on Bioware, but I would have thought a company like that would have fine tuned a game like Mass Effect to the best of their ability. Which would then make the hardware available the limiting factor?
 
wannabedamned said:
When You play mass effect, you get slow down and juddering. I guess you could blame that on Bioware, but I would have thought a company like that would have fine tuned a game like Mass Effect to the best of their ability. Which would then make the hardware available the limiting factor?
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Exactly.
Mohinder said:
PPC?

So.. the 360's a Mac?
Awesome
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How's that for irony. :D
 
wannabedamned said:
When You play mass effect, you get slow down and juddering. I guess you could blame that on Bioware, but I would have thought a company like that would have fine tuned a game like Mass Effect to the best of their ability. Which would then make the hardware available the limiting factor?
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It makes talent, tools, time and possibly the hardware limiting factors. With more time, more talent, better tools and a different direction in terms of where the processing power is spent (e.g. CoD4 spends more on AA than on resolution and spanks most 720p shooters for graphical prowess) and I have absolutely no doubt prettier games than Mass Effect will be produced.
 
wannabedamned said:
When You play mass effect, you get slow down and juddering. I guess you could blame that on Bioware, but I would have thought a company like that would have fine tuned a game like Mass Effect to the best of their ability. Which would then make the hardware available the limiting factor?
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Er, so the people at Bioware never make mistakes and everything they do is perfect. They are a good developer. But they are under the same constraints as many other devs, they have a publisher breathing down there neck wanting them to finish that game, no excuses, by the release date.

There a lot of factors that effect the quality of a game. Every coder, game designer, sound engineer and artist will be of varying ability and working with tools that arent always the best. They can often work 80 hour weeks trying to get things done. To dismiss it as a hardware limitation is daft.
 
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Kreeeee said:
I have absolutely no doubt prettier games than Mass Effect will be produced.
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I'm not arguing that, but you might find those prettier games have more load times/screens.

Mass Effect has millions of load screens as it is, just disguised as elevators etc.

Buzza said:
Er, so the people at Bioware never make mistakes and everything they do is perfect. They are a good developer. But they are under the same constraints as many other devs, they have a publisher breathing down there neck wanting them to finish that game, no excuses, by the release date.
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That's not what he said at all, but Bioware do tend to make well-optimised games and consoles are far easier to optimise for than, for example, the PC platform so Bioware shouldn't have much trouble as they have tons of experience with both consoles and PC.
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
Personally I'd put it down to having only 256MB of shared memory in that case as it seems to be texture-related. The game stutters, slows down and snaps-in as textures are drawn. 512MB shared memory would've probably helped a lot.

Halo 3's lighting issues are obviously shader-related, the Xenos GPU doesn't have infinite shader power and is pretty old tech now as far as GPUs go on the whole if you look at the PC platform today (Xenos was based on a hybrid R500/R600 design).
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http://hardware.teamxbox.com/articles/xbox/1144/The-Xbox-360-System-Specifications/p1
It does have 512MB of shared RAM.

PCs will always look better than consoles, but that has nothing to do with whether better graphics can be produced. Fixed hardware also means that the 360's specifications cannot be directly compared to a PC to determine maximum performance in a game.
 
Mohinder said:
PPC?

So.. the 360's a Mac?
Awesome
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Since when does having a similar style of CPU Architecture make the 360 a Mac? PowerPC cored CPU's are used in a lot more things than just old Macs! And, now that Apple moved to Intel CPU's does that mean all PCs are Macs and vice versa, or the old Xbox a Mac? Besides, system architecture is a lot more than just the processor at the heart of the design, let alone the software side of things.

PowerPC cores are at the heart of all the current gen consoles:

360 - Triple cored PPC
PS3 - The Cell's main core is PowerPC
Wii - Broadway CPU is PowerPC (as was the Gekko in the Gamecube)

IBM are certainly laughing all the way to the bank!
 
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Yeah but I would rather have more graphical effects over resolution! Cranking up the resolution helps a lot (esp with textures) but it only does so much for the game and needs a lot more processing power/memory which consoles lack.
 
and0r said:
Yeah but I would rather have more graphical effects over resolution! Cranking up the resolution helps a lot (esp with textures) but it only does so much for the game and needs a lot more processing power/memory which consoles lack.
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Lack of resolution is fine if you have a smaller TV, but I'm sure you would change your mind if you saw it on a bigger TV.

Depending on viewing distance of course.
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
I'm not arguing that, but you might find those prettier games have more load times/screens.
Mass Effect has millions of load screens as it is, just disguised as elevators etc.
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The huge cities in Assassins creed are stunning but the screen rez, texture rez and environment detail is still there. Also theres not many load screens either.
 
Ulfhedjinn said:
That's not what he said at all, but Bioware do tend to make well-optimised games and consoles are far easier to optimise for than, for example, the PC platform so Bioware shouldn't have much trouble as they have tons of experience with both consoles and PC.
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Doesnt mean theyll get it right everytime. Staff come and go, tools quality, time constraints etc etc all take there toll.
 
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