2006 PC hardware vs. XBOX Next...

MeanieMan said:
Smaller load times, something that has always haunted consoles.

That's what the hard drive's for. You cache all the data during a cleverly placed cutscene, and stream it from the cache as needed.

Besides, extra memory lets you do lots of things that don't necessarily involve longer load times. You could have more objects in your environment (say, more cars in GTA) or allow procedural generation of textures and geometry (something being worked on for the next Xbox).
 
lesman said:
I didn't laugh...I simply couldn't pick my jaw up off the floor...I'm still in shock....my hands are shaking....I'm scared...

Oddly enough ... Sling Blade came to mind.
 
MH Knights said:
From the Inq article linked above:
"...and in a reactionary move, MS is basing the memory on what Sony puts in the PS3. Right now, there is 256MB in the blueprints, but 512MB is a distinct possibility if Sony pushes the specs."

According to thise article Sony is going with 512MB of XDR DRAM:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/02/09/news_6118242.html

I thought Rambus RAM was supposed to be very expensive??

Very interesting indeed. If these new consoles don't hit the $500 mark I'll be suprised. With specs like this for the PS3 and the Xbox2...you console gamers may be in for sticker shock. :(

On the other hand...it's specs like these that will get you better longevity out of your hardware. Sort of...LOL
 
That article does NOT mean that PS3 will have 512MB of RAM. It means that the chips are 512 Mb - you'd need eight such memory chips to make 512 MB. If there's 4 memory chips, there'll be 256 MB. 2 chips, 128 MB. And of course, 1 such chip would yield just 64 MB of memory.
 
Wolf-R1 said:
Very interesting indeed. If these new consoles don't hit the $500 mark I'll be suprised. With specs like this for the PS3 and the Xbox2...you console gamers may be in for sticker shock. :(

On the other hand...it's specs like these that will get you better longevity out of your hardware. Sort of...LOL
They wouldn't be stupid enough to release a console for $500. They always lose money in the beginning by selling their consoles for $299, but it's easily and more than made up for in the end. No console will be $500. At least no major one from the major players.
 
I doubt any console will ever surpass the $300 mark again.

Even Sony couldn't get away with it. The original Playstation sales were low when it was first released, as were those of the Saturn (They were both far above $300). Even more recently, the PSX (A PS2 with many extra features) sold terribly in Japan when it was released by Sony.
 
WickedAngel said:
Even more recently, the PSX (A PS2 with many extra features) sold terribly in Japan when it was released by Sony.


That is a terrible example. That thing was an entire entertainment center in one box. Of course someone can say it sold terribly when comparing it to the PS2 sale numbers. It solds for damn near a grand.
The audience for one of those was way different then that of a normal PS2 owner.
 
MeanieMan said:
That is a terrible example. That thing was an entire entertainment center in one box. Of course someone can say it sold terribly when comparing it to the PS2 sale numbers. It solds for damn near a grand.
The audience for one of those was way different then that of a normal PS2 owner.

You missed the point.

I never compared it to the sales of the PS2. It sold poorly in comparison to other media-center devices as well.

The point is that no console is going to sell for more than $300, regardless of the features it has.
 
Tiny said:
I would like to Mikey in the NeXtBOX.
It's insane that something that small can hold up to 80 gigabytes...insane....think about old school (really old school) hard drives that were feet in diameter and could barely hold a megabyte of data, if that at all...jeez...technology is crazy, man.
 
lesman said:
It's insane that something that small can hold up to 80 gigabytes...insane....think about old school (really old school) hard drives that were feet in diameter and could barely hold a megabyte of data, if that at all...jeez...technology is crazy, man.

To be fair, that's an 8GB drive, not an 80.

And I wouldn't mind seeing a laptop drive in a console, but anything smaller... you lose reliability at that point. Try using an iPod day in, day out as a hard drive, and see how long it makes it.
 
Kevin Lowe said:
To be fair, that's an 8GB drive, not an 80.

And I wouldn't mind seeing a laptop drive in a console, but anything smaller... you lose reliability at that point. Try using an iPod day in, day out as a hard drive, and see how long it makes it.
I don't think you read the whole article, it states:

"At 49 grams, "Slim" is not only thin, but also light. The combination of these will result in a lean product with large storage capacity. "Slim" will come in one- and two-disk versions, offering 30-40 and 60-80 GB of storage, respectively. "Slim's" physical dimensions are expected to be 71 x 54 x 5 mm on the one-disk model, while the two-disk model will differ just slightly with an 8-mm height instead of 5 mm"

To be fair. I know the poster stated "Mikey" but I was talking about "slim".
 
WickedAngel said:
You missed the point.

I never compared it to the sales of the PS2. It sold poorly in comparison to other media-center devices as well.

The point is that no console is going to sell for more than $300, regardless of the features it has.

There weren't other media devices like it. You made a bad comparison on hardware that had little to do with just consoles.
They made a limited number of those things, and they are all gone. Sounds like a 100% sale there. It didn't sell poorly, Sony just knew what they were selling, and who to sell it to. A little box that could do everything a multi-thousand dollar entertainment center could do.

With how old the xbox and ps2, along with inflation, blah blah...I seriously doubt that either console will come to light under $299. Its just not the right number this time around. Especially if the rumors of MS trying to pass the xbox off as more then a console for the living room are true.
 
Gee, let's compare hardware whose specs we can only guess at to hardware whose specs we can only guess at :rolleyes:
 
Consoles are A LOT better than PC's. Gamecube has been out for 4 years and RE4 still looks and plays better than most pc games. Compare that to a pc that is also 4 years old. Consoles cost $200-300 and you don't have to upgrade them until 5 years later. With a pc you spend that every year on a videocard. It seems pcs are just for people who like benchmarking and not gaming. A console will look better for the first 3 years or so and then top of the line pcs will match it. I am not a PC hater, I just like consoles better.
 
MeanieMan said:
It didn't sell poorly, Sony just knew what they were selling, and who to sell it to. A little box that could do everything a multi-thousand dollar entertainment center could do.

Sorry, but you're wrong. It did sell poorly. Actually, it didn't sell at all. The initial shipment that Sony put out sat on the shelves for months. They weren't expecting such a monumental failure. They shipped a low amount and couldn't even sell those.

By the way, you're also wrong about the price. The MSRP was 79,800 yen (Around $756.00)
 
The price depends, there were 4 trim models with different features each (the lowest was down around $500 IIRC).
 
WickedAngel said:
Sorry, but you're wrong. It did sell poorly. Actually, it didn't sell at all. The initial shipment that Sony put out sat on the shelves for months. They weren't expecting such a monumental failure. They shipped a low amount and couldn't even sell those.

By the way, you're also wrong about the price. The MSRP was 79,800 yen (Around $756.00)

Thats not entirely true. It sold 5000 the first day and stayed hot for a month or so.. Then it died until the price cuts came in. It had a huge boost around Christmas and is now climbing to the top of DVD recorder sales in Japan.
So, while it might not have been as big as Sony may have liked, its still not what one might call a "monumental failure."
BTW, $756 was the 250GB model. The 160GB model was about $540.
They slashed those prices by huge amounts when the sales died last summer.
 
I don't see how a console running RE4 on a TV is going to look better than a $2,000 PC running at 1600 x 1200 or higher, with frame rates as high as the video card will go. Games like Ultima IX running at 1600 x 1200 on a PC still provide higher-quality visuals and speeds above anything a console is capable of, and that particular game was released in 1999, almost 6 years ago!

Consoles certainly look better for the price, but not if you want it to go head to head against a top-end PC and display. I've loved consoles all my life, but since I try to keep a relatively high-end PC, I have no real use for stripped-down PC consoles like the XBox which has most games in commonality, and the only platforms of any importance to me are ones like the Gamecube, which has a more diverse selection of titles as compared to what's available on the PC.

When Xbox Next comes out, I will wager that there will be some computers that will be able to beat it in terms of speed and image quality. Not price though! (but like I said, consoles are a good bargain). $500 video cards and $800 processors and the ability to just double your RAM on a whim isn't going to be outperformed by a $300 console just yet.
 
-freon- said:
Thats not entirely true. It sold 5000 the first day and stayed hot for a month or so.. Then it died until the price cuts came in. It had a huge boost around Christmas and is now climbing to the top of DVD recorder sales in Japan.
So, while it might not have been as big as Sony may have liked, its still not what one might call a "monumental failure."
BTW, $756 was the 250GB model. The 160GB model was about $540.
They slashed those prices by huge amounts when the sales died last summer.

It slumped within a week...it didn't take a month. It got a boost during Christmas and has been on the decline ever since.

They've dropped the price twice and it is still failing (Due in part to a weak advertising campaign). It might be at the top of DVD recorder sales in Japan, but that doesn't mean anything since all other competitive DVD recorders are at even higher prices than that of the PSX.

Retailers have had to take pricing into their own hands and have almost halved the initial launch price. That isn't the sign of a device that is going to endure. They were planning releases in the United States and UK. Since the launch, those release dates have been postponed "indefinately". It might make it out in the UK. I doubt we'll ever see it here.
 
Synful Serenity said:
I don't see how a console running RE4 on a TV is going to look better than a $2,000 PC running at 1600 x 1200 or higher, with frame rates as high as the video card will go. Games like Ultima IX running at 1600 x 1200 on a PC still provide higher-quality visuals and speeds above anything a console is capable of, and that particular game was released in 1999, almost 6 years ago!

Consoles certainly look better for the price, but not if you want it to go head to head against a top-end PC and display. I've loved consoles all my life, but since I try to keep a relatively high-end PC, I have no real use for stripped-down PC consoles like the XBox which has most games in commonality, and the only platforms of any importance to me are ones like the Gamecube, which has a more diverse selection of titles as compared to what's available on the PC.

When Xbox Next comes out, I will wager that there will be some computers that will be able to beat it in terms of speed and image quality. Not price though! (but like I said, consoles are a good bargain). $500 video cards and $800 processors and the ability to just double your RAM on a whim isn't going to be outperformed by a $300 console just yet.
Um....Resident Evil 4 just came out like a month ago....
 
Synful Serenity said:
I don't see how a console running RE4 on a TV is going to look better than a $2,000 PC running at 1600 x 1200 or higher, with frame rates as high as the video card will go. Games like Ultima IX running at 1600 x 1200 on a PC still provide higher-quality visuals and speeds above anything a console is capable of, and that particular game was released in 1999, almost 6 years ago!

Consoles certainly look better for the price, but not if you want it to go head to head against a top-end PC and display. I've loved consoles all my life, but since I try to keep a relatively high-end PC, I have no real use for stripped-down PC consoles like the XBox which has most games in commonality, and the only platforms of any importance to me are ones like the Gamecube, which has a more diverse selection of titles as compared to what's available on the PC.

When Xbox Next comes out, I will wager that there will be some computers that will be able to beat it in terms of speed and image quality. Not price though! (but like I said, consoles are a good bargain). $500 video cards and $800 processors and the ability to just double your RAM on a whim isn't going to be outperformed by a $300 console just yet.

Ultima IX, Higher quality visuals than RE4 on a console??? Come on now, thats just silly, there no comparison, RE4 has way higher quality visuals. And for the TV vs Monitor thing, running console games on a standard NTSC tv, looks as good as a PC running 1600x1200. However, if you ran a PC on the NTSC res size, that would look like ass, but for a TV it looks perfect. You have to understand that TVs and Monitors are two differant beasts, (most) TVs are interlaced, and have round pixels, where as monitors are progressive (scanline effect, odds then evens) and have square pixels. Both formats look perfectly good.
 
EDIT: i called doh-nut a dumbass back, but I decided i would be as much of a dumbass as him if I did that, so I erased it...he he ;)
 
when you start your post with "Um....." thats basically calling him slow or a dumbass. you are guilty.

and i just said stop being a dumbass. i didn't actually call you a dumbass. you were acting the part of a dumbass when reading what he said, as you were basically attacking his grammar, when you knew exactly what he meant. a tell-tale sign that you feel you've been defeated.
 
doh-nut said:
when you start your post with "Um....." thats basically calling him slow or a dumbass. you are guilty.

and i just said stop being a dumbass. i didn't actually call you a dumbass. you were acting the part of a dumbass when reading what he said, as you were basically attacking his grammar, when you knew exactly what he meant. a tell-tale sign that you feel you've been defeated.
Wrong again doh-nut...how was I attacking his grammar???? :confused: answer me that...yes, I knew what he was talking about, BUT...the original poster was talking about RESIDENT EVIL 4...the ACTUAL GAME TITLED RESIDENT EVIL 4...which in fact looks incredibly good graphics wise, so, as he was thinking Resident Evil: code veronica, I was basically telling him "thats not the resident evil hes talking about" It's more like smartass, not dumbass...and how the hell does me saying "um" mean I'm calling him a dumbass? please tell me, because I really dont know....you need to get your little theories straight doh-nut....defeated? please, as I sit and laugh, goodbye.
 
Enough with the arguments both of you.... keep in on topic or I will close this thread.

Consider this your first and last warning.
 
Mcseiam said:
Enough with the arguments both of you.... keep in on topic or I will close this thread.

Consider this your first and last warning.
Gotcha
 
Thanks for the defense guys :D....I didn't really take offense to the original comment, maybe I should have been more specific myself....Just to clear up any confusion, I was referring to Ultima IX being the 6 year old game...Resident Evil 4 is certainly new.

Ultima IX certainly looked the best at its release than any other game released up to that time, and for a good amount of time afterwards, plus it was one of the first titles that fully took advantage of high resolutions like 1600 x 1200. It looks unbelievably good today considering its age, and was definitely ahead of its time. It doesn't matter what kind of new special visual effects Resident Evil 4 has, it's still limited to what a TV is able to display.

I do think most people would take exception to saying a TV looks as good as a PC at 1600 x 1200 (and don't forget 2048 x 1536 is also available, which is perfectly acceptable for gaming as long as your video card is fast enough). For one thing, TVs have scan lines, which distort the image. They're also interlaced, which effectively gives you 30fps, and with all the drawbacks of interlacing. The dot pitch is also much greater, and the image much fuzzier...A computer monitor running at the same resolution as a TV, or even lower like 320 x 200, will still look sharper. A TV is just not capable of showing nearly as much detail as PC monitor can, and it wasn't meant to. 1600 x 1200 allows for many more times the amount of picture information and detail than NTSC resolution, even discounting the obvious benefits of non-interlacing, low dot-pitch, and superior monitor visual quality. You can also push the refresh rate up on a PC as high as your monitor can go, which can be over 100Hz at 1600 x 1200, and still at least 85Hz on a top CRT at 2048 x 1536, and your game will appear that much smoother. These differences might not be discernable to you, but outside of my opinion or anyone else's, the PC monitor will produce a better image every time.
 
arentol said:
When the Xbox2 and PS3 come out there is no way they will be faster than high-end PC's are at that time.

PS3 processor has GFLOPS rating equivalent to a 64Ghz Pentium 4....
 
jimpo said:
PS3 processor has GFLOPS rating equivalent to a 64Ghz Pentium 4....

We see massive GFLOPS claims all the time. I mean the Radeon X800 is supposed to pull 200 GFLOPS. That's 80% of Cell's performance right there. I somehow doubt that the x800 or the Cell are going to pull that kind of performance, except under highly specific conditions.

Besides, we haven't seen the specs of the actual chip being used in the PS3 yet. We've seen a 8-PE Cell, but there's no guarantee that the PS3 will have 8 PEs.
 
It's just a numbers game like everything else. Obviously if a 3Ghz CPU had dedicated shader units, it would be way faster than the current graphics chips. lol
The X800 isnt doing the same operations an Intel/AMD CPU is doing. It is also specialized to do them. The GFLOP specs are based purely on the basic design of the chip (ie x number of shader units able to work x speed), and not real world performance.
 
Synful Serenity said:
Thanks for the defense guys :D....I didn't really take offense to the original comment, maybe I should have been more specific myself....Just to clear up any confusion, I was referring to Ultima IX being the 6 year old game...Resident Evil 4 is certainly new.

Ultima IX certainly looked the best at its release than any other game released up to that time, and for a good amount of time afterwards, plus it was one of the first titles that fully took advantage of high resolutions like 1600 x 1200. It looks unbelievably good today considering its age, and was definitely ahead of its time. It doesn't matter what kind of new special visual effects Resident Evil 4 has, it's still limited to what a TV is able to display.

I do think most people would take exception to saying a TV looks as good as a PC at 1600 x 1200 (and don't forget 2048 x 1536 is also available, which is perfectly acceptable for gaming as long as your video card is fast enough). For one thing, TVs have scan lines, which distort the image. They're also interlaced, which effectively gives you 30fps, and with all the drawbacks of interlacing. The dot pitch is also much greater, and the image much fuzzier...A computer monitor running at the same resolution as a TV, or even lower like 320 x 200, will still look sharper. A TV is just not capable of showing nearly as much detail as PC monitor can, and it wasn't meant to. 1600 x 1200 allows for many more times the amount of picture information and detail than NTSC resolution, even discounting the obvious benefits of non-interlacing, low dot-pitch, and superior monitor visual quality. You can also push the refresh rate up on a PC as high as your monitor can go, which can be over 100Hz at 1600 x 1200, and still at least 85Hz on a top CRT at 2048 x 1536, and your game will appear that much smoother. These differences might not be discernable to you, but outside of my opinion or anyone else's, the PC monitor will produce a better image every time.
Oh, I didn't know you were talking about that game, either, so, oops on my part as well!
Good points there, but I was thinking: you know how if you watch a DVD on a standard TV it still looks "real" because it is "real"? Well, if a game got to that point, wouldn't high resolution not even matter? Because It still looks "real" anyways??? There'll still be interlacing/low dot pitch/etc., but that doesn't keep a "real" image from looking "real".
 
Kevin Lowe said:
We see massive GFLOPS claims all the time. I mean the Radeon X800 is supposed to pull 200 GFLOPS. That's 80% of Cell's performance right there. I somehow doubt that the x800 or the Cell are going to pull that kind of performance, except under highly specific conditions.

Besides, we haven't seen the specs of the actual chip being used in the PS3 yet. We've seen a 8-PE Cell, but there's no guarantee that the PS3 will have 8 PEs.

Sure, that number should be taken with a grain of salt. However, it's a fact that Cell is a processor that has been designed, from a clean sheet, to fulfill the requirements of modern gaming and media use. And x86 processors were not....in fact they were designed to run spreadsheets. I find it very believable that a clean sheet design will offer far more efficiency and bang for a buck (or bang for GHz) than PC architecture with all it's shortcomings and historical ballast.

x800 is a GPU, we should not compare it to CPUs. Cell can do they same as x86s when it comes to gaming, and more. Sure 8PEs is not a given yet, but even at 4PEs it's going to be completely different than what a 2006 spec PC can offer (and to be fair speculation also exists about PS3 containing a dual-core Cell (2x8 PEs), and I believe I remember mr. Kutaragi hyping about 1TFlops PS3 at some point :)

I believe there will be a remarkable difference in gaming performance in favor of the next-gen consoles when they come out, CPU wise. It's going to be an interesting 2006! :)
 
x86 processors were not designed to run spreadsheets. The first spreadsheet didn't appear until a few years after the first 8086 die was burned.

The next gen consoles will have a performance and IQ lead over PC's in the grahpics department for about three to six months months. I'm willing to bet $50 on that, and I'll even put that money in escrow if anyone wants to take the bet.
 
ThomasE66 said:
x86 processors were not designed to run spreadsheets. The first spreadsheet didn't appear until a few years after the first 8086 die was burned.

The next gen consoles will have a performance and IQ lead over PC's in the grahpics department for about three to six months months. I'm willing to bet $50 on that, and I'll even put that money in escrow if anyone wants to take the bet.
I'm not taking any bets because I'm a poor bum, but when you say "performance and IQ" your only partially right about one thing: Performance. The cell processor will be leaps and bounds ahead of current processor architechture and power in terms of IQ. Cell processing is so much more precise, efficient and powerful than x86 architechture that rules the land as of now. The graphics performance will be beat of course in the future, but unless PC video cards start using Cell architechture, the IQ of each compared to each other will be uncomparable.
 
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