Consoles vs. PC - Comparison

[Trackr]

Gaming PC + PS4 sounds like will deliver some great years for gamers.

Agreed. Whatever happens, we the PC gaming community win.

John Carmack.




This debate is stupid. There is no question consoles are more efficient with their hw than PC.

I don't know why you're getting your panties in a bunch.

No one is disputing that consoles are more efficient. We're simply debating over how much, because without knowing that, I can't factor it into my graph.

 

[Plague_Injected]

Agreed. Whatever happens, we the PC gaming community win.



I don't know why you're getting your panties in a bunch.

No one is disputing that consoles are more efficient. We're simply debating over how much, because without knowing that, I can't factor it into my graph.

Don't feed the fanboys.

 

[Trackr]

Don't feed the fanboys.

What are console fanboys doing on [H]?

Did one of us log onto GameTrailers or something?

 

[Plague_Injected]

What are console fanboys doing on [H]?

Did one of us log onto GameTrailers or something?

There are a couple around here on both Microsoft and Sony sides.

 

[metallicaband]

There are a couple around here on both Microsoft and Sony sides.

Is that directed at me? Because I sure as hell am no "fanboy" to anyone, actual games > platforms.

 

[Plague_Injected]

Is that directed at me? Because I sure as hell am no "fanboy" to anyone, actual games > platforms.

No. You appear to be a fanboy of a particularly shitty band, though.

 

[metallicaband]

No. You appear to be a fanboy of a particularly shitty band, though.

LOL, nah I criticize their post 90's stuff as much as Metallica haters, I'm a complete fanboy of their earlier work for sure though

 

[Trackr]

LOL, nah I criticize their post 90's stuff as much as Metallica haters, I'm a complete fanboy of their earlier work for sure though

I don't trust Metallica fanboys.

You ask them if they like "No Leaf Clover" and they say "Well, since it's not on any of Metallica's good albums, it must be pure crap."

Which is because it was released on the S&M album, which is essentially them covering old songs with an orchestra.

Except that S&M had its own EXCLUSIVE songs, just like No Leaf Clover, and the fanboys are jumping to conclusions that because it's not on any other album, it must suck.

 

[metallicaband]

lol wut? I'm a Metallica fan, but I assure you that I'm not one of those "retards".

Post 90s they did produce some Excellent stuff even when excluding the black album (which I thought was amazing btw even when some blind fanboys consider it as "selling out") , stuff as such as Unforgiven 2, Until it sleeps, Outlaw torn..etc, I even really liked a few songs in the Death Magnetic album such as Judas Kiss and it was a big step up over St. Anger that's my least favorite album.

The difference between back then and now is that in Metallica's best albums such as Master of Puppets or And Justice for all, pretty much every single song is a Gem, however in albums like the Loads, there are some gems as well but they're within a pile of crappy songs.

As for S&M, I love that album, I though Minus Human was a good song but absolutely loved No Leaf Clover, may Michael Kamen rest in peace =(

That's enough of me going WAY off topic here though lol

 

[Trackr]

lol wut? I'm a Metallica fan, but I assure you that I'm not one of those "retards".

Post 90s they did produce some Excellent stuff even when excluding the black album (which I thought was amazing btw even when some blind fanboys consider it as "selling out") , stuff as such as Unforgiven 2, Until it sleeps, Outlaw torn..etc, I even really liked a few songs in the Death Magnetic album such as Judas Kiss and it was a big step up over St. Anger that's my least favorite album.

The difference between back then and now is that in Metallica's best albums such as Master of Puppets or And Justice for all, pretty much every single song is a Gem, however in albums like the Loads, there are some gems as well but they're within a pile of crappy songs.

As for S&M, I love that album, I though Minus Human was a good song but absolutely loved No Leaf Clover, may Michael Kamen rest in peace =(

That's enough of me going WAY off topic here though lol

No, I'm sure that all those "retards" would love No Leaf Clover too.

It's just that they're too slavish to the "Good Album" rule to ever notice that S&M had exclusive songs, even when you tell them about it directly.

Which, I suppose, is fair. They don't get to listen to, what I consider, Metallica's best song.

Oh, and another thing.. to say that Pachelbel's Canon being called a song insults Metallica is like saying that the Godfather being called a movie insults Epic Movie because the Godather is actually a "film." No offense to Metallica.

 

[metallicaband]

Any Metallica fan whether fanboy or not should notice and already be aware of those exclusives, I think you might be generalizing a bit too much, I personally haven't seen many that think like that to be honest.

 

[Trackr]

Any Metallica fan whether fanboy or not should notice and already be aware of those exclusives, I think you might be generalizing a bit too much, I personally haven't seen many that think like that to be honest.

So, you're saying that I've just been unlucky? Well, hopefully you're right.

I just hate those Pompous Weenies that don't appreciate any music genre besides Classic Rock and think it's perfectly fine to insult Classical music on the basis that it does not have lyrics.

 

[metallicaband]

Anyone who insults Classical music shouldn't even be worthy of wasting your time listening to his opinions, because he obviously doesn't know what music really is. The "no lyrics" reasoning is just laughable lol

Anyway, attempting to get back on topic, does anyone know if using a powerful APU such as what the next gen are going to use will allow developers to figure out some advantages over the separate GPU/CPU setups?

 

[Snowdog]

John Carmack.

This debate is stupid. There is no question consoles are more efficient with their hw than PC.

I would agree that consoles are more efficient. But claiming 2x is not realistic either. Also the extra efficiency benefits are mostly after devs get a extensive experience wringing the last drop of performance out of them. By that time consoles are even farther behind PC HW.

It also looks like this time Consoles are starting much further behind PC HW than they did last time, and even last time they didn't exactly overwhelm compared to PC games at anytime during their run.

CPU seems like it would just be wrong. I know the IPC isn't very good on any AMD CPU lately...but just speaking my mind it would seem that a 1.6ghz hex-core would be faster than a i3...at least that would be the hope. I obviously don't have anything to back this up however I would imagine that, as a whole, developers would be able to push more out of the hex-core than a dual core i3 even when you consider low level access on the i3.

Keeping 8 cores fully occupied is much more difficult than keeping 2 occupied. A great many computing tasks just aren't that easy to make parallel. For 2 cores with the same overall throughput as 8 cores, the 2 cores will pretty much always be faster everywhere.

 

[Stereophile]

No one is disputing that consoles are more efficient. We're simply debating over how much, because without knowing that, I can't factor it into my graph.

Youemmaimai disputes it. Sorry for thinking you are slow like him.


As for how much, that Shishkovstok guy said "at least" 2x, and I know Carmack has said about 2x.

 

[acerbic]

Youemmaimai disputes it. Sorry for thinking you are slow like him.


As for how much, that Shishkovstok guy said "at least" 2x, and I know Carmack has said about 2x.

That seems to be the number that get's tossed out the most. And also keep in mind that AMD has come out and complained several times about Windows, directX, and not being able to get "to the metal" severely impacting the amount of performance you can get out of their products.

It's not some conspiracy, the game devs, console makers, hardware makers and even Microsoft themselves have all come out and admitted that you aren't really getting the actual performance from their parts in Windows gaming PC's and that it's not exactly ideal.

 

[Stereophile]

The "no lyrics" reasoning is just laughable lol

LoL.

There is a correlation between intelligence and the appreciation of classical music. Because it doesn't have lyrics, it requires more abstract, higher order brain functioning.

In 200 years people won't listen or even remember 99% of the crap music today, but Bach, Mozart, Chopin etc will still be revered.

I used to like Metallica, but I just pretend the band broke up after the black album. Nothing since is nearly as good as their old stuff.

 

[Trackr]

Anyone who insults Classical music shouldn't even be worthy of wasting your time listening to his opinions, because he obviously doesn't know what music really is. The "no lyrics" reasoning is just laughable lol

He wasn't really insulting. If he was, I would have just stopped listening.

He said that Pachelbel's Canon is "okay" and "quite good."

Then, when I said that it is the greatest song I've ever heard, he said "Calling it a song would insult the great James Hetfield."

To which I was speechless.

I would agree that consoles are more efficient. But claiming 2x is not realistic either. Also the extra efficiency benefits are mostly after devs get a extensive experience wringing the last drop of performance out of them. By that time consoles are even farther behind PC HW.

That's a really good point!

If you're right, consoles should gradually get to the 2x mark, not start out of the gate at twice the performance of a PC.

And like you said, by then PCs are far more powerful all over again.

Keeping 8 cores fully occupied is much more difficult than keeping 2 occupied. A great many computing tasks just aren't that easy to make parallel. For 2 cores with the same overall throughput as 8 cores, the 2 cores will pretty much always be faster everywhere.

That's what I thought at first, making the graph.

But then I realized that Devs are going to be coding for the console directly, so just like in the PS3's Cell processor, all 8 cores should be used. No?

Youemmaimai disputes it. Sorry for thinking you are slow like him.

You'd show a lot more intelligence if you didn't jump the gun next time.. and if you didn't label people as slow for disagreeing with you.

It's not some conspiracy, Microsoft themselves have all come out and admitted that you aren't really getting the actual performance from their parts in Windows gaming PC's and that it's not exactly ideal.

So.. Microsoft have come out saying that you're not getting the most out of your hardware with their own operating system? Wouldn't that be their fault?

There is a correlation between intelligence and the appreciation of classical music. Because it doesn't have lyrics, it requires more abstract, higher order brain functioning.

In 200 years people won't listen or even remember 99% of the crap music today, but Bach, Mozart, Chopin etc will still be revered.

I used to like Metallica, but I just pretend the band broke up after the black album. Nothing since is nearly as good as their old stuff.

I my opinion, there's a correlation with sensitivity and appreciating Classical music.

The typical 14 year-old punk who listens to Classic Rock and Screamo just doesn't have the ability to sit back, relax and take in a beautiful piece. They're too distraught by life.

But that's why I like the divide. Some people love Classical music. Some people love Classic Rock. But people who say "Classical music is quite good" just piss me off.

 

[acerbic]

So.. Microsoft have come out saying that you're not getting the most out of your hardware with their own operating system? Wouldn't that be their fault?

Yeah, in a way. But there's a couple things going on.

1. Being able to optimize for one specific hardware configuration.
2. Not having to deal with a rather bloated multi purpose OS.
3. Because of #1 and #2 not having to go through crap like DirectX and being able to go "straight to the metal".

It's not really a problem that can be fixed with a full desktop OS and the ability to use a wide range of hardware. If you went with embeded Windows or stripped down linux and non upgradedable hardware it would be solved, but at that point you'd be losing the functionality and fun of a PC. There is dedicated gaming hardware that does that, but we call those consoles or arcade machines.

It's really a non issue because PC hardware moves so fast anyways.

 

[ADRENALIN_2099]

What do you guys think was the first good looking console game of the ps3 and x360 era? Since I only had a ps3 I can only say that systems games.: Metal Gear Solid - 4, followed by uncharted 2 (never played3) then God Of War 3. After those games I awe was pretty much lost. That being said, I bought my ps3 in 2010.

 

[Trackr]

Yeah, in a way. But there's a couple things going on.

1. Being able to optimize for one specific hardware configuration.
2. Not having to deal with a rather bloated multi purpose OS.
3. Because of #1 and #2 not having to go through crap like DirectX and being able to go "straight to the metal".

It's not really a problem that can be fixed with a full desktop OS and the ability to use a wide range of hardware. If you went with embeded Windows or stripped down linux and non upgradedable hardware it would be solved, but at that point you'd be losing the functionality and fun of a PC. There is dedicated gaming hardware that does that, but we call those consoles or arcade machines.

It's really a non issue because PC hardware moves so fast anyways.

Ah. No, I was under the impression that you were saying that Microsoft designed DirectX to be inefficient, but what you're actually saying is that DirectX is the best they can do, it's just not as good as configuring the entire system for gaming.

But why is that? Isn't it silly to configure a PC to multi-task and lose gaming performance, while consoles are being configured to game and whether they lose multi-tasking performance is irrelevant, no?

I mean, if you can run Chrome on a PS3, then 90% of PC users should use a PS3 instead of a PC because 90% of PC users aren't really doing anything besides gaming and going online.

 

[acerbic]

Ah. No, I was under the impression that you were saying that Microsoft designed DirectX to be inefficient, but what you're actually saying is that DirectX is the best they can do, it's just not as good as configuring the entire system for gaming.

But why is that? Isn't it silly to configure a PC to multi-task and lose gaming performance, while consoles are being configured to game and whether they lose multi-tasking performance is irrelevant, no?

I mean, if you can run Chrome on a PS3, then 90% of PC users should use a PS3 instead of a PC because 90% of PC users aren't really doing anything besides gaming and going online.

In general terms...

It's not designed to lose performance for gaming because it has to multi task. It's that a more robust OS that can do more will have more resources tied up for doing those things or held so it can rather than something that doesn't even half to consider it at all.

And with things like directX they are good because it let's you go through that layer to access the wide array of hardware in the PC. Because a console doesn't have to deal with a bunch of configurations you can often bypass some layers and go straight to the chips.

This is why from game creators like Carmac, to hardware makers like AMD they're all saying you can never get the maximum performance out of the hardware on PC. You're always just stuck with a portion of it. When dealing with a console that isn't the case. It's also often not the case with gaming devices that use a stripped down embeded windows and set harware, or the same under linux.

The better way to look at it is this. The cost of being able to have multiple configurations, upgrade your hardware, and have a robust OS is that you can't tap the full potential of the hardware you have for gaming. But the cost of tapping the full potential of your hardware is that you have a less functional machine with a set hardware configuration you can't upgrade.

I wouldn't call one better or worse, it's just two different approaches for making a gaming device. It's also why trying to compare hardware specs between the two is a fools errand.

 

[Snowdog]

If you're right, consoles should gradually get to the 2x mark, not start out of the gate at twice the performance of a PC.

And like you said, by then PCs are far more powerful all over again.

I remember when PS3 came out, there were lots of rumblings about what a headache it was develop for. I think it took about 2 years for that to stop.

But then I realized that Devs are going to be coding for the console directly, so just like in the PS3's Cell processor, all 8 cores should be used. No?

No. It isn't that easy. Only a few tasks really easy to code for parallel operations. Graphic rendering is one that you can, you just divide and conquer. A GPU is hundred to thousand of parallel rendering units that work on their own section of the screen.

But the more general coding like the game logic isn't inherently parallel. What will generally happen is the will find logical entities that can run in parallel and separate them into logical units you can run in different threads/processes. But it will be very difficult to balance all these. Then you have to synchronize them, causing other threads to go idle while waiting for another thread. So you end up getting utilization to 80% on the first 4 cores, but only 20% on the last 4 cores (numbers chosen for simplicity) and in the end your overall utilization is only 50%.

With a more powerful dual core you get as much CPU power to your most important tasks even if you can't make it parallel (Provided that one task doesn't need more than 50% or one whole core), so it will be much easier to get your utilization up to 80% or higher. Not to mention being easier to code/debug.

But anyway it is kind of moot, anyone building even a low end gaming PC these day would likely get a quad core, they aren't exactly expensive. With a quad Sandy/Ivy, it really isn't a contest.

PS3/Xbox360 didn't ever wow PC gamers even with close to top GPUs when they shipped, and this generation is starting out even further behind the curve. It is going to be quite underwhelming. Throw in the server DRM nonsense and this is shaping up to be a borderline flop of a console generation.

 

[Trackr]

It's that a more robust OS that can do more will have more resources tied up for doing those things or held so it can rather than something that doesn't even half to consider it at all.

You mean like back in the day, booting into DOS to play a game because Windows was taking up too many resources in the background so the games wouldn't run as well?

And with things like directX they are good because it let's you go through that layer to access the wide array of hardware in the PC. Because a console doesn't have to deal with a bunch of configurations you can often bypass some layers and go straight to the chips.

This seems like purely a software issue, so why can't Windows accommodate such settings?

The cost of being able to have multiple configurations, upgrade your hardware, and have a robust OS is that you can't tap the full potential of the hardware you have for gaming.

That's what everyone says, but it's not fully explained.

Why do you need a robust OS? Why can't it just go into "Non-Robust" mode when gaming, then?

Why does using different hardware cost you in performance? It should, in theory, scale up or down regardless.

 

[acerbic]

The OS is just one of the issues. As for using different hardware... you can't fully optimize it for one specific item. So it's never going to be as fast. Combined with items in Windows you need to go through to get to the hardware and you lose more. They also can't do to the metal or low level programing if they have to deal with multiple GPU options, so as soon as that happens the ability for them to get max performance flies out the window as soon as you have an upgradable platform.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/16/farewell-to-directx/1

Interview with AMD on why directX is bad and windows is problematic. Some quotes.

'Wrapping it up in a software layer gives you safety and security,' says Huddy, 'but it unfortunately tends to rob you of quite a lot of the performance, and most importantly it robs you of the opportunity to innovate.'

'It can vary from almost nothing at all to a huge overhead,' says Huddy. 'If you're just rendering a screen full of pixels which are not terribly complicated, then typically a PC will do just as good a job as a console. These days we have so much horsepower on PCs that on high-resolutions you see some pretty extraordinary-looking PC games, but one of the things that you don't see in PC gaming inside the software architecture is the kind of stuff that we see on consoles all the time.

On consoles, you can draw maybe 10,000 or 20,000 chunks of geometry in a frame, and you can do that at 30-60fps. On a PC, you can't typically draw more than 2-3,000 without getting into trouble with performance, and that's quite surprising - the PC can actually show you only a tenth of the performance if you need a separate batch for each draw call.

Now the PC software architecture – DirectX – has been kind of bent into shape to try to accommodate more and more of the batch calls in a sneaky kind of way. There are the multi-threaded display lists, which come up in DirectX 11 – that helps, but unsurprisingly it only gives you a factor of two at the very best, from what we've seen. And we also support instancing, which means that if you're going to draw a crate, you can actually draw ten crates just as fast as far as DirectX is concerned.

But it's still very hard to throw tremendous variety into a PC game. If you want each of your draw calls to be a bit different, then you can't get over about 2-3,000 draw calls typically - and certainly a maximum amount of 5,000. Games developers definitely have a need for that. Console games often use 10-20,000 draw calls per frame, and that's an easier way to let the artist's vision shine through.'

'Having direct access to hardware would mean no drivers magically translating your byte code once again, and also having low-level memory management available, which you have to some degree with CUDA, and also your own thread scheduler would be really enjoyable. It definitely makes sense to have a standardised, vendor-independent API as an abstraction layer over the hardware, but we would also prefer this API to be really thin and allow more low-level access to the hardware. This will not only improve performance, but it will also allow better use of the available hardware features.'

Consoles also have a major bonus over PCs here, which is their fixed architecture. If you program direct-to-metal on the PlayStation 3's GPU, then you know your code will work on every PS3. The same can't be said on the PC, where we have numerous different GPU architectures from different manufacturers that work in different ways.

For example, developers may ideally need to vectorise their code for it to run optimally on an AMD GPU's stream processor clusters, or maybe tell the GPU's stream processor clusters to split up their units into combinations of vector and scalar units. Conversely, developers will ideally need to program for a scalar architecture on Nvidia GPUs. Once you remove the API software layer, you suddenly have to really start thinking about the differences between GPU architectures.

There are more articles from other hardware makers. But the long and short of it is you're never going to have the max performance of the hardware on a full featured OS that has multiple hardware configurations, especially on the GPU side, and is upgradable. End of story. So the very parts of PC gaming that are fun and make a desktop a far more useful item than a console are what prevent it from getting the maximum potential... often by a factor of several times.

 

[Trackr]

There are more articles from other hardware makers. But the long and short of it is you're never going to have the max performance of the hardware on a full featured OS that has multiple hardware configurations, especially on the GPU side, and is upgradable. End of story. So the very parts of PC gaming that are fun and make a desktop a far more useful item than a console are what prevent it from getting the maximum potential... often by a factor of several times.

It's not really the upgradeability that is the problem.

It's having differing components AT ALL.

Even if there were only, say, 5 different PCs on the market, that would still be impossible.

You'd need a single set of hardware for a single game.. otherwise it wouldn't work.

Well, I suppose in that case.. we'll just have to live with it, because having only one computer type in the whole world is just silly, even if you get twice the performance.

Btw, thanks for posting the interview.

 

[jinhur]

LOL, Saying PC gaming is only about e-peen, when it is really about playing at 1080p, (real 1080p), or higher, at greater than 30fps, game mods, multi monitor support, etc, etc., is just as silly as claiming that console gamers are all casual noobs, too moronic to know any better, or even comprehend the pure awesomeness of the glorious PC gaming master race.

agreed.
that poor fella.. haha

 

[wonderfield]

As for how much, that Shishkovstok guy said "at least" 2x, and I know Carmack has said about 2x.

I don't have any recollection of Carmack ever saying to the effect of 2x, but if he did, I suspect he was talking about the performance differential with regard to something quite specific. Generally speaking, the layers of abstraction between hardware and applications is not something that cuts performance down by a factor of two.

Ah. No, I was under the impression that you were saying that Microsoft designed DirectX to be inefficient, but what you're actually saying is that DirectX is the best they can do, it's just not as good as configuring the entire system for gaming.

DirectX (Direct3D) is designed to be an efficient abstraction. But it is an abstraction, and abstractions negatively impact performance unless they can simply be compiled or otherwise optimized away. There is currently no zero- or near-zero-cost abstraction graphics API, but the current APIs are not heavyweight things. You could argue that Direct3D is the best Microsoft can do, more or less, given their goals and the current hardware environment.

There are certain aspects that could be different if hardware vendors were to come together and agree on certain architectural standards, but that probably won't happen for a while. Until then, there are going to be some costs for the abstractions that the graphics APIs have to present.

But why is that? Isn't it silly to configure a PC to multi-task and lose gaming performance, while consoles are being configured to game and whether they lose multi-tasking performance is irrelevant, no?

Multitasking doesn't really hurt performance in any meaningful way. The OS delegates some CPU time to keeping itself in order and addressing the resource needs of any resident applications, but it's minimal: game engines are specifically designed to suck up every last bit of CPU time available. Most well-behaved desktop GUI applications, on the other hand, don't attempt to suck up mass amounts of resources and are effectively idle when nothing is being demanded of them.

Multitasking 'hurts' in terms of memory usage primarily, but that's a non-concern these days with the extent of memory availability in PCs. Windows is a bit more aggressive about paging than a lot of people would like for it to be, but that means more memory can be allocated to active applications, which is generally a good OS policy.

This seems like purely a software issue, so why can't Windows accommodate such settings?

This is more of a hardware vendor issue than a Windows issue. You can absolutely do rendering on a modern GPU without going through Direct3D/OpenGL (for the most part), but you still currently have to rasterize through those interfaces. There may be some small light at the end of that tunnel with Maxwell, though, making alternative thin graphics APIs more of a real possibility.

 

[Trackr]

So, you're basically saying that if nVidia and AMD decide on using the same GPU architecture, we won't need DirectX?

 

[wonderfield]

Not the same architecture, but some things would need to be standardized upon. Memory models, formats and so forth.

 

[Trackr]

Not the same architecture, but some things would need to be standardized upon. Memory models, formats and so forth.

And this could account for some of the 200% increase in performance?

Then why aren't they doing it?

 

[Snowdog]

And this could account for some of the 200% increase in performance?

Then why aren't they doing it?

Because they are competitors with patents/copyrights on their own unique design, neither would allow their competitor to copy their design.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Youemmaimai disputes it. Sorry for thinking you are slow like him.


As for how much, that Shishkovstok guy said "at least" 2x, and I know Carmack has said about 2x.

lol...

talk about being slow... I dispute the fact that the consoles are siginifanclt faster than comprable PCs and I have posted up plenty of benchmarks to prove it

an ancient pentium 3 with a ATi radeon 1800 XL (available at the time of 360 release) is enough to obliterate their performance. that setup can render doom 3 at 1600*1200 at more than 60fps with options maxed, the 360 and PS3 cannot.

In one of these other dumb console threads I even showed where the graph provided showing a PS3 being faster than the cost reduced version of the 7800 was wrong....

 

[wonderfield]

And this could account for some of the 200% increase in performance?

There's no 200% performance increase from ditching a graphics API in any general case. The situation is not nearly that grim.

Because they are competitors with patents/copyrights on their own unique design, neither would allow their competitor to copy their design.

That isn't always the case. NVIDIA and AMD do occasionally cooperate in some ways, but they generally try to remain fairly competitive with each other and maintain proprietarity. The current climate favors that to some degree.

It's going to happen eventually. It just hasn't happened yet, because nothing's really motivated it. It could be that NVIDIA and Intel are already working together on some level of standardization to gain an edge over AMD's monopoly in the next-generation console market, as they're both in a position of being almost exclusively reliant on the PC market (and PC gaming is a big part of that). Assuming that happens, AMD may in a position where they're forced to cooperate to remain competitive in the PC space.

A lot of things would get magically easier for everyone if there were more cooperation between the major vendors.

 

[BladeVenom]

As for how much, that Shishkovstok guy said "at least" 2x, and I know Carmack has said about 2x.

Yet the PS4 won't be able to run the Epic's Elemental demo as well as the GTX 680. If consoles were really twice as powerful as a PC with the same specs it could. http://www.pcper.com/news/Editorial/Epic-Games-disappointed-PS4-and-Xbox-One

 

[Snowdog]

That isn't always the case. NVIDIA and AMD do occasionally cooperate in some ways, but they generally try to remain fairly competitive with each other and maintain proprietarity. The current climate favors that to some degree.

Occasional cooperation is a far cry from having identical hardware to the extent that SW abstraction is no longer needed. The AMD/NVidia differences will only end if AMD goes bankrupt and no longer exists.

As long as AMD/NVidia exist as separate companies, they will have unique HW, and SW abstraction will be required if you want to target both architectures with the same code.

 

[wonderfield]

Occasional cooperation is a far cry from having identical hardware to the extent that SW abstraction is no longer needed.

I never said anything about identical hardware.

 

[Snowdog]

I never said anything about identical hardware.

To be rid of SW abstraction it would essentially have to be. The architectures are too unique and complex, that making a few changes to memory locations and the like is not even the tip of the iceberg.

Never going to happen.

 

[wonderfield]

Neither am I talking about getting rid of all abstraction. I'm talking about the possibility for thinner APIs.

 

[acerbic]

I don't really see the need for it on a PC anyways. I guess perhaps when we have cloud based processing (which both AMD and nvidia are pushing) we can have it, but for the most part oh well.

It's really a case of consoles and PC's not being the same. The price of being able to upgrade your box and customize it to how you want, along with it being able to do more things than a console, is that you will never be able to fully utilize the hardware in it. On the other hand in order to fully and efficiently utilize something the downside is that you can't customize it for squat and it only does one thing really well.

This has been the case with these sort of things since forever. Oh well, the PC can't fully utilize what's in it, you can upgrade it!