Xbox 720 Hardware guess from IGN

I guess all they have done is look at what can deliver solid 1080p gaming at around 30 minimum-60fps maximum.

I'm pretty sure a modded/custom/hybrid 6670/6770 with an optimised DX11/12 API, custom Cell style CPU and some tweaky cache/ram could well do that. With all those optimisations no reason why a 6670 couldn't perform as well as a 6850 or better I reckon.

1080p is the bar now. Do you need a 6970/580+ for that? No. Its whatever will do the job for the minimum cost per box. I don't think the next gen of consoles will be such a big leap as the current gen were. More evolutionary than revolutionary. That means cheaper parts.

Sony and MS will be wanting to get some profit back on each box far sooner than they were back in 2005/6. Shareholders and the market cant sustain such losses anymore.

man i thought the general consensus after a few pages of discussion was that this was fud and not very likely. if it really does end up being a 6670 theres no way in hell id waste my money on it. 6950 or 6870 would be great i think if they want it to last 8 years again and not suck balls.
 
man i thought the general consensus after a few pages of discussion was that this was fud and not very likely. if it really does end up being a 6670 theres no way in hell id waste my money on it. 6950 or 6870 would be great i think if they want it to last 8 years again and not suck balls.

If it performs the job as it is required and the games work great then you'll be buying.

Your fear/rage/whatever is kind of irrational really.

Besides who knows what it will be.

But I reckon it wont be some top of the line GPU powerhouse. It will be whatever MS and Sony can get for $20 a chip. Remember pushing the (then new) 1080p res required a top end chip around 2005. Now what does it take? Not the GPUs you are mentioning. This wont be a straight PC part anyway. It will be modded for pure performance in a controlled API/hardware environment. Hence why games on the 360 and PS3 even today don't look totally retarded as they would if you were running a PC with their PC hardware counterparts (X1800/7800GT) today.
 
If it performs the job as it is required and the games work great then you'll be buying.

Your fear/rage/whatever is kind of irrational really.

Besides who knows what it will be.

But I reckon it wont be some top of the line GPU powerhouse. It will be whatever MS and Sony can get for $20 a chip. Remember pushing the (then new) 1080p res required a top end chip around 2005. Now what does it take? Not the GPUs you are mentioning. This wont be a straight PC part anyway. It will be modded for pure performance in a controlled API/hardware environment. Hence why games on the 360 and PS3 even today don't look totally retarded as they would if you were running a PC with their PC hardware counterparts (X1800/7800GT) today.

yeah because who needs progress right? who wants their console games 8 years from now to look better than the shit they were in 2011? oh yeah, i do along with anyone whos ever gamed on a pc instead of getting spoonfed whatever crap console makers decide is good enough for us. 1080p is the MINIMUM it should support. in 3 years hopefully higher def will be the norm. AND it should be ready to play more demanding games than what are out now. AND probably 3d since ps3 already offers it.

so youre saying that a 6670 should run current xbox games at 1080p just fine, and i agree with that. what i dont agree with is that its acceptable. in 2 years i expect to be playing games with better graphics, at 3d or 100+fps, and at 2560x1440 or higher resolution. for that, a 6670 is not acceptable.
 
yeah because who needs progress right? who wants their console games 8 years from now to look better than the shit they were in 2011? oh yeah, i do along with anyone whos ever gamed on a pc instead of getting spoonfed whatever crap console makers decide is good enough for us. 1080p is the MINIMUM it should support. in 3 years hopefully higher def will be the norm. AND it should be ready to play more demanding games than what are out now. AND probably 3d since ps3 already offers it.

so youre saying that a 6670 should run current xbox games at 1080p just fine, and i agree with that. what i dont agree with is that its acceptable. in 2 years i expect to be playing games with better graphics, at 3d or 100+fps, and at 2560x1440 or higher resolution. for that, a 6670 is not acceptable.

Average TVs aren't going to be moving to 2560x1440 resolution in the next console generation. People have a hard enough time understanding basic concepts of HD and how to properly connect devices right now. This will not change anytime soon.

Look how slow Blu Ray is being adopted. Common folk just don't see the benefits of higher screen resolutions in the living room.

If Sony or MS put out a console that could do 4K resolutions with 8X AA, people would just immediately complain that the console was too damn expensive and wasn't worth it.

Looking how far Sony and MS have taken the current consoles with ~7 year old tech, I would say they did a remarkable job. Sure the resolution is usually 720P, but a lot of the games look great and I don't often find myself going "Gawd this looks bad".
 
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When the 360 and the PS3 came out most people didn't have an HDTV and most of the sets that were being sold were 720p. And shocker, those consoles manage to handle 720p just fine.

Now most of the sets being pushed are 1080p and their consoles are going to target that.

3d and higher resolutions.... that's just not what peoples TV sets are for the most part. There is no point in selling a console that people can't really use.

And people don't really upgrade TVs. People get the biggest screen they can buy within their budget and then hang it on the damn wall. They don't give a shit about the rest. If it's 1080p than it's 1080p, if not, who cares! The only reason 1080p is getting to be standard now is that it's getting to become impossible not to end up with a 1080p TV at the sizes people are buying.
 
But there is still a difference. The average TV in the last generarion was just moving to 1080p. And the consoles despite what they claim were all built around 720p, the fact that most of them have to go down to that resolution, then scale up is evidence of that.

So the next generation will see the need for 1080p standard, but on top of that we are in the middle of a 3D push. 3D effectively doubles the workload on any job because you need to render every scene from 2 POVs. Every console needs to have a decent modern chip. That is the only way it is acceptable to keep it long term. This does not make any sense. The only possible sense it makes, would be, MS is looking to ship on day one for $199. Perhaps, MS just thinks that XBL is so popular no one will care if the ship a lower power console.

The far more likely scenario is that this is just a fud article making random guesses or even making outrageous claims simply to drive in traffic.
 
Consoles are made to hit a performance area of where they want to be. Not dick wave about specs. Also consoles are piles of shit like PCs are. You get hardware level access and there is no bloat of them from stupid layers or OS, so you get a lot more with less.

I wouldn't worry about it.

BTW this is wrong apparently you were not alive in the last console generation because I am very sure sony tried to do a ton of dick waving. The difference is that console makers do not try to compare themself to PCs, however in the console race whom ever has the higher specs will be flaunting it with everything they have.
 
meh, maybe its because im a pc gamer. i guess you guys are used to being severely limited since its the status quo. ive always gamed on pc because its so much better and cheaper (i used to pirate games when i was broke in hs/college, now that i have a job i buy shit tons of steam games for cheap and ive bought most of the games i played back then.) i couldnt ever bring myself to buy a console for the 2 or 3 console-specific games id like to play on them when i had way too many pc games to keep up with already. now that im working though i was getting pumped for the next gen of consoles and hoping to get at least one. if i can expect <60fps at 1080p on medium graphics settings, then i'll probably just pass again. i agree that im probably not who theyre targeting though and for the casual/social gamer it may actually be enough. ill stick to 120hz (just waiting for a 120hz 2560x1600 monitor) at high settings.
 
BTW this is wrong apparently you were not alive in the last console generation because I am very sure sony tried to do a ton of dick waving. The difference is that console makers do not try to compare themself to PCs, however in the console race whom ever has the higher specs will be flaunting it with everything they have.

Hell yeah they did they made the cell processor sound like the second coming.
 
BTW this is wrong apparently you were not alive in the last console generation because I am very sure sony tried to do a ton of dick waving. The difference is that console makers do not try to compare themself to PCs, however in the console race whom ever has the higher specs will be flaunting it with everything they have.

Sony was trying to sell CELL chips and blu-ray, so no shit they were yacking about it. But outside of fanboys nobody cared.

meh, maybe its because im a pc gamer. i guess you guys are used to being severely limited since its the status quo. ive always gamed on pc because its so much better and cheaper (i used to pirate games when i was broke in hs/college, now that i have a job i buy shit tons of steam games for cheap and ive bought most of the games i played back then.) i couldnt ever bring myself to buy a console for the 2 or 3 console-specific games id like to play on them when i had way too many pc games to keep up with already. now that im working though i was getting pumped for the next gen of consoles and hoping to get at least one. if i can expect <60fps at 1080p on medium graphics settings, then i'll probably just pass again. i agree that im probably not who theyre targeting though and for the casual/social gamer it may actually be enough. ill stick to 120hz (just waiting for a 120hz 2560x1600 monitor) at high settings.

I have multiple SLI gaming rigs that I don't use. I just don't game on them really. The most use a tri 480 rig gets is my GF playing farmville on it.

Japanese shooters, rpgs, strat rpgs are all amazing, and those are all on console. I love fighting games as well and I play those on console and arcade cabs.

Consoles are for dedicated gamers.
 
also, i still dont understand why microsoft wont release an xbox emulator for pc. i mean theyre a pc company, so im sure their code can be ported over. not sure what cpu they use but the gpu is based on a pc part so cant be too far off. and last i checked they dont make much off the consoles anyway, maybe $50 at most? their profits are on games and xbox live subs and dlc etc. if they let you play the games on your pc in your bluray drive id do that.
 
also, i still dont understand why microsoft wont release an xbox emulator for pc. i mean theyre a pc company, so im sure their code can be ported over. not sure what cpu they use but the gpu is based on a pc part so cant be too far off. and last i checked they dont make much off the consoles anyway, maybe $50 at most? their profits are on games and xbox live subs and dlc etc. if they let you play the games on your pc in your bluray drive id do that.

If they let PCs run 360 games, they could immediately lose control over their whole thing. Piracy would go up, more people would cheat, less people would pay for XBox Live, online console players would cry after getting smoked by mouse and keyboard users, XBox Live account hijacking would be much worse than it is now, and they would run into usability/stability issues that they simply don't have now.

Companies are free to release their console games on the PC if they want. MS doesn't need to open up the can of worms with just letting people play 360 games directly on the PC.
 
If they let PCs run 360 games, they could immediately lose control over their whole thing. Piracy would go up, more people would cheat, less people would pay for XBox Live, online console players would cry after getting smoked by mouse and keyboard users, XBox Live account hijacking would be much worse than it is now, and they would run into usability/stability issues that they simply don't have now.

Companies are free to release their console games on the PC if they want. MS doesn't need to open up the can of worms with just letting people play 360 games directly on the PC.

yeah i guess that makes sense. its just those few console games that are getting me. id like to play uncharted, gow, maybe a couple others... not enough to get an xbox though. :)
 
Some folks don't seem to grasp the whole rationale behind consoles. The beauty of them is the the hardware platform is largely standardised. The developers don't have to code the games for a massive range of hardware both modern and legacy, not to mention DX9/10/11/AMD/Nvidia etc. That's one of the main performance hits that PC games have to overcome.

The code can be highly optimised for just one hardware specification. That's why console hardware can last a lot longer than PC hardware. How much attention nowadays do most modern games get for running on 2005 spec PC GPUs?
 
Some folks don't seem to grasp the whole rationale behind consoles. The beauty of them is the the hardware platform is largely standardised. The developers don't have to code the games for a massive range of hardware both modern and legacy, not to mention DX9/10/11/AMD/Nvidia etc. That's one of the main performance hits that PC games have to overcome.

The code can be highly optimised for just one hardware specification. That's why console hardware can last a lot longer than PC hardware. How much attention nowadays do most modern games get for running on 2005 spec PC GPUs?

hopefully very little, that would be dumb to cater to people with archaic computers. the hardware lasting forever is not for your benefit, its for theirs. they make very little on hardware and a ton on software. the longer they can go between refreshes the better for them. dont start thinking they care about you the customer. they want your money, and they want as much of it as they can get.

i do agree with ocellaris above though. piracy, cheating, and the support issues theyd have to deal with are why itll never happen. i wish it would as i would love to smoke xbox players with 500 hours in mw3 after about 3 hours on my mouse+keyboard. :)
 
also, i still dont understand why microsoft wont release an xbox emulator for pc. i mean theyre a pc company, so im sure their code can be ported over. not sure what cpu they use but the gpu is based on a pc part so cant be too far off. and last i checked they dont make much off the consoles anyway, maybe $50 at most? their profits are on games and xbox live subs and dlc etc. if they let you play the games on your pc in your bluray drive id do that.

Because the whole point of a console is to lock you into their system. If you can break out of the system then they cannot charge an extra $10 per game, and charge $50 for a $15 controller. It is just like printers, once you buy into the system you are stuck with over priced accessories. If they changed the console model, it would just be a PC.
 
Because the whole point of a console is to lock you into their system. If you can break out of the system then they cannot charge an extra $10 per game, and charge $50 for a $15 controller. It is just like printers, once you buy into the system you are stuck with over priced accessories. If they changed the console model, it would just be a PC.

yep. stupid idea, nvm. :(
 
Sony was trying to sell CELL chips and blu-ray, so no shit they were yacking about it. But outside of fanboys nobody cared.



I have multiple SLI gaming rigs that I don't use. I just don't game on them really. The most use a tri 480 rig gets is my GF playing farmville on it.

Japanese shooters, rpgs, strat rpgs are all amazing, and those are all on console. I love fighting games as well and I play those on console and arcade cabs.

Consoles are for dedicated gamers.

Oh I guess they weren't trying to sell PS3s? sd11 you argue weird points, most of the time I do not even know what your point is. Sony was dick waving to sell consoles. Just because they had a hand in blu ray and cell does not mean it was any different than any other dick waving.
When you have a small dick (wii) you say its all about performance, when you have a big dick you show it. That is just how it works in any mechanical or tech industry. But you almost always know at the end of the day a small dick is small.
 
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hopefully very little, that would be dumb to cater to people with archaic computers. the hardware lasting forever is not for your benefit, its for theirs. they make very little on hardware and a ton on software. the longer they can go between refreshes the better for them. dont start thinking they care about you the customer. they want your money, and they want as much of it as they can get.

i do agree with ocellaris above though. piracy, cheating, and the support issues theyd have to deal with are why itll never happen. i wish it would as i would love to smoke xbox players with 500 hours in mw3 after about 3 hours on my mouse+keyboard. :)

Your not getting the whole picture, but it doesnt matter. You keep playing on your PC with its ever dwindling supply of games.

And before you class me anti-PC, I'm just being realistic. I'm not a hardcore console fan either. But I remember the days back in the early 90's when the PC section in the computer game stores was three whole walls of big black cardboard boxes. Now its down to one rack in the corner near the staff toilet. Its a shame but there you go. Consoles got the rest.
 
Consoles are made to hit a performance area of where they want to be. Not dick wave about specs. Also consoles are piles of shit like PCs are. You get hardware level access and there is no bloat of them from stupid layers or OS, so you get a lot more with less.

I wouldn't worry about it.

you do not get more for less. Just because you keep saying something does not make it true....Go back and look at what hardware was available for the PC and what the consoles put out.......yeah I guess if you consider 600p upscaled to 1080p better than 1600*1200 native res..lol btw the PS3 and 360 run an OS first and game second.....just like ye' ol' standard PC.....

all one has to do is compare doom 3 on both platforms and go from there....or pretty much any current game like batman AC lol the PC version puts the console version to shame...litteraly...same for the older batman AA title....heck you can even compare titles available to the PC and 360 at time of launch and see the lackluster perforamnce of the console vs the PCs of the time....

When the new consoles are out, the 79xx series will be available for a long time along with kepler and the consoles will not even be able to touch that level of performance. heck they look like they won't even touch 5870 level performance...

2MP all maxed out vs 4+MP all maxed out.....you do the performance math...
 
Your not getting the whole picture, but it doesnt matter. You keep playing on your PC with its ever dwindling supply of games.

And before you class me anti-PC, I'm just being realistic. I'm not a hardcore console fan either. But I remember the days back in the early 90's when the PC section in the computer game stores was three whole walls of big black cardboard boxes. Now its down to one rack in the corner near the staff toilet. Its a shame but there you go. Consoles got the rest.

i have 205 games on steam and im not even a hardcore gamer. how many console games do you have? just for shits i will even let you total all games across all of your consoles. and there are a lot of pc games i dont have that i want. i just have such a gigantic backlog that i wait for a games price to drop before i buy it because i can. i will, in fact, keep playing on my pc with its 2560x1600 resolution and graphics all on high at 60+ fps and the ability to increase those numbers if i ever want to. EDIT: also mouse+keyboard. haha every time i try to play console im like "how do they expect me to aim with this thing? it takes forever just to turn around..."

and i cant believe you think the "pc games arent in stores any more" argument is valid to ANY degree. steam has put b&m pc game sellers all but out of business. i can buy any game from my room for often 75% off if i wait a little. why would i ever pay $60 for a game again? i wont. ever. and neither will anyone else because its an archaic system that robs the customer blind. most ive payed for a game in the last year was $15 for metro 2033 i think and i regretted it, should have paid $10. theres origin, steam, gmg, amazon dd, etc all just throwing awesome games at you for ridiculously low prices. why would you want to drive all the way to the store and deal with checkout lines just for the pleasure of paying over twice as much? :confused:
 
Your not getting the whole picture, but it doesnt matter. You keep playing on your PC with its ever dwindling supply of games.

And before you class me anti-PC, I'm just being realistic. I'm not a hardcore console fan either. But I remember the days back in the early 90's when the PC section in the computer game stores was three whole walls of big black cardboard boxes. Now its down to one rack in the corner near the staff toilet. Its a shame but there you go. Consoles got the rest.

Ya but this is not a realistic assessment. Back then the console games always out numbered PC games. The reality is PC gaming always had less mass appeal than console gaming. Simply because the initial buy in for console gaming is lower. You can say the exact same thing about music, look in a best buy now, the music racks keep spreading out and becoming smaller. But the fact is people still listen to just as much music. So what happened? Simple the sales went all online. Slowly but surely entire walls of music and video games turned into a small rack that has itunes or steam gift cards.
 
Ya but this is not a realistic assessment. Back then the console games always out numbered PC games. The reality is PC gaming always had less mass appeal than console gaming. Simply because the initial buy in for console gaming is lower. You can say the exact same thing about music, look in a best buy now, the music racks keep spreading out and becoming smaller. But the fact is people still listen to just as much music. So what happened? Simple the sales went all online. Slowly but surely entire walls of music and video games turned into a small rack that has itunes or steam gift cards.

Amen to that.....Steam is where I get my games now....
 
Some folks don't seem to grasp the whole rationale behind consoles. The beauty of them is the the hardware platform is largely standardised. The developers don't have to code the games for a massive range of hardware both modern and legacy, not to mention DX9/10/11/AMD/Nvidia etc. That's one of the main performance hits that PC games have to overcome.
Show me the proof of this, I don't believe it. This is an often quoted line, but honestly I don't believe it that much. The PS3 GPU was based roughly off a 7900 and as far as I can see, that's roughly where it sits when put up against other PC GPU options. I had an 8800GTS 320mb which was roughly twice the performance of a 7900 and if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it was roughly twice the performance of a PS3 as well.

The code can be highly optimised for just one hardware specification. That's why console hardware can last a lot longer than PC hardware. How much attention nowadays do most modern games get for running on 2005 spec PC GPUs?

Its not optimisation that gives it longevity, its stagnating graphical quality. My 8800GTS 320mb played games better than a console 5 years ago and I'm pretty sure it could still play games better than a console, the difference between console and PC is that on PC I DONT want to play on low settings at sub-720 resolutions because I don't have to, I can just upgrade my card and be playing at 1920x1080 and high settings.

BF3 doesn't play on consoles because its highly optimised or because consoles can get more power out of them than PCs, BF3 plays on consoles because they neutered it to play on consoles. Its hardly a new thing, I remember playing games like ReVolt and the original Rainbow Six on N64 back in the day... they were completely different games on PC to the N64 because the N64 couldn't deal with them in their entirety. I played a lot of ReVolt on N64 and have recently been playing it on PC and I can say its a different game, what was a ditch on N64 was a pond on PC, there were obstacles on PC that didn't exist on consoles (supposedly because the console couldn't deal with that many objects), PC had 8 cars and console had 4.

Consoles don't have longevity because of optimisation or because they can get more performance than a PC, its because after you've released a console that's what you're stuck with until the next one comes out so you're forced to develop for the lowest common denominator, which is the only denominator, even if it means neutering you game to make it run.

Even more reason to make it so the GPU you put in the console is ACTUALLY capable of running 1080p easily, and not just barely running 1080p for some games but not for others. If they released it with a 6670 like the rumour stated, it'd start off at the point of having to play at the equivalent of low settings just to manage 1080p.
 
^ It's more than 2x performance framebuffer of video cards back then was 256MB the starting poing for high performance cards and 512MB was the higher end cards. Not to mention it was GDDR3 ram which smokes the ram used in the PS3 and 360 and it's not shared...(yes I know, the ATi card has some insanely fast edram but it could not overome the slow ram used in the system when you pitted it's performance against the 1800XL or the Nvidia counterpart)
 
^ It's more than 2x performance framebuffer of video cards back then was 256MB the starting poing for high performance cards and 512MB was the higher end cards. Not to mention it was GDDR3 ram which smokes the ram used in the PS3 and 360 and it's not shared...(yes I know, the ATi card has some insanely fast edram but it could not overome the slow ram used in the system when you pitted it's performance against the 1800XL or the Nvidia counterpart)

I said roughly :p It was my only point of reference that's why I used it as an example, I never owned a PC with a card comparable to the current gen consoles. But it let me push around twice the pixels of the consoles at noticably higher settings. I remember doing comparisons of graphics because at the time I was tossing up between a console + work PC or just building a gaming PC that I could also use for work.
 
When the new consoles are out, the 79xx series will be available for a long time along with kepler and the consoles will not even be able to touch that level of performance. heck they look like they won't even touch 5870 level performance...

And folks will still be playing the next gen of consoles long after the 79xx series cards have been consigned to your mom's PC for her to browse Ebay on. So which was the better long term investment?

These boxes have to sell for $400. Both Sony and MS will have done some market research to see what sort of prices people are willing to pay and I bet they are not as high as they were in 2004/5. Plus Both MS and Sony wont want to be making such a loss on these boxes as they were prepared to do back in the 'good times'.

We here on this site are a minority. Sure a vocal one but our influence is diminishing year by year.
 
We here on this site are a minority. Sure a vocal one but our influence is diminishing year by year.

This time last year I would agree 100%. But I'm telling ya I feel a change coming. Even console fanboys I personally know are jumping and building their fist PC. All it took was them seeing BF3 on a modest system. If PC can keep this small momentum going and consoles stay shitty, I think more and more people will come to their senses.
 
you do not get more for less. Just because you keep saying something does not make it true....Go back and look at what hardware was available for the PC and what the consoles put out.......yeah I guess if you consider 600p upscaled to 1080p better than 1600*1200 native res..lol btw the PS3 and 360 run an OS first and game second.....just like ye' ol' standard PC.....

Yes, you do. The OS of the PS3 and 360 are not a giant bloated pile of shit like windows is. And in the console you have hardware level access rather than the giant turd that is directX. So consoles are actually able to get more out of their hardware than a PC is! Amazing, I know.

Have fun and do it this way. Take a PC, load up XP or win7, slap in 256mb ram and a 7800gt and then try to play any current cross platform game. It won't, at all. The PS3 can do that at 720p and mid details. That should tell you something.

all one has to do is compare doom 3 on both platforms and go from there....or pretty much any current game like batman AC lol the PC version puts the console version to shame...litteraly...same for the older batman AA title....heck you can even compare titles available to the PC and 360 at time of launch and see the lackluster perforamnce of the console vs the PCs of the time....

This has nothing to do with consoles being more efficient with their hardware, PC's being terrible with their hardware and just throwing more horsepower at it to do what hey do.

I bought Batman for the consoles. Good leaderboards, and there was nothing about the PC good enough to make it worth bothering about, oh and it was buggy as shit.

. i will, in fact, keep playing on my pc with its 2560x1600 resolution and graphics all on high at 60+ fps and the ability to increase those numbers if i ever want to. EDIT: also mouse+keyboard. haha every time i try to play console im like "how do they expect me to aim with this thing? it takes forever just to turn around..."

That mouse only applies to FPS and some other games. Not all games are better with KBM. And not everybody mainly plays FPS games. There are plenty of great console games I like and they work fine for them. The only PC games I've played lately are Tribes, Quake Live, and Blood Bowl.
 
Yes, you do. The OS of the PS3 and 360 are not a giant bloated pile of shit like windows is. And in the console you have hardware level access rather than the giant turd that is directX. So consoles are actually able to get more out of their hardware than a PC is! Amazing, I know.

Have fun and do it this way. Take a PC, load up XP or win7, slap in 256mb ram and a 7800gt and then try to play any current cross platform game. It won't, at all. The PS3 can do that at 720p and mid details. That should tell you something.

I'm still waiting for someone to show a GPU in a console can punch above its weight compared to a PC. I won't argue the 256mb ram thing, I'm sure consoles can use ram more effectively than a PC, but I'm not convinced a low end GPU in a console will perform any better than the same low end GPU in a PC.

As for your 7800GT challenge, well, a 7800GT was similar performance (if not slightly better) than an 8600GT. Here's several current cross platform games running on an 8600GT...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITs10oq8CEc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugsPpaWud4c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8FJ3igw76Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29V8RT3mP4k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmUIm0ay6Gc&feature=related

Some of the videos are a bit stuttery, but that's to be somewhat expected for a low end PC recording with FRAPS, if you believe the comments most of the games except maybe BF3 are playable at low to medium at low res... sure sounds like console level performance to me :p

Point is though, I have no doubt consoles have less shit running in the background which lets them use less memory and maybe even less CPU (though they're still hamstrung by those limitations), however when it comes to how much eye candy the GPU can throw up on screen, to me it seems consoles don't really do it any better than a PC, they just achieve what they can by setting the quality to uber-low and resolutions far below what most PC gamers would even consider an option. To me that's logical, as once the game is started up and in full screen mode, Windows gives all the graphics power over to the game rather than hogging it for itself.
That mouse only applies to FPS and some other games. Not all games are better with KBM. And not everybody mainly plays FPS games. There are plenty of great console games I like and they work fine for them.
I agree a 360 controller is better in some circumstances like racing games, but KBM is better for a lot more than just FPS games. Even some 3rd person games I've recently played I put aside my controller and used the KBM because the controller just lacked a bit. Mouse has advantages in speed and Keyboard has advantages in sheer number of buttons available, which sees me using KBM for more than just FPS games even though I also have a 360 controller rigged up on my PC as well. It is obviously also dependant on what you get used to, but there's no denying certain advantages to KBM.
 
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It's not just the OS, it's a matter of hardware level access, something PC games do not have. Which is a huge advantage. Also since the hardware is fixed, developers can really focus on pulling the max out of what they have.

So while a 7800gt is still a 7800gt, the PC can never fully utilize it to it's max potential. The console can because it has hardware level access. Furthermore since the console version of the game can be designed specifically for one item, it's going to be a lot more efficient.

It's not punching above it's weight, it's just not crippled and gimped because of the drawbacks on the PC, which are rather big ones.
 
It's not just the OS, it's a matter of hardware level access, something PC games do not have. Which is a huge advantage. Also since the hardware is fixed, developers can really focus on pulling the max out of what they have.

So while a 7800gt is still a 7800gt, the PC can never fully utilize it to it's max potential. The console can because it has hardware level access. Furthermore since the console version of the game can be designed specifically for one item, it's going to be a lot more efficient.

It's not punching above it's weight, it's just not crippled and gimped because of the drawbacks on the PC, which are rather big ones.

Well like I showed above, there's people playing current gen games on 8600GT cards, a card which is LESS powerful than a 7800GT.

I hear a lot of talk about consoles being able to use the GPU more efficiently and not a lot of evidence. It wouldn't suprise me if a PS3 console running a modified 7800GT can perform better than a PC with a 7800GT, but I wouldn't expect it to be hugely better or be capable of pushing out exceptionally higher resolutions or anything.

Personally I think if a 6670 can barely manage 1080p on a PC, it'll also barely manage it on a console.

So yeah, show me some actual evidence of PC GPUs being "crippled and gimped", coz I'm just not seeing it.
 
Then how come consoles are running at 720p 30fps when PC games can do the same game in their entirely innefficient state as you say, at 1080p and 120 fps?
 
Then how come consoles are running at 720p 30fps when PC games can do the same game in their entirely innefficient state as you say, at 1080p and 120 fps?

Well its about a million times more powerful, so not really a good comparison :p

But still, I'm not seeing this huge inefficiency of PC GPUs compared to console GPUs... I hear what people are saying, I'm not seeing it based on my (admittedly not expansive) gaming experience. Hell, I even posted a list of videos of people playing games on an 8600GT, a card less powerful than the 7800 series which the PS3 GPU is based off.

No doubt certain games are efficient and certain games are not, regardless of whether they be on console or PC, but I'm not seeing the universal "consoles are more efficient/less gimped than PCs".
 
I agree with you, you cannot make something so efficient it doubles it's power. And that only buys tyou 18 months. The other thing is even if they could make it that efficient it would not get done. It would just take too long. Not that many people get out and bare metal code. That is just the reality of it. That is exactly why all programming languages are moving away from it not toward it.
 
It's not making it more efficient at all. It's a matter of PC games having to support a slew of different GPUs where a console game can be optimized for a single GPU, which is a huge advantage. It's also a matter of console game developers having hardware level access to a GPU where a PC game developer has to go through directX, another huge advantage.

The GPU is the same, that's not the point. It's just that the draw backs of having to support a ton of GPUs instead of being optimized for one and having to use directX instead of having hardware level access to the GPU means that you'll never get the maximum performance out of a GPU on the PC. Consoles don't have those limitations.

It's not that the actual hardware is different, it's just that the PC platform is unable to fully use things to their full potential.
 
It's not that the actual hardware is different, it's just that the PC platform is unable to fully use things to their full potential.

Ok maybe I'm not understanding you, how does "unable to fully use things to their full potential" manifest itself in our current discussion of GPU performance? Do you feel the same card in a console will be able to push more eye candy or higher resolution compared to its PC counterpart which is "unable to...use...their full potential"? I personally don't think it can, or at least I haven't seen any evidence to show that this would be the case (if you can provide something conclusive I'd be happy to change my opinion ;)).

My argument is if a 6670 can barely push 1080p on a PC, it'll barely be able to push 1080p on a console. Just like a 7800GT would struggle to play games above 720p, just like a console powered by a 7800 derived card (the PS3) also struggles to play games above 720p. Do you disagree?

Or is there some other context in which you are using the phrase "use things to their full potential" which I'm not grasping?

I ask simply because this is the same thing I've heard for years and over several console generations, that a console can use its hardware more "efficiently" to produce better results than similarly powered PCs... yet to me it seems like an unsubstantiated claim in the context of GPU performance (just talking about GPU performance and not things like the pathetic memory capacity).
 
im with you tudz, and i dont think hes ever going to understand what youre saying.

ok so in this benchmark comparison, a 7800gt scores a 522 while a 6670 is 1,225. they claim the new gpu will be what, 5 times as fast? im seeing about 2.5 judging by those numbers. i really dont think it will be a 6670.
 
@Tudz

There are two reasons here

On a console a game can be completely optimized for just the GPU that's in the console. This is not the case on the PC where the game has to be designed to get a good amount of performance out of a slew of different video cards. Obviously it's easier to wring more performance out of a 7800 when you are just designing for a 7800 than it is when you are designing for potentially 20 different cards.

Second on a console you can often get hardware level access rather than having to through an API (directX or OGL) to access those features. So when developing for a console you have low level access, you do not have this when developing for a PC game.

So PC gaming developers not only can't optimize for just one GPU, they lack the same level of access to the actual hardware and have to go through the directX API.

It's not that a console magically makes a piece of hardware better, it doesn't. It's just that being on a PC prevents you from having the same level of access to the GPU and from optomizing on one GPU so you can't wring the same amount of performance out of the GPU on the PC.

Which is why crying about "oh noes, it's not the fastest thing out there" doesn't really matter. Since the amount of access they have to it plus the amount of optimization they can do for it means that the performance is going to be better.
 
sd11 you keep trolling the same point over and over. Get over it. Your inability to do simple math is astounding.

No matter what you say the xbox could be better if it had a better GPU. And throwing in a second rate GPU is real stupid. Developers do not spend all their time optimizing code for bare to metal programming. They do what is far easier, they just chop down the the settings and image quality, sell it and call it a day. The PS3 was absolute proof this was true. All they claimed never came to light because developers found the platform difficult to program for compared to the xbox SDK.

Even if you were correct how much are we talking? even if you make a game that uses a GPU at 100% efficiency it does not matter because when right now today a GPU that is twice as powerful exists that GPU can be placed in a PS3 or a PC and developers can run code that is a crappy 50% efficient and match the low end GPU in the Xbox. And they wont need to take nearly as long to make the game, nor will it cost as much.

All programming languages are moving away from bare to metal programing not to it. This is happening for a reason. Because simply put few bother with such drivel in the real world. The efficiency talk is marketing, and even if it was true you could make a more powerful GPU efficient.

No one is crying that this is not the fastest thing out there, we are stating this is down right lame. No one asked for a 590 or 6990.
 
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