Can the PC compete with Next Gen consoles?
- Thread starter skilzygw
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Well the good thing for pcs is that the lvl of hardware has been here long enough that we are going to get a great leap in the visual department next year .
Dx 8 has been around long enough that all games coming out in the next year or so should have that as the base line with dx 9 the sweet spot (Sm2.0 )
Then later this year we can look foward to a few key developments
1 ) a new sound card . Say what you will about creative but the new card should at least improve performance over the audigy 4 and most likely by a good amount
2) r520 and g70 . Both of these will be sm3.0 and they should both offer a ton of performance for the dx 9 engines coming out
3) dual core cpus . Sure at first the advantage in games wont be there but sweeny has already said the unreal 3 engine is multi thread friendly and will get a pretty sizable performance gain on the dual core cpus and we should expect more going foward along with 64 bit compiles of the games
4) the ppu this coupled with the dual core cpus should greatly enhance the power of the pcs .
We know that the pcs will have the gpu advantage and the ram advantage . The consoles will have the cpu advantage but with the ppus and dual core cpus it wont be long till pcs get past that point too
Dx 8 has been around long enough that all games coming out in the next year or so should have that as the base line with dx 9 the sweet spot (Sm2.0 )
Then later this year we can look foward to a few key developments
1 ) a new sound card . Say what you will about creative but the new card should at least improve performance over the audigy 4 and most likely by a good amount
2) r520 and g70 . Both of these will be sm3.0 and they should both offer a ton of performance for the dx 9 engines coming out
3) dual core cpus . Sure at first the advantage in games wont be there but sweeny has already said the unreal 3 engine is multi thread friendly and will get a pretty sizable performance gain on the dual core cpus and we should expect more going foward along with 64 bit compiles of the games
4) the ppu this coupled with the dual core cpus should greatly enhance the power of the pcs .
We know that the pcs will have the gpu advantage and the ram advantage . The consoles will have the cpu advantage but with the ppus and dual core cpus it wont be long till pcs get past that point too
the devs admitted no such thing. they admitted the final game will look every bit as good as that REALTIME clip.
and PLEASE explain to me how im trolling the forums.
trolling would be what u do in the console forums 24 7, oh no wait not only is it trolling its abuse of mod status.
and PLEASE explain to me how im trolling the forums.
trolling would be what u do in the console forums 24 7, oh no wait not only is it trolling its abuse of mod status.
Again, GR3 will be on PC aswell. The rest were CG renders that are only supposed to represent what PS3 games can look like (aside from PGR3 and F1 - although the F1 fanchise is also on PC.
Exactly how is the same game going to have lower poly counts, less effects and lower FPS on a more powerful machine? At the very least high end PC's will be running say 50% of next gen console games with higher res and higher FPS.
Lol, your dellusional. Even NOLF2 looked better than Halo. And wasn;t Unreal 2 released before Halo on the PC?
And Unreal 2, HL2 and Riddick. Other games I suppose are debatable.
UT2K4 doesn't compare to Unreal Championship? What have you been smoking?
.
Same engine, same game. Perhaps you were watching the video's with your fanboy glasses on? Post a link to the PC video and I will have a look
Wrong:
dmode.datamachine.net/sweeneyinterview.html
Any game ported from next gen consoles will look as good or better on a high end PC simply because a high end PC will be more capable in every respect. And no, a lot of the vids Sony showed were CG. Try doing a little reading around the net, its common knowledge.
No, the final version will run of the faster SM3.0 path for all platforms.
Wow thats a serious case of fanboy mode. So when nvidia tells you the PS3 GPU will be more powerful than anything ever seen before you beleive them, but when they say they will produce an even more powerful GPU for PC before PS3 is launched (a perfectly logical statement) you accuse them of lying?
Practically everyone has a PC and until that changes, people will wnat to play games on them.
Agreed, thats why I am getting an X360 as soon as they are released. However by 2007 you will probably be able to get a midrange R600 GPU for $150-$200 that blows away the X360. Same with PS3.
Nah, the only game performance advantage the Cell has over a PC CPU is for physics. A PPU will blow it away.[/quote]
Well,PC hardware's raw performance will surpass console very soon.
But I think console's performance/price ratio would be better than PC for about four years because of the advantage of closed platform.
It's unfair to compare XBOX to PC,you know XBOX's price now costs less than 160 dollars.
But I think console's performance/price ratio would be better than PC for about four years because of the advantage of closed platform.
It's unfair to compare XBOX to PC,you know XBOX's price now costs less than 160 dollars.
Blazkowicz_ said:three of them are high res with something like 16x FSAA. those are PR shots, not screenshot
#006 and #126 are real, I don't see why they are so interesting.
I'm not even sure if 6 is really....
BTW, I'd say UT2k3 looked better than halo, though obviously it came out afterwards, and looked better because of the brute force route(high polygon and high quality textures) as opposed to using modern features.
Ah, at least Splinter Cell Chaos Theory looks significantly better on PC than on xbox.
But I'd say PS2 wasn't a big threat to the PC. It wasn't capable of running most pc games due to the differences in strengths of the two platforms, and there wasn't much cross over between the two.
Xbox has come close to killing the PC by taking much of its development away, and having hardware powerful enough to run the latest pc games fairly well, or limiting the latest pc games to what the xbox can do. Oh, and the cheap port jobs that spent virtually no effort adjusting the user interface or controls for the PC.
Unreal Championship 2. It has some very nice looking graphics that, imo, blow away UT2k4. It also blows away ut2k4 in general deathmatch gameplay, though the maps are too small, the player count is too small, and it lacks vehicles!
randycat99
Veteran
HVZ said:
Zowwweee! I heard'dat, y'all!
...and I'd like to know more about this "miss information" person. Is she hot?
My small point to add to this topic pertains to the CPU discussion a few pages ago. In a post made by the resident hardware expert in a topic at another website I frequent, an interesting point was made that distinguishes the impact of BPU hardware and SMT implementations. They both are very helpful in keeping those pipelines well fed, but a bit redundant when both are used together on a single chip (a P4 with hyperthreading, for example). The presence of hyperthreading only brings minor gains because all that BPU activity is doing its job accordingly to keep the pipeline filled. So this explains much behind recent IBM CPU incarnations that aims to depart with BPU and OoOE type of schemes, but maintaining the SMT functionality. The resulting design isn't to necessarily come up short in the absence of BPU and OoOE goodness (in theory). This is simply an opportunity for SMT to take a bigger wack in improving processor performance (in theory). So maybe the whole deal ends up a wash (loss of BPU/OoOE, gains in SMT)? Maybe you get a little better here, a little worse there? We won't really know for sure until we get to actually see it in action, imo. If it ends up working great, I think we can only thank IBM for daring to buck the trend and think outside of the Intel box. Diversity in implementations is the opportunity to chance upon advancements that were otherwise obscured or just not practical in past efforts.
HVZ said:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/616/616591p1.html
Yea sure he said it will look every bit as good as the clip. Suree he did . Thats why the people interviewing him are saying it wont happen too and his own comments back it up
zidane1strife
Banned
The only thing that saved pcs from complete and utter obliteration's the fact that consoles require guaranteed mass reproduction off the bat, and 65nm even if viable may not have that guarantee. Should it've been othewise(slightly more mature 65nm process, less competition which forces console makers hand into taking the safer route. ) a dual-cell setup at 4+Ghz along with a 600M+transistor gpu, would've ensured no pc game significantly surpassed a console game for almost half a decade, and would have kept tech-superiority-parity for the whole console 5-6 yr cycle in many aspects.
Still, even though this is not so, currently the tight-bonding between cpu+gpu particularly for cell/rsx, makes it kinda like a virtual giant supah-gpu IMHO. Going at it from that perspective, games designed with gphx emphasis above all and using cell mostly for that, could, I believe, very well require post 500M transistor gpus to match.
Now for some speculations and wild guesses....
But alas the console market is bound to grow ever more, and now that the partners are set, there likely won't be any mid-R&D phase changes. Next time budgets are likely going to be bigger sony/toshiba/ibm can fully dedicate themselves to improving the design of future cell versions while improving fabbing capabilities, at the same time they'll benefit from nvidia's independent r&D. Fabbing capability could very well keep increasing in costs, in which case sony who has large consumer base(entire sony group) can keep up, and justify expenses, while smaller less capable firms will just have to give up.
With few suppliers of the highest cutting bleeding edge tech, such an edge is likely to acquire a costly premium. Should sony and allies keep up to date, and costs consolidate top tech fabs, then it'll be that console h/w superiority during most of the 5-6yr cycle can be achieved due to market forces.
If the cell can be used to aid the gpu with verts/geometry I think that such a case could very well occur.(and may even explain the ridiculous polycounts in the ps3 demos... with the exception of deano's heavenly sword which barely used the cell, and is as good as if it was realtime demo judging from his comments... and yeah it does blow away anything I've seen within or coming to the pc arena, IMHO)
PS
The ppu is not guaranteed to succeed in the market, and while I've not heard the specs, I'm doubtful about it's realworld performance. I'll wait to see product reviews before I draw my final conclusion.
Still, even though this is not so, currently the tight-bonding between cpu+gpu particularly for cell/rsx, makes it kinda like a virtual giant supah-gpu IMHO. Going at it from that perspective, games designed with gphx emphasis above all and using cell mostly for that, could, I believe, very well require post 500M transistor gpus to match.
Now for some speculations and wild guesses....
But alas the console market is bound to grow ever more, and now that the partners are set, there likely won't be any mid-R&D phase changes. Next time budgets are likely going to be bigger sony/toshiba/ibm can fully dedicate themselves to improving the design of future cell versions while improving fabbing capabilities, at the same time they'll benefit from nvidia's independent r&D. Fabbing capability could very well keep increasing in costs, in which case sony who has large consumer base(entire sony group) can keep up, and justify expenses, while smaller less capable firms will just have to give up.
With few suppliers of the highest cutting bleeding edge tech, such an edge is likely to acquire a costly premium. Should sony and allies keep up to date, and costs consolidate top tech fabs, then it'll be that console h/w superiority during most of the 5-6yr cycle can be achieved due to market forces.
pjbliverpool said:
If the cell can be used to aid the gpu with verts/geometry I think that such a case could very well occur.(and may even explain the ridiculous polycounts in the ps3 demos... with the exception of deano's heavenly sword which barely used the cell, and is as good as if it was realtime demo judging from his comments... and yeah it does blow away anything I've seen within or coming to the pc arena, IMHO)
PS
The ppu is not guaranteed to succeed in the market, and while I've not heard the specs, I'm doubtful about it's realworld performance. I'll wait to see product reviews before I draw my final conclusion.
zidane1strife
Banned
arrrse said:ROFL
Of course if 600mil transistor GPU/4ghz cell @65nm was feasible now then NV/ATI/Intel/AMD would still be sticking to 300mil/2-3GHZ 90nm chips aye
Well, sony/toshiba's fabs have from what I understand the capacity for 65nm production. But it's riskier, from what I understand and as such it won't be used. Sony cannot afford to risk a shortage when fighting against a company as strong as Microsoft is, if it was nintendo only they may've been able to take the risk(with the big N usually launching after it's competitors, and taking a more family friendly approach, a shortage would've been manageable.).
If it'd have been a product which didn't require guaranteed mass production capability, like some high-end gpus. It'd probably have been done. If MS was not in the market, or had decided to launch x360 later, it'd have been done too most likely.
Market forces kept them from taking such risk, and it is understandable. Surpassing pc/hw while a laudable and reputation gaining goal, is not their main goal. Keeping their top spot as leader in the console market is, and as such risk must be averted even if they've the ability to produce such.
Next time, there likely won't be a mid-cycle change of plans. The ibm/toshiba partnership will likely be kept, and the nvidia one too. Such will allow billions to be saved in gphx and cpu r&d, allowing more $$$ to go into fab improvements.
Deepak said:
If you take a very myopic view of "gaming", then you are possibly correct. For info, here's a lits of the top 10 selling games I found from May 2005:
So that's what... 2 MMORPGs, 5 RTSs and 2 FPSs ... and Lego Star Wars.
How many of those are going to stretch a modern high-end PC? Or rather how many of them are going to *require* the power of the next-gen consoles?
The limited number of buttons on consoles make MMORPGs and RTSs rather difficult to play IMO, much better on a PC. Any online multiplayer game that requires the use of text chat needs a useable keyboard.
*shrugs*
There's more to gaming than FPSs.
nutball said:
There's much more to PC than just gaming... Such as free po.... st... POST! POST!! Err...
Deepak said:
It's no longer the only game in town, sure.
Perhaps, but it's a bloody big niche.
As for exclusive PC games... well that was what I was meaning... some genres don't work well on a console controller, and if you add a mouse and a keyboard... well that won't work well in a typical living room, anything with a fair bit of text on-screen won't work well on an SDTV. So for these genres the PC is the only sensible option.
Which Big Boys? Those who developed HL2 and Doom3? Or those who developed WoW?
Deepak said:
Yeah, really disappointed me with the number of good PC games that were just xbox ports. I miss the bygone days were the PC would get exclusives like Fallout, Deus Ex, and so forth, and when you could look foward to an experience not offered on consoles. I guess there's still strategy games, but the RTS genre feels so dated to me, really in need of an update, so far I think Pikmin has been the most innovative in that regard and it's a console game.
At least Halflife 2 and it's expansions came out on PC. I'd praise UT2k4 as well, except Unreal Championship 2 is the better(though with far less scope) game. Oh, and Guild Wars was a pleasant surprise, though certainly not a be all end all to PC gaming. Not exactly a hardcore game either, considering I can run my cpu at 40% it's max speed and still have the game play with no slowdown.
I'm definetely looking foward to battlefield 2 though, but I'm not sure what will be on PC after that to interest me, especially if games are going to be tailor-made for xbox and then cheaply ported to PCs without reworking the user interface.(the graphics on the xbox ports are often better than pc games though, the splinter cell series and riddick have basically blown away nearly anything on PC....though xbox ports do often suffer from low res textures and poor performance compared to native pc games, but at least they don't require 1 gig of ram like bf2 and will run on a geforce3 at low settings)
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