Oblivion 360/PC comparison

[kyleb]

Exactly, and DD5.1 is compressed so analog is technically suprior for games anyway.

And again, the performance is far from solid on the 360. I'm not just talking low framerate here but massive of hitching from loading in some areas and even the occasional chug while something loads up right in the middle of combat.

 

[DemoCoder]

Games like Burnout Revenge sound awesome on a high-end soundsystem. No comparison to a typical PC desktop speaker setup. Burnout rocks my entire house during explosions given my SVS Sub.

 

[c0_re]

Obviously you have never attempted this yourself. Both ATI and Nvidia drivers offer underscan functions, and the ability to scale the size of the picture. A PC image can basically be scaled to match the size of the TV screen.

Here's mine in my old house:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v68/pjbliverpool/pjbPC.jpg

Thats fine but how many people actaully have this configuration in their home? One in a 1000 maybe?

 

[kyleb]

If you have a surroundsound system and a PC then there is nothing preventing you from hooking them up together and making use of it, so again 5.1 surround no more a plus for the 360 than it is for the PC.

 

[c0_re]

Obviously you have never attempted this yourself. Both ATI and Nvidia drivers offer underscan functions, and the ability to scale the size of the picture. A PC image can basically be scaled to match the size of the TV screen.

Here's mine in my old house:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v68/pjbliverpool/pjbPC.jpg

That’s fine but how many people actually have this configuration in their home? One in a 1000 maybe, most people don't have their PC in their living room.

For gaming you don't really need a 1000$ sound setup imo, since most games don't even use very high quality sounds.
The only reason I don't suggest getting a card that does dolby digital live encoding is because most games use EAX, although oblivion does not.

I find sound in games especially console type games to be almost as important as graphics, oblivion(and Morrowind) has an unbelievable soundtrack. To me the upgraded graphics and mods of the PC version doesn't make up for me being able to sit on the couch and play with a big coffee table in front of me and a 50+ HDTV and very nice sound system.

Now with that said if I had a TV more PC friendly and a super high end PC I'd play it on PC in a heartbeat, I still think the sound coming out of the 360 version would be cleaner\more refined, but graphics>sound so yea the PC hooked up to the HDTV and HTS system wins for every game that’s on PC and a Console of course.

 

[kyleb]

I still think the sound coming out of the 360 version would be cleaner\more refined...

There is no reason it would be, rather the other way around. Again, the 360 has to compress the 6 chanels into a single DD5.1 signal only to have that uncompressed at the reciver while PCs can ouput full quality analog singals to be amplified directly.

 

[Moloch]

That’s fine but how many people actually have this configuration in their home? One in a 1000 maybe, most people don't have their PC in their living room.

Stop the damn "how many people have this setup"
Stop ignoring things simply because they don't support your argument

I find sound in games especially console type games to be almost as important as graphics, oblivion(and Morrowind) has an unbelievable soundtrack. To me the upgraded graphics and mods of the PC version doesn't make up for me being able to sit on the couch and play with a big coffee table in front of me and a 50+ HDTV and very nice sound system.

There's nothing preventing you from doing the same with your pc, but you're going to perform better using a desk/ chair setup.
Btw consoles have inferior controllers.

Now with that said if I had a TV more PC friendly and a super high end PC I'd play it on PC in a heartbeat, I still think the sound coming out of the 360 version would be cleaner\more refined, but graphics>sound so yea the PC hooked up to the HDTV and HTS system wins for every game that’s on PC and a Console of course.

Super high end??
With my 7800GT and 3200+ with 1GB of ram I play(ed... one of my monitors died) at 1280x960 and performance is sufficient, perofmrnace would be a bit better at 720P.
I only have a slight problem with a stutter now and then outdoor because of memory usage.
It uses about 1 gig, combining the physical and pagefile usage.
The nature of RPG gaming is that you don't need some 50FP to make it play smooth.
oblivion doesn't start feeling chunky untill around 15fps and performance for me is generally above 20.
In dungeons its 30-50+.
The great thing about a PC is that I can do more than just game (and watch movies) I don't have to switch from gaming to using my pc ya know, besides there's always mods for the pc you simply will not get for a console
Wake me when you can do everything on a console that you can do on a PC
The cost to upgrade your PC to something that can play games isn't really that much.
Lets see you bought a Dell pc with a nice 3800+ cpu (not that you need one to game) and has 1GB of ram but has a shitty onboard videocard, but has a pci-e slot.
Just pop in 400~ doller video card and you'll have great FPS in even oblivion at a resolution equal to that of the XB360 and have better graphics.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Stop the damn "how many people have this setup".

Why? It's not relevant if 99.9% of 5.1 set-ups in existence are in the living room connected to the TV?

Maybe they should've added an asterix: *unless you're part of the 0.1% of people who have a 5.1 setup on their PC.

 

[AlNom]

hmm... I'm still undecided on which one to get really... I have a pretty good PC that would run it fairly well, and I could hook that up to my LCD TV via DVI... I'm not much into modding though. The X360 version would save me the trouble of installation, but it would have slower load times compared to my PC....but it's more convenient to just put in the dvd and play...and I don't have to worry about other things running in the background (I'll typically be doing something and then head off to play on the console).

Frick.... PC version + 360 gamepad.

But more importantly, is the collector's edition a limited production item? I sure could use the bathroom reader, but I wouldn't mind waiting for a price drop on PC.

 

[Moloch]

Why? It's not relevant if 99.9% of 5.1 set-ups in existence are in the living room connected to the TV?

Maybe they should've added an asterix: *unless you're part of the 0.1% of people who have a 5.1 setup on their PC.

Stop pulling numbers out of your ass
If you're a pc gamer there is nothing preventing you from getting 5.1 sound.
It is not difficult to do, nor is in expensive.
To say 5.1 is a plus for xbox360 is inane.
Most people don't even have a discrete graphics card, so lets give the XB360 points for graphics too!

 

[Sis]

There is no reason it would be, rather the other way around. Again, the 360 has to compress the 6 chanels into a single DD5.1 signal only to have that uncompressed at the reciver while PCs can ouput full quality analog singals to be amplified directly.

Forgive my ignorance on this, but wouldn't that be true for the DD5.1 audio being lifted off a DVD? Or is this an issue with on-the-fly compression?

 

[Sis]

Stop pulling numbers out of your ass
If you're a pc gamer there is nothing preventing you from getting 5.1 sound.
It is not difficult to do, nor is in expensive.
To say 5.1 is a plus for xbox360 is inane.
Most people don't even have a discrete graphics card, so lets give the XB360 points for graphics too!

While I agree that it is inexpensive--even with trying two different sound cards before I discovered the root issue, I'm still out only a small amount of money.

However, the plug-and-play nature of the 360 is indeed a positive. Perhaps stating 5.1 sound as if it's exclusive to the 360 is overstating it though...

 

[Sis]

The only reason I don't suggest getting a card that does dolby digital live encoding is because most games use EAX, although oblivion does not.

Oh no. What's the deal with EAX? I presumed that the DDL encoding just converted whatever was meant for the 5.1 output on the soundcard into DD, even if it was first in EAX. Is this not true?

 

[Moloch]

Oh no. What's the deal with EAX? I presumed that the DDL encoding just converted whatever was meant for the 5.1 output on the soundcard into DD, even if it was first in EAX. Is this not true?

Well only creative cards can do EAX above 2.
Remember how doom 3 a patch for EAX because of carmack's reverse?
Well that requires eax 4 which you can only get from creative cards.
Creative pretty much is the 3dfx of soundcards (glide vs eax), except they aren't in any danger of competition.
The point is that cards that can do dolby digital live (encoding) can't do EAX above 2 because of creative, so you'll be missing out on some audio affects, and a bit of performance.

While I agree that it is inexpensive--even with trying two different sound cards before I discovered the root issue, I'm still out only a small amount of money.

However, the plug-and-play nature of the 360 is indeed a positive. Perhaps stating 5.1 sound as if it's exclusive to the 360 is overstating it though...

What exactly are you having a problem with?

 

[Sis]

Remember how doom 3 a patch for EAX because of carmack's reverse?

No, I'm relatively new to PC gaming, especially HTPC gaming.

What exactly are you having a problem with?

Your list above of the issues surrounding sound card support.

It seems absolutely ridiculous to me that I even need to worry about this at all. I should be able to look at the specs on a PC and see this: 5.1 surround sound support and digital out support and be done with it. This is definitely not true--unless I'm plugging them into PC speakers, which is different just because it is. And nothing on the box suggests "PC speaker setup required for surround sound support"--but maybe it's there in fine print.

You don't see any issue here at all--in fact, you gloss over the confusion with a statement that it just requires some "understanding"--missing the point that this enlightenment is not required on the Xbox 360. I am merely suggesting that this plug-and-play nature is why the Xbox 360 gets an edge in surround sound support. But after thinking some more on what you and kyleb are saying, I agree with you that it technically is not true. That is, your argument has swayed my opinion. I certainly didn't expect you to take issue with it.

 

[Moloch]

No, I'm relatively new to PC gaming, especially HTPC gaming.
Your list above of the issues surrounding sound card support.

It seems absolutely ridiculous to me that I even need to worry about this at all. I should be able to look at the specs on a PC and see this: 5.1 surround sound support and digital out support and be done with it. This is definitely not true--unless I'm plugging them into PC speakers, which is different just because it is. And nothing on the box suggests "PC speaker setup required for surround sound support"--but maybe it's there in fine print.

You don't see any issue here at all--in fact, you gloss over the confusion with a statement that it just requires some "understanding"--missing the point that this enlightenment is not required on the Xbox 360. I am merely suggesting that this plug-and-play nature is why the Xbox 360 gets an edge in surround sound support. But after thinking some more on what you and kyleb are saying, I agree with you that it technically is not true. That is, your argument has swayed my opinion. I certainly didn't expect you to take issue with it.

Well the shadowing technique used by doom 3 appararenly had been patented by creative, instead of creative sueing them, ID patched doom 3 to use EAX,
As for surround sound on the pc, there really is no issues, you set your soundcard to 5.1 and set the game to 5.1 and you're done with it.
Note- oblivion has no such sound option so it obivously uses whatever you set your soundcard to, so for oblivion you don't have to do anything at all, with other games you can choose a good number of options besides speaker setup- hardware or software acceration, EAX on/ off and what version sometimes.
Sp with obivion you there's no extra steps if you already set up on soundcard.
You have options for choosing the audio mode for the XB360 dont you

 

[kyleb]

Forgive my ignorance on this, but wouldn't that be true for the DD5.1 audio being lifted off a DVD? Or is this an issue with on-the-fly compression?

DD5.1 is compressed by nature, off a dvd or on-the-fly from a game makes no difference. Some DVDs have a DTS digital track for uncompressed digital surroundsound.

 

[Gubbi]

DD5.1 is compressed by nature, off a dvd or on-the-fly from a game makes no difference. Some DVDs have a DTS digital track for uncompressed digital surroundsound.

DTS is also compressed, just not as aggresive. Wiki

Cheers

 

[_xxx_]

My Xbox 360 was this: plug it into the receiver and it works. PC: buy 2 different cards because you can't figure out what the hell is wrong with your sound.

You need just one card for your PC. Look here:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29709

 

[London Geezer]

Am i the only one who now feels like this thread will inevitably turn into a DD vs. DTS thread? I can see the patterns in the Matrix. A deja-vu.

Anyway, yes, DTS is totally compressed, it's just compressed less than DD. Dolby will say they compress sound "more efficiently" and the DTS guys will say that their system sounds better, which i think it does.