Oblivion 360/PC comparison

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london-boy said:
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.

Ah, easy to make such a prediction when you drone on about it and thus make it selffulfilling. :)

Back on topic: Consoles are all about ease of use and comfort. That goes for hooking it up to your AV system as it goes for just plopping in a DVD and you're off to play.

Comfort , IMO, is the greatest advantage of Oblivion on x360. I can sit in my couch, play on a big screen, have really good surround sound, sip coffee and eat snacks while playing this rather slow paced game. In comparison, sitting in the office in front of my monitor with crappy speakers (compared to the AV setup) for hours on end is just unbearable to think of.

And... It runs really well on X360.

Cheers
Gubbi
 
To steer this thread back to the track (and by the way, dts and Dolby Digital are both compressed, dts only has (usually) a higher bitrate due to being compressed less. That doesn't necesarily always mean dts is better. Often the perceived "betternes" of a dts track is due to volume differences and differences in the mix. Certainly on a cheap PC 5.1 setup, I don't think you could thell the difference) I tweaked more some of the settings on my PC Oblivion (AMD64 3000+ (2GHz), Radeon 9600XT, 1GB RAM) and I was able to enable tree shadowing and lengthen tree and grass draw distances, plus enable high detail textures, and they didn't seem to affect the performance too badly.

The weird thing is, that setting the tree draw distance to max actually seemed to run faster than on low setting. Maybe it's because I enabled some instancing option on the Ati drivers.
Anyway, I'm surprised my not so high end PC is able to run this game as well as it is. The only things I seem to be missing now compared to the xbox360 is HDR rendering, higher resolution (to me 800 x 600 is acceptable, the slight jaggies that are there really don't bother me at all), self shadowing and maybe some neater water reflection effects.
 
scooby_dooby said:
Why? It's not relevant if 99.9% of 5.1 set-ups in existence are in the living room connected to the TV?

The argument isn't that there is a specific group of users that don't have it - the point is, on PC you *can* if you want to and that there are most definately people out there that use this and find that possibility/advantage useful.

Also, given the recommended specs for Oblivion, I would think that there are more than 99.9% that have a decent audio setup if they already spend the money to upgrade to or above the recommended specs to play the latest games such as this one is.

Gaming on consoles is more mainstream than gaming on PC. Especially framerate fluctuations is something PC users should be more aware of since setting up your game to run good on your PC is something most people have to, in order to achieve the best experience.
 
Phil said:
Also, given the recommended specs for Oblivion, I would think that there are more than 99.9% that have a decent audio setup if they already spend the money to upgrade to or above the recommended specs to play the latest games such as this one is.

But there's a hell of a lot of difference between a crappy Logitech or Creative 5.1 (or 7.1) setup and a proper surround system, so unless you have a HTPC, console gaming is just going to be much more immersive audio-wise.

Cheers
 
Gubbi said:
But there's a hell of a lot of difference between a crappy Logitech or Creative 5.1 (or 7.1) setup and a proper surround system, so unless you have a HTPC, console gaming is just going to be much more immersive audio-wise.

Cheers

Absolutely. My surround sound system might be about 4 years old now, but it's a Sony, it's damn good and never gave me a problem. Anything that produces sound in my living room is connected to it and i wouldn't want to have it any other way. Playing games on my PC hurts my ears sometimes, as that's not connected to the SS. It wouldn't make much sense anyway, i don't have a dedicated sound card anyway. Oh and... my PC isn't in my living room, which i think might be a problem even before any sound quality issues...
 
Gubbi said:
But there's a hell of a lot of difference between a crappy Logitech or Creative 5.1 (or 7.1) setup and a proper surround system, so unless you have a HTPC, console gaming is just going to be much more immersive audio-wise.

Cheers

...and there is also a hell of a lot of difference between normal TV speakers and a decent Surround setup. I don't get it why we must argue specifics here: The point being; Audio capability is as much of an advantage on PC as it is on Xbox if the necessary additional equipment is there to use it, period. Is there any reason to go further than that? I don't see anyone arguing how many users must be playing in 480p on Xbox360 compared to a minimum of 1024x768 on PC either...
 
radeonic2 said:
hmm.. I checked google and a site said they did, but they don't :(
There's nothing preventing you from using the analog 5.1 inputs.

Unfortunatly there is, I use a regular HT sound system with my PC - it doesn't have analog inputs. Currently I have an nforce 2 with soundstorm and so I can use the SPDIF (incidentally im pretty sure Oblivion sounds just as good on my setup as it would on the X360 with the same setup), however im looking to upgrade soon and I certainly don't want to be downgrading my sound in the process. Thats why im hoping for Soundstorm 2 with nforce 5. If not I'll have to find an intergrated sound solution that supports it (I believe they are actually quite common) and just have my CPU handle the encoding. I'll be getting a dual core Conroe anyway so shouldn't be an issue :D
 
pjbliverpool said:
Currently I have an nforce 2 with soundstorm and so I can use the SPDIF (incidentally im pretty sure Oblivion sounds just as good on my setup as it would on the X360 with the same setup), however im looking to upgrade soon and I certainly don't want to be downgrading my sound in the process. Thats why im hoping for Soundstorm 2 with nforce 5.

Again, look here:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29709

This soundcard does it all, DDL & DTS over SPDIF.
 
DTS is really cheap to encode (CPU-wise), so any integrated solution with S/PDIF out is going to be fine. It's the handling of 3D voices before the output stage that is taxing.

Cheers
 
c0_re said:
Thats fine but how many people actaully have this configuration in their home? One in a 1000 maybe?

Its true that its not a common setup, but there is nothing stopping any PC gamer from having it if they want it that much.

Of course it should become a lot more common once HDMI starts becoming more common on both TV's and PC's. DVI quality output+5.1 sound over a single native capable to a HDTV is the holy grail for living room based PC gaming. Lets just hope MS hurry's up with those wireless adapters for the X360 control pads aswell. Until they do im stuch with my old wingman. Good for a PC pad but after a few months with the X360 pad, definatly subpar in comparison.
 
scooby_dooby said:
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.

The point is that if you want it on the PC, you can have it, so holding it against the PC just because most people choose not to use it doesn't make sense.

Im sure the majority of people with Xbox 360's don't have 5.1 systems or HDTV's but we arn't holding that against it.
 
radeonic2 said:
Stop pulling numbers out of your ass :rolleyes:
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!

Sorry but a 250$ DD 5.1 PC setup combined with a crappy office chair on a 19-23 inch monitor is pretty much crap in camparison with people's 5000$ HTS. Again unless you can hook up your PC directly to you TV I like playing from the couch, I sit in an office chair and ride a desk all dam day I don't want to deal with that once I get home.

The reason sound comming out fo the 369 will be cleaner and more refined is becasue every 360 is the same(DUH!) and the developers know the sound capabuilities of the box so they can make the most of it, it's not an unknown like always is in the PC world.
 
_xxx_ said:
Again, look here:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29709

This soundcard does it all, DDL & DTS over SPDIF.

Cheers, im looking for something a bit mainstream (i.e. reliable) though ;)

From the comment in that thread I don't think I would trust that card.

Thats the beauty of soundstorm - its built into the mobo, brimming with features and performance (for the time), and it just works.

Nvidia were insane not to get into that market segment at the time. By leveraging the DD enconding and the fact that it was also in the xbox, they could have become a serious competitor to creative. And the sound market is in dire need of some competition. Im hoping that nvidia is going to leverage the PS3 audio capabilities to give them a kick start in the PC industry (assuming RSX Audio is a real dedicated hardware solution)
 
OT: Sis! Get a Turtle Beach Montego DDL! It has a single optical cable passthrough to a reciever that will allow you to get 5.1 (I believe it can go up to 8.1). Creative Audigy cards don't allow Digital connections to a reciever. This makes it so you use their PC speakers instead of a home theater sound setup.
 
c0_re said:
Sorry but a 250$ DD 5.1 PC setup combined with a crappy office chair on a 19-23 inch monitor is pretty much crap in camparison with people's 5000$ HTS.

Don't forget that viewing distance is a factor in the percieved size of a sceen. a 24" monitor (the sweet spot for me until Dells 27") will seem a lot bigger from 2 feet than a 50" HDTV will seem from 10 feet.

And also consider that many PC gamers use headphones rather than speakers. They do limit sound positioning ot the front and back (although X-Fi is supposed to work miracles here), however in terms of immersion, a good set of headphones is the match of a good HT sound system.

For my part, I like to have both :LOL:
 
Usually with a good set of cans, headphones can offer superior positioning for ups/downs than the speakers. Naturally, surround speakers will always beat headphones for front and rear positioning. So it's really a toss up.
 
KOF said:
Usually with a good set of cans, headphones can offer superior positioning for ups/downs than the speakers. Naturally, surround speakers will always beat headphones for front and rear positioning. So it's really a toss up.

For positioning, yes. Which is super important in multiplayer FPS. But for immersion, having your innards turned into liquids when a shell goes off in COD2 beats headphones by miles.

Cheers
 
pjbliverpool said:
Don't forget that viewing distance is a factor in the percieved size of a sceen. a 24" monitor (the sweet spot for me until Dells 27") will seem a lot bigger from 2 feet than a 50" HDTV will seem from 10 feet.

And also consider that many PC gamers use headphones rather than speakers. They do limit sound positioning ot the front and back (although X-Fi is supposed to work miracles here), however in terms of immersion, a good set of headphones is the match of a good HT sound system.

For my part, I like to have both :LOL:


I have to agree headphone gaming the way to go with PC's, some of these new headphones comming out(Shure and Seinheiser) really kick ass and can provide a level of emersion that even some nice HTS can't provide.
 
pjbliverpool said:
From the comment in that thread I don't think I would trust that card.

The comment in that thread was about a Terratec card. Terratec always had crappy drivers, nothing new.

Thats the beauty of soundstorm - its built into the mobo, brimming with features and performance (for the time), and it just works.

Even the most mediocre sound card will always deliver better quality sound (because of all the interferances from the mobo and design compromises) and more speed than any iontegrated solution.

But I admit that most people wouldn't be able to really tell the difference quality-wise if the integrated solution is decently implemented.

OTOH, don't newer Azalia boards also have DDL and DTS over SPDIF?
 
kyleb said:
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.
If this is true, I don't put much weight in this argument:
kyleb said:
Exactly, and DD5.1 is compressed so analog is technically suprior for games anyway.
For example, WMA Lossless may be technically compressed, but so what?
 
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