tl;dr post worthy ahead
First and foremost, one has to define the moniker "more powerful hardware." A task, which would require an intricate and down to the smallest minutiae comparison of the involved hardware kits, this comparison would present in a very detailed way the components and their capabilities; the second part of the task would be to determine how much more efficient are each and every compared parts at running specific code; and finally one would have to present the results, in a statistical form, for each components and for each code sample ran during the tests.
Only then you could start talking about hardware being "more or less powerful."
You could start doing that, yes, but you would have to consider another indubitably important factor:
by how much do a piece of hardware's performances out pace theses of the other parts in presence?
And in some cases -and when I say some I mean most- you will find that parts are not doing the same things as others, and when they do, they're not faster in every categories.
So, what could you do about that?
The logical, technological and
only solution viable for this forum is to take all this elements into consideration when talking about a code running on these parts.
The simplistic, flawed and not welcome at all in these forums second option would be to even the numbers, obtained for each components inside a products, out to a single, unspoken, value for each product and then use this single, meaningless, value as a technical caution to support the hollow and uneducated points they make, in the name of this corporate allegiance nonsense we refer wryly to as "system wars."
Simplification is the mother of all evil in technological fields, especially in discussions. Because it sends off the wrong signal to some people, it tells them that the issue at hand is "simple" or at least can be characterized simply.
Of course the simplification is often produced to help the less technical versed folks understand, which is a commendable thought at its root. No, the problem appears later on, when some of the less technical versed folks do not comprehend that a simplification is not meant to be used as a basis for extrapolation or any other form of reasoning for that matter.
So, here we are, we're left with extremely complex pieces of engineering and some people who do not comprehend,
and more importantly do not try to learn at all, the inner working of it all, want not only to know which product "packs the more punch" but they also feel confident enough to enter technical arguments -to prove that their favorite system is superior, of course- with no knowledge of the situation or the field at all, other than some simplifications they picked up left and right on this terrible place we call the Internets.
But what baffles every educated readers, each and every time, is that even when confronted with over simplistic, flawed, meaningless information some folks find a way to
not understand basic corollary concepts.
How is it hard to understand that different can be more computational capable, yet not necessarily superior in every way to something more classical in its form?
I'm sure that a lot of the people whom should take note of the advice written between the lines of this post have already phased out, dubbing the post as a rhetorical exercise, a sermon or too theoretical for their taste.
To address that, I'll take a simple example (yes simple, no lies) to illustrate the aforementioned concept: geometrical forms.
Please bear with me and do not run out of the thread screaming "
he has maths with him and capable of using it against us, run for your lives!," there won't be no maths, well nothing that would require more than grasping the concept of numbers.
You create a code base on a platform B, this platform average, and utterly meaningless value of all its numerous and complex components performances is 100 (a round number!), this number is also the area size of that machine.
You'll note that, even though the Machine A has a higher
meaningless valueâ„¢, it's smaller in absolute height and has a smaller base.
They're not to scale, before anyone asks.
Still following me? Heck no, you say? Fine, let us continue then.
Now, time to port the code base created for the crowd favorite geometrical machine B and its 100 rating, to the other, differently shaped, product, the rated 120 Machine A.
And what does happen? Simple, you have to cut corners to make the code base, made for a 100 MVâ„¢ part, fit into the 120 MVâ„¢ part you have to cut corners...
And only a pathetic, low life and uneducated fan person would not think of that basic principle and concept, which, ironically, finds ground in the flawed and simplistic approach to technological topics which they chose to adopt to discuss things out.
I had to step down from moderating the forums for a while, since I was busy with the backstage preparations for the site, and Stefan was busy on his end as well.
In clearer words, we let a lot of stuff slide in the forums. The quality of the average technical discussion was once too many hurt by the noise created by fan persons who weren't there to learn something about technology but just there to hear what they wanted to hear and express their uneducated drivel in a passive aggressive way.
But here's the deal, no one is here to read clueless about technology fan persons getting at it based on incomplete piece of information -information beyond their grasp- that they heard on internet. If folks wanted to do that, there are a billion gaming forums out there with odd technological threads where people spew nonsense after nonsense to outdo their rivals' own drivel.
This is a technological forum, thus meaningless and petty sandbox king of the hill fight are irrelevant to the (smart ones) people who read this forum
This conclusion to my post serves no other meaning than being an announcement of the upcoming crackdown
(great game, BTW) on the console forums.
