What’s the price of switching from console to PC?

[Squilliam]

AMD is already beating Wii U with Trinity.

In a tablet power envelope? I don't think so, not yet. I still suspect that the best bet for a Wii U competitor would be Haswell with on package DRAM, 10W TDP.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I wouldn't hold my breath on that 10W haswell being competitive with the wiiu either.

 

[Squilliam]

lthough Intel mentioned that the Haswell GT3 config would have twice the shader count of Haswell GT2, it was careful not to disclose the total number of EUs in any of the versions. Based on the information we have at this point, GT3 should be a 40 EU configuration while GT2 should feature 20 EUs...

Beyond the resource streamer, most of the fixed function graphics hardware sees a doubling of performance in Haswell.

In Ultrabooks those gains will be limited to around 30% max given the strict power limits.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture/12

Given the a combination of embedded high bandwidth RAM and binned 22nm Intel chips vs stock standard 45nm IBM parts it would be a stretch to IMO to say that it won't be as powerful, if not more powerful as the Wii U.

 

[green.pixel]

Not so at the beginning of a console generation. for example, the 360 was by far the best platform to play Oblivion on for a full year, despite PC GPUs having the same paper FLOPs as Xenos (and yes part of this had to do with Bethesda's inability to implement a proper LOD system and cull geometry).

Oblivion runs like ass on X360. For a full year? Hardly, 8800GTS/GTX came out in November that year. A Venice@2.4GHz/2GB/X1900XT combo with some tweaking could run it at 19x12 with higher/more stable framerate and detail than X360. Barton/Northwood with 6800GT ran it fine at 1280x1024 and that's >40% more pixels than 720p.

 

[Gubbi]

Oblivion runs like ass on X360. For a full year? Hardly, 8800GTS/GTX came out in November that year.

Okay, so eight months.

A Venice@2.4GHz/2GB/X1900XT combo with some tweaking could run it at 19x12 with higher/more stable framerate and detail than X360.

Some tweaking = absurd overclocking? A 1900XT at 1280x1024 would regularly hit 20 fps in outdoor areas. Throw a bit of magic and it went even lower.

Barton/Northwood with 6800GT ran it fine at 1280x1024 and that's >40% more pixels than 720p.

No it didn't. I had an Athlon X2 + 6800GT, it ran fine in dungeons, reasonably in cities, but tanked in outdoor areas, - unless you reduced draw distance and foilage.

And none of the Nvidia cards did HDR+AA until after the 8800 launched.

Cheers

 

[almighty]

And none of the Nvidia cards did HDR+AA until after the 8800 launched.

That technically isn't true is it? There's more then one way to do HDR other then FP.

 

[Gubbi]

That technically isn't true is it? There's more then one way to do HDR other then FP.

Nvidia cards didn't do HDR+AA in Oblivion until late 2006. You can blame Bethesda if you want. ATI enabled it in a driver patch, Nvidia didn't.

You can also blame them for the lack of an effective LOD system which is why PC GPU performance in outdoor areas were so poor; A shit ton of geometry would be processed to render a few pixels for an object in the distance. Oblivion was clearly developed with the 360 as the primary platform, with its unified shaders and its very high alpha blending bandwidth the 360 was more or less immune to high geometry load and foliage overdraw.

Cheers

 

[fearsomepirate]

The PC has a few niches left: RTS and MMOs and to some extend first person shooters (though arguably consoles are at par here).

If we're talking sales, consoles dominate the FPS genre now. The PC-exclusive AAA FPS is nearly extinct, and the few that are spotted in the wild rarely break much past 2m units, much less the 5-10m you see the top console games achieving.

 

[I.S.T.]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-introducing-the-digital-foundry-pc

I don't recall if this was posted earlier in the topic, but it might help.