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General discussion

Continuing raging war: PC vs. Console

Jul 21, 2005 2:01AM PDT

This is like asking which is better, a Mac or PC? But I will try to sort things through. I can only name a few however.

The problem is that a Console's strength is the PC's weakness. The same goes for the other way around.

I'm only in high school, and out of all the people I've asked, a good 85% of them own consoles(actually more Xboxes than PS2s). Exactly what are the pros and cons of a console?
Pros:
1. Consoles are made stricly for gaming and are designed for that platform. A 4 year old PC won't run the latest games, but the 4 year old PS2 will.
2. At first, consoles are expensive, but they drop in price in a few years. The PC that is a few years old won't even be sold on the shelf anymore.
Those are few.
Cons:
1. You can't give your XBOX a complete makeover like you can with your PC.
2. New technologies are introduced and become radically expensive.
3. In the case of Nintendo, older games aren't compatable with the newer consoles.

My solution? Get both. You'll be happy on both platforms.

The PS2 was called a supercomputer; Now even the cheapest PC has more powerful hardware. The problem with Cell(in the PS3) is that programmers have to wrestle with many threads.
Also, I don't understand why Microsoft is using a 3.2 GHZ PowerPC when the 2.0GHZ PowerPC in the Mac ran hotter than Precsott.
As for Nintendo, I don't know where the heck they are going.

Thoughts?

Discussion is locked

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PCs will catch up
Jul 21, 2005 2:30AM PDT

although this generation of pc gpus is powerful, they are still not as powerful as the next generation of consoles. But pcs will catch up in a year as they always do. Actually, the console cpus are weak. I have read alot about that and all you need to do is google it. The weak point of being a pc gamer is that it is TOO expensive. You make what you can out of it by upgrading it, which is fun, and spending thousands of dollars when you can have a more powerful gaming console for a hell of a lot less money. i still think pc gamers are special as they are not little kids, since you have to put money into your system to play the latest games, so its mostly teens and older. consoles, are 8 year olds and older.

konny

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agreed
Jul 21, 2005 8:49AM PDT

I still somewhat remember the hype of the PS2. People kept calling it a supercomputer. When it was relesased, the rumor just faded away.

The best rumor of the PS2 is when people thought Saddam bought hundreds of PS2 consoles to make a supercomputer for his weapons program, and creating a shortage. This was never proved, but I thought it was funny. :-D

Yes, PCs will always be superior to the console, but people will always buy a console because it is cheaper than a PC.

I do have a felling though that the XBOX in future gens will be a PC because Microsoft has an OS on it. It won't be long before you see a keyboard, mouse, AOL trial edition, and 500 patches.

Also, what is the purpose of USB on the PS2?

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lol i remember reading about the saddam thing
Jul 21, 2005 9:45AM PDT

as for the usb, i dunno, but isnt one enough? i mean, two? does anyone use these?

konny

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here's a link
Jul 21, 2005 11:22PM PDT
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ACTUALLY!
Jul 25, 2005 2:28AM PDT

the upcoming console's GPUs are leser than current computer GPU's...just FYI

please consider the following:
a console operates at 640x480 on a normal TV, and at maybe twice that on an HDTV (1920x1080 is rare in a TV and costs a fortune, so I'm not going to touch that)

but consider a console like PS2 and how it runs "the latest games"
it's rendering 640x480
with no Pixel Shaders
with no Vertex Shaders
with low-ish quality
no Anti-Aliasing
no Anisotropic Filtering

hell I could have a GeForce2 MX 200 handle that
in most of the games PS2 plays, it's just not that demanding


consider Xbox
it uses a custom GeForce2/3/4 hybrid chip
that chip has some Pixel Shader and Vertex Shader support, but still no AA/AF
and it's still only doing 640x480 (unless you have an HDTV your console runs 640x480, not 800x600, most TV's that are not HD will not take 800x600, and a console won't force it, they'll do 640x480)


now in terms of the upcoming consoles
PS3 is using nVidia's...ugh I already have forgotten it's name
the theory was that it was the same GPU as G70, but it's not, it's about the same however

when nVidia was demo'ing PS3 with Sony they did not have those GPU's avliable, so they used 6800 Ultra SLI to render stuff, and it was said to be providing "roughly the same performance"


and if we look at Xbox360 it's going to have roughly the same performance as the PS3 in terms of graphics and processing power (don't sit there and get into an Xbox vs Playstation arguement, they are competitive products designed to match each other's specs using different hardware configurations...it's like ATi vs nVidia, neither is better by leaps and bounds, if ATi was still selling the 9800XT as their top product yeah nVidia would be better, but ATi is competitive and releasing new products)


the Xbox360 might even be a tad slower as it's a tad older (by the time PS3 launches Xbox360 will be old-ish, as PS3 doesn't launch until 2006 (around Q3 iirc))

Nintendo however is being pushed into the niche Microsoft wanted them to be in, their own, the toy niche


their new product has less power than PS3 yet Nintendo fanatics will claim it's 5-6 times faster than Xbox360 or PlayStation 3

if you just look at it
you'll realize that cannot be true
it is not physically large enough to support the cooling required for the hardware it would need to be that fast, it's that simple (it could have a Pentium M type chip inside it, but no GPU in the world is that fast and runs cool...their all fireballs cast in silicon)


i'm not trying to incite PlayStation 3 vs Xbox360
as personally neither serves a good purpose
by the time they are respectivly released PC's will be multiple time faster than them

the Playstation 3 will be slow by next spring (Before it's release afaik, because nVidia is putting G80 out then in accord to ATi's R580)

Xbox360 is about as capable as a higher range gaming PC of today
and in 6 months, it'll be ancient


consoles seem fast because software is written for them and their limitations

consider the port of Doom 3 to Xbox
they had to remove so much of that game's graphics just to make it playable

PC's are always going to be more powerful than consoles
consoles are fast for about a week after their release, but due to their inabaility to upgrade and the fact that they come under the top shelf PC in terms of performance at launch...i don't think you could fairly say their going to be kings


I mean maybe back around the time of PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast yes, consoles were faster for gaming, but consider it now

Consoles are releasing at $500
games costing $50+
and they can't touch PC's in terms of IQ or performance


the best console, which at current is Xbox360 (as their almost released and some have been spotted, even though that violates NDA's)

compare that to the most powerful gaming PC in the world, which as of today would be an Athlon64 FX-57 with dual 7800GTX's (or a Pentium D 840 EE or an Athlon64x2 4800+, the FX-57 would give about a 2% lead over the dual cored chips, and multi CPU doesn't benefit you at all (just looks cool/costs a lot and it benefits heavy multi tasking things))


dual 7800GTX's in SLI + an FX-57 would eat an Xbox360 for breakfast

you just have to consider the raw power behind that
but consider the Xbox360
it costs less (1 Xbox360 per 7800GTX + 2 games, or 2 Xbox360's + 2 games per FX-57)
and it's not using an API like DirectX 9.0c
it's using it's own custom software and OS


Playstation 1 is an excellent example of optimization
Playstation did not have that much power, but it had a lot of 3D games released for it (just like Nintendo's N64) and a lot of the 3D stuff done both of those consoles was done via optimizations in code and some very impressive skill on the designers part

it created some of the most realisitc environments avliable at the time
and some of the games even look good by today's standards
consider this was done almost a decade ago

that's the thing about consoles, they have to offer other features now in order to keep up, they have to offer things like DVR features, DVD burning, TV tuner, DVD playback, just to compete

honestly, which would you prefer?
a console with lower level gfx, issues with online play, and fairly non-customizable controls/a lesser variety of options

or a PC with top of the line graphics, seemless online gameplay, a huge variety of games (every game avliable for any console from the current generation is avliable for PC (with the exception of a few Nintendo releases, but honestly who cares?)) and a huge array of options


yes, i'm promoting the PC
the consoles were nice back when Voodoo 2 SLI cost $1500 on it's own + the PC which would be another $2000-$3000 and you could only game at 1024x768 in some games due to the lack of power in Voodoo2's

so at that point your weighing a $5000+ PC against a $400 PlayStation

i'd take PlayStation thankyou very much, it gave simmilar performance in the day

but the thing is, graphics technology has caught up and passed consoles by...by miles

and it's getting cheaper
$550 per card for dual 7800GTX's
or $600-$800 per card + $200-$300 2D card for Voodoo2 SLI
(not that much anymore)

so in short i'm basically saying that consoles are for the person who is a casual gamer, the person who doesn't want to spend a lot, or the person who can't afford to spend a lot

a PC is for the serious gamer
it's faster, plays more games, has better multiplayer (large scale multiplayer, as in 16-32 people connected with no issues)

and don't say a console is faster than a PC
that hasn't been true since Xbox360's launch

the graphics war is too fierce at current for ATi or nVidia to stick with the GPU they released for a console as their PC counterpart, simmilar to what nVidia did with Xbox (it has something simmilar to a GeForce4 Ti 4200)

in terms of PC vs Mac...well let's save that for another day

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two 7800GTXs and a FX-57?
Jul 25, 2005 2:48AM PDT

uh who wants to spends over a grand just on graphics cards alone when you can have something just as powerful for only $300?

konny

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RE:
Jul 25, 2005 3:17AM PDT

Xbox 360-multicore 3.2GHz IBM PowerPC-based CPU
PS3-Cell Processor

Do these compete though there's no basis of comparison with the fx-57?


Xbox360-if gfx is comparable to 6800ultra, i don't see the problem. obviously compared to the pc world, this will get outdated fast. But some ppl are still using integrated gfx in systems...
ps3-Graphics Processor RSX "Reality Synthesizer"
Graphics Core Clock Speed 550MHz
System Memory 256MB XDR
Vector Units 1 VMX vector unit per core
System Memory Bandwith 22.4GB/s, RSX 20GB/s (write)/15GB/s (read), SB 2.5GB/s (write)/ 2.5GB/s (read)
Shaders 100 Billion Shader Operations/s
Video Memory 256MB

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nice post
Jul 25, 2005 4:02AM PDT

Xbox uses custom GeForce3 chip. I was wondering how they got Doom 3 on Xbox.

However, what will keep people buying consoles is the price. Average Joe would rather pay $150 for his Playstation 2 than $1000 for his computer.

Also, I found out where to order the next-gen stuff.

http://store.yahoo.com/videogamesdepo/niresy.html

But I agree, the PC will always be more powerful.

[Nintendo Revolution uses a dual-core 64-bit PowerPC chip~1.8GHZ]

Did you know that about 2% of the Japanese population want an XBOX 360?

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RE:
Jul 25, 2005 4:21AM PDT

The PS2 uses a 256-bit processor so... [Nintendo Revolution uses a dual-core 64-bit PowerPC chip~1.8GHZ]. the xbox uses 3-cores.

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correction
Jul 25, 2005 5:24AM PDT

PS2 is claimed to have a 128-bit chip, not 256. However, no code is written in 128-bit, hardly even 64-bit.

Personally I don't know why all the next-gen consoles use PowerPC(including Cell). Either way, IBM is going to make a fortune off of all this.

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(NT) (NT) You're Right
Jul 25, 2005 7:11AM PDT
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few reasons
Jul 27, 2005 4:12AM PDT

biggest is that PowerPC is amazingly strong for FPU operations

it can be had en masse vs AMD chips
and it's Bi-Endian
while x86 chips like an Athlon64 are little endian, and server chips like a Siligon Graphics R8000 are big endian

PowerPC can do both
meaning you can do Itanium-like operations (i don't remember if Itanium is little or big, but I want to say big)


PowerPC is basically THE CPU
it just won't run Windows
which is why it's not amazingly popular in the consumer segment


in addition i'm guessing IBM has higher manufacturing ability than AMD does


also
7800GTX SLI would not match a console
they'd blow it away
6800U SLI is between 5% slower to 10% faster than PS3 gfx wise

and PS3 is going to be neck and neck with Xbox360
and as to Nintendo, great for them, it's still going to be slow and pathetic and support games nobody except small children want to play, until a year+ after their release

thank you i'll stick to Sony or Microsoft for my console gaming needs
and currently it's Sony
as their farther away from PC's
MS Xbox games (except the Halo series) all make it to PC fairly fast
and a lot of Playstation first games take a while to hit Xbox and PC

if that chagnes i'm going to change to buying an Xbox for my console
while i'm not impressed by either, i'll end up buying one because of the slightly earlier launches (mainly the Hitman series, which i've never really liked on PC (except the first one, which was designed for PC))

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what I think
Jul 28, 2005 11:28AM PDT

I think the reason PowerPC was not used for Windows is because IBM and Microsoft were once enemies. A while ago, IBM kept selling its OS/2 operating system. Microsoft retaliated by forcing IBM to pay more for Windows. This led to a court settlement and Microsoft had to sell it evenly.
Also, PowerPC chips are more expensive than their x86 counterparts.

In today's gen consoles, we have the XBOX, Gamecube, and PS2. While XBOX leads on hardware, the controller is unconfortable to me. The GameCube and PS2 controllers are good to me. However, better games are their for the PS2. So I would pick up a PS2 unless Microsoft fixed the controller.

As for the PS3 and 360, I think it is a tie. We will have to wait and see.

By the way, what is Bi-Endian and little endian?

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(NT) (NT) xbox has diffenent controllers & xbox live and halo 2
Jul 28, 2005 11:47AM PDT