With ram, an optical drive, a hard drive, an operating system....
Consoles are just a bad PC.
Compared to current hardware, sure. But consoles run off of what is the equivalent of installing a light OS onto your high dollar graphics card. The point is, consoles AREN'T a bad PC, they aren't a PC at all. They are built to do one specific job, the fact they can do what they currently do says something about the hardware they were using 7 years ago.
Compared to current hardware, sure. But consoles run off of what is the equivalent of installing a light OS onto your high dollar graphics card. The point is, consoles AREN'T a bad PC, they aren't a PC at all. They are built to do one specific job, the fact they can do what they currently do says something about the hardware they were using 7 years ago.
Well they are a PC, but......
Argh, English makes this harder to explain than it should be. z_z
I think I know where you were going, and while being technically accurate, it doesn't make a comparison of the two fair.
Consoles are really just weak computers, and while they do do their job, they have to run all the games an low settings while being as optimized as possible with various tricks involved (textures loading slowly, big guns, low-FOV, etc.) it really has nothing to do with the hardware, the hardware is weak by today's standards, that is factual, it could not run games on high settings with high FOV at 1080p unlike many modern computers.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm back from my eternal slumber of 2 or 3 months. A long-ass time.
Oh boy, visual basic. I can barely contain my excitement.Not.
Compared to current hardware, sure. But consoles run off of what is the equivalent of installing a light OS onto your high dollar graphics card. The point is, consoles AREN'T a bad PC, they aren't a PC at all. They are built to do one specific job, the fact they can do what they currently do says something about the hardware they were using 7 years ago.
Sure, they're built to do one specific job, but that's partly their downfall.
Can you develop games on a console? No. Can you develop mods on a console? No. Can you upgrade a console? No.
I see what you mean about them not being a PC; they aren't personal, Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo can lock them down, taking the personal out of personal computer.
And no, a console is a lot more than a graphics card. It's like saying my computer is a CPU with a bunch of peripherals attached.
If Sony & Microsoft want to keep their consoles' hardware up-to-date with/more advanced than the new generations of PC parts, they'd probably have to do one of two things:
1) Release upgraded versions (or kits, as someone said before) of the consoles every time new generations of parts release, which I'd say is around every year
2) Squeeze the absolute best hardware on the market into the new consoles, keeping them on-par with PC's.
Neither of them would work as great as their current plans. From what I've seen, no console gamer likes to buy a new system every year. Most of them much prefer the current "cycle" of consoles; every new generation lasts for around 6-8 years. Putting the best, most expensive hardware into a console would mean higher prices, and probably less sales.
Xbox 720 rumered to have about 12x the power as the 360. that does sound a lot but from the date the xbox was made to today it should have along the lines of 24x the power if i remember right.
The Xbox GPU actually was more advance it was the first unified shadder something PCs did not get for another year from ATI.
How is the CPU terrible.
The 360 CPU is capable of 76.8 GFLOPS.
Lets take a look at what AMDs and Intels current designs can do.
Granted this is one benchmark and GFLOPS are not a perfect measurement of speed.
The 360 also has 512mb of vram not 256.
The xbox cpu has only about 165,000,000 transistors while. mean while today's proccesers are in the billions.
Have you ever opened an Xbox 360 and looked at it? All it is is a miniature PC. All the same parts, just integrated and condensed into a purpose built machine. It's essentially a large GPU with a CPU attached to it. If there is nothing as/more capable when it is released then it can hardly be outdated. Considering the additional function of current gen consoles (web browsing, streaming movies/TV, DVD/Blu-Ray players, Social Media etc) I'd say the current gen consoles aren't as inferior to PC as you might think.
But consoles are just inferior PCs. All consoles are are decent PCs sold at a loss, because the manufacturers intend to make up what they lost on selling the console cheap on the games.
Xbox 720 rumered to have about 12x the power as the 360. that does sound a lot but from the date the xbox was made to today it should have along the lines of 24x the power if i remember right.
The thing is, 12x the power of a 360 is about as powerful as a C2Quad with a 7900GT or so.
Yeah, it's still pretty powerful, but it's still way out of date.
Xbox 720 rumered to have about 12x the power as the 360. that does sound a lot but from the date the xbox was made to today it should have along the lines of 24x the power if i remember right.
Well pure GPU wise it has 48 stream processors.
It is very similar to the ATI 2xxxx series but it has a lot more texture processors per stream processor then any other ATI GPU in that era.
it is supposed to be capable of doing 80 GFLOPS.
(I have found this number to be disputed some say 240 but that is max theoretical and as AMD said before the VLIW5 never saw its resources used to the max this number is based off comparing it to the AMD 2xxx series with similar specs this number is probably off but its the most accurate number I could come up with.)
The AMD 6970 with VLIW4 arch has 1536 stream processors and can do 2.7 TFLOPs or 2700 GFLOPS.
The AMD 7970ghz edition with GCN has 2048 stream processors and can do 4300 GLFOPS.
Microsofts next console would have to be 53 times faster in the GPU department to catch up to today's PCs.
Note GLFOPS is a poor measurement to compare graphics cards on but its the best numbers we can get software specific game optimizations ram bandwidth all come into play GLFOPS is more of a perfect world measurement.
Microsoft is not going to throw a 7970 in its console ever or a 8970 why? Cost
Consoles are for budget gamers while PCs are for people with larger budgets.
The xbox cpu has only about 165,000,000 transistors while. mean while today's proccesers are in the billions.
O ya I forgot number of transistors is a measurement of performance that's why an AMD 8150 murders the Intel 2500k in benchmarks because it has more transistors .
Well pure GPU wise it has 48 stream processors.
It is very similar to the ATI 2xxxx series but it has a lot more texture processors per stream processor then any other ATI GPU in that era.
it is supposed to be capable of doing 80 GFLOPS.
(I have found this number to be disputed some say 240 but that is max theoretical and as AMD said before the VLIW5 never saw its resources used to the max this number is based off comparing it to the AMD 2xxx series with similar specs this number is probably off but its the most accurate number I could come up with.)
The AMD 6970 with VLIW4 arch has 1536 stream processors and can do 2.7 TFLOPs or 2700 GFLOPS.
The AMD 7970ghz edition with GCN has 2048 stream processors and can do 4300 GLFOPS.
Microsofts next console would have to be 53 times faster in the GPU department to catch up to today's PCs.
Note GLFOPS is a poor measurement to compare graphics cards on but its the best numbers we can get software specific game optimizations ram bandwidth all come into play GLFOPS is more of a perfect world measurement.
Microsoft is not going to throw a 7970 in its console ever or a 8970 why? Cost
Consoles are for budget gamers while PCs are for people with larger budgets.
1. I was using all AMD GPUs for comparison because Nvidia could very well measure its GFLOPS a different way.
2. Microsoft has said they like working with AMD and as long as AMD is a good parter to them they plan on using them for the 720 and at this point it would be too late to switch to Nvidia for the GPU plus them using an AMD GPU makes the console easier to make backwards compatible.
If you are too lazy to read the whole thing that's a small preview you could also go read the thread I started on it I think a while back or someone did its somewhere.
1. I was using all AMD GPUs for comparison because Nvidia could very well measure its GFLOPS a different way.
2. Microsoft has said they like working with AMD and as long as AMD is a good parter to them they plan on using them for the 720 and at this point it would be too late to switch to Nvidia for the GPU plus them using an AMD GPU makes the console easier to make backwards compatible.
If you are too lazy to read the whole thing that's a small preview you could also go read the thread I started on it I think a while back or someone did its somewhere.
Compared to current hardware, sure. But consoles run off of what is the equivalent of installing a light OS onto your high dollar graphics card. The point is, consoles AREN'T a bad PC, they aren't a PC at all. They are built to do one specific job, the fact they can do what they currently do says something about the hardware they were using 7 years ago.
Argh, English makes this harder to explain than it should be. z_z
I think I know where you were going, and while being technically accurate, it doesn't make a comparison of the two fair.
Consoles are really just weak computers, and while they do do their job, they have to run all the games an low settings while being as optimized as possible with various tricks involved (textures loading slowly, big guns, low-FOV, etc.) it really has nothing to do with the hardware, the hardware is weak by today's standards, that is factual, it could not run games on high settings with high FOV at 1080p unlike many modern computers.
2 or 3 months.A long-ass time.Oh boy, visual basic. I can barely contain my excitement. Not.
Sure, they're built to do one specific job, but that's partly their downfall.
Can you develop games on a console? No. Can you develop mods on a console? No. Can you upgrade a console? No.
I see what you mean about them not being a PC; they aren't personal, Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo can lock them down, taking the personal out of personal computer.
And no, a console is a lot more than a graphics card. It's like saying my computer is a CPU with a bunch of peripherals attached.
1) Release upgraded versions (or kits, as someone said before) of the consoles every time new generations of parts release, which I'd say is around every year
2) Squeeze the absolute best hardware on the market into the new consoles, keeping them on-par with PC's.
Neither of them would work as great as their current plans. From what I've seen, no console gamer likes to buy a new system every year. Most of them much prefer the current "cycle" of consoles; every new generation lasts for around 6-8 years. Putting the best, most expensive hardware into a console would mean higher prices, and probably less sales.
The xbox cpu has only about 165,000,000 transistors while. mean while today's proccesers are in the billions.
But consoles are just inferior PCs. All consoles are are decent PCs sold at a loss, because the manufacturers intend to make up what they lost on selling the console cheap on the games.
Yeah, it's still pretty powerful, but it's still way out of date.
Well pure GPU wise it has 48 stream processors.
It is very similar to the ATI 2xxxx series but it has a lot more texture processors per stream processor then any other ATI GPU in that era.
it is supposed to be capable of doing 80 GFLOPS.
(I have found this number to be disputed some say 240 but that is max theoretical and as AMD said before the VLIW5 never saw its resources used to the max this number is based off comparing it to the AMD 2xxx series with similar specs this number is probably off but its the most accurate number I could come up with.)
The AMD 6970 with VLIW4 arch has 1536 stream processors and can do 2.7 TFLOPs or 2700 GFLOPS.
The AMD 7970ghz edition with GCN has 2048 stream processors and can do 4300 GLFOPS.
Microsofts next console would have to be 53 times faster in the GPU department to catch up to today's PCs.
Note GLFOPS is a poor measurement to compare graphics cards on but its the best numbers we can get software specific game optimizations ram bandwidth all come into play GLFOPS is more of a perfect world measurement.
Microsoft is not going to throw a 7970 in its console ever or a 8970 why? Cost
Consoles are for budget gamers while PCs are for people with larger budgets.
O ya I forgot number of transistors is a measurement of performance that's why an AMD 8150 murders the Intel 2500k in benchmarks because it has more transistors .
Why a 7970? A 670 is cheaper and has more power.
But isnt the 670 better for gaming?
1. I was using all AMD GPUs for comparison because Nvidia could very well measure its GFLOPS a different way.
2. Microsoft has said they like working with AMD and as long as AMD is a good parter to them they plan on using them for the 720 and at this point it would be too late to switch to Nvidia for the GPU plus them using an AMD GPU makes the console easier to make backwards compatible.
3. uhhh
Rather then derailing this thread with a massive benchmark post I will just give you a link.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-benchmark,3232-8.html
If you are too lazy to read the whole thing that's a small preview you could also go read the thread I started on it I think a while back or someone did its somewhere.
oh right i forgot they wanted to use AMD. DERP
The only differences are slight price and brand.
i heard Nvidia was better for gaming and AMD was more for video editing
The only difference between AMD and Nvidia cards is the brand. They both perform on the same tiers and are both just as good as the other for gaming.
Not sure who told you that, but they don't know what they are talking about.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html