Re: Why PC Games look better than 360 games.


Bruno wrote:
Swam Mollen wrote:
Here we go again, - dont you understand what I'm saying?

More like you don't understand.

I think you are getting over defensive on the PC front.


That to beat the 360, you NEED that 'overkill'.

The fact is, the 360 and PC being comparable is NOT a bad thing.

The $4000 rigs you talk about will not only look a lot better than the
360 they will also run a hell of a lot faster. If one goes for current
generation gfx cards in the mid price range, a decent CPU (which can be
a three years old P4) then you still get gfx that's on par or better
than the 360.

As I said, rubbish.




How many PC owners do you know with 24-32"+ screens?

A couple but since we tend to sit a lot closer to PC's than to TV's
there is less need for huge screens. It's about resolution and pixel
size more than screen size.

Now you're backing out. You cant get the same expereince on a 17" or
20" screen that one gets on a 30"+ screen for gaming. Period.





And 'on a par' is rubbish as you dont have access to Shader Mode 3
graphics, - things like post processing (motion blur, blooming, etc -
the very things that help elevate GRAW from being a good looking
shooter to a fantastic looking showcase game).

Maybe you need to check the specs of what a current generation gfx card
will do.

Apologies, I mixed you up with someone else, you did say you have an
X1900XTX.
I thought you had said you have an X800



Consider this: Occlusion processing, making effects like 'sitting in
padded room', 'stone room' etc. It sounds FAR better and MUCH more
realistic with EAX on a X-Fi card than onboard.

There is something in between like I have been saying all along. You
don't need X-Fi to get great gaming sound.

But to beat the 360, you do.



Funny, since the 360 has only 512 MB in total. Plenty of people are
happy with 512 MB but of course they have swapping when the game loads
and so, still it's far faster than the loading on a console.

That 512mb on the PC includes the entire OS, most of the drivers, so
it's far less than you think. The 512mb on the XBOX 360 is entirely for
games.

Yes but the 512 MB also includes gfx memory. Plus there is an OS on the
thing also.

HUH? THe only reason the PC requires 512mb RAM is to allow for A)
Higher resolutions and B) Overcome the slower PCI-E or AGP bus
bandwidths.

PCI-E 16x is around 4gb/sec compared to the 360s whole ram bus being
around 20 gb/sec.

Therefore having a dedicated VRAM quota is unnecessary.

PCI-Express can do the same, but most graphcs cards use dedicated VRAM.




You DO need at least 1gb on a PC, or else swap-files will cause
stuttering and frame-rate issues.

Depends on the game and how much you have running behind the scene. Some
games need a lot and others will do with less.

Oh no come on. You're being ridiculous now. Name me one FPS released in
the last couple of years that runs well on a 512mb system.


You probably have never opened these up. A typical XEON server sits in
a rack, has cooling in and around it, as well above and below it to
keep it cool.

I'm talking a Xeon workstation. Servers don't come with Quadro graphics
and the thing is under my desk at work in a standard mid-tower case.



DELL build a great case for cooling by channelling all the air in and
out through coving and having huge heatsinks and lots of fans.

Amazing - now cooling is suddenly not something which cost top $$$ but
just air in and out. Just like I have been saying all along.

And you just told me DELL etc add all sorts of unnecessary stuff to
their systems..... amazing.

Like i said, it's somthing you DO need to consider when putting
together a PC. And you claim it's not, yet system builders are charging
you for it already...
..



Finally, did you know that the PowerMac G5 2.5ghz models have liquid
cooling?

Yes - it is also very quiet. And the case is stylish as hell made in
like two or three aluminum parts. The point?

You claimed it was unnecessary, I've proven that two large system
builders do it as standard.



Likewise, visit a typical gaming hardware enthusiast site and you'll
see people will justify their $10,000 spend on quad SLI liquid cooled
FX 60 ALienware boxes.

Yes and your point is?

And you'll see how people justify the high end stuff.



Well, good luck finding a game that beats the effects used in Ghost
Recon on the 360 without upgrading again :-)

I think you should check out F.E.A.R. or maybe take Q4 since it's on
both 360 and PC. But no, wait. You won't use Q4 since it runs like a dog
on the 360 and in multiplayer it's even worse.

Frankly Fear looks great, but it does NOT in any way match or beat the
best I've seen on the 360.

G.R.A.W. simply stomps all over Half Life 2,
Condemned looks considerably better than F.E.A.R.

Q4 runs like a dog, but considering that every other FPS on the 360
looks better and plays smother, that suggests it's down to poor coding
rather than lack of power.



Have you seen the screen-shots of Condemned for the PC? Clearly
designed for X800/Geforce 6800 class GPU based PCs, it lacks the shiny
crisp graphics that make the 360 version a standout. Instead it looks
much flatter and not nearly so polished.

Entirely due to Shader Mode 3 pixel rendering.

Come on - there are plenty of games on the 360 which looks dull. Just
take that Perfect Dark Zero thing.

Have you played this game?

Look at all the shiny new effects, motion blur, plenty of reflections
and pixel shading effects. If anything, it's the very thing that's
wrong with the game. They took cartoonish graphics and tried to update
them by turning on all the 360's bells and whistles. It looks plasticy
as a result, but it's not bland by any stretch of the imagination.




You'll start to see that a lot mor. And games like Oblivion, developed
in tandem, will require X1900XTX / XT SLI class GPUs to outperform the
360.

Not likely.

Very likely.



"Miss a few effects'. Frankly, if you are going to be 'on a par' you'd
have to have THE SAME effects, with the same framerate.

I think we can agree to disagree here.

I think I know what's happening here. You've just spent a whole wad of
cash on a new graphics card and you are desperately trying to justify
having it without upgrading the rest of your PC.



No, but you wont be getting the best PS3 and XBOX 360 beating graphics
unless you upgrade.

Like I said, you need to spend to get BETTER graphics right now.

Well that is no different from spending to upgrade from the XBOX to the 360.

You've spent $600 or thereabouts, plus tax, on a new graphics card
simply so you can get graphics that are slightly better, or at best, on
a par with the 360. A console that costs, at minimum, $300. Or $400 if
you got the premium.

Your old games wont look better, simply run a bit smoother and crisper.

Your new games will be running, but not at their best as they dont have
access to a fast CPU to feed the Graphics card.





Are you following this discussion or just jumping in point by point?

I'm commenting on what I quote - nothing else.


My point is - PC games do look better than 360 or PS3 games, but only
if you whack up the res, get in a great high end graphics system and
high end CPU to feed it.

And my point - had you read the articles you'd know - is that high end
is not needed. A current generation mid range card will do and a three
year old CPU will be able to feed that gfx card just fine.

This, I totally disagree with.

Go check 3dmark. Do a search on CPUs around your one's speed.
Frankly, nobody even bothers with a 2.5 ghz P4 on a rig with such a
high end card.

There's a reason.

It cant feed the graphics at nearly the rate necessary to get the
card's full potential.

Why on earth didnt you aim lower and get a X1800 or Geforce 7800?

Clearly you wanted to aim high but you arent seeing the real potential
of that card.

Simply switching to a newer P4 or a Pentium D will add between 30-40%
more points onto your 3dmark.


You and others seem to think it's me slating the PC for being
expensive, or whatever.

I'm thinking the money you think needs to spend on a PC for it to best
the 360 is totally over estimated.

And I think you've underestimated the specs for a PC that can best the
360.




Sure but not as much a dead end than your current AGP equiped
motherboard. In fact what I suggested is the only available upgrade path
for the CPU+RAM you have.

Which is why I'd need to upgrade both.

Why spend $400-800 on a new motherboard, case, PSU and graphics card
when I've limited it to an old style Intel chip socket?

Because you don't need anything but a new good gfx card to play the new
games. Sure a faster CPU will play them even better but even your old
CPU will provide better framerate than the 360 if you just get a new gfx
card.

Sorry, but the evidence and experience does not bare this out.





Clearly your not very good at it, or just being devils advocate :-)

Go see what you wrote about Dell's cooling and then stop that talk about
high performance cooling solutions.

I think you've missed the point somewhat.



And your not running the high end CPU and Graphics cards we've been
discussing.

Hmm, I should think most people would say my X1900XTX is a high end gfx
card. And as for rest - sure you can find something which uses more
power but if one builds a gaming system you don't put in 4 disks like in
my box so there is not much of a difference. Nor am I having any but
minimal cooling. I can double the cooling effect just by running the
fans faster than crawl speed.

See above, sorry, but I mixed your spec up with someone else's.

But nevertheless, this does suggest you've stuck a Ferrari Engine in a
12 year old Ford car.

Quite how you think you're getting away with having a slow old CPU feed
a top of the line graphics card is beyond me, but hey, you're stuck
with it as you spent all your cash on the high end graphics card.



So there IS a bit of snobbery about the Sound-blaster cards that you've
been dissing through this thread.

No, that's not it. My point is that Sound Blaster cards are way
overpriced so when you spec a PC with thoose you are really just blowing
up the price.

Funny, you spend $600 + on a graphics card that you'll never use to
it's fullest, thanks to a slow CPU, and you then tell me Sound Blaster
cards are unjustifiable as they dont give enough of a boost to justify
the cost.

Irony.



Frankly either you are making that up or incredibly fortunate.

Frankly I find your remarks a bit condescending.



I regularly image machines at work, across abroad spectrum of specs,
motherboards and CPUs and it is a certainty that if you put the wrong
image on a machine it'll blue-screen or cause a significant headache.

Did you read what I wrote about the procedure? Before changing hardware
you uninstall the drivers for what you exchange!

Of course you can't just use a image of one configuration on a different
configuration.

It's just as time consuming to do that, and risk the bsods, as simply
running the installer from scratch.




Granted, Kernel errors are rare but the can and do happen if you
significantly change the chipset and CPU you're using.

Yes they can. And the procedure I used will not work in all cases.
Sometimes drivers are not uninstalled properly so they will mess up
things when you install the new hardware.

And one has to rely on all the drivers being clean and well written.

How long have you been using a PC now?



It's very hit and miss getting a decent game on PC games. You have to
manually match yourself to other people, often ending up overwhelmed
unless your in a game with friends, and certainly you wont find the
matchmaking services that Live now hasa across the board.

Well - I for one can do without the matching I get when playing PGR3.
More often than not the races are spread out way to much skill wise and
language wise as well. Maybe it works better stateside but here in
europe there are often races with multiple languages and people not
understanding each other.

The more games you race, the better the matching is. THat's how it
works.

When you start playing, and for the first few games, you'll find it
just randomly picks games.

As you play more, and it gets your skill levels, you'll get better.

Sadly this is an english speaking dominated world and youre bound to
find more english speakers than otherwise. In europe there are far more
language groups, and with the 360 still being early to market, you're
bound to find more mixes than you'd like.

Give it time and it'll get better and better.




and you cant play many MMPORGs without paying at least $10 a month.
Well name one MMORPG for the 360.

Final Fantasy XII

Okay - although not released yet. I also found out there supposedly is,
or will be, an FFXI for the 360. But it costs $12.95 a month to play it
regardless if you have Live Gold or not!


I'm playing it for free now.

You did ask for an MMPORG that's on the 360 now, - i gave you one. In
the future there will be plenty more.



True, but this is changing with Live. Sandbox games will be far more
prevalent with the larger hard drives and Live Marketplace.

Hardly. I find it hard to believe Microsoft will let anyone make game
mods that goes on Live in a similar manner to how mods are found for PC
games all over.

Frankly you are cynical. They've already discussed things like putting
your face on Avatars, and there have been a few sandbox games out
there.
We shall see, but it's not as impossible as you think.


EOD

.

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