Re: Why PC Games look better than 360 games.


Bruno wrote:



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.

Period my ass. It's a different experience for sure but sitting much
closer to the screen means a 20" fill a lot bigger portion of the
viewing field than a 50" TV does. I know which one I prefer for immersion.

I'm afraid you are talking complete ass. I have a 20" Dell Widescreen
TFT with a pretty damn good response time for a TFT display, - and
beleive me, it's nothing compared to my lovely 32" LG HDTV sitting in
the livingroom.



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.

How come - it's not like the 360 is so special with regards to sound.

Oh now come off it, - it's got a preddy damned good sound processor
capable of all sorts of trickery that one finds in the likes of a
dedicated card on the PC.




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.

Funny. A. Higher resolutions only requires gfx memory not system memory.
And it's not like one has to play at a super high resolution it's a perk :-)

The PCI-E is plenty fast enough. In fact it's so fast you can have two
gfx cards work together sharing their data just over that bus.

You really are clueless when it comes to system design.

PCI express 16x splits to 2x 8x when running in SLI,, and they both
require onboard DDR3 VRAM to operate efficiently.




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.

You still need to store the data somewhere. Having just one type of ram
does not make textures appear magically out of thin air - they need to
be in the memory.

Did I say otherwise? You were the one claiming that a system can get
away with less than 1gb as it's minimum, citing the Graphics ram as an
addition to this equation.





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

In fact the most PC gfx "cards" use shared ram but they are only really
good for 2D since they have no 3D power.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.




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.

If I do you


Well, come on then.

Try running F.E.A.R. or Far Cry on a PC with only 512mb ram.



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...
.
I never said cooling was not to be considered. What I said was that it's
not something you have to pay top dollar for. Water cooling fx. is only
needed if you A. Want to overclock like crazy or B. Want to be very silent.

I'd rather have a PC with a decent sound level than have to shove loads
of large fans all over it.




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

You've proven nothing. Apple uses water cooling to be "cool" and quiet.
Not because a couple of fans won't do the job.

Bull. Apple put fans in their slower systems, they require liquid
cooling BECAUSE a couple of fans wont do. Do you advocate shoving
dozens of 120mm fans all over the shop, causing lots of exaust noise?

And as for Dell they
actually use very few fans and a duct, that's not expensive in any way.

They use lots of fans, about 8 per case, and lots of ducting. It's a
design that requires the entire system to be designed in tandem with
the case.




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

Well beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You like less detailed textures, less detailed charactors, lighting
effects and atmospheric detail?





G.R.A.W. simply stomps all over Half Life 2,

HL2 is a turd. Compared to games like Far Cry and F.E.A.R.

Now you are simply being ridiculous.




Condemned looks considerably better than F.E.A.R.

Not true.



See above, considering FEAR lacks any of the special effects used in
Condemned, and shares the same basic LITHTECH engine, your statement is
somewhat FALSE.


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.

A lot of the effects are done poorly. And the framerate isn't exactly
great either.

Yes, it was done poorly - but it's not bland by any stretch of the
imagination. As for frame rate, you have GOT to be kidding.



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.

Come on now. You need to come up with something better than that. Since
I run the games in super high resolution the bottleneck is the gfx card
not the CPU.

I've read plenty of benchmarks that clearly show that the faster your
CPU, the better your frame rate is. Yes, upgrading from Card X to Card
Y will give you a boost, but you are hampering the maximum that card
can deliver by sticking to an old CPU with a slower FSB.


Besides I plan on upgrading once the next Intel and AMD
generation is on the market late this year, but that doesn't mean games
look bad now. The resolution alone is a big advantage over the 360.

But resolution is not the be-all and end-all. Not every game requires
tiny details to be shown, and anyone can shove up a high resolution
display if they reduce the detail down to nothing.




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.

I spend the same amount on the gfx upgrade and the 360 within $10 or so.

OK, tell me where you can get a X1900XTX 512mb for less than $600 and
I'll gladly buy one.

Seeing as I've been hunting all over the net for one for a decent
price, I think I would have come accross one by now. Even on EBAY.

The thing is that because there is a lack of good games for the 360 mine
is collecting dust,

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Call of Duty 2, Hexic HD, Fight Night
Round 3, Kameo: Elements of Power, Condemend: Criminal Origins, Burnout
Revenge.

Surely you have not played all of these recently?

so upgrading my PC to play some of the great new
games on it made good sense.

You cant be serious. You spunked $600 on a graphics card + another $50
on a motherboard, one that you're going to have to discard to get a new
CPU very soon anyway?

All to play games, even though you have a console that you spent $400
on very recently.

Are you rich?



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.

Agreed. But they will still be at least as nice as on the 360 or perhaps
you think there is a CPU upgrade coming for it.

The moment you get games written for dual core or multithreading, that
throw more complex geometry and effects around the screen, your PC will
struggle to feed your XTX card.


This, I totally disagree with.

So go read the articles. If you get a 1800GTO fx. it will do the same
tricks as the X1900XTX just slower meaning lower framerate or lower
resolution.

It's considerably slower and still around $300-350, more than a
standalone 360 without HDD.
So to surmise, it will only do as well as a 360, not better but just
about cost the same.

I've read plenty of benchmarks, checked plenty of 3dmark comparisons,
and I DO know what I'm talking about.




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.

3DMark is such a dull game. But since you like it why don't you go check
it but look on the high resolutions and you'll see the CPU matters very
little.

I've done plenty of research and It's evident you are either deceiving
me or have no idea what you are talking about.

Every benchmark I've read, even just ramping up clock speeds on the
CPUs and adding dual core variants on the 3dmark scores shows the score
improves as you add more CPU power.





There's a reason.

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

*sigh* Like I said time and time again. Check the articles on the net.


Which ones, for I cannot find any that corroborate your opinion. You
seem rather lonely.


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

Because they aren't fast enough for 2048*1536.

And why do you need that stupidly high resolution??????



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

Again. 3DMark is a dull game.

You only say that because it contradicts you.


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

Sorry but if you think so then you are mistaken. Only with something
like a Quad SLI gfx system is the bottle neck not the gfx card(s). Stop
being stubbon and go read the benchmarks.

Why dont you show me which benchmarks you like to read, as none on any
of the popular websites corroborate your statements.

In fact, they completely contradict it.



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.

I'm not stuck. It's only money.

I'm glad some people have the spare cash to splurge $600 on a graphics
card.



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

In fact it saves a lot of time. Since all you uninstall and reinstall
are the specific drivers for motherboard and what may be integrated on
it plus the gfx card. If you go from scratch you'll install Windows,
thoose drivers just mentioned, all the other drivers AND all the
software and finally having to put in all the little tweaks and settings
as well.

Funnily enough ,I have just upgraded:

Geforce 7600GT,
Athlon 64 3500+
Gigabyte NForce 4 motherboard,
etc

Guess what happened when I plugged my old hard drive with a freshly
installed Window XP on it?


BLue screen of death.

I deliberately did exactly as you suggested, and it didnt work.

As is the case EVERY SINGLE TIME i've done it before.

Like I said, you havent a clue what you are talking about.




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

Like I said there is no guarantee. If it works you save a lot of hours
and if not you spend one hour at the most.


How long have you been using a PC now?

Properly a lot longer than you from what I can gather. The first one was
from the time where a hard disk was considered the latest thing since
most machines had two floppy drives at the most.

You didnt learn a lot then.

Listen, clearly you are just playing devils advocate, as there's no way
someone can make so many fundamental mistakes such as contradicting
established facts, experience and evidence as you .

Wether you want to continue arguing is up to you, but frankly you've
made too many comments and stuck to too many points that show you up as
nothing more than an antagonist.

If you really beleive that a 2.5ghz P4 Northwood CPU attached to a
X1900GTX 512mb is a good balance, and that resolution is the ultimate
expression of graphical beutey, then so be it.

But I know different, and I know my own eyes do not deceive me.

Thankyou.

.

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