Will console graphics ever beat PC graphics?
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Now this is an interesting question. When a person thinks "graphics" that person, I'd wager, doesn't know the mind-boggling depths of the features and technology one can find in modern graphics cards and accelerators.
Anti-aliasing, shaders, memory, memory interface AND type, core clock, stream processors, and the gigabytes on top of gigabytes that make the hardware run as efficiently as possible; the list goes on, and this all before the specific technologies exclusive to the chipset manufacturer, AND the hardware being used to display allllll of this.
Now, consider the following: At a certain point, graphical technology will advance to a point where our organic eyes can't tell the difference between one generation of graphics and the next.
To apply that thought to the topic, there will come a day when the difference between console graphics and PC graphics will be undetectable to the human eye; indeed, the ONLY difference will be in the numbers involed in that paragraph of techno-babble above.
Furthermore, even when technology advances to the point where photo-realism is the norm, there will still be popular and exceptional games that outright deny such graphics. Beyond what Nintendo, et al. have been doing in the past year or so, there have been plenty of games that go for an artistic approach instead of looking "real," such as Okami, Zelda: Wind Waker, and Mad World; this is all without even considering the very small, VERY enjoyable flash-based games that one can find on the Internet.
Bottom line: This question is completely moot. Disregarding most of my rambling gibberish, that last paragraph, I think, answers the topic question. The debate just doesn't matter.
On the other hand, who's the twit who took the time and effort to think of all this and type it out, eh?
Anti-aliasing, shaders, memory, memory interface AND type, core clock, stream processors, and the gigabytes on top of gigabytes that make the hardware run as efficiently as possible; the list goes on, and this all before the specific technologies exclusive to the chipset manufacturer, AND the hardware being used to display allllll of this.
Now, consider the following: At a certain point, graphical technology will advance to a point where our organic eyes can't tell the difference between one generation of graphics and the next.
To apply that thought to the topic, there will come a day when the difference between console graphics and PC graphics will be undetectable to the human eye; indeed, the ONLY difference will be in the numbers involed in that paragraph of techno-babble above.
Furthermore, even when technology advances to the point where photo-realism is the norm, there will still be popular and exceptional games that outright deny such graphics. Beyond what Nintendo, et al. have been doing in the past year or so, there have been plenty of games that go for an artistic approach instead of looking "real," such as Okami, Zelda: Wind Waker, and Mad World; this is all without even considering the very small, VERY enjoyable flash-based games that one can find on the Internet.
Bottom line: This question is completely moot. Disregarding most of my rambling gibberish, that last paragraph, I think, answers the topic question. The debate just doesn't matter.
On the other hand, who's the twit who took the time and effort to think of all this and type it out, eh?
The PC engine uses different features to the console version. Each machine is optimized accordingly, a PS3 is different to a 360 is different to an average PC. It would be naive to think that Crytek isn't pushing the graphics as far as they can on PC because that has been the main draw of the Cryengine since it's conception.Xzi said:
Just because an engine is scalable to work on many machines, doesn't mean it can't also be pushed further than its standard settings!
In terms of sheer grunt, PC gaming will most like always be on top. No console can match top-of-the-line PCs for raw processing power. It's just not possible.Mafoobula said:
But games like LIMBO, Team Fortress 2, Braid, Zelda: Wind Waker, Okami; games that don't push "realism" - will still benefit from extra processing power! With more machinery to work with, with less boundaries, there come less in the way of an artist to achieve their ultimate vision! Saying "the debate doesn't matter" is a silly thing to say. The only reason you can get artistic games like the ones you mentioned is because technology adjusted to allow for these kinds of flippant art styles and graphics.
Bottom line: you're silly, stop being silly.
console graphics are about a month out of date by release, seeing as consoles are always the same hardware but PCs come in components and can be interchanged and upgraded
Well, I don't think consoles will surpass PC's in the graphics department any time soon. I'm OK with that. To me, console graphics are just fine where they are. Either way, we all know that with each generation there will be improvements. Now, we can't predict the future so we can't actually know whether or not consoles will reach or surpass the level of graphics we find in PC games. It might happen 5, 10, 20 years from now. Or, it might not.
...Scrumpmonkey said:
*shakes head*
Ok, gather around children. A graphics card with hardware acceleration works how? By performing pixel-operations on several pieces of memory in parallel. Various hardware manufacturers have created variants of this for their different graphics cards. Nvidia, ATI, Voodoo, etc.
But in reality, it is simply a computer engine performing memory operations based on an instruction set, on several memory areas at once.
You can use this in very structured and limited ways to perform some particular tasks very quickly - gpgpu processing. Not everything can be structured for acceleration this way. But there are a lot of tasks that can be thought of as intrinsically parallellizable. Some of those are possible to do in gpgpu processing. But it is limited, because of memory restrictions and simply the fact that the processor on that engine is separated from the cpu on a computer, which is needed to make simple, but necessary transformations underway.
What, then, if you actually had a programmable cpu on that bus? Instead of having a gpu with very, very limited capabilities? What about, say, six of those processors? And on a bus that actually has higher bandwidth peaks and significantly lower access-times than on the most cutting edge gpu card?
This is actually what we had to experiment with on the ps3, until the fucking assholes at Sony decided to drop linux support..
..anyway, where was I. Oh, yes. So what we have here is the same type of limitation that any computer has - it cannot produce more data than a cpu could possibly compute and transfer it on the bus - creating a system like that would require faster ram than we have. But it was possible to have faster ram than in a normal system, and link the elements on it.
If you compare that with a normal PC, it would be as if you had the gpu linked directly on the first layer of memory after the level2 cache.
So you lose the possibility of running the gpu on "peak", and serving it finished data (which is an expensive process - this is not an ideal solution). But you gain the possibility of directly accessing half-way or completely processed data - as well as have the option to transform data on the fly inside the graphics context.
If you don't see how that affects possibilities in animation technology, layered rendering engines, physics, scene interaction, or whatever else having to do with handling of graphical contexts - not just by opening up for use of more of those theoretically parallellizable tasks, but also to decrease the size of the time-steps between transformations - then you just need to change you opinion.
Yes but no.
Consoles have the ability to temporarily advance beyond what PCs have, but this is always a very short lived experience due to the consistently growing and evolving nature of the PC. A console may get ahead for a few weeks, but inevitably it's inability to evolve will catch up to it, and the PC will fly by.
Consoles have the ability to temporarily advance beyond what PCs have, but this is always a very short lived experience due to the consistently growing and evolving nature of the PC. A console may get ahead for a few weeks, but inevitably it's inability to evolve will catch up to it, and the PC will fly by.
Dollar for dollar, console graphics RAPE PC graphics. Try getting decent graphics in MW2 on a PC that costs the same amount on a PS3. If you want to spend $1500~$2000 on an elite gaming PC, they better be at least a little superior to that which can be produced on a $300 machine.
Perfectly reasonable, if you do enough research/wait for the right bargains to build a PC for $300, assuming that you can nab a free copy of Windows (that XP disc will probably do) or if you run the Linux and WINE gauntlet, that will match the PS3 on MW2's graphics. Why the hell did you pick MW2 since it looks fairly dire compared to, say, Uncharted 2, but that's beside the point.radioactive lemur said:
..except no one is going to saw over the branch they're sitting on. As painfully and thoroughly demonstrated with examples such as: the childish indignation of Valve, to the ignorant comments from Carmack and others in the industry when it comes to the practical use of parallel processing elements.Johnnyallstar said:
Remember, this is technology that's actually been available since the 80's, but never ended up being commercially viable and practical for use until now.
We have the same unfortunate thing with Netbooks/laptops and integrated chipsets - Nvidia actually made prototypes of computers like this several years ago. But the fact that the various giants are not interested in jumping too far ahead, and crashing their existing chip and software production lines, makes sure that it takes years upon years before the computers actually make it to the market.
That's the long and the short of that. What annoys me, though, is that a lot of people instantly go from "not economically sound" and to "not technologically superior". It simply doesn't work like that.
No, consoles will never leapfrog PCs in graphics. PCs are constantly available for upgrade, whereas a console isn't. I personally don't mind sacrificing a delay in graphic upgrades for the money I'm saving.
but the guy that designed all cars would have to have a way to make said car work and test it over and over again. This person would then have a prototype and sell it to a company. his car is as fast as the companies car. This person though can improve their own car but the only way for the consumers cars to improve is that the designers car improves.TBR said:
at least that's how I see it. also considering you have to design the game on the computer which requires the computer to be more advanced if the design is going to be more detailed.
Not quite so true.veloper said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_%28graphics_chip%29
The Xenos chip is far more advanced then that of the PS3. Basically the Xenos is an R500 series card (X1900) with some heavy modifications that bring it above its counterparts. The most notable difference is the unified shader architecture which offers a lot more flexibility in visuals.
What it comes down to is this.
The 360's Processor is indeed a simplified PowerPC tri-core processor each running two threads, thus giving us Six (6) logical cores. Even so, the 360's processor still does pretty well in general computing, but it's not quite viable for a PC. (Important thing to note is that almost all console CPUs are simplified so they basically do linear calculations such as physics and graphical based calculations. Console CPUs generally suck at things like AI. A PC's CPU is much, much faster at actual decision making, whereas console CPUs slow down a lot.)
The PS3's processor is more powerful then that of the 360s. But again, it's not made for general computing. It's a very, very good number cruncher though. In fact, it's good enough at doing it that many devs offload some of the graphical workload to the Cell processor. In fact they almost need to do it since the PS3's GPU is, to be frank, a piece of shit.
Sony could have easily worked in better GPU advancements with very little addition to the cost.
It is also worth noting that the 360's GPU has at least some DirectX 10 equivalent capabilities, where the PS3's does not.
...so pay attention, kids. Lesson for life here. Unless you bury your interests, your principles, and just pick the horse that's going to win - you'll actually end up using your university-education for raging at people who cannot read, on the internet.
That's how much of a failure you'll be if you think standards and properly programmed solutions - or just plain obvious truth - matter over a huge advertisement budget.
They don't.
Not only that - it's not just more successful to go for lies and bullshit - it's actually going to be negative for you if you stick to what you believe in. Really, don't do it. Unless it has something to do with your favourite multi-billion corporation ruling the world, obviously. Then pursue your dream, confidently.
That's how much of a failure you'll be if you think standards and properly programmed solutions - or just plain obvious truth - matter over a huge advertisement budget.
They don't.
Not only that - it's not just more successful to go for lies and bullshit - it's actually going to be negative for you if you stick to what you believe in. Really, don't do it. Unless it has something to do with your favourite multi-billion corporation ruling the world, obviously. Then pursue your dream, confidently.
I mean, "Beat" can kind of be looked at subjectively. It costs more to build a PC that can produce those amazing graphics than it does to drop 299 on a console and another 60 on a high-quality game, doesn't it? I know a lot of my buddies have incredible machines, including one guy that has built a full-on 3-D machine that he runs FFXIV on. I'm not really much of a PC guy, so i don't know. Can you folks out there build a PC capable of that screen shot's graphics for under $400? (I wouldn't be surprised if you could, actually. ;p)