xbox 360 graphics

[xXDracoXx]

At the moment, it's possible to obtain higher quality gaming from computers because no developpers have come close to fully tap the 360's hardware potential. The triple-core(with IBM's form of HT for 6 logical cpu's) is far from being fully used with the current games and the programming, I believe, is far from being efficient with using ATi's new unified shader architechture. I think they will release this technology in PC's in a year or so.

The problem I find with the 360, if you observe all the games, is the lack of memory. It may be ddr2-700(bloody fast), but 512MB seems just lame, especially when shared with the gpu. You can see that they use poor anisotrpic filtering in all the still shots because bringing it up would require more samples of the same textures and use way beyond 512MB.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Yes the X360 is not being used anywhere near its potential. Thats why its games don't look 2 years beyond the PC's best (which also isn't close to being used to its potential).

So the real question is which has the higher potential. And without putting too fine a a point on it, the PC creams the X360 in that regard... At least at the high end anyway.

 

[Heyyou27]

It's actually DDR3 at 700MHz, and the 6 logical cores aren't very powerful.

 

[xXDracoXx]

well, the cores use the PowerPC architechture and I saw some benchamrks about a year ago showing a Mac's PowerPC cpu at 2.5GHz outperforming a P4 at 3.2Ghz. Now get 3 of those PowerPC's running at 3.2Ghz with 2 threads each and it's actually a shitload of power.

 

[k2000k]

I dont know about the earlier poster, but COD2 runs beautifully on my Plasma screen. I noticed though that Halo2 does not look as good, I it probably has something to do with the upscaling to 1080i revealing more errors than a normal tv or 720p television will reveal. Comparing graphics on a pc and console is kind of hard. For a lot of reason, not to mention that a console will probably not be equiped with the latest card for costs reason and because it doesnt need too.

Console game designers have a set piece of hardware for a number of years so they have two advantages.
1) They know exactly what each console will have.
2) Because the hardware does not change as fast, they have to resort to being more efficient with their programming to improve graphics.
Example: Bungie, when making Halo2, said that they figured out a way to make Master Chief look better, but utilizing half as many triangles as the original MC for Halo.

PC-Latest graphics advances
Console-Perfecting older modles by becoming more efficient. Though plenty of programmers mess this up.

 

[LordBelial]

RIght now for video gaming, the 360 out performs every pc out right now in graphics and smooth playing. You can buy the most expensive graphics card, have the most ammount of ram, and the fastest cpu out to date right now, and you will still lose frame rates in high detail parts of a computer game, now that might be getting to picky, but im a picky person. alls i know is that when i play a video game, i dont want to see the screen slow down because of the action, whats the point of spending 1500 bucks on a good gaming machine if the 360 runs it better? i understand its a "gay consol" like some of you will say, because i agree, how ever, as of now, the 360 out performs the pc in smooth playability. However, by playing the 360 iv realized one thing that does not compare to the pc..and thats anti aliasing, it only can go up to 2x MAX on SOME games...call of duty and some racing game i was playing at my friends house had 0 anti aliasing, and looked horrible (remember, im picky) my pc i can turn it up to 8x with no problem (how ever the annoying occasional loss of frames.)i used to up grade my graphics card every 4 months or so, everytime a new one came out, im gonna start saving my money for a long time...from what i hear coming out in the next year is rather insane.

 

[LordBelial]

p.s. dont say "xbox 360 sucks cuz you need to buy an expensive hdtv" thats what monitors are for, i work at best buy, and half the people that bought the 360, are playing on a 300 dollar lcd or crt monitor, which is better resolution than an hdtv itself. what really blew me away, was the graphics of the new far cry game coming out for the 360 www.gametrailers.com look for far cry instincts for the 360, and watch it, if you put that on any gaming rig now, those affects and draw distance, would surely mean a loss of frames, may be only a small ammount of loss frames, but its noticible, and very annoying.

 

[Acert93]

well, the cores use the PowerPC architechture and I saw some benchamrks about a year ago showing a Mac's PowerPC cpu at 2.5GHz outperforming a P4 at 3.2Ghz. Now get 3 of those PowerPC's running at 3.2Ghz with 2 threads each and it's actually a shitload of power.

Different chips. The Xbox 360 CPUs are pretty stripped down. The advantage comes in that there are 3 cores (instead of 1 big out of order execution core... although it will be a while before developers get a handle on multithreading, let alone maximizing the CPUs effeciently) and the 128bit vector units and the L2 cache locking and streaming to the GPU.

X1900XTX/XT = Better

When it comes to shading yeah, no contest. X1900XT kicks its butt 6 ways to Sunday. In other important areas, namely bottlenecks (memory, CPU/Memory accesses, featureset, specific speed ups like no hit on FP10 blending, etc) I would say it poses some interesting questions.

If we are talking a shader bound game, then X1900XT. If we are talking about a game running with 4xMSAA, HDR, and some nice new effects like displacement maps??? I am not sure we can quantify "faster" in some ways. In PC terms, YES, X1900XT is faster as it matches the general development environment and known/typical bottlenecks devs avoid. But if you said to 2 dev teams of equal skill, "Build a game specifically for this chip. You have 28 months & $40M to get the best results". I think the 360 has enough advantages in other areas to be competitive in the end product. Not everything is about pure shading ability or flops this or frequency that.

Nice thing for us PC gamers: R600 will have (my guess) 3x the shader performance and more features in general. Xenos what??! 😉

So the real question is which has the higher potential. And without putting too fine a a point on it, the PC creams the X360 in that regard... At least at the high end anyway.

The problem being of course that (a) developers do not develop for high end hardware--more like the 5200FX!--and (b) the PS3 and Xbox 360 will become the new baseline for performance, meaning new games will target their features and performance ranges.

So basically I would expect higher resolutions and a couple bells and extra whistles, but as much as consoles HELP PC gaming, they really hold it back as well. 🙁

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

RIght now for video gaming, the 360 out performs every pc out right now in graphics and smooth playing.

This is based on what objective information, your biased Op-onion?

You can buy the most expensive graphics card, have the most ammount of ram, and the fastest cpu out to date right now, and you will still lose frame rates in high detail parts of a computer game,

Show me where that's the case with an X1900XTX in Crossfire running @ the 1280x720 of the Xbox.

now that might be getting to picky, but im a picky person.

I doubt it.

alls i know is that when i play a video game, i dont want to see the screen slow down because of the action, whats the point of spending 1500 bucks on a good gaming machine if the 360 runs it better?

As if the Xbox doesn't stutter (or overheat). And while a PC may cost more, it's got alot more functionality to most of us. BTW, ever copy a DVD/CD with your Xbox? What about edit a pictures or video to high quality? Seriously the money argument is silly, and only used by people who don't make enough.

i understand its a "gay consol" like some of you will say, because i agree, how ever, as of now, the 360 out performs the pc in smooth playability.

Once again prove it apples to apples.

However, by playing the 360 iv realized one thing that does not compare to the pc..and thats anti aliasing, it only can go up to 2x MAX on SOME games...call of duty and some racing game i was playing at my friends house had 0 anti aliasing, and looked horrible (remember, im picky) my pc i can turn it up to 8x with no problem (how ever the annoying occasional loss of frames.)

Yeah that happens when cranking up the res, hence why games don't do it for the Xbox beyond 2X for 720p and beyond 4X for 480i/p, because it runs out of memory, same happens to graphics cards despite having apparently more (used differently though).

p.s. dont say "xbox 360 sucks cuz you need to buy an expensive hdtv" thats what monitors are for, i work at best buy,

I wouldn't say that's something to mention, if anything it detracts from your statements here, especially when you make mistakes like this;

and half the people that bought the 360, are playing on a 300 dollar lcd or crt monitor, which is better resolution than an hdtv itself.

That's a pretty general and naive statement. 1024x768 is not supperior to HDTV, it's the very minimum of Plasmas, 1280x1024 isn't superior to HDTV's 1080i/p for reolution, and 1600x1200 also is below 1080i/p for resolution. Only the panels that cost MORE than $300 are better than 1080p/i, and it doesn't matter because the Xbox only displays in 2 HD outputs, everything else would be interpolated. So regardless of whether or not they hook it up to a QUXGA monitor, it doesn't make the image better because the resolutions higher. Only the blurring effects of analogue CRTs and HDTV Plamsas would offer any benifit at improving a base image, and that would be to smooth things out, not sharpen them up. Seriously, I hope you don't sell TVs!

In the end I don't care console vs PC, it's a pointless argument like religion, and usually the leaders of both sides are zealots who are more insterested in their choice than reality. Both will perform their tasks based on what the developers expect. Some will favour PC some will favour PS3/Xbox360. Also it's getting annoying watching people defend their position with innacurate information.

 

[Dresden]

omg, this thread still exist?!? i was such a noobie when i commented in it, ahah! Who cares, they are both fun machines, what more can you ask for? And just to defend my old noob self against grape, i've read that the i/p in HDTV res specifications meant interlaced/projected. i'm not saying i'm right, but i didn't just pop that out of my butt.

i think the best argument for a console is that the hardware will be fully utilized at some point, and it forces developers in the long run to create very good code for the games. it's amazing that progression happens on these machines over the span of a few years, when they are pigeoned holed to the same, unevolving hardware.

PC's, on the other hand, get a refresh gpu every three-four months. The sheer power undoubtedly makes up for any other short comings, but imagine if PC's were subjected to longer GPU updates...i think PC game developers rely to much on the powerful GPU's we recieve. This really makes both PC and Console very lopsided compared to each other. Why am I rambling...

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

LOL!

You probably read it from someone who works at BestBuy!

No problemo, just think of how the image scans and it makes sense.

Next lesson: Fields vs Frames.

Now to enjoy the Daily Shows....

 

[pjbliverpool]

When it comes to shading yeah, no contest. X1900XT kicks its butt 6 ways to Sunday. In other important areas, namely bottlenecks (memory, CPU/Memory accesses, featureset, specific speed ups like no hit on FP10 blending, etc) I would say it poses some interesting questions.

Shading, pixel fill rate, texel fill rate, geometry throughput.... in fact most of the key graphics performance area's.

Main memory's obviously much better because its all dedicated to the GPU at a much higher speed than the 360. edram is obviously a major 360 advantage but enough to overcome <50% the main memory bandwidth? PS3 had edram too compared to the xbox which didn't. What I want to know is how much do you really need for a modern framebuffer with lossless compression. Is 256GB/sec overkill?

CPU/Memory accesses are only going to be a limit if your limited by that in the first place. How many games get a speed up from the doubling of the CPU interface bandwidth by moving to PCI-E? How big is that jump? For all its talked about I simply don't see any evidence to suggest that the GPU is not working pretty independantly from the CPU with the limited connection between the two being more than enough to service the needs of the game.

Featurset is a Xenos advantage but how much of one? What specific features does it support than R580 doesn't in hardware? I know how far it goes beyond the SM3 spec but R580 goes beyond it too. And of course features don't neccesarily equal more power. For example compare a 9800XT to a GF6600. A generation ahead but a scaled down version of that generation which is comparable or inferior to the previous high end in real performance. Yes Xenos has unified shaders but I don't see that as an automatic advantage for several reasons - but thats a whole other subject

BTW FP10 is supported by R580 aswell and while its ROPs can only output 2 samples per clock rather than the 4 of Xenos, it still has quite a healthy lead over Xenos' multisampled fill rate because of twice the ROPs and 30% higher clock speed.

If we are talking a shader bound game, then X1900XT. If we are talking about a game running with 4xMSAA, HDR, and some nice new effects like displacement maps???

Well both displacement maps and HDR are also heavy shader functions so on that side of it, the R580 comes out in front. fill rate with 4xMSAA is still greater and it also supports FP10. So the only real disadvantage im seeing here is framebuffer bandwidth. But how much bandwidth does such a frame take up? I remember seeing a calculation at B3D and it was suprisingly small even without compression. I think Xenos forgoes lossless compression because of its huge bandwidth anyway but R580 will still employ it as much as possible.

The easy way to test of course is just to get an R580 in a modern game (CoD2 or Oblivion would be ideal), run it at 720p with 4xFSAA and see how performance scales down as you downclock the memory speed. If it scales almost linearly with the very 10 Mhz drop then you know that game is bandwidth limited on R580 at X360 settings - thus proving the advantage of the edram.

 

[pjbliverpool]

RIght now for video gaming, the 360 out performs every pc out right now in graphics and smooth playing. You can buy the most expensive graphics card, have the most ammount of ram, and the fastest cpu out to date right now, and you will still lose frame rates in high detail parts of a computer game,

The fact that your talking about 8xFSAA gives a little hit as to why that might be!

You have to consider settings aswell as framerate.

An X1900XTX will play any game out there right now with perfect smoothness as long as the setting are equivlent to what they would be on the X360. So for CoD2 for example, 720p + 2/4xMSAA + Trilinear texture filtering (so im lead to believe).

Lock your framerate at 60 with vsync and you will get almost a rock solid 60fps with the odd dip down to 30 (still smooth). Same applies for any game and thats without taking into consideration dual GPU's.

Perhaps on a poorly maintained system with lots of background apps, spyware and maybe even a virus or two to will get unpredictable framrates but not on a well built, clean system.

 

[billythekid]

I have a XBOX360 and I was fairly impressed. I went out and bought the xbox360 VGA game for my Sony 21" monitor. This has made a big difference in quality.

What I would say is if you can afford a HD TV then go for the new Samsungs they look gr8, if not go for the VGA cable for the xbox. I also have an optical cable through my platinum Pro 2 to a set of gigaworks s750, which is nice.

I would say that the 360 is far better then the pc for reflections and AA and AF. Fight night looks like proper people fighting, gotham is mind blowing and you really notice the diff between a TV and HD on a monitor. You see leads you couldn't before.

My pc is not shite either I have a AMD 64x2 4800, 2 GB of ram OCZ, gigabyte 1800XL 256mb GFX and 2*250 SATA HDD

So I have the latest ish stuff to compare

I would say the 360 wins easy

 

[LordBelial]

Ok, i dont care what the "specs" are for the pc vs the 360. just look at the 360 games and pc games right now. All 360 games run smooth at all times, all pc games do not run smooth at all times. so as of right now. the 360 is better for GAMING.

 

[pjbliverpool]

First of all, when it comes to graphics, your GPU is by far the most important component in that system and an 1800XL is comfortably inferior to Xenos. Hence your system won't be demonstrating X360 level performance.

Second, its not fair to judge the power of the system by games like PGR3 and FN3 since they have no PC equivilents to compare too. Just because they arn't on the PC doesn't meana top end PC couldn't handle them, just look at Oblivion and UT2007.

I would say that the 360 is far better then the pc for reflections and AA and AF.

This makes no sense whatsoever. Are you saying that all X360 games run at higher settings than 4xTSAA+16xQAF? Because those settings are pretty standard for all PC games on very high end systems. And with higher resolutions to boot.

 

[FITCamaro]

I have CoD2 for PC and have played it on the 360 at stores. The graphics on my system and the console look the same with the 360 getting props for the images being slightly less jaggy since every frame on the 360 is rendered with AA while I didn't run it. But throw a 7800GT in your system and you've got the 360 or more. For $400 (premium kit) the 360 is a powerful piece of hardware. But if CoD2 is what you plan to play, the PC is way better. I couldn't play it on the 360 cause the controls aren't quick enough or accurate enough.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Utter rubbish.

Firstly, not all X360 games are perfectly smooth all of the time time (e.g. Quake 4), and second of all, all PC games can be perfectly smooth at all times on the right PC at the right settings. The ability to balance power, graphics and framerate is one of the major advantages PC's have over consoles. With a console if you have a poor framerate your stuck with it. With a PC you can turn down the graphics or add more power. Either way you have control over the framerate far more-so than with a console.

 

[Sonic_Reducer]

gamming consoles dilever alot of quality but they are made to be easy to use just pop the dvd and play, high end pc graphics have more capacity for graphics, do you imagine when the programmers of the xbox360 dilever there best code and push the hardware, what would be on the market in graphic cards yeaaahhh something better , consoles are cool but i think they would never reach the performance of an high end card, despite you can do alot more with a pc that with a console 😛

 

[billythekid]

All I am saying is I have a topend pc and a 360 and the 360 wins hands down.

Another note as well is that theres no games for the pc these days cause alot of people copy them.

 

[Murgos]

PC's with high end parts will always be better than consoles in the graphics department. It's the games you should be looking at.

Anybody here play guitar hero? Decent graphics, extremely fun. World of Warcraft? Graphics are certainly not everything. :lol:

Anyway, I'll be buying an xbox 360 here very soon. I was going to upgrade my pc but everybody says to wait for AMD's new processor to come out and I think that is sound advice; everybody should keep that in mind while deciding what to buy.

 

[nextlevel]

mindless arguement that will go on years and years....since the days of nintendo 64, maybe even further back.

PC will always have the advantage of customization but at the same time, this is PC biggiest downfall. Developer don't just have one hardware to optimize for, so they program for the biggiest common denominator, what is that, a Nvidia 6600/6800?

PC will always have the potential of beating any console, but the keyword here is potential. It usually takes some time and usually at the second half of any one console lifespan.

Simplistic is the keyword here for console.

PC wins mostly due to it's brute horsepower force and Console win from programming for an optimize piece of hardware. Please don't tell me PC is an optimize piece of hardware, cause XP and whatever crap it loads up, interface, drivers, registry, service.s..etc etc is not optimize(maybe Vista will be).

The comparison will never be apple to apple, as preferences, wealth, etc etc will always be a matter of opinion. Stop arguing about which is better, there will always be a bad PC port to Xbox, just like there will always be a bad Xbox to PC port. Get both, and choose which game u want to play on which machine and life is easier.

 

[pjbliverpool]

All I am saying is I have a topend pc and a 360 and the 360 wins hands down.

Another note as well is that theres no games for the pc these days cause alot of people copy them.

You don't have a top end GPU. There are 8 distinct single GPU's which are faster than yours and thats not considering the fact that you can double them up.

Your GPU is one of the many PC GPU's that is inferior to Xenos, there are at least 2 (say 3 on Thursday) which are superior without doubling them up.

Tell you what, give me an exampe of the game which you say runs worse on a top PC, and the settings you think it runs worse at. Then at least we wil have something valid to debate.

 

[r1chardhawkins]

I dont know about the earlier poster, but COD2 runs beautifully on my Plasma screen. I noticed though that Halo2 does not look as good, I it probably has something to do with the upscaling to 1080i revealing more errors than a normal tv or 720p television will reveal. Comparing graphics on a pc and console is kind of hard.

Example: Bungie, when making Halo2, said that they figured out a way to make Master Chief look better, but utilizing half as many triangles as the original MC for Halo.

i've played halo 2 using a 3 foot projector screen and is no where near being as sharp or as good looking as Dead or Alive 4 or Call Of Duty 2

 

[conomega]

I have a Xbox 360 and a high end computer (7800GT SLI, 4400 X2). I've played COD2 and Quake4 on both and the PC looks better. But you have to almost know what your looking for to know what is missing in the 360. However, I love my 360 because of one game...Fight Night Round 3. 85% of the other games currently available are disappointing.