really? you dont think a 9800GT or HD4830 would beat a 360? i suppose its difficult to quantify, point is there has never been a better time to buy a graphics card. you can get a lot of performance for very little cash. The OP was making out that you NEED a 4870x2 or gtx280 to get decent gaming performance, which is clearly not true.
2 points i want to put across comparing a pc to an xbox 360 is all well and good but do it properly. Build a pc that has the graphic/processor equilvent of a xbox, basically a pc with no optional extras. i bet the price of that sort of pc would be alot closer to an xbox 360. Also classic thing of effort = reward. No effort needed to play an xbox so you get worse graphics and lesser gameplay options (mods etc) Make the effort with a PC you get top notch graphics, complete customisable options, the works. And as someone else mentioned the typical PC gaming audience does tend to be more mature. Spend a night on halo 3 and then a night of counter strike source, yes theres people who constantly act like idiots but theres alot more on halo
Theoretically yes, actually? No, no way. Say they did actually port GoW2, would it look as good on a 9800GT as it does on the 360? I doubt it. The reason why is the 360 has 1 combination of hardware across all models, developers can tailor the game to work perfectly with that game, Bungie were able to eek out so much from the xbox when they made halo 2, the system was pretty damn old and they still managed to make a game that could stand up to PC games of the time. With a PC you have millions of combinations of hardware so they can't tailor it to a specific system, the result is you need vastly higher system requirements to play the game than the console needs, plus then you've got all the bloat that comes with it from windows, etc. What's the typical high end system now? 4gig of RAM and almost 2gig of video RAM. What do you get for that? Not a whole lot more than you can get on the 360. Will the 9800GT or HD4830 last you more than a year or 2 before you have to upgrade again? Again, I doubt it. The trick I've found with PC gaming is to buy one of the best around at the time. Yeah, it will be £300-400, but you can get away with using it for several years (I'm still using the 7800GTX I bought 4ish years ago and it still performs ok). A friend of mine only just upgraded his PC for £300 or so to get a new mobo/CPU/GFX (against my advice of spending a lot on a good system that will last longer), and now he's talking about having to upgrade again. I'm not really that much of a hardware enthusiast, I like hardware, but I don't want to deal with the ******** that comes with it. To me, PC gaming really isn't worth the effort it takes to be able to play a game at the same graphical level as an xbox. The xbox was released around the same time I made my PC, I know which one is looks better. You can build a PC capable of running Fallout 3 on the higher settings for only £100? I'd like to see that.
your missing my point, if i build a pc that could run fallout 3 at max settings and compared it to a xbox that couldnt. Thats not a fair comparison.
I wouldnt say that assumption is true at all to be honest. I played GoW1 on my 8800GT and it looked far better than it did on the xbox, my xbox touting flatmate commented on it at the time. I'm sure we've all heard the arguments for non-standard parts and configs making everything incredibly difficult for game developers. But what about the games that get scaled to play on 3 different consoles? Large sections of code have to be rewritten so the ps3's cell processor can handle Xbox ports. At the end of the day we have x86 processors and DirectX, these basics provide more than enough stability if games are coded properly.
It would if they'd bother to code it as well. Most console to PC ports just about work, let alone look/play as well as their console counterpart. That's why games are programmed to work with DirectX - so it's then up to NVidia/Ati et al to make sure their drivers work with the DirectX api.
I have a PS3 and I am building a PC for Christmas this will be the first time I've properly delved into PC gaming, as it started casually playing halo on my current pc. I want my PC so i can play xbox360 "exclusive" games without the problems of the actual hardware(if it breaks i know how to fix it in a pc) and hidden costs (live, wifi etc) and obviosly for all those cheap pc games!!!!!!!!!!!!!(yes i said cheap! PC games are really cheap compared to console games imo) I also need a decent pc though as I need soemthing that copes better with illustrator and other dev tools. PS3/PC imo thats the best combo
I think an 8800GT would do it, they're pretty inexpensive these days. On the other hand, I do know you can beat the original Xbox with just a stick (mostly for what it did to Deus Ex 2.)
as above said, there are also 3 combinations of consoles, some times the people arguing FOR console usually only look at the one they've got. take GTA4 for example, xbox360 gives best experience while PS3 have shitty view distance, and Wii can't handle it. but on PC, one release and it will shine brighter than any console can dream, if the PC is compatible with just 8800GT. now take Gears of War, the original one looks just as good on console as on PC, it's because the Unreal Engine 3 is very well ported both-ways. if Epic hasn't been such an arse, GoW2 would look the same (if not better, with forced AA) than xbox360 with better frame rates. now let's look at a PC originated title: Crysis. when it comes out on consoles, do you really think it will have as good quality as max it on PC? first, it will not be 1080p on ANY consoles. second, it won't be maxed (which 8800GT can do perfectly fine at 1280*1024). and third, frame rates are going to be questionable. although PC may be expensive to build, but a PC can do many more things than just game, can your console be used to run Vmware? can your console do word processing? can your console be used to jailbreak a iPhone? so what if the overall system cost is a little higher, you get what you payed for, without crappy firmware updates and being tied down to a specific company.
Vmware specifically, not quite but certainly run windows on PS3 slowly using virtual machine, open office runs fine on PS3, download Yellow dog Linux for it, don't know what jailbreak is but if yu can do it via Linux you can probably do it on PS3. Crysis maybe an issue but if the game was coded for a specific architecture with no compromises made towards cross platform I bet you could get pretty close, though I admit 1080p would be wishful thinking but not so necessary when you are 8-10ft away from your TV to game.
One thing to note is that PC games are a hell of a lot cheaper to buy than console games. If you buy enough games, it's cheaper on the PC.
Could not agree more my friend! Yes it is more effort, and that is the main argument against PC gaming in my experience. However imo you get so much more out of PC gaming (crappy ports aside). Also I simply CANNOT live without AA and a keyboard and mouse!!!
PS3 is built to game, that's why all other stuff sucks. let's face it, using the web on PS3 sucks. also, we are talking about consoles vs PC, not PS3 vs PC, so only if all consoles support what you've said, then we can consider that as a valid point. the only standard architecture in PC gaming is x86 and DirectX, which are both the basics of xbox360. (i think PS3 cell processor is RISC based, seeing it's based on PowerPC) so it is fully possible and very easy to port the Crysis engine to xbox360. so as long as the company is not an Epic failure, it is also very straight forward to port from xbox360 to PC.
mouse+keyboard > gamepad It's the only argument that matters in my opinion. I can't understand how anyone else can choose a console when the gameplay, therefore the fun, will be crippled by a freaking gamepad (for most types of games) Gameplay comes first Good gameplay = fun fun = win win = PC
No, but TBH I don't really care, at the end of the day, completely ignoring the fact that Crysis was a pretty average game after taking into account the graphics, because uber grafix mean jack **** at the end of the day. So long as it doesn't look horrifically bad I'm not really bothered that much. Hell, even if it does look horrifically bad I still don't really care. I picked up Deus Ex for the first time last year and even with the notoriously ugly graphics I still really enjoy it. The argument that PCs can have better graphics than a console doesn't really bother me in the slightest because graphics do not make a game. Irrelevant, we're talking solely about the gaming aspect of consoles vs PCs here, shock horror, I'm sitting at a PC right now, DUN DUN DUUUNNN! Look, I'm not saying that PC gaming is bad, I can see the advantages, and there are some games I will only play on the PC. I don't think any of the people who prefer consoles here said any different either, but for some reason the PC only people seem to be quite closed minded and aren't willing to accept that a console does have it's advantages over a PC. I find there is a lot of snobbery among PC gamers which is another reason why I don't tend to do it so much now.
Well I'm glad my post sparked some intelligent conversations and not another hot internet debate! I agree that KB/M controls are better for gaming most of the time. Particularly in FPS and RTS games. If game developers start to support KB/M support in their games out of the box I'd be a happy camper. Ironically, this thread must have pissed off the PC gods because moments after posting my computer crashed, failed massively, and required me to do a format of my C partition. Couldn't log into my profile due to it being "unable" to load and the whole system was mysteriously running like a turd. Gotta replace that hard drive...
Yeah I can't see why they won't allow KB/M support for the 360. Aren't there a few PS3 games that support it?
