How the Xbox 360 affects PC gamers

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but it's hard to image how much more wrong this article can be!

It's really not even a good idea to think of R500 having pipelines in the conventional sense, but in terms of raw texture and geometry throughput, it's more like 8 pipelines. In terms of shader power, well, R500 could be as much as 2x R420. The key point to remember is that R500 has a unified shader architecture, so all previous bets are off.

EDIT

OK, this has been discussed, and to a degree it comes down to how you describe/define ALUs.

However, in no way is it sensible to say: "R500 has 48 pipelines compared to 16 for R420."

 

hi all

im sorry "Using a mouse and keyboard for FPS's is definately better than using a joypad, but having a platform (a rather expensive one at that) for the sole purpose of playing one genre of game seems a bit OTT to me. I suppose if your really into FPS's then its not an issue." ok, so what do you want to play stratergy on? say command and conquer generals? huh? i HATE playing any form of stratergy (and yeah i cant spell) on a console, it sucks arse, and having that platform (albeit an expensive one - sometimes) being PC ISNT silly, as its not JUST for FPS's, id like to see people downloading music on an XBOX360 without paying for it, id like to see msn messenger on an xbox (and people actually using it LOL) and people actually using an xbox360 as there ONLY form of computer

the internet may be possible for the xbox360, but whoop? i dont think xbox360 will really affect PC gaming much, if not at all!

 

Did you guys ever thing that, hey it has usb ports maybe their planning on letting you use a kb and mouse?

 

i think that it will help pc gaming, because it will advance technology faster than the pace it has been going recently.

 

Thing is when you get a kb/mouse for your console to play FPS games, the AI of the game is really poor, to suffice the gamers playing with a joypad/analogue. But would be cool for playing online etc i suppose.

 

What has any of that got to do with gaming?

Your right, there are more games than just FPS's that benefit from a keyboard/mouse control system, but i was only responding to the comment made about FPS's in particular. Flight sims are another genre that consoles have never got right, thanks to the iffy controls and lack of hardware to make them any good.

I seriously doubt a massive change on the whole for PC gaming, and never suggested otherwise. But if its good enough, then it will make a change to me.

 

Yes, I agree, you can't compare '48 of these' to '16 of those'.

Absolutely, the R500 is faster than an R420 in certain scenarios, but it ultimately depends on what scenario we're referring to before we can determine exactly how much faster than R420 this chip is.

By the way, welcome to the forums buddy.

 

They've already said Keyboards/mice will be used for some things, but disabled for gaming.

 

Thanks! Overall, I think the column needs editing - as it stands it does not flatter the author at all!

 

When i evaluate the impact of these next gen consoles, i just think about the time the ps2 and the xbox were released. I remember them advertising games on TV with amazing graphics and expressions (at least they were good for the time). When i actually saw the console in action though, it was no where near as good. All the screenshots you see of games right now are shot at perfect angles, during perfect moments and perfect conditions all around. The real game experience won't be actually as good. These new consoles will not kill PC gaming in anyway, nor will it have a giant impact.

They certainly are nice systems though. Just 2 weeks ago i shelled out $363 for a 6800GT, and now i am thinking - for that same money i could have bought a WHOLE system.

I hope that PC companies do learn a lesson though. I am disgusted by the thought that AMD and INTEL release their new line of processors in baby steps to milk the market. Maybe something good will happen for everybody with this next generation of consoles.

 

You call that a system? Not even. Sorry to say but my computer owns the Xbox 360. But on the other hand, the Playstation 3 kicks the crap outta my computer. There is no compention here. The Playstation 3 will simply kill the Xbox 360. Like come on, the PS3 has the worlds most advanced GPU in the world. And Xbox 360 is using ATI and PS3 is using nVidia. nVidia gives off better graphics no matter what. ATI is ment for speed. But in this case, nVidia kills ATI in speed. Making the PS3 the worlds most advanced gaming system in the world today. It's okay for you people who like this Xbox 360. Just face it, the PS3 is the King of all consoles.

 

I read this earlier:
XBox 360 on [H]

still think ATI is slow?

 

Consoles. The Fairchild Channel F, the world's first home television game console to feature changeable game cartridges, was released in August 1976, a full five years before IBM's first PC, which was launched on August 12, 1981

Nezuji

 

I can't belive that people are suggesting that this means the end of PC gaming. So long as there are PCs, there'll be PC gaming. Let's be honest, no matter how wonderful XBox3 will be, do you really want to stop using your PC? The reason we're all here in the first place is because we love arsing around with these things... modding them, overclocking them... customising them... tweaking, and personalising them to our needs. We do a whole lot more than game on them, no matter if gaming is your primary reason for building it.

On my PC, I can play some awesome games, and use Photoshop, office, design and build web pages, edit and encode music and video... blah blah... Not only that... I can open it up... buy new parts, fiddle around... just "get in there" and roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty.. so to speak.

All XBox 3 is going to do is act as a test bed for the next gen of GPUs and graphics/memory architecture for PCs.

Plus... haven't we heard this argument before?

XBox 3 will be a great games platform, and it will only mean an end to PC gaming, if the PC was only another games platform - but it's not.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

 

The PlayStation 3's RSX will definitely beat the XBox 360's GPU.

A for effort guys, but the Unified Shader Architecture just seems like a horrible idea. Maybe I'm wrong, but it appears as though it would ruin the pipeline's latency and destroy the frame rate. The RSX (which appears as though it has conserved the architecture of a previous design - only I cannot remember which one - but probably beefed up significantly, and synergistic processing units are probably employed too) is like a bunch of assembly lines, and the XBox 360 GPU is like a Chinese guy in a hut.

The RSX will definitely beat it in pure processing power. I find it very difficult to believe that it can stand up to something with 300 million transistors, and I doubt that it can match the power of the synergistic processing units that would be employed.

Even if the XBox 360's GPU was better, the PS3's would perform better. It appears as though the XBox 360 CPU would be good at things like AI and game management, but it just doesn't have enough capability to organize scenes that would utilize the GPU's full potential.The Cell processor would blow away the XBox 360 in that realm.

It appears as though there would be a second bottleneck. Because the I/O and memory access pathways are integrated (and not as fast as the PS3's), it could not send graphics packets to the GPU and load textures and graphics scripts at the same time.

 

Holy thread revival, Batman!

(Sorry, always wanted to say that)

 

Spec wars...honestly I don't see the point in saying "the ps3 is the king" and all that. The only thing it's king at is hype, nothing more. Why? Because it exists only as specs and some screenshots which most likely aren't any actual gameplay.

It makes no difference what so ever if it has 3, 7, 9 or even 13 cores because (at least from what I've understood from interviews with the game creators) nobody has yet to come up with a solution that could take advantage of all of them.

Dual cores have been around for PC's for a while already but still we haven't seen any _games_ that support it, although nvidia forceware drivers now can put the second core to use (I haven't got a clue as to how much this makes a difference). So how about 3 or more cores? I'm pretty sure that we have to wait quite some time to see multi threading put to use.

I think this sums it up pretty well: "The best console is the one with the best games"

The increase in number-crushing power just gives the programmers more freedom in a way, but they still have to figure out how to use it and it surely isn't going to be a walk in the park.

I think M$ did get a nice headstart with their box 360, and luckily they've learned from the first xbox's release that they have to offer appealing games right from the release if they wish to start selling the box.
It will be interesting to see how the market shares will divide, and how will the ps3 and nintendos new console fare when they get released.

I think the x360 multicore system is going to speed up the development of multithreaded programming and the solutions programmers come up with can be used as an example for the PC games, and ofcourse this works the other way around too.

 

City of Villains is dual core optimised.

 

Ah, damn! Haven't read the article yet!

Thanks for the info