PC vs. Xbox comparaison

[Dre]

Hi everyone, well.. one of my buddies is a hardcore PC gamer and non-believer in the Xbox. I finally took it upon myself to sift through the internet and do a comparaison of top-end PC and Xbox. I sent him this in an email, but thought a couple of you might like to see the info I gathered so here's his email to me first, and then my reply

-----------------------
The max res. may be 1920x1080 but by no means does this mean the games will run at that level. The Xbox's 750mghz + geforce 3 card will NOT be able to handle these resolutions. Show me that the Xbox can smoothly (100 fps +) run games at that res. and I will suck Bill Gates' pen*s.

A PC/console's max resolution tells nothing about performance. If your graph card/monitor can handle 1600+1200 it does not mean that it can your pc can actually perform at that level; just like the Xbox. You need some nasty horsepower to back that up. How exactly can the Xbox function at such high resolutions? Does this adapter include 1ghz of CPU and geforce4????????
-----------------------
And here's my response to my somewhat ignorant little friend... :)

Well, dude.. I truly thought you to be more knowledgeable than this ... You need to learn a bit more how computers work :-) hehehe.. just a low-blow..sorry..

First I would like to know why you require 100+ FPS when you can only discern 26-30?

Second, a console is not the same as a computer. Optimization of hardware improves performance beyond whatever you seem to imagine. Knowing EXACTLY which registers to read and write from, exact assembly code instructions, etc. allow for extremely optimized compilers.

If you want a comparaison between different aspects of the systems, I shall give them to you as you seem to enjoy making unfounded and biased claims
(and you know.. its a way to procrastinate studying):

Geforce 4 Ti4600 (the best card out there now right?) can do a whopping 4.8 billion AA samples per second. The GF4 Ti4200 does 4.0 billion AA samples/sec. The NX (lets call that the Xbox chip) also does 4.0 billion AA samples/sec. Memory bandwith is in the 8 GB/sec range for the Geforce4's, and 6.4-8 GB/sec for the GF3's. The NX has a memory bandwith of 6.4 GB/sec.
There is obviously hardware supported fullscreen anti-aliasing on both.

For the rest of the comparaisons, I'll just use the top end Geforce 4 Ti 4600 and Geforce 3 Ti500 (the highest geforce 3 card available) video cards so you can see how they rate:
Core clock: GF4=300 Mhz, GF3=240, NX=250
Peak fill rate (Mega Pixels): GF4=1200, GF3=960, NX=1000
Peak fill rate (Mega Texels): GF4=2400, GF3=1920, NX=2000
Peak fill rate (Mega Texels): GF4=2400, NX=2000

So, as you can see.. the NX chip lies around the middle of the high-end GF4 and high-end GF3. Very capable of holding its own with the GF4's (so far anyways...)

As for processing power.. you have MORE than enough. Its a customed design GAMING ONLY cpu from Intel that runs at 733 MHz. Now, what does the fact that its customed designed have to do with anything you might ask? Well, it comes back to the point I made earlier about assembly instructions. When you design a CPU, you have to give it an instruction set right? Now,
remember a couple of years back when MMX started out and how "cool" everything was if it said "Uses MMX technology" or 3dnow but thats AMD. Anyhoo, MMX is a set of assembly instructions specifically designed for multimedia operations. For the CPU on the Xbox, Intel went one step further and designed a few more Xbox specific instructions to make things even speedier.

As for sound.., well.. Xbox obviously has the advantage over PC. With Dolby digital 5.1 REAL-TIME ENCODING it kicks ass. You might say that the newer sound cards also have this, but they don't really have games supporting true 5.1 (or sounds cards!)yet on PC. I don't think until DVD-ROM's are widely accepted as a standard and games ship on them will this be truly supported in PC games. Its just too big to fit all the information required on a cd. Also, the 5.1 capable cards do not perform real-time encoding of dolby digital 5.1, they simply "support it".. most likely for DVD movies, etc.

So, to answer your question " Does this adapter include 1ghz of CPU and geforce4?". The answer is no. But its extremely close, and because of its specific instruction set it is more than able to perform at settings of which we have spoken at length.

You just need to realize, that right now.. Xbox is completely on par with PC. However, that won't be the case anymore once the newer video cards come out again. I totally know that.. and it sucks, but there are LOTS of kickass games for the Xbox coming that are Xbox exclusive.. so I'll have the best of both worlds.

In case you are wondering, I got most of my info from here:
http://wwww.pcvsconsole.com/features/consoles/
www.nvidia.com

There were also some quick little google searches to see if any other sound cards could perform DD 5.1 (and no.. the Audigy can't even do it :-))

Anyhoo, I guess I should get back to my studying.. hope this cleared things up a bit for you!

Lates,
Dre

[Kraft]

Just FYI, but anything over 60 fps is just stupid. The human eyes and brain are only capable of perceiving about 65 frames a second on average so anything more will just be overkill, and may even cause headaches and depending on the length of exposure, damage vision.

[l Maximus l]

Interesting info...what was his response?

[Dre]

Originally posted by Maximus
Interesting info...what was his response?

I don't know yet.. I'll post it as soon as I get it :) I'm sure it will be... "interesting".

[Spaztic]

I would be ****ed as well if I had a ~$2000 computer I bought from a retail chain, and then come to find out the xbox can perform as well or even better then it. Plus with the xbox I can lounge on the coutch and watch it on by large tv.

[LynxFX]

Interesting stuff Dre.

I'm with that guy with saying that I'm a hardcore PC gamer and love that but I also believe in the Xbox. :)

I posted a thread yesterday about why I will just buy Xbox exclusive games and games made for both systems I'll 9 times out of 10 buy on the PC.

I like the power of the Xbox because I know that it will get games that take advantage of the power alot faster than the PC will get games that take advantage of the power of the the GF4. I also love the DD5.1. I use spdif out to a receiver so that is all the soundcard has to support on the PC which almost all do now. The nForce motherboards also have the same DD audio chip that is in the Xbox. But like you said, few games take advantage of DD5.1 on the pc.

I still am a fan of high rez on the computer though. Overall it can look better than the Xbox with the same game. 1920x1080 is what the Xbox will have to render at if it wants to do 1080i games. But if they get that running at a steady 30fps then it should look KILLER.

One problem I always have with these kind of arguments is the FPS issues. Like that guy saying, show it running 100fps or whatever is pointless. The Xbox only needs to pump out 30 or 60fps. On the PC I hope to stay above 60fps. So why would I care if it can or can't do 100+ fps? Because that means that I have room to grow. If it is doing a 120fps on a game now, then that means when a game comes out in six months that has twice the polys or more advanced engine that I could run it at say 60fps while the person with the graphics card that could only do 60fps on the old game can barely run the new game. That is why high frames count on the pc but on the xbox they always have one set to shoot for. Get that 30 or 60 and they know what their hardware is.

The Xbox is the most advanced console ever made. It has plenty of power to produce some mind boggling games for a couple years. But you have to be blind to think that it won't be passed by the ever evolving pc in less than a year....if we get the games to support it of course. :D

Definately post his response Dre. I still can't see how even the most hardcore PC gamer won't look at what the Xbox can really do.

[Snoopy7548]

just tell him that if he were to buy a pc with the specs of the xbox, he would end up spending alot more than 300 bucks, unless he bought one on ebay, which is what i may do, i found a sweet athlon 1.7 ghz, 512mb of ram i think, 40 gig harddrive, and some more stuff for 500 bucks:D :D

[Hugh_Jass]

Good read, Dre.

The thing I find interesting is how people rip on console gaming vs. PC gaming, but have no problems with handhelds, such as the Game Boy.

The Game Boy series is the most popular gaming platform of all time, yet it has ALWAYS been behind the curve technologically.

Handhelds, consoles, and PCs all serve a niche and they are all fun.

[Kraft]

I just got SimCity 2000 on my Palm Handheld... you have no idea how happy that makes me.