EggXpert

Hi, I've been wondering something for quite a bit, Now we all know that consoles we have now use Gpus from about 2-3 yrs ago, Now my question is that, why does a console run games better than a pc, if the pc is more powerful? Now i know that Pc will definitely beat a console in power, but why is it that consoles run it smoother and sometimes never lag?

 For example, The Xbox 1 Gpu is similar to a Geforce 3, Geforce 4 Gpu, And The original Xbox uses a 733mhz intel cpu. Now heres the thing,

Lets take a computer that has a Amd Athlon 64 Single Core 1.8GHz, A Geforce 6600 Card, 1.5GB DDR 400 of ram and so on.

Now lets play halo 2 or 1 on the xbox and on the pc i have laying around (yes i have played halo 2 on that specific pc and its not as smooth as the xbox). Halo 2 is running smooth on Xbox, On the Pc is choppy and not as smooth as the Xbox.

Now Wouldn't the pc be able to pump out more fps or run the game just as smooth as the xbox or even smooth? I don't get it?

Why is it that consoles run games better than the pc can.

Consoles most definately do not run games better. They just have a wider market as there's severly less priacy, and many more people out there have a console rather than a pc. So games are better optomized for the consoles.

Think about it. You can put w/e you want together and build a computer. but ever console will be identical. So developers have a lot more to work with with the smaller amount of variables.

There are games that consoles can't touch. IE Crysis and Unreal, that need to be waterd down. Though in most cases consoles will look better as now a days its the consoles that lead the majority of the gaming market, simply because there's more money in consoles.

It seems that the days of extreme pc gaming are gone, so we'll have to settle with select gaming titles that excel on the pc. and ports that will hopefully be done right. like Gears of war and DMC4, rather than those badly done ports like Resident evil 4 and DMC3 on pc.

It's all about the money really. PC's have soooo much power, and they're all so different that no one can really optomize them like they can with consoles.

 

w1ng3dkn1ght:

 For example, The Xbox 1 Gpu is similar to a Geforce 3, Geforce 4 Gpu, And The original Xbox uses a 733mhz intel cpu. Now heres the thing,

Lets take a computer that has a Amd Athlon 64 Single Core 1.8GHz, A Geforce 6600 Card, 1.5GB DDR 400 of ram and so on.

Now lets play halo 2 or 1 on the xbox and on the pc i have laying around (yes i have played halo 2 on that specific pc and its not as smooth as the xbox). Halo 2 is running smooth on Xbox, On the Pc is choppy and not as smooth as the Xbox.

I see exactly what you're trying to say.. But you're missing three very important points..

Reason 1:

  The chips inside of the Xbox 360, and Wii are RISC chips making them very specific for the tasks at hand.  This type of chip, while they work very well if you're developing titles made specifically for them, are unacceptable choices for any long term development.. In other words, a very good part of the reason why the console is so cheap is that they often do not worry about backwards compatibility with older consoles AND also do not think about forward compatibility with future hardware.. You can't compare a 733 Mhz RISC chip to a 1.2 Ghz Athlon, they have absolutely nothing in common and clock frequencies mean nothing once you leave a design specification (models of Athlons with the same design at higher freqs will be faster than other Athlons, but they won't necessarily be faster than a chip with a different design!! ) The reason why the Console chips do more at lower clocks is because they're doing what they were designed specifically to do.. The CPUs in your desktop are far more broad in their application and there are a lot of things (calculating large prime numbers for example) that a  budget PC can do 10-20x faster than a console because they tossed that capability out the window when they built the console specifically for playing games (and not for multitasking or managing large amounts of memory).

 

Reason 2:

Also they will decrease the cost of the console below the cost to manufacture the console so that they can take over market share.. Once they take over market share, they keep the prices of the games artificially high so that they can make the money back that they lost (and much much more)..  The idea is that they will make money back in overpriced games..

Keep in mind, PC games drop in price much faster than console games do..  

Bioshock PC: $27.99

Bioshock 360: $36.99

Bioshock PS3: $56.99

 Although in the short term, it is very tempting to get a console, the companies make sure you end up paying for it in the long run.. Since you can get a budget gaming PC for less than $500 these days, I think you need to run think to calculate your REAL cost of ownership of a console and compare that to a PC that you can upgrade and keep your keyboards, controllers, etc.   That brings me to Reason #3:

Reason #3

Not only are the console games overpriced, but so are their accessories. They make ridiculous amounts of money on accessories.. A PS2 memory card with about 8 megs on it still costs about $29 if you bought a Sony brand from Circuit City..  The manuf. costs of that card has fallen to less than 10 cents, yet Sony keeps the price the same.

w1ng3dkn1ght:

Now lets play halo 2 or 1 on the xbox and on the pc i have laying around (yes i have played halo 2 on that specific pc and its not as smooth as the xbox). Halo 2 is running smooth on Xbox, On the Pc is choppy and not as smooth as the Xbox.

Either there is something really wrong with your PC, or you weren't running it at comparable graphics options.. You'd need to set your resolution to 1024x768 to be down there with the original Xbox..  I have a fanless GeForce 6600 in an Athlon 3800+ and it's running Crysis at about 15 fps on absolute lowest settings.

 

Well Most ported console games are really badly optimized or not optimized at all, Because on this computer which consists of An Amd Athlon 64 3000+ @ 1.8ghz w/ a Geforce 6600LE and 1.5GB Of DDR 400 Ram A 160Gb Sata Hard Drive, floppy and etc. Doesnt run halo 2 that nice Halo 1 runs perfect at 60fps capped at max settings, But halo 2 can be a bit laggy, the avg fps i get on that computer is about 20-35 fps, Mainly in the 25-27 area.

 Sidicas thanks for giving me a specific answer now i understand why consoles tend to run games Easier (I shouuld say) than pc's can. console Hardware is specifically made to do one thing, and pc hardware isn't exactly made to do one thing, so therefore consoles run games easier than pc's can.

One thing, So the chips that intel made for the Original xbox or consoles overall has a completely different design and chip arcutecture (srry if i didn't spell that right) than the cpus that we use in computers correct? 

Yeah I think Sidicas hit on all the strong points in the argument.

Basically console chips are a one trick pony....the games made for the system are guranteed to play certain games and play them well without fail (except maybe xbox, lol). The PC chips on the other hand are more a jack of all trades with one of it's strongest traits being the ability to multitask.

The first consoles were made back when computers were very large, very expensive, and you had to be a rocket scientist to use one. Console makers said, we just want to take the "gaming" part of the computer and make it available to the public so they did that and dumbed everything down so that ANYone could figure out how to use it. Look at the NES cartridges....basically floppy disks in a huge plastic, duplo block like casing.

Obviously a lot has changed since then and computers now are small, relatively inexpensive, and easy to use. Maybe not quite as easy as consoles....I mean what's easier than shoving a disk into a slot?

But I digress, basically today's consoles are comprable to a computer's videocard packaged with a rudamentary case/power/and optical drive.

its really inaccurate to try and compare a console game that was ported to a PC because they dont try to get the game to utilize the new hardware it can or even if they do they dont try to get it to use it properly. After all why would you want the game to run as well if not better on a PC which would mean that it wont make you as much profit right away when you can spend less money and less time to get it to just kinda work on a PC?

evilshima:

its really inaccurate to try and compare a console game that was ported to a PC because they dont try to get the game to utilize the new hardware it can or even if they do they dont try to get it to use it properly. After all why would you want the game to run as well if not better on a PC which would mean that it wont make you as much profit right away when you can spend less money and less time to get it to just kinda work on a PC?

First off, All games no matter what platform are created on computers (not consoles). lol, I can just see some guy trying to code with triangle, square, circle....haha.

The difference is, when you coding a game for PS3, for example, you know exactly what your working with and the hardware capabilities of the device are the same for every PS3 out there. They all use the same chip, the same operating system, the same graphics card. Thus the programmer dosen't have to waste time making it work with Linux or 50 different kinds of Geforce cards that have come out over the past decade. The testing is easier because you can have 1 PS3 to test the game on and you know if something goes wrong there, it'll happen on everyone elses PS3. With PC's you gotta test it on an old build, a newer computer, different graphics cards, different cpus. Then you gotta figure out if the application conflicts with things like security software or windows etc....PC's use thousands of different parts, so there's probably millions of different configurations out there.

This has been one of the biggest issues in developing PC games over consoles.