9700m gts vs Playstation 3 vs xbox360

I just went to my local gamers botique. Never been there for awhile, infact been out of touch of the console seen, anyway I notice someone play a game on the Playstation 3 some driving game and man wow the graphics look just as detailed and demanding as anything on the pc but was running so fluid and smooth. Now I have a Toshiba x305 with a 9700m gts and I wanted to now how this gpu stacks up against both consoles.

 

The 9700GTS would eat either console's GPU for breakfast.

Most current-gen console games are 1280x720, and many still can't maintain a constant thirty frames per second. For comparison, you set your x305 at 720p, and you'll max the settings in any game (except of course, Crysis) and still be >30fps.

I want a 9700m GTS. Brand new cards are mad sexy to me. Are you overclocking it?

 

It depends on the game. Console games are usually very well optimized. PC games are designed to be compatible with all sorts of hardware - and are therefor less optimized.

However - the 9700m GTS is a great GPU and more powerful than the GPU in the 360 and PS3. You should be able to max out games 'console games' (ported to PC). When it comes to racing; Pure, Grid and Dirt should run very well - no doubt.

 

Nah I haven't overclocked mine kinda scared yet just got the laptop so maybe in the future when I need more power but now it runs all my games maxed. The Playstation 3 was played on a hdtv i guess so it look mighty sharp and fluid so I was concerned that for 1400 bucks this notebook better hold it's own against a $400 console.

 

Just realize the money that went into designing and building the PS3 is way more than any laptop... millions of dollars.

Sony is losing their *** selling it at that price. And the 360 was losing money for a long time.

 

they should be getting money from games as well. I think publishers needs to pay m$, $ony to publish a game on their consoles.

 

You mean dumbed down? Most console games are turned down versions of what you can get on a PC.

 

No, that's probably not what was meant. Console games are optimized for the console they're played on which allows you to get more out of the hardware (even if it is inferior hardware). There is no PC game that achieves this because it is not profitable to optimize something for a single card. If you did that with a 9700M GTS, the performance on that card would be quite awesome, but the people with 8600M GT cards would be screwed (it probably won't work very well) and so would the people with 280GTX cards (the considerable amount of stuff that this card could do above and beyond the 9700M GTS would be utterly useless).

Each PC game is a compromise wherein every card gives something up -- the code is structured in a way that tries to allow you to get the users of powerful cards something extra out of them, but at the same time still have the weaker cards run the game decently. As a result, no single card is used to its full potential. Consoles do not require such compromise.

 

Sure the optimization game is always easiest on consoles, but there are plenty of PC titles that are still very well optimized. Even Crysis I think is a well optimized title for what it's programmed into it, the issue was it needed alot of processing power to shove and process it's gigantic load of data. Crysis WH took it even further, plus user feedback pretty much allowed Crytek to look at what was unnecessary LoD wise and what was not. There are many a well optimized titles out there, but yes consoles have the advantage of being fixed, standardized hardware. Far Cry on Xbox was proof of that, but then again it had much weaker normal/bump mapping, as well as very blocky water reflection/refraction maps and shadow maps were especially blocky too. There were huge trade offs but trade offs that were less noticeable in standard definition resolutions.

 

I second ^^
Everything he says is pretty true. Instead of optimizing a game towards one specific hardware setup like in the case of xbox 360 or ps3 development, PC developers uses several different setups to develop each individual game setting from low-highest.

For example: mid range on Far Cry was build using the 8600 gts as test hardware, while the gamer setting on Crysis Warhead was build using the 9800m gt as the hardware in mind.

So I think as long as you have a gpu thats similar to the arch-typical hardware developers choose to build the game: ie 9800m gt, 6800 gtx, ATI 1900xt, 7800 gtx, you should expect the game to run best for your machine.

 

@ OP
The games running in 720p look so sharp and crisp because the HDTVs they're on support 720p as a native resolution. Just as on PC's, running a game at a native res of 1200x800 looks better than the same resolution on a monitor that has a native res of say 1680x1050...unless you use AA, which then drops the performance.

 

Not true about the fps, COD4 runs at a constant 60fps in singleplayer on the consoles and looks quite good. I ran it maxed out on PC @ 1400*900 with no AA, then played it on the 360 for a little bit, it stacks up well.

 

In general, PC hardware is superior to console hardware. It's not that console hardware is bad, but its hardware is optimized for its main/sole purpose: to play video games. A PC equipped with the newest, and best GFX card on the market will smoke any console. And it doesn't even have to be one of the best ones...an intermediate card is probably better too.

 

That's why I used the word ' most' to cover myself with the exceptions. That some of the biggest console games of this gen (Gears Of War, Uncharted, Halo 3, MGS4, GTA4 *ugh*, Mass Effect, etc.) have struggled with 30fps is simply fact. I'm not dogging out console games, I'm just disappointed by the delivered performance.

I know this may seem nitpicky, but CoD4 was only 600p. It was a smart move by Infinity Ward, because the game's performance was stellar on the 360.

 

Gears, Halo 3 and Bioshock do not struggle. They all have a solid, rock steady 30fps framerate. And thx to the subtle motionblur it feels real smooth. I rather have a solid 30fps, than fps hovering somewhere between 30 and 60. Detail is still awesome on the current gen consoles (fuk Wii).

But yeah - there are lots of games running way better on PC. Mass Effect is way better optimized than on 360 - and you don't need a beast to run it properly for example.

edit: you're right on COD4

 

what facts? you don't go on facts ...Gears of War, Halo 3 do not struggle with 30fps... GTA 4 was a bit less fluid but it ran smooth for the most part... The consoles basically have extreme processors that do all the work, a 7900 GT type graphics card, and developers that know their stuff... when a developer locks any game @ 30 fps on my PC, come talk to me . I mean, where else will you get such a machine if you don't enjoy spending $500+ on 'entertainment'. The price/performance is what is is, it's good.

 

GTA IV visibly struggles.. if you play that game, and, say, play Ninja Gaiden 2, there is a very VERY noticeable difference in framerates. Everything just feels sluggish in GTA IV. Same with Mass Effect.. it looked AMAZING, but the framerate struggled, especially in heated fire-fights.

Halo 3 CAN struggle, but the only time I've seen this is when you have a lot of explosions happening in 4 player multiplayer.

 

GTA IV and Mass Effect and Baja are the current gen games what have fps problems on consoles.
Uncharted, MGS4, Halo 3 etc run smooth and well.

It's just games on consoles are designed for them. Multiplatformers are designed on PC's, then ported to X360 and then to PS3. But when we talk about exclusive games, then it's practically impossible to compare PC games with them.

About performance - 9700M GT is much more powerful than either console gpu. But CPU is a diffrent story. X360 is using 3-core cpu and PS3 is using 8-core cpu so their arhitecture is *very* diffrent from PC gaming.

 

yea it really depends on if the game is designed specifically for a console or for both console and PC. Even games like Halo 1 and 2 that were originally designed for xbox but later ported to PC ive heard dont run too well on the PC and are much better on the old xbox

 

actually 7 cores, they disabled one to increase yield. paper wise, the ps3 should really beat pcs, but that's hasn't happened.

 

the x305 definitely eats the 360 and the ps3 and the wii as part of a balanced breakfast, basically a bowl of nails...........without any milk. lol. and anyway, the only reason why it is somewhat slower is because of the game optimization, and vista running in the background with all of the processes. the 360 just focuses on the game, a pc can't.

 

What!?.......... Anyway so if I upgraded the cpu in my x305 instead of the gpu, it would be a significant upgrade for framerates in game?

And I do understand that video games made for consoles are tweaked so not to much graphics will be displayed at certain times so frame rate will hold above 30 fps. unlike pc, were game developers wont know where all the different gpus will struggle at different graphical scenes. So I can safely assume that in multiplayer games, being more spontaneous and unscrpited graphics wise, consoles would struggle and drop way below 30 fps since it's less predictable for programmers to know how much is going to be happening on screen that the video game console can calculate and hold steady at 30 fps. Right?

 

game devs wont even use 7 cells on the ps3 cpu, I find it so pointless to give the ps3 a 8 cell cpu and a midrange gpu

 

No, improving GPU will almost always yield far better results than CPU (to put in perspective, an 8800m GTS will easily bottleneck a 2.2 C2D. Except in RTS games, the GPU is always the bottleneck (unless you have a really lopsided system config).

Consoles are not optimized by the algorithm you proposed. How would multiplayer in consoles require less programming than on the PC? Instead, the console programmers know exactly what hardware they are programming for and can then optimize for that specific set of hardware.

As people have stated before, the x305 will outperform any console by a very large margin.

 

That system wont out perform Xbox 360/PS3 by a huge margin. Mainly because pc developers doesnt know how to tweak visuals for specific gpus yet. The reason why console games look as good as they do is because developers spent 100+ hours fine tunning Look/Performance on that hardware. Its like every console game is a crysis warhead tuned even further.

Anyways, I would feel pretty safe running next gen games on your hardware, although it will be @ less than 1440x900 resolutions.

 

my desktop and laptop will eat the consoles alive

 

Yeah my desktops and now laptops have always eaten consoles for breakfast.

Hmm lets see now, I own a 360. Gears of War do struggle when there is lots of enemies on screen at once. Not even the motion blur can hide that. More games that do not run at a constant 30 fps is Bad Company and GTA IV is the most horrible running game so far on the 360. I have the game and the game runs at an average of 25 fps not 30. Lots of action on screen at once and it drops down to 20 fps. Just standing still in most parts of the city and turn around 360 degrees and you´ll see it struggles to keep the framerate consistent at 30 fps.

Just great that the game hits PC soon so it can be played like it should be played with true HD and above 1080p running smoothly. Consoles is still the poor mans PC and they can´t compete with PC´s since they barely runs games at 720p. When developers want better looking games on both consoles they have to lower the res to 600p or even lower 560p to maintain the measly steady 30 fps. Meanwhile running on a PC at the same low res 1280x720p will yield high framerates.

The 9700m GTS is not a bad card at all, 48 SP´s is pretty good and not too far away from a 9800m GTS with 64 SP´s. So you got a pretty good GPU there for sure.

 

With this new generation of 9 series 256 bit gpus, specifically the 9700m gts, is it safer to overclock them. I mean would it sustain overclocking better than last generation gpus? Did nvidia toughen the design because of the overheating fiasco, there by benefitting from overclocking without prematurely killing the chip?

Finally I hear the 9700m gts is the newest design with alot more potential then the 9800m models which is basically the 8800s, so with better updated drivers the 9700m gts can really shine? Is this correct?

 

what about a 9700m GT vs a ps3?

 

It's really hard to compare consoles to PCs and laptops. PCs have to strugle with games and Windows (and others programs runing) at the same time while console only has to run a game. Also as it ws said before console games are much better optimised.
But PC/laptops with high-end GPUs (and 9700 GTS is high-end GPU) will always perform much better than consoles. But those cost approximately 2x (laptops even 3-4x) as much as a console does.
For the money you pay for a console you can't get a PC let alone a laptop which would run the same game as good as console does.

 

Well thing is his laptop will run the same games much better if even used the same low res 1280x720 as the consoles do.

 

Well, where did you hear about the 9700 being the newest design with a lot more potential?

And, believe me, you are safe to overclock. I highly, and I mean highly recommend download nvidia system tools 6.02. with 6.02, you can monitor your hardware temps, and they are dead on accurate, while you overclock. I had my stuff running prime 95's blend test and nvidia geoforms running with my clocks close to my stable ones in my sig and it barely hit 155 farenheit. the same goes for my cpu's. the stable clocks in my sig took around 2 hours to get as well as 8 times restarting because of nvidia display driver issues. I would also recommend updating to the newest drivers listed on toshibas website, but i bet you have. So, download nvidia system tools 6.02, set up your oc to the ones around mind, and just go from there.

also, download:

ccleaner - to keep your x305 in good shape
prime 95 25.6 - to stress your cpu
nvidia geoforms - to stress your gpu, heavy on shaders!!

I only load my saved overclock setups before a benchmark or a game that i will know i will need it in. in gtr evolution, i dont need to overclock it. but, in fsx, my stable oc does the trick to bump it up around 5 fps average.

 

When I was doing research before I decided on the x305 vs p7811fx, I'm not sure what article it was but they were discussing the new nvidia mobile gpus from 9600m gs-9800m gtx and how the 9600s are just old models with different names and overclocked along with the 9800s similar to, I guess, the 8800s architecture and the only new design from the ground up is the 9700m gts. I'm not sure if my info is right cause I was reading alot and can't recall facts but this is what I remember. Specifically the mention of 9700m gts.

Anyway I already have ntune 6.02. Got the latest updated video drivers from Toshiba 176.39. I was thinking about downloading ccleaner but thought the mcafee system cleaner does the same thing right? let me know if it doesn't.

prime 95 25.6 - to stress your cpu and nvidia geoforms - to stress your gpu. And what are these? wouldn't stressing the cpu and gpu add more wear and tear to those components along with overclocking it shortening the life expectancy of the chips?

I experimented overclocking my x205 sli1 back when I had it but it crashed once playing multiplayer cod4 so I never tried again, but could see the performance gains and potential.

Also you posted something about clocking the 9700m gts to 9800m gts specs and got same readings on GPU z. I never understood what that was until I saw it on the freeware post. Can you explain this and let me know what the clocks for the 9800m gts are. I'm assuming you mean overclock it to the 9800m gts clocks, right? Would this be stable?

I'll probably try it if it is or just go with a modest clock a little lower than the ones in your sig. Thanks.

 

the 9800m gts clocks are 600 core, 800 mem, 1500 shader. those would be perfect and extremely stable. also, to let you know, never pass my super oc because your gpu will not be stable and only overclock before you play a game or do benchmarks. dont load your overclocks at startup. and nvidia geoforms is a "screensaver-demo" that is heavy on shaders and graphics. it is really cool, like floating liquid and stuff. and prime 95 is for stressing the cpu and memory. these things you only do once in a while, as to test an overclock or just to see your maximum temps. they dont shorten the life expectancy as long as the chips dont overheat, and on the x305 they dont. and ccleaner is different than mcafee system cleaner, but only by a small margin. however it is a useful tool and extremely lightweight.