How good are PS3 graphics considered?

I just bought a PS3 and I'm amazed by the graphics.(I never got into comp games so that explains why.


I was wondering what level PS3 graphics are considered on in comparison to computer graphics? Which video card is it approximately equivalent to?

 

Although it would depend on the particular game/type of computer, high end computer graphics are generally considered superior to PS3. Console graphics would be like Ati MR x1600-ish in performance; not bad in pwer/performance, but not the best on the market. As far as other consoles, PS3 and Xbox 360 are basically equivalent and the Wii is the weakest of these three.

 

The thing is that consoles may not be as powerful hardware wise as PC's, but use most of the power toward the game being played instead of just what is available like in a PC.

 

Depends on what kind of TV your playing it on. PS3 looks great on a 1080p TV.
And the new xbox 360 revisions that are coming out will look great at that resolution as well.

I dunno I would say the graphics look pretty similar to the 7800/x1800 level honestly. I played CoD3 on xbox 360 and was pretty blown away. And NBA Live 07 on PS3 and was also very impressed.

 

The current Xbox 360's can do 1080p just fine.

Although I run my 360 on a 32" LCD HDTV 720p (purchased solely for the 360) and it looks great!

Gears of War is amazing, I cant wait for Halo 3.

 

Well, the PS3 looks better than my X1400, so I'm happy. My folks are buying a 720p 100cm-ish LCD TV, right in time for the PS3 launch, so I'm looking forward to some Resistance and Gundam goodness come March 23.

 

Actually none of your games are playing above 720p, thats what they target their performance at, and they don't let the games play higher then that. Upscaling is done, but no increase in detail is gained.

The ps3 and xbox 360 are equivalent to the ati 8800, or just under it. The ps3 is strong when alot of features are used at once, while the xbox is able to assign all its power to specific task (PS3 has alot of specialized processors, but the xbox took a little bit of DX10 tech and made its pipelines programmable to handle either shaders or vertexes). Most games favor the latter type configuration.

Still the subject is kind of moot. Even the PS2 can outshine PC games, and thats cause game makers on PC don't care to design their games around the best card. Or they just suck at it (case in point, just cause. Visual features like full shadowing were totaly thrown out of the pc version). The PC will outshine the consoles on games like quake wars and unreal 3 cause we know those companies strive hard to update the pc and have no problem utilizing new tech, but fact is the number of games that will actually look next gen will clearly be higher on the consoles.

 

There is no way xbox or ps3 is at 8800 level. I can still see a lack of smooth edges when looking in the distance and the level of detail isn't the same =/

 

He said the ati 8800, whatever that is.

 

Typo maybe? Ati 9800?

 

Nvidia 8800GTX? Hope he didn't mean that, 8800GTX made PS3 graphics obsolete before it hit the shelf. And I think Nvidia even said that themselves.

 

PS3 specifications for the graphics is:
Nvidia G71

which is equivalent to Nvidia Geforce 7900 GTX/ Quadro 1500M

thats it!!!

other than that, their multi-core CPU is a nice addition to the number-crunching for high res rendering and physics calculations.

it pulling out 1080p games will require that G71 GPU.

 

I've played Rainbow Six vegas on my pc via HDMI (720p) on my tv and I am running a 7800GT - the 360 playing rainbow six: vegas (720p and 1080i) blew it out of the water as far as performance / graphics goes - thats what its meant to do, play games, it doesn't have all the services and other things running in the background. . . I personally from experience dont think you will see better graphics until more dx10 cards are available - PS3 in the long run I think will take the game competition because of the size of blue ray discs and the amount of data you can put on them compared to what the xbox360 can read.

 

But wasn't R6: Vegas also very poorly ported? I don't know if there are any X360 games that are very well ported, tbt.

 

PS3 looks really good. Games designed for the hardware, hardware and an OS designed just for games.

It's GPU lacks features and the power the Xbox 360 GPU has, but still the PS3 shines.

Both platforms have impressive looking games.

PS3 doesn't have much out right now but the Xbox 360 has a few titles to display the power.

-Dead rising, hundreds of onscreen zombies, everywhere.
-Gears of War, amazing character models.
-Burnout Legends, solid 60FPS racing.
-Crackdown, huge city and great physics, particles and explosions .

That's just a few to check out.

 

As with all consoles, the graphics will keep improving over time as developers start tapping the true potential of the hardware. The two factors thet are hurting the ps3 right now are 1) price, and 2) an exclusive "must have" title. The only game that would make me shell out the cash for it at this point is the new metal gear, if that had been a launch title, things would be vastly different in the current state of the console wars.

 

ps3 uses a 256 mb 7950 gx2
This is not as good as the 7950 gtx

 

No, it's not.
The RSX is a modified G70 (7800GTX).
The Xenos (R500) is a sligthly more powerful (and with unified shaders) R520 (X1800XT).
A 8800/8900 or a X2800/X2900 will have far more beautiful graphics.

 

Of course an 8800 would look better, they costs the same as an entire PS3!

 

No, Sony's marketing says the PS3 looks really good. That does not make it true.

The PS3's hardware is not designed for games. In fact, gaming is about the biggest weakness I can see for the PS3. There are many tasks at which it would excel, and it has already been adopted for some supercomputers.
But for games? It can get by... Barely.

It has an inferior GPU, compared to the 360.
It has a CPU that, while theoretically powerful, is completely unsuited for games, and at best, is comparable to a mid-range Pentium 4 in overall gaming performance.

And its lack of a hardware scaler is going to hurt in the, according to Sony, high-def era...

 

No wonder my electricity bill is $∞. (I don't have PS3, BTW)

 

ps3 graphics are okay

nothing too special anymore after you've seen trailers for crysis, alan wake, etc...

dx10 blows console graphics away.

also, since you can't upgrade a console gpu, and new desktop gpus are always comming out, you can bet that games in the long run will look much better on the pc (not to mention that current desktop gpu technology already trashes the console gpu power, especially the ps3's old old 7800, xbox 360 hold its own MUCH better)

also, i've seen the trailer for DMC 4, and the jaggies are ripping my eyes out

 

In the end of all this, the success or failure of the consoles wont be determined by the graphics cards or the cpus, but by the games, most notably the platform specific titles.

 

The RSX in the PS3 is apparently based off of the 7800 series cards. Therefore, a 7950GTX will theoretically beat it, but this will be offset by a smoother framerate on the PS3 due to optimization. On the other hand, the G80 and the R600 will blow it out of the water completely. But like Lysander said, the 8800GTX costs as much as a PS3 by itself and features more onboard memory (just for the GPU) than the 360/PS3 have total.

Also, I'm going to have to give mixed reactions to Jalf's comments. I do concur that the processor is not ideal for gaming, and that is indeed its greatest weakness and an area where the 360 will shine. But the PS3's GPU is faster than the 360's Xenos. The problem is, the PS3 is pretty much a developer's nightmare. Everything has to be custom-tailored to take advantage of the PS3; they have to figure out how to assign tasks to the Cell's SPUs as well and they don't nearly as many programming options on the GPU as the 360 or even the Wii for that matter (which has a completely programmable TEV). The PS3 has x number of pipelines, x number of pixel shaders, x number of vertex shaders, and 256MB of memory. The 360 features 48 programmable shaders that can act as either pixel shaders or vertex shaders, and all of the system's 512MB of memory (besides that reserved for the OS) can be shared with the GPU and the CPU. It's just much more customizable and much easier to get the most out of the system. Another point to consider is that the PS3's OS uses much more system resources than the 360's OS.

But back to the matter at hand, the PS3 does look good, but for the price, the 360 will look as good in nearly all cases and costs $100 less (to be fair, the core PS3 is more analogous to the Premium 360). The 360 also does 1080p, and features a scaler, which can add to the GPU to push higher resolutions (not to mention the 10MB of eDRAM in the 360 for HDR and FSAA) that will actually make 1080p games such as Virtua Tennis look better on the 360 than on the PS3 IMO. The PS3's upper hand right now is HDMI which provides better picture clarity, but I'll take the 360's analog signal over HDMI's DRM any day.

Well, that was a long post, but the point is that the PS3 does look good, but for the money, I think the 360 is the better buy for games. But in a year, they will both be dominated by PC graphics, and indeed, when Crysis comes out in a few months, they will both look outdated. But for me, I'm done with hardcore PC gaming. It's just too expensive, and I'm tired of having a $2500 computer so that I can handle a game that will look at least as good and run smoother on a $400 Xbox. So far, I've yet to run into a PC exclusive to sway me otherwise.

 

Quote.
@notebook_ftw and Lysander:
The PS3 will cost 599€ in Europe. An 8800GTX costs now 520€ in Italy, and in a pair of months will go down to 400-450€.

 

I definitely agree and understand that PC gaming is far superior to consoles however it is still far more expensive. Like in anything else, pay more money get better things.

The PS3 will be entertaining for the next 1 or two years.

The ps2 up untill ps3 was far behind PC gaming yet still prevailed and succeeded immensely.

 

Sure, PC will look better. But it will cost 2-3 times as much. I'm not sure if you can build a full system that will give you the same quality as a PS3 and I know you can't build a pc from scratch for $400 that will match the 360.

Then again, a console can't do half the things a pc can do...
I love my 360, even on a SD games are AMAZING (and I've seen them in HD too).

I mainly bought it for BioShock, because I'm sure my x1600 in my MBP can't touch it, and I don't have $2000 to drop on building a new gaming rig that can run that.

 

2-3 times as much? That depends on where you are and what you buy.

The PS3 is pretty much priced like a PC here. (something like us$ 800-1000 in Europe and Australia, iirc)
I can get a pretty decent gaming PC for about the same price.
It's only cheaper if you happen to live in the US or Japan.

 

Hmm, I would classify the 8800 as being on par with the xbox 360 video chip. (Edit: To clarify; before the 8800, you really needed a SLI with a really fast dual core to really approch the speed of a 360. I am not saying 360 is faster then pc, I am just saying you really need to invest alot in your pc to squeek out the same performance. The 8800 is really the first single card solution that can match the 360, and may even surpass it. I don't think we will ever know THAT untill we can actually see a game optimized on both systems to do that.. like unreal 3?)

Certainly though this is only based on exhisting games, and well, sadly for PC lately those games haven't been shinning all that much. It saddens me that I may need to seek out an xbox simply because game makers today are crapping out on their pc counterparts. In games like world of warcraft and unreal 3 or crysis where the company is actually striving for a perfect pc version then having a pc is great, but anytime an xbox 360 version is in the works side by side, they totaly screw over the pc version.

As for my ps2 comment, well FF12 does offer better visuals then what I have seen on most of todays pc games. They actually manage to pull off effects that replicate shaders even though the video hardware isn't capable of it. Square really showed that you can still look awsome on outdated hardware.

btw hmmm, I still see you are prone to replying to people through negative rep where they have no way of actually arguing with you.

 

Oh well give me a break. Show me a consol that can run games at 60fps in a resolution of 1920x1080 flawlessly, no way My 8800 kicks my Xbox360 ass real hard. Sure it costs, but that's what it does if you want to be at the top.

The 8800 may surpass, give me a break, it surpasses the old G70 by far, it surpasses Xbox GPU by far. Give me another break, this is so fun to read.

Oh and doesn't both consoles beat a C2D E6600 too?

 

To be fair, you don't need SLi and a "really fast dual core" to reach the speed of the 360. Games like F.E.A.R. and Quake 4 look fantastic on performance cards such as the x16/1700 and the Go7600/7700 paired with at least 1.5GB of RAM and even the slowest Core Duo. But they can easily look just as good as their Xbox 360 versions on a single Go7800 with a decent CPU. And this is laptops we're talking about here, not even desktops, which feature quite a bit more performance than the laptop parts.

The problem is that in few years, even that 7800/Core Duo pair is going to be struggling playing new games that run fine on the 360/PS3 because those games will be optimized for the consoles. It's like how you have to have a SM3 card to run the new Splinter Cell, and then a year old card that was dominating a year ago is giving visuals similar to the Xbox version of the game. It's just the way things are.

 

First of all, nearly every game on the PS3/360 can run games @60fps and 1920x1080 resolution, cause that's what they're meant to do. Look at GT5 on PS3 which is built from the ground up for 1080p and it features amazing graphics... better than most PC games I've seen.

And yes, the 8800 does surpass both the G70 (and you forgot G71 btw) as well as the Xbox's Xenos; I'm not arguing that. But how much of that power is lost to Windows? How much memory and CPU is lost to the Operating System? A lot. That's the point here. Who cares if the card is actually faster if it doesn't look any better? That's like saying "My V8 is better cause it can go faster than your V6" when they both hit fuel cut at 140mph. Sure, it has the potential to go faster, but that doesn't mean it is indeed faster.

What I'm saying is that yes, the 8800 and the R600 will be better and faster than the 360/PS3. But at the same time, the games will be developed for the consoles and PC gamers will have to deal with poorly written ports that will run slower on those machines. And no, the 360 and PS3 are both slower than the C2D e6600 at general computing, and that's why they are not computers, but rather game consoles. Their specs and features are too stripped down to be useful for much else besides games.

 

Are console games also based off DX9.0c (and DX10 upcoming) or do they have their own process? I know nothing about consoles :x

 

I'd say the graphics are purdy darn good.

 

In general they use their own API (Application Programming Interface). Currently, the two main graphics APIs are DirectX and OpenGL. DirectX was developed by Microsoft, and thus the Xbox 360 shares many traits in common with this API. OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is an open source API developed by a group called Khronos. Currently, OpenGL is used on the PlayStation 3, as well as Windows, UNIX, Linux, Mac, and BSD. DirectX is a Windows-only thing, so it is for sure not used on the PlayStation 3 or the Nintendo Wii, but it is used on the Sega Dreamcast, Xbox, and Xbox 360 according to Wikipedia.

The difference is that the Xbox 360 uses its own specification for DirectX that isn't directly analogous to DirectX 9.0c or DirectX 10. For instance, the 360 features unified shaders that can't be handled by DirectX 9, but it doesn't feature (as far as anyone knows) Shader Model 4.0 or geometry shaders which are required for DirectX 10. So really, the answer is confusing, but in general I would say no.

 

notebook_ftw, quake4 and fear are very simple games to the xbox 360, if the xbox could run those games at ultra high pc resolutions, it would. You would need to compare something like gears of war.. or something that is really cutting edge on the xbox 360 (and pc, were it out on pc). Unfortunately afaik the only unreal3 engine game on pc now is vegas, and I hear its pc optimisation has left a bit to be desired.

Magnus, I agree the 8800 rocks, and it could probably easily outperform the xbox 360. It is going through a growing phase though. I've heard of just as many games it dosn't perform as well as it should. The 360 aside, I dont think the 8800 is our messiah. I'm gonna wait for the next dx10 card.

Also technicaly games on the xbox can run 1080p, but currently ALL games on ps3 and xbox run 720p, and then get upscaled if the video out is 1080p. This is because the game makers choose 720p for its greater framerate. Half of it has to do with keeping performance consistent and that you can do more eye candy at 60fps using a lower resolution, the other half is some programmers just suck and cant program an engine that performs well at low resolutions let alone high ones.

 

currently vista ultimate is using 544 megs out of 1 gig on my 1505.

Anyone using a 1 gig memory card or usb drive to use vista's speed boost function? I am contemplating using a 1 gig sd card as a cheap upgrade.

 

Well then show me Oblivion playing 60fps at that resolution That game doesn't even play 60fps on my 360 at 720p. Oh you're talking about ports, well DX10 will instead be ports onto the consoles. DX10 will blow these consoles away. I don't hate consoles I own several myself. But the talk about price is very funny. If you want to play high def you have to buy an expensive TV right, or you can go cheaper and buy a TFT Widescreen monitor instead. But to say you can't build a PC for $600, well that's the console, how much does a high def TV cost then if you want to play say in 1080p, oh not too cheap For that kind of money you can get a high end PC instead a really nice PC, hell even my high end desktop computer costs less than an PS3 and a High Def TV together

The new consoles is not any Whooo!! to me, I have seen these kind of graphics before on high end PC's, they do nothing new to graphics. But I can imagine little kids who thinks these consoles will crush PC for a long time Just nice to debate, I do own a XPS M170 too so I'm a notebook lover for sure.

Yes I think the 8800GTX rocks, every game I throw at it eats up. The drivers has gotten better too.

By the way what I mean with kids is that this is probably the first time they get near PC high end standard graphics, that is I'm not overly impressed by the graphics on any of these consoled, since I know the games still look better on my PC, sure I own a high end PC but still.

It would have been different of course if I owned a old Celeron with a geforce 2 or something along those lines.

Hmm 1080P is the "real" 1920x1080 resolution and 1080i is interlaced which upscales to this resolution, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Hmmm well,

If the core is similar to 7800 gtx that doesnt suprise me. But its called 7950 gx2. This is the first hdcp gpu that nvidia came out with. It cant actually be using the 7800 nm process. It might be a related and similar power.

 

stamar Nvidia stated before that it is a modified RSX based of a G70, but maybe they changed this later on before putting them into the PS3.

 

PS3 games are rendered at 720p only, and upscaled to 1080p, which isn't quite the same. And I believe many of them only run at 30fps at that...

 

All of the PS3 games currently out run a 720p. However, the last I heard, GT5 was being built for 1080p, but I can' be positive of this. However, you are right, all the games currently out are just 720p upscaled, so it's not quite the same.

As to the PC vs. console price, my thinking is this. A console will last a good 5 years. The graphics aren't going to get any worse, and I'm pretty happy with the way things are now. Sure, PC will surpass them, but you won't see that as the end user without upgrading the hardware. So yes, you could build a nice system now for a little more than a PS3 that will look as good. But guess what? Unless you upgrade your hardware (thus spending more $$$), your graphics aren't going to get any better either. So if you use the argument that PC gaming will surpass console graphics, you can't also use the argument that it's not much more expensive. It's one or the other. And the problem is that many later games may actually look worse because the standard hardware level will rise, and your older hardware will start getting neglected. Previous generation ATi cards already can't run games (like Splinter Cell: DA) because they don't support SM3. This is what I'm trying to point out. But some people are OK with this, and if you're one, then more power to you. I just can't justify the price going on.

 

I'm not using the argument that PC graphics will surpass that of a console. I'm using the one that even today, a decent PC will be able to match its graphics, which means no upgrade is needed later on to catch up. And if you buy a DX10 GPU, it should certainly last quite a few years feature-wise. (Performance will obviously become a problem some years down the line, but it's going to be *a lot* of years before DX10 features become mandatory, and even longer before DX10 support is not enough)

On a related note, PS3 in Europe offers less value for the (vastly) higher price

True, but that doesn't answer the question of "why should I pay 50% more for a PS3, when a 360 can offer the same or better graphics?"

 

Yeah the PS3 GPU is inferior to the 360's

 

I shall answer the question.
The 360 is the same price when you take into account the wireless bridge (£50)and xbox live membership (£40). With £280 for the console thats £370 and then the £120 for the hd dvd drive. hmmm thats £480!! And then a recurring £40 a year for xbox live.

Oh and then your £280 gadget suddenly becomes obsolete when the hdmi/bigger hd revision comes out. Cheers microsoft.

So in my opinion both are overpriced! Get a wii.

Really? Please show me where in the UK I can get a good gaming system for £425?

 

So how is it that the PS3 comes out 1 year later, yet is still more or less equal to the 360 in terms of performance?

What a fiasco.

 

the 'theoretical' power is more but the designers (most) haven't been able to take advantage of it yet. They will in time.

The games will be amazing! But it is cheaper to make games for the 360 as of now, so I guess we can expect to see more for it?

 

Sucks for European gamers. I particularly feel bad for Lysander, but that's mostly cause he's the only European I know getting a PS3.

Other than that, I agree with you. My PC argument was not directed toward you, it was directed to those who say PC gaming will blow the PS3/360 out of the water AND aren't that much more expensive (see comments about 8800 on previous pages). And I do have a 360, so I guess you can see where I stand on your question of "why should I pay 50% more for a PS3, when a 360 can offer the same or better graphics?"

Although as a side note to you, Jalf, I kind of resent myself for buying the 360 seeing as who makes it...

Sadly, no. The PS3 does have theoretically more power, but real world benchmarks have not proven to be the case. The Cell is quoted at 2GFLOPS of processing power versus the 360's 1GFLOP, but that's assuming the Cell is operating with all 8 SPU's. The PS3 only has 7 available PSU's, and one is locked for the OS, so only 6 SPU's are being dedicated to games, so you're looking at a drop of as much as 25% in performance, now to only 1.5GFLOPS of power. On top of that, these are artificial numbers that were computed; none of them were actually tested. Combine that with the fact that it's going to be SO hard to program for (especially considering the Cell's SPU's are so limited compared to the 360's triple PPCs), that you will rarely (if ever) see a performance gain on the PS3. Also, the GPU is limited by old technology and lack of innovation and flexibility that will hurt it in the long run.

 

Both CPU's are slower than a AMD64 3000+, there was an interesting article on this where several game coders said that they would have been better of choosing a PC CPU than the current ones that are in both consoles. I think it was anandtech who had the article. Going to look it up, else maybe other people here has read that article too.

 

looks pretty good to me . Of course not all games look like this and some look pretty terrible, but in a year or two when developers get the hang of programming for the ps3, pretty much all games should look just as good or better than the screens above. the xbox 360 also has some very good looking games such as gears of war.

Its pretty silly to try to compare pc and console hardware as they are very different. PC gaming will always have the potential to look better as you can fork $2000+ in a rig to play a game like Crysis in uber hight details, but you also have to constantly upgrade to maintain that performance. You can also pay $400 or $600 for an xbox360/PS3 and know that your system will be able to play nice looking games for the next 5 or so years perfectly fine.

and btw, the comment about the cpus in the xbox 360/PS3 being weaker than an AMD 3000+, you kidding right?...