Why do we need so much power??

Games run on an XBox 360 perfectly fine, yet the XBox 360 isnt really as high spec as some of the PCs/laptops currently available.

So why is it that when a 360 game, like Gears of War, gets ported across to the PC, its system requirements increase so much??? Even then its buggy as hell, with stuttering and so many reported problems??!!

 

Because crappy companies make crappy ports.

 

Xbox are designed SOLELY for games. That`s all they need. There is only 1 type of hardware and plenty of firepower to go by. Therefor a game can be easily made specifically for that console because it requires compatibility with just that 1 type of hardware.

PCs are a different story. Different combinations of hardware requires scalability, drivers,hassles and most of all new investments with each games.

Pretty much...

 

Because the developers must rema-jigger the game engine to work with a bazillion different hardware combinations and operating systems while sharing the available memory with that windows thing.

 

I suppose, I didnt think of it that way.
well, you guys sure made that sound like a silly question now!
lol

 

It is a silly question lol.

 

lol. Sorry Ive had a XBox 360 in the past and am new to gaming on my laptop!!!
I hope this thread gets deleted, Im embarrassed now! lol

 

"Why do we need so much power??"

You're the one with the 8800 SLI "Beast"

 

I'm pretty the PC version on very high looks better than the x360 version

 

Specially at high res....max AA...max AF....oh boy.

 

Xbox 360 - dedicated to games

PC - Runs through an OS to play games

 

It really is astounding how much raw power is wasted by having games run through an OS. One might consider figuring out a way to bypass the OS and run the game directly on the hardware, but that is virtually impossible due to the incompatibility between the games and hardware sans the OS to interpret.

<---Here's me waiting for homogenized PC hardware in the coming future, as predicted by Gabe Newell at Valve.

 

that's why pc's are complements and not substitutes for gaming

well excluding hardcore pc gaming rigs...

 

They exist already. They are called consoles.

 

Well, a PC/laptop has more uses then just gaming.

Even consoles have primitive OSes nowadays. The PS3 has firmware that needs updating every now and then and acts as an OS. Same with the X-Box 360. They are fitted with a simple OS. Still, its impressive if you think about it that Windows can hide whatever setup you have so your game can run on any machine.

 

And how graphically impressive consoles are with the hardware their running, I've always been pro console but notebooks are just soooo versatile, so I have both, thats the best setup

 

when the start getting desent strategy games on xbox/ps3 i will contemplate the idea of getting one. but my "gaming beast" which cost me $1500 looks better than any console game. plus it can do soo much more.

 

Sooner or later we'll see more Keyboard + Mouse games like UT3 on the PS3...

If the consoles aren't flooded with Wiimote-clones at that point, anyway

 

PC's werent made for games. Games were made for PC's

and not everyone has the same laptop. (thank God). Pc games have to adjust to all sorts of combinations of hardware and stuff.

 

I believe that running a Microsoft Windows O/S on a decent PC is like trying to run with your legs tied together. The Stronger legs have developed throughout the years of training (the more powerful the PC's have become through Technology), the Stronger ropes they bind you with (The even more resource-wasting operating systems become - Queue Vista).

O.K - It's a wierd analogy, but I'm sure you get my drift.

I think saying it's about different drivers and different hardware is not the reason. Of course the games have to cater for different setups, but when the game loads, it is configured for the hardware, and that's it.

 

Graphically impressive? Consoles?

Ha.

In a couple of years' time, companies will have really learnt how to optimise games on the consoles, and will really be able to push some performance out of their standardised parts. Pity that PC gamers will be laughing at them while playing games with maximum settings at 2560x1600 on their single 11800 GTXes.

 

Yeah, and I believe it's because PC's have been cursed by demon chickens from Mars.

No, Microsoft is not involved in some kind of conspiracy to hold back your PC. I'm sorry if this is disappointing news, but they're not.

Huh? Not at all. *Everything* that happens on hardware has to go through a driver, which means it has to go through an OS, and through a library like OpenGL or DirectX. It's not some magical switch you pull once when you start the game. Every polygon, every GPU command that's sent to the GPU in every frame has to go through several layers of software. Different drivers and hardware *are* the reason. The game doesn't get "configured for the hardware".

So no, games don't have to cater for different setups. They rely on the OS and DirectX or similar libraries to do that for them. If I'm writing a game I simply ask DirectX to put my graphics on the screen, and it does that *no matter the hardware it's running on*. That only works because of the OS, drivers and all the other software layers are working behind the scenes.

Yes, that means there's some overhead, but it also means my game will work on all 50 GPU's that are in use today, and on next year's hardware as well.

This overhead isn't the whole story though. Sure, it contributes to slowing PC's down a bit, but it's not such a huge deal to be honest. (at a rough estimate, I'd say you might lose at most 20% performance. Noticeable, yes, but not crippling)

Two much more important factors are related to the overall balancing of the system.
When Microsoft or Sony design a console, they pick parts that match each others in performance. They pick RAM that is fast enough to keep the CPU and GPU busy. They ensure that there's a sufficiently fast bus connecting different components. They try to eliminate bottlenecks. It's no good having the fastest CPU in the world, if your GPU sucks, or you're using 200MHz RAM.
So they're able to balance performance far better. They may not need to use the hyper-advanced GPU's that you have on PC's, because while the console equivalent may be a bit slower, it also won't be stalled so much of the time because it's waiting for other system components to catch up. That happens fairly often on PC's. Maybe the GPU needs to wait for the CPU to finish processing the current frame, or maybe it's waiting for the PCI-E bus to finish transferring data to it. In that time, it may have nothing to do. That's obviously inefficient. The more that can be avoided, the better.

The second point is similar, but from the point of view of game developers. As I said above, the console designers try to achieve a balanced design that allows all components to be used fully with few bottlenecks.
And game developers are able to take advantage of the same fact. They *know* exactly how much they should load the CPU, and they know exactly how much data they can afford to transfer from CPU to GPU per frame. They know exactly how long it takes for the GPU to render a specific scene.

Whereas on a PC... Well, they can measure these things on their own systems, but those are vastly different from the systems users are going to play the game on. How much work should be pushed from GPU to CPU? On a console, that answer is easy, just run the game and see what runs best.
On a PC, it depends. Maybe this task could be better done on the CPU, but then what if we're running on a system with a fast GPU and an ancient CPU?
What if this is an AGP system where the amount of data that can be transferred from GPU to CPU is just ridiculously low? So game developers can't utilize the PC fully either, because it's a moving target. Code that'd run fast on your system may be vastly different from what'd run well on mine. And they have to strike a decent compromise that works *acceptably* on both.

 

Thanks for your detailed response Jalf. I stand corrected.