Xbox 720 is another iPhone 4S!!

[TheRundownRabbit]

I thought we weren't due for a new major console til 2015. Well, I'm not gonna go on a rant saying "hurr durr, PC is better" because frankly, I think they are both equal. But this thing looks like it will have just as many problems as the Xbox 360 had initially.

 

[ph0b0s123]

New graphics & power can create new game mechanics

Really? That's hard to believe. As I haven't seen much evidence of that. Care to make an argument on the behalf of this?

Battlefield 3 on PC has 64 person multi-player, console versions have 24. That's all down to CPU difference. I don't agree with more powerful GPU's adding specifically to better mechanics, but CPU's, definitely. Whether it be more advance AI for NPC's, etc.

The fact that you don't see the differences being shown very often is because muti-format titles are always going to design their mechanics around the capabilities of the the lowest common denominator. When porting to a more powerful platform you can scale up graphics, but it's not so easy to scale up mechanics, apart from the example mentioned above.

 

[balanovich]

Um, midrange tech from several months ago can still do anti-aliased 1080p. What's the problem here?

Yeah, I'm as confused as you on this one. OP is crazy.

GPU is weak. Yes it can do AA in 1080p. But if it does what will it sacrifice? Texture quality? shadows? Other goodies? It is always a compromise. I don't know why the OP assumed that AA would be what is sacrificed.

It's disappointing but I never liked Xbox so I don't care.

 

[Bors Mistral]

I'm slightly confused by all the arguing going on the last few pages. There are some simple facts we can all agree on:

- console hardware is weaker than what you can trick out in a desktop case, and no amount of optimization will magically change that
- consoles are more accessible, easier to use and market, as well as cheaper in the short run
- PC gaming seems more expensive as it has a higher cost barrier of entry, but as long as you have some idea what you're doing can be cheaper in the long run and still provide superior experience
- consoles will still be predominant in America half a decade from now, and will keep majorly influencing the pace of game development

In the end, the point of the whole thing is that for PC gamers, while an 6670 is an underpowered chip by today's standards (and the part that'll end up in the 360's successor will likely be something twice as powerful) it doesn't really matter. Consoles will finally be moving beyond DX9. With the tech and sociability in DX11, even if the consoles end with some equivalent of midrange hardware at release, we'll still be getting some very pleasant visuals on PC.

Until DX12, 13 or whatever rolls around and everyone starts once again crying how "consoles hold us back"...

 

[Twilight_guy]

Did you create this thread just so you could say that? Sound like your saying that consoles are bad or aren't as good as they should be, which on a gaming website is basically implying that that PCs are better. That implication is the crux of PC vs. Console debate and nobody, I mean nobody, wants that.

Oh really now.

There is a difference between insulting an entire community of gamers and stating an obvious fact. That PC performance is superior to that of consoles is an obvious fact. This seems like a debate that "console players" rather not have which puzzles me seeing as you are the ones being victimized.

I'm primarily a PC gamer. I hate people who debate Console vs. PC because they're sad, sad people who do not realize that maybe, just maybe, life would be better if we all just got along and didn't try to argue over stuff that doesn't matter. On top of that, no everybody hates PC vs. Console because its a stupid argument. This thread could be about stating a fact about Performance, but judging from the connotation of the argument rather then the denotation, combined with a basic knowledge of the most common types of threads in these forums, it seems to me that it likely is a PC vs. Console thread or at least will turn out that way.

 

[CarlMin]

Did you create this thread just so you could say that? Sound like your saying that consoles are bad or aren't as good as they should be, which on a gaming website is basically implying that that PCs are better. That implication is the crux of PC vs. Console debate and nobody, I mean nobody, wants that.

Oh really now.

There is a difference between insulting an entire community of gamers and stating an obvious fact. That PC performance is superior to that of consoles is an obvious fact. This seems like a debate that "console players" rather not have which puzzles me seeing as you are the ones being victimized.

I'm primarily a PC gamer. I hate people who debate Console vs. PC because they're sad, sad people who do not realize that maybe, just maybe, life would be better if we all just got along and didn't try to argue over stuff that doesn't matter. On top of that, no everybody hates PC vs. Console because its a stupid argument. This thread could be about stating a fact about Performance, but judging from the connotation of the argument rather then the denotation, combined with a basic knowledge of the most common types of threads in these forums, it seems to me that it likely is a PC vs. Console thread or at least will turn out that way.

I'm not seeing a lot of flaming on this thread. I am, however, seeing a lot of cynical bystanders insulting those who engage in this console vs. PC debate, reminding everyone how stupid they think it is. These people are actually more in number and way louder than those who actually engage post to engage in the discussion.

It surprises me that so many people are reluctant to have this debate to begin with.
It's enough just to mention the word PC to generate a ridiculous amount of hatred in response. Like literally hatred. It's a fascinating phenomenon really. But it seems like the problem here is not the people who willingly engage in the debate. It's about people who'd rather not be reminded about the conclusions that the debate will inevitably lead to.

 

[LilithSlave]

It is true that more computing power can lead to more possibilities in AI and the like.

But that is, as a whole, not what it is used for. Nobody has even come close to fully utilization of the PlayStation 2 hardware for gameplay, much less the current generation.

Dwarf Fortress uses almost no computing power, and is yet a piece of coding genius.

I'll become more excited about new hardware when people start to utilize the hardware we've already had for years.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

This might be worth reading for anyone who's of the binary opinion that PC > Console. It might not change your opinion, but definitely good reading material.

http://geekscape.net/geekscape-decodes-microsoft-s-next-gen-xbox.html

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Um, midrange tech from several months ago can still do anti-aliased 1080p. What's the problem here?

Yeah, I'm as confused as you on this one. OP is crazy.

GPU is weak. Yes it can do AA in 1080p. But if it does what will it sacrifice? Texture quality? shadows? Other goodies? It is always a compromise. I don't know why the OP assumed that AA would be what is sacrificed.

It's disappointing but I never liked Xbox so I don't care.

I don't see how it's disappointing, anything better than what they had is, by definition, an improvement, eh?

 

[boag]

I love seeing the elitists attempting to compare PC Specs. to Console Specs. as some kind of barrometer for the graphical and calculatory power of the machine. To give you an idea of what "6 Times More Powerful" means, let's take a look at the current Xbox 360 Specs.
(as provided here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware)

The Xbox 360's CPU:

The XCPU, named Xenon at Microsoft and "Waternoose" at IBM, is a custom triple-core 64-bit PowerPC-based design by IBM. The CPU emphasizes high floating point performance through multiple FPU and SIMD vector processing units in each core. It has a theoretical peak performance of 115.2 gigaFLOPS and is capable of 9.6 billion dot products per second. Each core of the CPU is simultaneous multithreading capable and clocked at 3.2 GHz.

Have a nice i7 - featuring 8 Cores - in your machine? The Xbox 360 has 3 cores, and it's only now - seven years later - starting to reach the barriers of what it can do.

The Xbox 360's GPU:

...the Xbox 360 had a chip designed by ATI called Xenos. The chip was developed under the name "C1" and "R500" was often used to refer to it.[2] The GPU package contains two separate silicon dies, each built on a 90 nm process with a clock speed of 500 MHz; the GPU proper, manufactured by TSMC and a 10 MB eDRAM daughter-die, manufactured by NEC. Thanks to the daughter die, the Xenos can do 4× FSAA, z-buffering, and alpha blending with no appreciable performance penalty on the GPU...

This GPU has a clock speed less than half of a "Mid Range" PC Card in today's market, and has been handling all modern released since 2005. Crysis 2, Skyrim, The Witcher 2 - this card was so well designed that they're still finding new and interesting things to do with it.

But hey - you have a 1 GB Card, right? 2GB Card? Well, you probably also have higher than 8GB of DDR3 RAM as well, running on your 64-Bit OS, right? More than enough fast writeable memory for your machine to do anything! Well...

The Xbox 360's RAM:

...The console features 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM clocked at 700 MHz with an effective transmission rate of 1.4 GHz on a 128-bit bus. The memory is shared by the CPU and the GPU via the unified memory architecture. This memory is produced by either Samsung or Qimonda...

The Xbox 360 has less than 1/20th of your available memory made by the lowest bidder - it has 512mb of shared DDR3 RAM for everything.

Now, let's take a quick look at the games industry today.
Take your biggest, prettiest title. In terms of raw demanding power, The Witcher 2 and the original Crysis are probably at the top of their game. Your machine probably runs them around 60fps mark with small loading times thanks to it's fast memory, assuming V-Sync and max settings of course. Everything else is generally designed for consoles first, making your expensive hardware essentially worthless.

Scaling what the Xbox 360 can do right now, compared to what the next one can do based off what we know, you'll need to upgrade your current High End PC hardware to something along the lines of 4 times more powerful to run the first generation Xbox 720 games.
EPIC designed and built a 6gb Video RAM system, running the absolute bleeding edge hardware for their demonstration of the next version of the Unreal Engine, as an example of where the technology will be for the next gen.
That system cost them over US$10,000.00 to build. The Xbox 720 will cost you less than the original Xbox 360 - US$400.00 at launch - and will run that tech demo at close to 60FPS based off it's currently known architecture.

Good luck.

You're so right. The PC crowd will be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just so they can keep up with the superior technology and specialization of an econo-box gaming machine.....built from PC parts.

Here is why you are absolutely and utterly wrong: Xbox 360 was significantly more powerful (when compared to PC's)back when it was announced, and PC's were well past performing it before the thing released. By the time 2014 rolls around, and people are just opening up their Xmas Xbox 720's, the PC crowd will be opening their Haswell/Maxwell platform PC's and laptops. Consoles will be back in the position of being utterly destroyed in performance and visuals over consoles.

But at least you have your friendly $300 price point and motion controllers.

300 dollars for an xbox that will play the same games a 1k PC?

I fail to see the downside, aside from mods.

 

[boag]

Um, midrange tech from several months ago can still do anti-aliased 1080p. What's the problem here?

Yeah, I'm as confused as you on this one. OP is crazy.

GPU is weak. Yes it can do AA in 1080p. But if it does what will it sacrifice? Texture quality? shadows? Other goodies? It is always a compromise. I don't know why the OP assumed that AA would be what is sacrificed.

It's disappointing but I never liked Xbox so I don't care.

please calm down, I dont understand how not being able to see the pimple texture on a characters skin will ruin a gaming experience.

 

[Kathinka]

another fun aspect no one has brought up yet:

already now you can easily assemble a PC that outperforms the specs of the xbox720 by far for arround 300-400 bucks. how is that going to be in almost 2 years when it actually comes out? the thing is probably not going to cost only 400 on release.

and console fanboys cry PCs would be expensive.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

another fun aspect no one has brought up yet:

already now you can easily assemble a PC that outperforms the specs of the xbox720 by far for arround 300-400 bucks. how is that going to be in almost 2 years when it actually comes out? the thing is probably not going to cost only 400 on release.

and console fanboys cry PCs would be expensive.

Utter fucking bullshit.

A case. A hard drive. A motherboard. RAM. Video Card. Cooling. Power supply. And since a 360 will come with at least 1 controller, that means for the purpose of this comparison, you'll need to buy at least a keyboard and a mouse. Oh, let's not forget the operating system either! Most PC gamers who toss this argument in usually don't count the OS cost because they just pirate that anyway.

For less than $400? Yeah, keep fucking dreaming. I find it funny that so many people who want to say "you can build your own for DIS MUCH" seem to forget that a computer isn't just a video card taped to a hard drive with wires coming out of it.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

This might be worth reading for anyone who's of the binary opinion that PC > Console. It might not change your opinion, but definitely good reading material.

http://geekscape.net/geekscape-decodes-microsoft-s-next-gen-xbox.html

Yeah, that didn't change my opinion. All it talked about was the potential for shinier graphics. Yawn. PC gaming is about far more than just that.

....what? PC gaming is about more than shinier graphics? Is that why this thread consists primarily of people bitching about a GPU? And please don't say something retarded like Steam or "flexibility".

Those have nothing to do with gaming itself. Here I was thinking that gaming was all about how much fun you had playing something.

 

[Kathinka]

another fun aspect no one has brought up yet:

already now you can easily assemble a PC that outperforms the specs of the xbox720 by far for arround 300-400 bucks. how is that going to be in almost 2 years when it actually comes out? the thing is probably not going to cost only 400 on release.

and console fanboys cry PCs would be expensive.

Utter fucking bullshit.

A case. A hard drive. A motherboard. RAM. Video Card. Cooling. Power supply. And since a 360 will come with at least 1 controller, that means for the purpose of this comparison, you'll need to buy at least a keyboard and a mouse. Oh, let's not forget the operating system either! Most PC gamers who toss this argument in usually don't count the OS cost because they just pirate that anyway.

For less than $400? Yeah, keep fucking dreaming. I find it funny that so many people who want to say "you can build your own for DIS MUCH" seem to forget that a computer isn't just a video card taped to a hard drive with wires coming out of it.

checking the website of my favorit hardware store in my town:

phenom II X4 955 BE - 1800 crowns
zalman CNPS7X LED - 500 crows
MSI 870-C45 - 1000 crowns
Kingston HyperX 8 GB kit - 750 crowns
XFX HD 6870 Dual Fan - 2750 crowns
Sound is onboard - 0 crowns
Seage Barracuda 7.2 (1 TB, going a bit overboard here, but what the hell, i got wiggle room) - 1000 crowns
LG GH22NS70 (bulk) - 300 crowns
Bitfenix Shinoby (rather nice case actually, you could save a lot here if need be) - 800 crowns
Antex HC Gamer 620 Watt (absolute overkill for that rig actually) - 1420 crowns

leaves us at 10320 crowns, a tiny bit over 400 euros. toss in some peripheral devices and you are set. if you need to save money for an OS, just take a less insane Power Unit or Case. not sure how much a windows license actually costs, here you get them thrown after you for free, for example if you are a student. hell, the graphic card is about 2,5 times as powerfull as what the xbox720 is going to have, and you don't really "need" a full Terrabyte either. you could easily make concessions worth 100 euros or more there if you need to make cuts, and STILL come out better than the new xbox.

and all that is before overclocking and similar fun stuff.

there. that was just some random rig i crapped out of the top of my brain, without comparing prices or doing any research, AND it got fancy bullshit components like LED lights and rather generous hard disk space and power supply.
and it utterly curbstomps the 720.
it can do everything it can do better, and a ton more. if one is hell bent on the console experience one could rig it up to a big TV and a gamepad and get the full console experience, with better graphics and more customization for less money.

and all that are the prices TODAY. in almost two years, when the new xbox comes out, you will be able to assemble this kind of system for the price of a dinner for two in a fancy restaurant.

 

[Cronq]

and all that are the prices TODAY. in almost two years, when the new xbox comes out, you will be able to assemble this kind of system for the price of a dinner for two in a fancy restaurant.

Wrong. These parts won't be available for purchase in 2 years. You'll have to rummage around a garage sale or at Goodwill.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

another fun aspect no one has brought up yet:

already now you can easily assemble a PC that outperforms the specs of the xbox720 by far for arround 300-400 bucks. how is that going to be in almost 2 years when it actually comes out? the thing is probably not going to cost only 400 on release.

and console fanboys cry PCs would be expensive.

Utter fucking bullshit.

A case. A hard drive. A motherboard. RAM. Video Card. Cooling. Power supply. And since a 360 will come with at least 1 controller, that means for the purpose of this comparison, you'll need to buy at least a keyboard and a mouse. Oh, let's not forget the operating system either! Most PC gamers who toss this argument in usually don't count the OS cost because they just pirate that anyway.

For less than $400? Yeah, keep fucking dreaming. I find it funny that so many people who want to say "you can build your own for DIS MUCH" seem to forget that a computer isn't just a video card taped to a hard drive with wires coming out of it.

checking the website of my favorit hardware store in my town:

phenom II X4 955 BE - 1800 crowns
zalman CNPS7X LED - 500 crows
MSI 870-C45 - 1000 crowns
Kingston HyperX 8 GB kit - 750 crowns
XFX HD 6870 Dual Fan - 2750 crowns
Sound is onboard - 0 crowns
Seage Barracuda 7.2 (1 TB, going a bit overboard here, but what the hell, i got wiggle room) - 1000 crowns
LG GH22NS70 (bulk) - 300 crowns
Bitfenix Shinoby (rather nice case actually, you could save a lot here if need be) - 800 crowns
Antex HC Gamer 620 Watt (absolute overkill for that rig actually) - 1420 crowns

leaves us at 10320 crowns, a tiny bit over 400 euros. toss in some peripheral devices and you are set. if you need to save money for an OS, just take a less insane Power Unit or Case. not sure how much a windows license actually costs, here you get them thrown after you for free, for example if you are a student. hell, the graphic card is about 2,5 times as powerfull as what the xbox720 is going to have, and you don't really "need" a full Terrabyte either. you could easily make concessions worth 100 euros or more there if you need to make cuts, and STILL come out better than the new xbox.

and all that is before overclocking and similar fun stuff.

there. that was just some random rig i crapped out of the top of my brain, without comparing prices or doing any research, AND it got fancy bullshit components like LED lights and rather generous hard disk space and power supply.
and it utterly curbstomps the 720.
it can do everything it can do better, and a ton more. if one is hell bent on the console experience one could rig it up to a big TV and a gamepad and get the full console experience, with better graphics and more customization for less money.

and all that are the prices TODAY. in almost two years, when the new xbox comes out, you will be able to assemble this kind of system for the price of a dinner for two in a fancy restaurant.

"Toss in peripherals"? Yes, because PC gamers play with $5 keyboad/mouse combos. Your keyboard/mouse will definitely be more expensive than that. Probably in the $40 to $50 range.

And what if you're not a student? What will you do then? Just doing a bit of Googling, it seems that it costs 149 Euros for just the Home Premium version (and no, this is the full version, not the update. You need the full version).

When you add up the above, by the way, including a hypothetical $30 kb/mouse combo (which probably isn't that good anyway), we're now up to 570 euros.

By the way, I said 400 bucks, not 400 euros. That means dollars. 400 euros is not 400 dollars, it's about 530 USD.

If we add up the keyboard and the cost of the operating system (because you know, you can't do all that "fun stuff" without an operating system), it should interest you to know that's almost $750.

You're not going to win this argument, please give up.

 

[LilithSlave]

"Toss in peripherals"? Yes, because PC gamers play with $5 keyboad/mouse combos.

Plenty do.

I see tons of people made fun of for having fancy pointless keyboards and mice.

I am a console fan, by the way.