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 Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 05:52 Post subject: Hardware Efficiency in Relation to Gaming on PC/Xbox... |
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According to the forum descriptions, this question didn't really fit in either Console or PC section, as it concerns both, so I stuck it here. Feel free to move it if need be, and sorry for the inconvenience.
How is it that a game released for both XBox and PC can have such high requirements on the PC end, and yet achieve smooth framerate with the XBox's hardware?
Prime example, the upcoming Brothers in Arms.
The PC Reqs. have been upped to something like min: 512rdram 1.5ghz 64mb gfx (an updated post from a dev on the forums, still reads the old specs on a lot of sites).
Those are pretty mid specs right there, with the recommended being 1 gig, and 2.5ghz.
Now, what does the XBox's hardware consist of?
I was told (though perhaps in error, please correct if so), that Xbox consists of a 733mhz processor, 512 ram (not sure on that one), and a card slightly newer than the Geforce4Ti series.
Thus, how can a game like BoA run beautifully on the console, yet the PC takes almost triple the processing power and double the RAM?
I understand that PC has to have processor usage and ram space reserved for running the OS, but still? Seems like a hella lot more power needed to get the same framerates as XBox.
Please don't misunderstand this to be a flame/console war topic.
I'm genuinly curious as to why this is, and was hoping someone could enlighten me.
Are console games coded more efficiently to make better use of limited hardware?
Is Xbox's hardware different than I listed above?
Why is it?
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| Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 07:05 Post subject: |
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Because when they program it for the xbox they dont have to deal with the fact that there are a million different system setups, and also on the xbox it doesnt look as good in the first place, so its getting some ease there.
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| Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 07:15 Post subject: |
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lol...made becuase the xbox was made just games
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| Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 07:19 Post subject: |
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Doesn’t the resolution have something to do with it? Like the visuals are compressed to a certain resolution whereas pc games have a multitude of selectable resolution textures  lower res = lower system strain I am talking out of my ass so I could be 100% wrong  I don't own a console but that is what I think
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| Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 07:43 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Doesn’t the resolution have something to do with it? |
Good point. What is TV resolution? 640x480 or 800x600?
Even so, every monitor can run these modes right? So why aren't the min specs only slighly higher than the Xbox? 733 vs. 1.5ghz is double. Bit of a jump.
And OS isn't really that good of an excuse as a processor/ram hog. When idle my pc is using 2-7% (1.8GHz P4) according to task manager (thats with Trillian, NAV, Daemon, and NVidia as background apps + the usual WinXP fare)
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| Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 08:28 Post subject: |
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| Immunity wrote: | | Quote: | | Doesn’t the resolution have something to do with it? |
Good point. What is TV resolution? 640x480 or 800x600?
Even so, every monitor can run these modes right? So why aren't the min specs only slighly higher than the Xbox? 733 vs. 1.5ghz is double. Bit of a jump.
And OS isn't really that good of an excuse as a processor/ram hog. When idle my pc is using 2-7% (1.8GHz P4) according to task manager (thats with Trillian, NAV, Daemon, and NVidia as background apps + the usual WinXP fare) |
The specs on the XBOX are (still from memory, but a lot more accurate than originally posted):
Intel Celeron 733MHz CPU
128MB SDRAM
Video chipset based on the GeForce 3 series, 64MB? ram (comparable in power with a GF3Ti)
<10GB hard drive
DVD Rom made by Thomson, Philips, or Samsung
As you can all see, the can's not much to look at. Just a washed-down crapfest PC. So, how come it runs everything so well?
Well, three sides of the story here:
1. The advantages of the Xbox
2. The disadvantages of the PC
3. The lower demands on the XBOX
Let's take a closer look:
1. The XBOX, based on a watered-down version of the Windows 2000 Kernel with a heavily-modified DirectX interface, is the perfect gaming machine. Since the developers could guarantee absolute compatibility of all parts, every pixel could be squeezed out of the GPU, every bit crunched by the CPU, everything neatly arranged in memory - everything that could be streamlined, is. That means software needs a lot smaller footprint. ATI compatibility pieces... who the fuck needs them. AMD optimizations... goo-bye. Compatibility routines with older NVidia cards - later. OpenGL routes - bye, bye. All of this crap, pieces of which inadverently fall into the memory and CPU/GPU cycles of PCs, is simply absent on the box, because it is not needed. Thus, resources are saved, and less resources on the XBOX do the same amount of work as more resources on the PC.
2. The PC is a variety of different chips, bits, pieces, and mods, trying to play together without crashing too much. Besides the obvious lack of hardware and software streamlining there, the PC is shot in the foot by yet another factor: something I call the Big Brother Effect. That is, while the XBOX, designed solely for games, can run a minimalist kernel that supports the essentials and provides just enough i/o for the interfaces to use, Windows XP alone requires 128MB of RAM just to run it's fat ass smoothly. And you may as well disregard the 2% load on your CPU - as soon as something big starts flowing through it's rusty pipes, Winblows makes those 2% act like 20. Your performance is drastically decreased due to, ironically enough, the versatility of your system.
3. The average television supports a maximum resolution of 352x244 (or something close to it). The most advanced TV's of today only allow for 1024x768 output. Max. That means that most of the time, given that 1600x1200 is your PC's game resolution, the XBOX only has to put out 1/16th of that amount of pixels. That means it can - an does - slack off on the texture, sprite, and polygon amount and resolution. The result is an optical illusion - a game that appears to be running the same as big brother's, with about 1/16th of the details applied, on a much more optimized, less loaded, and overall better-running machine than Big Brother. Thus, the decent framerates.
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| Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 08:47 Post subject: |
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Well running on a HDTV, there is no performance loss, and the game only looks better.
So I don't think native resolution is really a factor.
"Techniclly speaking, Beta-Manboi didnt inject Burberry_Massi with Benz, he injected him with liquid that had air bubbles in it, which caused benz." - House M.D
"Faith without logic is the same as knowledge without understanding; meaningless"
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| Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 08:52 Post subject: |
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Thanks Accelleron, pretty much answered every single question I had about the topic. Much appreciated.
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razor1394
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Posts: 3571
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Sat, 5th Mar 2005 09:52 Post subject: |
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Immunity - Hardware works perfectly for this topic. *MOVING*
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| Posted: Sun, 6th Mar 2005 00:07 Post subject: |
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[quote="Accelleron"] | Immunity wrote: | | Quote: | | Doesn’t the resolution have something to do with it? |
3. The average television supports a maximum resolution of 352x244 (or something close to it). The most advanced TV's of today only allow for 1024x768 output. Max. That means that most of the time, given that 1600x1200 is your PC's game resolution, the XBOX only has to put out 1/16th of that amount of pixels. That means it can - an does - slack off on the texture, sprite, and polygon amount and resolution. The result is an optical illusion - a game that appears to be running the same as big brother's, with about 1/16th of the details applied, on a much more optimized, less loaded, and overall better-running machine than Big Brother. Thus, the decent framerates. |
Point 3 here is about right. It's mostly down to reolution. Don't forget that there is also quite a lot of natural antialiasing on an NTSC or PAL tv to begin with as well, due to low refresh, gamut and general pixel resolution. XBox is also very efficent at handling compressed, and simultaneous textures and full screen anti-aliasing.
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| Posted: Sun, 6th Mar 2005 02:03 Post subject: |
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| AnimalMother wrote: | Well running on a HDTV, there is no performance loss, and the game only looks better.
So I don't think native resolution is really a factor. |
The fact that you have HDTV does not mean that your XBOX is running it. There is a hardware addon that gives the XBOX HDTV compatibility (i think) but even with the new plasma displays, all you're really doing is enhancing the image via hardware paths in the set to display well on your TV.
Think of it this way: The average 15" LCD is capable of delivering 1024x768 pixels of resolution. It needs that amount to look good. Today's largest plasma displays are 60" and up, and yet even the best of them have the same 1024x768 resolution. How do they look good? Easy. First, you'd be insane to sit as close to a 60" plasma as you would a 15" LCD, so you cannot tell the amount of detail the display truly puts out.
Second, the XBOX really is not capable of running at a resolution higher than 640x480, and that is the res. it runs on. But that doesn't matter. Since the XBOX is designed to output to a 352x2XX resolution, it can feel free to cut corners (i.e. use less CPU-intensive rendering paths, pixellate things like sprites, shadows, and textures more, and pixellate the HUD, all without us ever noticing.) Therefore, yes it does run at a 640x480 resoultion, and yes, your HDTV does pick up more of that, but what you are seeing on your HDTV screen is more your TV's post-processing than your XBOX's capabilities. I'll give you a glaring example:
This is an overlay of two untouched Doom3 screenshots: one on Ultra detail with all settings maxed, one on low detail with everything disabled. This is what your XBOX produces:
This is the same overlay, reduced to a 320x240 resolution. This is what goes into your TV as a composite signal:
This is the input (second) image, blown up to 1024x768, the resolution your TV outputs it at. The ultra detail part has been untouched, the low detail part has been tweaked with some post-processing, just like what your TV does to it's input images. Now compare the high and low images and tell me if Microsoft could not get away with using a low detail setting to boost it's framerate:
NOTE: Admins, sorry for the large image size, but it is necessary to prove a point in this case. Please do not alter.
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