Console vs Comp gaming question

[dcast]

Why is it that systems like playstation2 are able to play complex games with such low system stats and to play a modern game on the computer you need a really insane system?

[madjo]

I think this boils down to the resolution of your regular tv screen, which is lower than the resolution that's common on computer monitors. (about a quarter)

and the fact that a console only needs the bare minimum to run games, whereas on a computer the cpu (central processing unit) is taxed on multiple levels. (for instance, by a fullblown operating system)

[leech]

Two words. Custom Hardware.

The x86 architecture was never created to play games in the first place. Which is why all the graphics are done on the GPU.

With gaming consoles, they can have a low power CPU and have all the power in the GPU and since the developers can literally just program the GPU and have just the CPU control I/O they can run games a lot faster.

This is also the same reason why the console games have no where near the bugs that PC games have. With PC games you have an almost infinite number of different hardware combinations, whereas with a console you have one. And that one piece of hardware can be highly optimized on.

A good example of this, something like an Amiga 500. It's a 16/32 bit processor (Motorola 68000) that ran at 7.4mhz. Yet could easily play games that were barely possible with the same graphics quality on a 50mhz 486. Simply because it used custom graphics chips and sound, etc.

The fact that you can buy commodity hardware for the PC is both a strength and a weakness.

Hope that explains it a bit more.

Leech

[Adrian]

With PC games you have an almost infinite number of different hardware combinations, whereas with a console you have one. And that one piece of hardware can be highly optimized on.

That's very true! And programmers are FORCED to optimize, which leads to miracles... I remember back in the days (i.e. the 80's and early 90's :) ), optimizing was a natural (and very important) part of game programming. You can't tell the user to buy a better graphics card or a faster processor. Instead, you have to really come up with the smartest algorithms and use all custom hardware.

As the programmers learn to utilize the hardware better and better, they can do more and more complex games. Compare the early Playstation 1 games to to for instance Tekken 3 (from the end of the Playstation 1 era). It's hard to believe that it's actually the same system :)

[dcast]

That answers my question thanks.

[bjweeks]

My 1000$ computer kicks the 400$ x-box 360 *** and does a hell of a lot more.