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Thread: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

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    Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    I have always wondered how these video game consoles can produce such an amazing picture, with a price point for an entire console that rivals most entry level graphics cards.

    For Example: GTX 1080 retails for around $599
    An XBox One retails for around $499
    A PS4 Retails for around $299

    How do these consoles that have a very basic APU (apparently low-end Radeon 64-Core) put out images that rival the graphics quality of a dedicated GPU on a PC?

    Sometimes it's a bit scary how much better the games look on an XBox or PS4 than they do on a PC with significantly better hardware.
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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    Re: cost. I don't think you've really twigged the economies of scale involved. A manufacturer's production run of a particular GPU model is in the thousands, maybe. The PS4 has sold over 100 million units. On their production run, the GPU manufacturer needs to make a reasonable profit on each unit; the console makers don't.

    Re: performance. A PC game needs to run on thousands of different hardware combinations, from potatoes to gaming rigs, with all sorts of wild-and-wooly driver shenanigans, so everything needs to be abstracted to actually work at all, and there's an actual general-purpose OS running at the same time, as well as a browser with a bazillion tabs, or an email client, or whatever else may schedule processor time away. The number of different hardware combinations for a console game is one. Maybe two. So you don't need to abstract, and you don't need to worry about being scheduled away from, so you can just run everything full tilt. You also don't need to achieve that much; resolutions are lower and framerates are much lower, and you only need to get the broad strokes right because TVs are pretty terrible and the person looking at it is across the room anyway.
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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    LOL nice analysis.
    actually TV has 4K and 8K now but still they are looked at from far away (usually) and most are still likely HD and big. Also consoles might only use 4K for games.
    source: https://www.theguardian.com/games/20...-xbox-series-x
    Both machines use versions of AMD’s Ryzen series of central processing units, which are built around the company’s Zen 2 core architecture. This technology is designed to bring efficient processing to desktop PCs and mobile devices but the console companies have worked with AMD to produce custom versions. The PS5 CPU operates at up to 3.5GHz, while the Xbox Series X CPU can run at a peak speed of 3.8GHz, suggesting a raw processing advantage for Microsoft’s machine.
    ....
    The PS5 version uses 36 compute units (individual blocks of computing resources) running at up to 2.23GHz and offering 10.28 Teraflops (a measure of how many trillions of floating-point operations per second a graphics processor can deal with). The Xbox Series X version of the AMD Navi GPU features 52 compute units, offering 12.155 Teraflops. This would seem to give Xbox Series X another advantage, but the PS5 GPU runs faster (up to 2.23GHz compared to 1.825GHz) and developers will also be able to vary the frequency of operation, boosting the speed of the CPU and GPU when needed – during graphically intense moments of a game, for example – while the speed of the Xbox Series X processors is locked.
    for comparrison
    RTX 2080 TI Founders edition- 14.2 terraflops
    RTX 2080 10.6 terraflops
    AMD 5700XT 9.75 terraflops
    GT730 - 0.13 terraflops

    probably due to my poor eyesight. i rarely see difference between normal TV and HDTV. i still can't really see the difference between HD and 4K at a distance. i can see it on monitor up close. but not if i stand 4m away.

    console is basically relatively weak CPU + strong GPU. you can check online for such Gaming builds. you can get a good one for 500 EUR or USD. GPU is what is needed for games and as CatKiller said they don't need to run much of other processes. although we have game streaming on consoles lately and some other stuff. there is still much less processes. Steam OS with big picture might come close to that, if they really went for it. so you would optimise the OS just for the games.

    I use single core AMD Athlon 3800+ where i added the GT 730 card (before it was Radeon 3650 but it died). now this system can run many games until about 2012. when it was put together i spent 250 EUR on it. at the time it ran most games reasonable. if i spent 250 EUR on card instead of 60 EUR, i bet it would run them all maxed out and maybe run even more recent games.

    i only got Ryzen 7 for the kid because the price was reduced for the older model + we need one PC with descent CPU for video editing. otherwise if i wanted a gaming PC i would go with Ryzen 3 or i3 maybe even Athlon or Pentium then add whatever i saved on CPU to the card. add steam os or something very light on it (windows manager?!). add a lot of RAM. now if you connected that to TV and see it from across the room you should be impressed.

    Look at Kubuntu (or Ubuntu). they take up 500 MB RAM with various processes and services running on boot. add a few apps (and snaps) and suddenly the ram goes up quite fast. maybe even CPU usage. if you install something more basic like tiny core, then the whole OS is 16 MB. then you can work on GUI and make it look presentable with little resources used. and remove the service you don't need on console, so that CPU is as free as it can be.

    in addition to all that games on consoles cost 50 EUR (or more) and when they are on sale they sell them mostly around 20-30 EUR (or USD). sure in some cases you can get used ones, but if i am not mistaking, the multiplayer might not work on those. here on PC you have older games for a few EUR. we picked up Portal 1&2 for about 2 EUR i believe.

    consoles also mostly can't be upgraded. and this is already becoming an issue as game files become huge. they increased the disk size to 800GB, but with huge game files this is what? 8, 9 games+saves+some free disk space? on PC you can just add more disks if you need them. maybe they will support some external drives. or cartridges.
    Last edited by mastablasta; September 15th, 2020 at 06:45 AM.
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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    I don't know precisely but I recall reading an article awhile back with the same topic. Something about consoles usually cap at 30fs or so. Also the resolution isn't near what the display is usually. I do a similar thing with my Kodi machines (admittedly not nearly the gpu requirement) where they are locked at 1080p output even though they are on a 4k display in some cases.

    Those are the 2 things I can recall directly. There was more about how stuff is rendered, detail isn't the same... small differences that add up where the hardware is concerned.

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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    A PC with similar hardware to the XBox One, or PS4 cannot play games at the same quality level that the console can.
    To play games at an even quality, you will have to spend much more money, on much higher end hardware.

    I have noticed a lot of console games are locked to 30fps. Reasons for this are to keep from fluctuating frame rates above the 30fps, since 30fps matches with a 60hz output.
    There are a few that do actualy run up to 60fps.

    Also, I found out that consoles render at lower resolutions, and output at higher resolutions. The XBox One renders at 1280x720, but will output up to a 4K signal. The PS4 renders at 1600x900, and again will output up to a 4K signal as well. Which in turn, looks fantastic on a 60" TV when you sit a good 8+ feet away. Neither of which are true 1080p, let alone, 4K.

    This is starting to make much more sense.
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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    a bunch of hacks

    plus they only work on single hardware and can tailor the OS to it. in addition the volume of sales and manufacturing pushes the price down.

    PC graphics will always be supreme, however console make it look good for the user. so here you have the same thing as macs and iphones. they work well for the users needs, so the users don't mind obsolete (or in case of phones not the latest) or lower end hardware. as long as it has the logo and works fluently for their needs, they would buy then despite the much higher price if you compare the specs & power to other brands.

    just read an article about nvidia, the RTX and how AMD was downplaying it (ray tracing) as it started to loose the game. then come consoles with AMD that show ray tracing. but it's actually "hacked". not real time and uses various other things to get similar effect.

    all i know is people played and play games that do not have ray tracing. it might be the future, but again the game (and fun) might still be more important than ray tracing. after all if ray tracing was really so important, nintendo would hardly sell anything. maybe it will be just one of the features in the future, maybe it will be important. in my opinion still hard to say. is 8K important? i means consoles will start with 4K and even that is not on PC standard.
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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    Quote Originally Posted by mastablasta View Post
    PC graphics will always be supreme, however console make it look good for the user.
    That's an interesting thing to say... If you look at it like this:
    The PC may have superior hardware, but if the console game looks (and plays) the same, what's the difference?

    This kind of reminds me of "shotgun modems." (Does anyone remember this?)
    Where they could use two lines for downloading, but increased your latency. But it seemed like it was better, because you could download faster.
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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    speaking of downloads - there is also cloud gaming. apparently GeForceNow works out of the box on Linux and for 5.50 EUR a month you can get 60FPS at 1080p ray tracing and all that via Chromium/Chrome browser (you also need 50 mbps connection otherwise you get 720p).

    and then there is also stadia.

    but i wonder how that will work once the lines get clogged up. it's like when you have one or few tourists, all tourist are welcome. but when they start arriving with giant ships and you can't move through home town normally, and you would rather not have them.
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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    Quote Originally Posted by mastablasta View Post
    speaking of downloads - there is also cloud gaming. apparently GeForceNow works out of the box on Linux and for 5.50 EUR a month you can get 60FPS at 1080p ray tracing and all that via Chromium/Chrome browser (you also need 50 mbps connection otherwise you get 720p).
    I actually beta tested GeForce Now. It's a great service with a couple of caveats. It does stream 60fps / 1080p from a remote PC with very little latency. However, not all of your games will work. I have a Steam Library with about 150games in it, and during the beta, I could only get about 35 of them to work. (Yes, I tried them all.)

    When you log in, it drops you on a desktop with Steam installed, just like you were using it yourself on your local PC. When you go to install a game, it will tell you IMMEDIATELY if the game is not supported, in which case, it will not download the game. If the game is supported, it will install the game in approximate 10 seconds. Even a huge game like GTA-V. The games are pre-configured (video settings) and launchable right away. You can go to the video settings in the game, but increasing values seem to not do anything, whereas decreasing values will adjust the game accordingly, but again, does not increase the frame rate over 60.

    Quote Originally Posted by mastablasta View Post
    and then there is also stadia.
    I want to try this before I buy anything. But it doesn't seem like they have a "demo" game, or anything like that. If they did, they might find more people would be up to using it.

    Quote Originally Posted by mastablasta View Post
    but i wonder how that will work once the lines get clogged up. it's like when you have one or few tourists, all tourist are welcome. but when they start arriving with giant ships and you can't move through home town normally, and you would rather not have them.
    Nvidia GeForceNow will allow ANYONE to play for an hour before getting booted. If you are a subscriber, you can play up to 6 hours (pay close attention to the "up to" part) before you are booted. Of course, after you're booted, you can log right back in... but you're gaming is interrupted.
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    Re: Consoles vs. PC - Comparison Discussion

    i thought Assassins creed Odyssey was the demo game for Stadia.

    i am sure they will add more games through time. it might still be an interesting option if it works well. for example we have 1 hour limit for games so even the free account will do.

    i still wonder how well it would work if more people used it. it would also slow down the internet probably. we use optics, but many here have optics to a certain junction and then copper to the flat or house. these junctions could get strained if more people used these kind of services.
    Read the easy to understand, lots of pics Ubuntu manual.
    Do i need antivirus/firewall in linux?
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