 |
| |
|
| |
|
|
Asher
|
 |
Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:24
|
|
I'm about to head for dinner so I'll just do a basic "Gaming Architecture 101" for Fez:
When designing PC games, the code needs to be able to run fine on a vast array of systems. Systems with 128MB RAM, systems with 1GB of RAM. systems with Windows 98, Systems with Windows XP, Systems with Windows 2000, Systems with Windows Millenium, etc.
Systems with a Kyro II video card, Voodoo 3/4/5, Radeon, Radeon 8500, Radeon 9700, TNT2, GeForce 1, 2, 3, 4, and FX, etc. The amount of optimizations you can do for each platform is exceedingly minimal.
With a console, like the Xbox for example, everything is always the same. The developers can ALWAYS count on the exact same charateristics for each console. They can avoid and bypass the whole HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) DirectX uses on the PC and write directly to the hardware, letting them do far more things. Developers can always count on the graphics chip having, say, 128KB of texture cache so they can fill it up perfectly each time. On the PC, some graphics chips don't even have a texture cache!
Then there's the fundamental design differences. The Xbox has a unified memory architecture. The video RAM is the system RAM is the sound RAM. On the PC, if the CPU ever needs to deal with vertex data (which is very important, mind you, for things like collision detection), it needs to send this data back on the AGP bus from the video RAM and copy it over to the system RAM. The AGP bus is already nearly full because it's constantly loading the textures from the harddrive or RAM also. This is a major performance hit. On the Xbox, the CPU can just touch the vertex instantly in the RAM -- it doesn't need to move it anywhere.
The PC isn't designed around gaming, it has MANY design "features" that severely hamper gaming performance, which is why an Xbox will outperform a similarly configured PC by a substantial margin.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ironikinit
|
|
I just wanted to point out that strategy games aren't unknown on consoles. In fact, two titles mentioned by name in this thread as examples of why players wouldn't use a console (Panzer General and Civilization 2) I can remember from the Play Station. I never played Civ 2 on the PS, but my friend did. He complained that the late game had extreme lag. I played PG all the time, though, and never had a problem. I've since played it (admittedly not much) on the PC and did not notice a difference. Other strategy titles I owned were A Train, Allied General, X-Com, and Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat. All of them ran fine, and I also got a CD player out of the deal by hooking the PS to my stereo. It really was a bargain and when I had company we could play hockey or Tekken.
Another supposed console drawback, that of lack of a mouse, seems I can recall a console system that offered one.
The PS had for me an advantage that others have pointed out and I strongly agree: ease of use. I didn't need to look for patches or reconfigure the system to play a particular game. Hmm, now that I think on it, making the switch to PC could be seen as an expensive blunder. Of course, free games are easy to find online, and when I made the change I was in a small town and made some more interesting friends online so I don't regret it. However, I really didn't need such an expensive system. I could've bought a much more moderate system for chat, outdated/low-end strategy games, browsing, word-processing, etc. and put the savings into about 12 different consoles...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Jon Miller
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Asher
Pick the right tool for the job.
Civ would suck on the console, Mario would suck on the PC.
Voila. |
I agree
Jon Miller
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:24.
Apolyton Time is 00:24. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
17-12-2002 04:14
Attachment: 
|
