Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How the PC Is Making Consoles Look Out of Date

Posted by Soulskill on from the reaching-hardware-limits dept.

An anonymous reader writes "What has been clear from this year's Game Developers Conference is that consoles are beginning to show their age. With nothing beyond a possible Nintendo update on the horizon, developers at this year's GDC have turned their eyes to the PC. The article includes three videos that give a fantastic insight into where PC graphics are headed, including a version of Epic's Unreal engine, Crytek's Cryengine 3, and DICE's Frostbite 2 engine. Considering that these leaps in eye candy are only possible with the current state of PC graphics, we wonder how long consoles will be the target platform for development of blockbuster games."

3 of 568 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Consoles need to invest more on hardware. by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 5, Informative

    There was a time when Sega, Nintendo and Sony would all design unique hardware. Later on these unique designs became less common, and now thanks to consoles like the Xbox, the common design is an intel chip (or IBM), a standard PC graphics card, etc.

    er

    Wii :
            * CPU: PowerPC-based "Broadway" processor, made with a 90 nm SOI CMOS process, reportedlyâ clocked at 729 MHz[120]
            * GPU: ATI "Hollywood" GPU made with a 90 nm CMOS process,[121] reportedlyâ clocked at 243 MHz[120]
            * "Starlet", part of the Hollywood package: an ARM926EJ-S processor reportedlyâ clocked at 243 MHz.[122]

    PS3 :
    CPU 3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine with 1 PPE & 7 SPEs
    550 MHz NVIDIA/SCEI RSX 'Reality Synthesizer'

    XBox 360 :
    CPU 3.2 GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon
    500 MHz ATI Xenos

    Not really off the shelf parts you'd find in a Dell!

    --
    The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
  2. Re:Until.... by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fun fact, you can play those games on a PC in the living room. The Wii emulator dolphin can do HD. Which a real wii cannot.

  3. Upgrade every year? Not needed. by dstyle5 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hundreds of pounds every year? My 3.5 year old PC still plays games well enough and the only things I've done to it are add more fans and hard drives. If you are forced to upgrade every year you either bought a very cheap PC to begin with or are upgrading without reason. My PC is finally starting to strain under new games like Dragon Age 2, but my 8800GT and 6850 still get by well enough for most games. The need to upgrade ever year is a fallacy.