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Slimebeast on 27 November 2010
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HappySqurriel said:
Slimebeast said:
Foamer said:

You're still completely missing the point. One last time for the hard of reading, in bold seeing as it's not getting through to you- he's saying no one's taking advantage of the huge tech advantage of the PC. Here's the rest of his point, in italics this time in case you're still not getting it- that's why you're not seeing the quantum leaps in graphical fidelity you'd expect given the enormous gulf in power.

The pics you're posting are just reinforcing what he's saying and, along with your spectacularly ignorant comments on hardware, making yourself look very silly.

No, my comments on hardware are accurate.

A console generation is a minimum 16 times increase in graphics rendering power compared to the previous gen(each 18 months doubles the power ----> x2 x2 x2 x2 = 16)

The Xbox360 came out 5 years ago and had a GPU equivalent of a Nvidia 7800GT 256MB (or a Radeon X1800XL if you like).

But the current strongest graphics card on PC - the Nvidia GTX 580 1536MB is not 16 times faster than a 7800 GT (it's not even 10 times faster).

Conclusion: PC is not a generation ahead of consoles yet.

Actually, that isn't accurate at all ...

There is not a uniform level of processing power which defines a generation and (as a result) there is not a uniform boost in processing power that represents a generational gap. No one would argue that the Dreamcast was a generation ahead of the N64 but the Dreamcast was only 4 to 6 times as powerful as the N64; and few people would argue that the XBox 360 or PS3 aren't a generation ahead of the XBox, but neither system is 16 times the processing power of the XBox.

In general, the jump between a system in one generation to its replacement in the next generation is roughly 10 times the performance; and some systems will see smaller or larger jumps because of changes in strategy (changing the price point, change in time between console releases, change in size or energy consumption, etc.).

 

Now, the undelying question is "what is the minimum processing power jump which can define a generational jump on processing power alone?" which is not a straight forward/easy question to answer. First off diminishing returns are an issue; a couple of generations ago if you released a system that was twice the performance of another system the difference in displayed results could be dramatic, while today it would be noticeable but not significant. Secondly, you have to question whether the display resolutions and framerate remain the same or not; because the results produced by modern hardware at 720p @30fps (like most HD console games) are dramatically different from what hardware can produce at 1080p @60fps.

With that said, if you released a system that targeted 720p and was 6 to 8 times the processing power of the HD consoles no one would question that it was a generation ahead; and on the other hand, if you're targeting 1080p (or potentially 3D displaying at 1080p) you would need 8 to 16 times the performance.

 

One last consideration is that Crytek is (potentially) talking in terms of games that are in development today and will be released in 2011/2012. If you're producing a game where your 1 year old low end graphics card is the minimum requirement and has 4 times the processing power of the HD console's cards, you're targeting a new mid range graphics card for the game to perform well, and you're including enhancements for the people who will be running a system with 2 graphics cards that won't be released for a year, the hardware you are working on would clearly be a generation ahead of current generation consoles.

Great post as always Squirrel, and I'm ready to agree.

About the bolded though. That makes tons of sense and is probably what is happening at CryTek and in Yerli's head at the moment. But isn't that unfair though to include future hardware and future games and say the PC is easily a generation ahead?

Because the same could be said for consoles. Bethesda is (potentially) developing Fallout 4 for next gen consoles and I can bet my hat that the Xbox 720 will be released in late 2012 and have a GPU that is way faster than a Nvidia GTX 580.