| Monteblanco said: IGN's article is ridiculous as the performance in a customized system is much improved in relation to a PC running Windows. If there is any point in the piece is to show that a poorly designed system with a R700 GPU can outperform the PS3 and 360, something anyone with a little bit of technical knowledge could tell without building that machine. Also, regarding the point of how much the next Sony and Microsoft consoles can improve, I don't think Nintendo is worried about it. They will all be stuck in the TV's 1080p resolution and thus there isn't much more than can do after they reach 60fps, which the R700 will have no trouble in doing with current games. Polygons are not an issue and it would need much more power to improve lighting in a significant way. I doubt they will add more textures because it would be expensive and games would take a lot of disc/download space and will take forever to load in memory. As such, it is more likely that third parties would follow the Nintendo standard and do minimal improvements in Sony and Microsoft's next platforms. |
I think it is simpler than this ...
If you look at the hardware necessary to run a PC game at 1080p @60fps, with the highest level of detail, with 16xAA and 16xAF and then compare the hardware necessary to run the same PC game at 1280x1080 @30fps, with the second highest level of detail, with 8xAA and 8xAF you will see a significant difference in cost and energy consumption; but if you look at how meaningful that difference is to most gamers you will see that they hardly care about the improvements from the better version.
While this does act (to a certain extent) as a disadvantage for Nintendo releasing a system against the HD consoles, if Nintendo positions their console correctly it protects them against anything Sony and Microsoft realistically could release. Basically, it is possible that Sony and Microsoft would have to release a system 1 to 2 years after Nintendo's system at $100 to $200 more than Nintendo's system to have the processing power advantage to have a noticeable improvement in graphics for most consumers.
