For all the years I've been gaming, all I cared about was that my console plays games.

Now in this gen, there's all this tech talk that the devs talk and users talk about regarding the PS3, X360, PC, etc and I want to know what they're talking about. But the thing is, I know NOTHING about Console Tech so I have no clue what they say.

So if you know a lot of this stuff, could you help me out by answering my questions? Here are some of my questions below:

What is 30 fps vs 60 fps? Why does framerate matter when it comes to graphics? I hear devs talk how games will look better at 30 fps than 60 fps. For example, John Carmack said that Rage runs at 60 fps but Doom 4 will look much better because it's 30 fps.

I don't know how high PC game framerates can go but I hear that 120 fps is possible? Why can't Consoles have the same tech as PCs?

What's a CPU and GPU?

What's the Cell in the PS3?

What's the difference between pre rendered and in game scenes?

These might seem simple questions but I don't know anything about this stuff. Like literally nothing. I may not be a dumbass when it comes to general knowledge, academics, etc but I've just never been able to find out what all this console tech stuff is.

So if you could help me out, it'll be greatly apprciated

30 Frames Per Second and 60 Frames Per Second refer to the number of images a console/computer throws onto the screen every second (as any video you ever see is just a series of images rapidly displayed to trick the brain into seeing motion).

30 Frames Per Second is fine for almost any console game as long as the game is consistently locked at 30FPS.  Most PC gamers would prefer higher than 30FPS especially for shooters.

Consoles have to have one standard set of specifications so that developers can make games for them with some surity.  So while consoles might start out powerful, PC's quickly outstrip them as parts are upgraded over time, but consoles stay the same until the generation changes.

A CPU is a Central Processing Unit that does an awful lot of the hard yards in computing and making the game you're playing come together.  A GPU is a Graphics Processing Unit that has more to do with processing and displaying the image that the CPU prepared.

The CELL is just a type of CPU.

Pre-rendered scenes are almost like videos already prepared and put straight on your game disc.  You could almost say that for the time you're watching the pre-rendered scene, your console is just a DVD player.  But an in-game or in-engine render is one done on the fly by the CPU and GPU, and generally won't look as good, or take up as much space on the disc.

Thanks for the answers starcraft.

But could you answer why graphics at 30 fps will look better than 60 fps?

Will it be possible for next gen consoles to be native 60 fps and still look very good with the graphics?

When we install data onto our harddrives, what exactly happens? So basically why does loading become faster, etc?

It can't. As far as I know our eyes apparently can barely regester over 60 frames a second. if something clocked in at 120 frames a second it would be so fluid it's like real life. The more frames a second the better. Technically a game running at a solid 60 frames a second is going to look better then one running at 30 fps.

The Playstation cell proccessor is an additional proccesor most often used as a replacement for its inferior GPU. I don't know too much about the cell other then the fact that Sony invested millions in the technology and that today its what seperates the X-Box 360/Wii from the PS3. Both the 360 and Wii use PowerPC instead of Sony's Cell processing power. Essentially the cell processor is made up of seven microprocessors..... well since you don't understand the console tech me using technical language and trying to explain it would be hard.

Long story short Sony wanted the PS3 to pack some serious punch so together with IBM and Toshiba they created what they though was the ultimate processor, called the cell processor. While Nintendo and Microsoft used the PowerPC.

Well it's just that I hear that statement a lot. Like even when Gears of War 3 was announced, Cliffy B said that Epic chose to stick with 30 fps because of the graphics. Or maybe every devs opts for the 30 fps on consoles because console tech isn't good enough yet to maintain 60 fps with amazing graphics?

So I get that the Cell is an extra processor and so is the Cell the primary reason why the PS3 used to and still sometimes get crappy ports from the X360 version? Is that why Devs find it harded to develop for the PS3?

Because having 60 FPS while having good graphics require more power and weight on the system than to have 30 FPS ,its a limitation issue, not anything else.

on consoles, if you want 60 FPS you have to sacrifice a bit of the graphics , because the console wont handle it and will result in crashing or loss of FPS.

as for CPU and GPU, to put it simple and to understand it more.

CPU = the system's Calculator, it calculates every bit of the things that happen in the game, such as AI

GPU = the systems Graphical memory , the better the GPU the better the textures

the Cell is a CPU model.

this is a prerendered ( Or in other words CGI)

This is In Game

Difference is the CGI one is premade , its just a video file that plays when you reach some point in the game, while the non CGI one is a series of animations in a "Cut Scene" that is made on the fly by the system.

When devs say about the 30/60 fps thing they mean they couldn't get all of the effects, textures and quality they wanted if they ran at 60fps. 60fps will look better, but going to 30 and getting a better-looking game is often preferable.

The difference between 30 and 60 is usually a tiny difference in perception but is double the workload on the graphics chip (GPU). 120Hz probably wouldn't look different to 60Hz for 95% of people but would again be double the work. The reason PC have 120Hz monitors is so they can have 3D glasses tech and give 60fps to each eye.

Console CPUs and GPUs are 'worse' than PC tech because they are fixed in a point in time (2005/2006)  in order to maintain compatibility, and because their max power consumption is MUCH lower than a PC (Wii = 18W, average PC = 300W, gaming PC can be up to 500/600W real-world consumption). So naturally the Wii's CPU has to use a lot less power and therefore performs a lot less. Like how netbooks can't match a desktop.

Moore's Law, in PCs, is that the transistor count doubles every two years for CPUs and GPUs (I'm paraphrasing but that's the effect). This means that if you have a 2-core CPU in 2006, you can probably have a 4-core CPU in 2008 and an 8-core CPU in 2010 of the same kind (again not quite, because the core is only a part of the CPU). Same thing for the GPU. Performance scales relatively well with core and GPU-shader counts.

So, if a new console was made today, it could have about eight times the performance of the X360 or PS3 (both CPU and GPU) for the same power consumption. If companies were willing to let a console pull 300W then it would be even faster like a desktop PC.

If you want any of that further explained, just ask, there's a lot to say about CPUs and GPUs in particular.

The thing about 30fps vs 60fps (on consoles anyway) is that 60fps requires a lot more power to support.  So, a 60fps game will be smoother, etc. but will feature less fancy effects, typically, than a 30fps game, as a 30fps game has more free resources for fancy effects.

So, Modern Warfare, for example, is 60fps, very smooth animations and looks nice, but, if you really study it, you'll see lot's of fairly low resolution textures, etc. and fairly frugal use of particle effects and the like.  The argument is that Modern Warfare is fast paced and its more important it is smooth vs looking top flight amazing.

So when Epic say they're going for 30fps in Gears what they are saying is that, due to the somewhat slower pace and stronger focus on graphics to wow you in Gears, they are going to settle for 30fps but much better textures, effects, etc. than say Modern Warfare.  Another example would be Killzone 2, which is 30fps and loaded with fancy effects.

As consoles are all the same and have one specification basically if you want more fps you have to loose other fancy graphical features.  Therefore, from a pure eyeball candy perspective, a 30fps game can be argued to look better in terms of if you stood still and looked around at the textures, etc. vs a 60fps game.

Personally, my view in for SP campaigns and games where you have time to look around, etc. 30fps with the best textures, etc. the developer can manage is better than 60fps, whereas for online, fast paced shooters 60fps is probably better.

On PC, as others have noted, it's all about having more of everything if you have a powerful enough PC, so say 60fps plus all the fancy effects, etc.

Make sense?

Sorry for the following long post but I hope it answers all your questions.

What is 30 fps vs 60 fps? Why does framerate matter when it comes to graphics? I hear devs talk how games will look better at 30 fps than 60 fps. For example, John Carmack said that Rage runs at 60 fps but Doom 4 will look much better because it's 30 fps. 

FPS stands for Frames Per Second and is defined as the number of “screenshots” displayed on the screen every second. 60 FPS requires the hardware to create twice as many frames every second as 30 FPS does. This means at 60 FPS the hardware only has half the time it would in developing a screenshot as it would at 30 FPS. The time boundary causes a limit to the amount that can be put into a single frame which is why console devs often opt for 30 FPS over 60 FPS when they want to improve the graphics of their games. This is why John Carmack said Doom 3 (30 FPS) will look better than Rage (60 FPS).

I don't know how high PC game framerates can go but I hear that 120 fps is possible? Why can't Consoles have the same tech as PCs?

Yes, PC’s can have insane framerates given they have powerful enough parts. Consoles are designed to have a single hardware platform so that devs and consumers all have a consistent experience. Imagine buying a 360 or PS3 at launch and then not being able to play games made 3 years after launch as the hardware was made more powerful. That would be horrible for devs and consumers. So when a console comes out it is generally in the ballpark of current PC tech. Over time, however, it becomes outdated. So when devs get a game to run at a solid 30 FPS on consoles it can generally be played on a PC with higher settings while still at a higher framerate.

A good analogy is a car. Say we have a 2010 Ford Fusion. Somebody purchases one early in the year and someone else purchases one later in the year. Imagine what the guy who bought it earlier in the year would be thinking if the end of the year model (for the same year) was more powerful and safer than the one he bought? It would make things harder for consumers to differentiate what exactly they’re buying as well as Ford as they’d be constantly producing something different and repairs and customer support would become a nightmare.

What's a CPU and GPU?

CPU: Central Processing Unit. It is responsible for creating a 3D model of a frame while taking many things into consideration including AI, physics, etc.

GPU: Graphics Processing Unit. Once the 3D wireframe is created the GPU takes information such as current lighting sources and textures and basically colors in the wireframe to create the final image to be displayed.

What's the Cell in the PS3?

The Cell is a new CPU architecture first used in the PS3. I believe others have answered this well enough so I’ll leave you to their answers. Plus this post is getting crazy long.

EDIT: Alright. I decided I'll just write this one out too. The Cell is a processor architecture aimed at making scalability better. Non-technically, it means you can put many together fairly easily to improve processing capability. The PS3 has a single Cell CPU which includes 9 parts: 1 Power Processing Element (PPE) and 8 Synergistic Processing Elements (SSE). One of the SSE's is actually disabled so there are actually only 7 that work. This is done because when making the chips it's common to have a few SSE's that don't function properly. So the chip only needs 7 of the 8 to work to be considered a good chip.

The PPE pretty much splits up work between the SPE's and reorganizes it when they're done. The SSE's do the heavy lifting, splitting up AI, physics, geometry, and in some cases basic graphics functions. The 360 in comparison has a processor containing 3 PPE's capable of running 2 threads each (doing 2 calculations on each PPE). However the PPE's and SPE's are different in design and are good at different things which is why the PS3 and 360 both have their strengths and weaknesses.

What's the difference between pre rendered and in game scenes?

Pre-rendered cutscenes are exactly what the name suggests. The process I explained above involving creating an image and coloring it in is known as “rendering”. Pre-, the suffix, means before. Pre-rendered means “rendered before” implying that the footage being displayed is not being processed as it’s being displayed and is rather just a video that was rendered during game development. People have different definitions but for me “in game” typically means that the footage being shown has been created using textures and models you would see while playing the game and is being processed as its being displayed. I differentiate this with “in engine” which I take to mean video that was pre-rendered but used in game textures and models when it was rendered into a video file.

Will it be possible for next gen consoles to be native 60 fps and still look very good with the graphics?

It’s very possible. Right now the standard resolution of output is 720p for “hi-def” games on consoles. 1080p TV’s have a wide enough adoption and current PC GPU’s can output games at this resolution with a ton of effects and post processing without much of a hitch at 60 FPS. As an example, I have an nVidia 9800GTX (about 2 years old now) and I play Borderlands maxed out at 1920x1200 with full AF and all effects on at ~50 FPS no problem.

When we install data onto our harddrives, what exactly happens? So basically why does loading become faster, etc?

When data is being read off the disc the disc is spun. The same is true with hard drives. However current disc technology doesn’t allow for a spin rate that’s as high as that of a hard drive. As a hard drive spins faster it allows for faster data storage and retrieval. If game data is stored on the hard drive loading it takes less time as the data can be retrieved faster than if it was being loaded off a disc.

So I get that the Cell is an extra processor and so is the Cell the primary reason why the PS3 used to and still sometimes get crappy ports from the X360 version? Is that why Devs find it harded to develop for the PS3?

The short answer is yes. However, the Cell is just a part of it. The memory architecture of the PS3 is another part of it. Neither are bad, they’re just different to what people know and are used to.

Feel free to ask any follow up questions or for more detail. I tried to keep it at a top level.