did people still think nextbox use 6670?
wat

PC graphics are held back by consumers. No developer will risk a big budget game with insane graphics, because current consoles might not be able to run them, thus you cannot make them multiplat and lose profits and secondly there are not enough high end PC owners.

I love these kinds of excuses by PC gamers... 5 generations of video cards since the launch of the 360 more than 6 years ago, and the best the PC can do visually is Battlefield 3.  At this point in every previous generation, there was absolutely no comparison between the latest PC games and their current gen console counterparts... they weren't even in the same league.   Go back and compare PS1/N64 games to PC games circa 2000, or PS2/GC/Xbox games to PC games in 2005/6... it's like night and day.

Now... even the best looking PC games are nearly identical to their versions on 6 year old console hardware, unless you have the latest bleeding edge cards in your rig or dual-GPUs of older cards.  Crysis 2, Witcher 2, Battlefield 3... games that a generation ago would have all been PC-exclusive or ported to next-gen consoles at least a year or two after their initial releases are able to run just fine on 6 year old hardware with still awe-inspiring visuals and no impact on gameplay.  Console exclusives like the Gears and Uncharted series routinely blow most PC-exclusive games out of the water in terms of visuals.

Don't worry though, I'm sure in the next year or two PC gamers will finally have games to justify their $1,000-plus rigs' existences, while us console gamers continue to enjoy the same games with almost negligible differences in visuals, all for around $300.

yup consoles are holding back current PC games due to developers being able to sell more copies if they design games for all platforms. Not sure why you decided to write 3 paragraphs to restate what was said in the post you quoted tho.

Of course PC hardware has never been more advanced than consoles, than it is today. It's just these days that power is used to drive 3 1080p+ monitors at 60fps with high levels of AA etc rather than much higher detail assets as the cost of creating 2 totally different sets of assets (one for console and low-mid PC and another for high end PC) is just prohibitive.

Look, Mark Rein hints of Kepler (Nvidia's brand new GPU) level performance in the next gen consoles. That's many times faster than a Radeon 6670 (whereever that stupid rumor came from).

Now for the Xbox 3 to literally be as fast as Kepler would mean it 's 12 times faster than the X360 which is unlikely to happen because of the high power consumption, but it still suggests there's hope we could see the 10 times increase in graphics that we all want, at least from the PS4.

Because of the line "there was a brief implication that the mystery NVIDIA Kepler card's performance would be matched by whatever the console platform holders are working on now." and because of previous rumours about PS4 being more powerful than Xbox 3.

Yes, clear rumors from developers. Dont' have the links though, sorry.

Bit unfair. While I prefer console gaming myself, it's common knowledge core assests for games these days are based on console hardware which makes sense from a business point of view. So a gaming rig can only power past the limitations of host hardware and then it's up to the developer to make incremental or significant improvements to take advantage of a PC gaming rig. When they do though, the graphics are way better. BF3 on Ultra or Crysis 2 with DX11 + hi res texture pack and everything on Ultra look far superior than their console counterparts. Plus the frame rate is doubled with no screen tear to boot.

But I do see your point. Even if inferior, consoles have shown they can produce the PC goods that as you correctly point out wasn't really possible in previous gens. I bought a gaming rig over a year ago and to be honest I'm perfectly happy with my 360 and PS3 including the multiplats. It's just a nicer place to be for gamers and you can be playing in about a minute or two rather than waiting for everything to boot up and all the other hassle PC's bring in general.

Precisely what I've been saying. Development and hardware technology cycles , market branching and the overall fickle nature of the customer is forcing the market to move faster. The paradox in the 7th gen has been that even with tech cycles going ever faster, the development fazes have been prolonged a great deal. This won't do for the 8th generation, they need more opensource 3rd party out-of-the box tech to eliminate development time and cost.

I fully expect a lot more outsourcing from the likes of Epic, Valve, Crytek, Bioware, Naughty Dog and a few other monoliths (ND might not technicalyl be a "monolith" but is likely to become a lot more relevant in this regard in the 8th gen).

Thats not what i said about Bethesda. All I was saying that if the PC was the lead platform for Skyrim, we probably would have seen better visuals on the high end scale. At this point in time, the pc versions have increased res, a few added effects, some more AA, higher levels of AF. Nothing groun breaking as we see in the witcher 2. If you cant see how this is a result of consoles then I dont know...

Crysis 2 on the other users advanced graphics techniques, and looks amazing on PC as well as console. But like i said the entire game was designed for console. Again, limited by consoles.

Battlefield 3...are you serious??? This is one of the best examples I can think of where game design was negatively impacted.