darkknightkryta said:
As Mark Cerny researched; x86 isn't actually good for games. It's just gotten to a point where it's good enough and not worth investing more money in other technologies. |
Funny joke, x86 has always had an edge over PowerPC in many tasks.
The problem lies completely with cost.
With the origional Xbox, Microsoft used a Celeron/Pentium 3 Hybrid due to cost instead of a full-on Pentium 3, even then the CPU was dwarfed in clockspeed by Desktop chips at the time and Microsoft still paid for the premium in having x86.
Microsoft then went with PowerPC with the Xbox 360 because the Cost/Performance ratio was against x86 at the time. - Back then you didn't have high performance x86 cores that would cost anywhere from $30 - $60 that would fit into a console.
Both consoles were launched where low-end x86 CPU's weren't common place. - Then came the Netbook and Tablet revolution with cheap-to-manufacture Atom and Brazos "Good enough" processors, AMD followed Brazos up with Jaguar just before this generation was about to kick off.
For the first time in console history x86 was viable in a Price/Performance/Power ratio to drop into a console all thanks to Netbooks, Tablets and low-end laptops, but don't kid yourself, the next generation consoles CPU's aren't going to be spectacular in any performance metric just like the previous generation.
Remember the PowerPC CPU's the Xbox 360 and PS3 uses are low IPC, In-order architectures and are thus low cost solutions, perfect for a cost sensitive device.
They provided adequate performance relative to Intel and AMD at the time, but they never out-performanced processors like the Core 2 Quad Q9700 which despite being 7-8 years old... Can still run every console port just fine today with better image quality and a "bloated OS" with other applications all at once.
