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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Console Graphical Power Ranking

DS should be below N64
Saturn should be below Playstation
3DS should be below Xbox and GameCube.
Genesis should be below SNES.
GBA should be above the SNES (you should see some of the things they were able to pull off on the GBA.)
Idk why Game Gear is above master system while master system is below Gameboy Color when they share the exact same hardware with the only difference being a higher color palette on the game gear. They should practically be right next to each other.



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PS3 and Xbox 360 are very tricky.

The GPU of the 360 was way better than the one in the PS3, but the latter had the Cell architecture which could help out and theoretically more than even the playing field. As this was very labor-intensive it wasn't done to the extent SONY probably hoped for. As a result third-party titles tended to look slightly better on a 360, but first-party titles from SONY tended to look even better.

As for the rest of the list, Mster System should be above Game Gear. It's the practically same hardware (both have the same Zilog Z80 CPU, the same sound processor, the same 8kb RAM/16kb VRAM and 32 colors onscreen, the only real difference is that the Game Gear has a larger color palette to choose from, but still only 32 colors at the same time on screen like the SMS), but the Home console outputs at a higher resolution (256*192 compared to 160*144), so the Master System should win.



it is very complicated. God of War 3 on the PS3 seems better than any game on the Switch. I even have doubts if the Switch would be able to play that game.



You got the top 8 right, I think (except one could add Xbox One S, which is actually marginally stronger than the base Xbox One).

When it comes to Wii U, PS3 and Xbox 360, I would say they rank:

Xbox 360
Wii U
PS3

Despite all the hype around the cell processor, the Xbox 360 outperformed the PS3 in almost every single multiplatform release, even in late releases, such as MGS V. I know people like to point to PS3 exclusives to demonstrate how it was more powerful, but I think that is a completely hypothetical arguments, as those games weren't on the 360. It is also not obvious to me that the best looking games that generation were PS3 exclusives.
The Wii U is a bit more tricky, as it does have some improvements over X360 and PS3, but the processor is probably worse than the 7th gen consoles, multiplats were mostly worse than at least the X360 versions, while somewhat on par with the PS3. More optimized ports like Bayonetta were probably best on the Wii U though. I would guess Wii U is pretty much tied with X360, with PS3 worse than both. The Switch is clearly stonger than all three though given the ports it got.

While the order of the 6th gen is obvious: Xbox > Gamecube > PS2 > Dreamcast, where the Wii, 3DS and Vita and PSP fit in is less trivial. My best guess is that the PSP is still weaker than the Dreamcast, but stronger than 5th gen consoles. The Wii is essentially an overclocked Gamecube, which would still put it below the Xbox (I have also seen more impressive things on the Xbox compared to Wii), 3DS is probably between Gamecube and PS2 and Vita is stronger than the Xbox.
So:
Vita
Xbox
Wii
Gamecube
3DS
PS2
Dreamcast
PSP

DS, PS1, N64 and Saturn are the most difficult to rank. N64 is probably stronger on paper, but the shortcomings it had because of the cartridge size meant the textures are lower resolution compared to the others. DS games look like shit, but the screen quality is part of the reason. I think Super Mario 64 looks better on N64, but Mario Kart DS looks better than Mario Kart 64. The Saturn and PS1 have better textures and performance than most N64 games, and I actually prefer how they look. Comparing multiplats, the Saturn usually did better than PS1 in 2D games,  but the PS1 usually had better looking 3D games. However, I am still not sure if PS1 was actually better at 3D. Saturn used quads as polygons instead of triangles, which made character models look a bit rough, but it did have less of a texture warping issue and the extra processor allowed for infinite 2D plains which was a decent compensation when draw distance would otherwise be a problem. N64 certainly had better looking polygon models than the competition though. So all in all, this is probably how they should be ranked:

N64
DS
Saturn
PS1

The rest of your list seems correct, except the SNES is stronger than Genesis.



I'd put the SNES above the Genesis. It had multiple graphical advantages, including:

- A larger color palette (32,768 vs. 512 for the Genesis, a 64x difference)
- More on-screen colors (256 vs. 64 for the Genesis, a 4x difference)
- More on-screen sprites (128 vs. 80 for the Genesis)
- Larger sprites (64x64 max size vs. 32x32 for the Genesis)
- Sprite scaling/rotating via Mode 7

The Genesis did have the advantage of being able to render large numbers of sprites with less slowdown thanks to its faster CPU, but in most respects the SNES was just a beefier system in terms of graphical prowess. The SNES's capabilities didn't always translate to better-looking games, and the Genesis had some stunning games in its own right, but on average the SNES seemed to pull off better-looking games on a more consistent basis.



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I'd separate New 3DS from og 3DS. New 3DS can stay where it is, while og 3DS would be below Gamecube. The og 3DS can possibly push more advanced shaders going by Resident Evil Revelations, but otherwise it's closer to PS2/Dreamcast level that XBox/Gamecube level. I'm not sure it's even as powerful as the PS2.



TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine seems worth listing just narrowly behind Genesis. It still had a few important games and the obvious impressive shmups. Very impressive system. Just launched late outside of Japan.

After that 3DO was the very technically impressive, but very expensive system.
There were a few games that started on 3DO that didn’t port as well to Playstation as you would expect while they got to grips with it during the first year.

Saturn I have no idea where to rank, but lighting effects in smaller play spaces could seem way beyond what the other consoles could do.



It's a bit complicated to comment on DS vs. N64.

DS games generally look way better than N64 games when upscaled but natively they ran at a lower resolution (192p vs. 240p). Though the N64 CPU was, on paper, some 50% faster than the DS's, that would've meant it was faster than a Pentium while the opposite was true and it was not even close.

I think the DS was deliberately designed to be a portable N64, so there's that to consider.



 

 

 

 

 

Why not create a log graph of the power of the consoles for a graphical representation?



Shadow1980 said:

I'd put the SNES above the Genesis. It had multiple graphical advantages, including:

- A larger color palette (32,768 vs. 512 for the Genesis, a 64x difference)
- More on-screen colors (256 vs. 64 for the Genesis, a 4x difference)
- More on-screen sprites (128 vs. 80 for the Genesis)
- Larger sprites (64x64 max size vs. 32x32 for the Genesis)
- Sprite scaling/rotating via Mode 7

The Genesis did have the advantage of being able to render large numbers of sprites with less slowdown thanks to its faster CPU, but in most respects the SNES was 

Shadow1980 said:

I'd put the SNES above the Genesis. It had multiple graphical advantages, including:

- A larger color palette (32,768 vs. 512 for the Genesis, a 64x difference)
- More on-screen colors (256 vs. 64 for the Genesis, a 4x difference)
- More on-screen sprites (128 vs. 80 for the Genesis)
- Larger sprites (64x64 max size vs. 32x32 for the Genesis)
- Sprite scaling/rotating via Mode 7

The Genesis did have the advantage of being able to render large numbers of sprites with less slowdown thanks to its faster CPU, but in most respects the SNES was just a beefier system in terms of graphical prowess. The SNES's capabilities didn't always translate to better-looking games, and the Genesis had some stunning games in its own right, but on average the SNES seemed to pull off better-looking games on a more consistent basis.

Didn't translate to better looking games because it wasn't straight forward better, anyone saying so is just fanboying

Genesis had higher resolution 

More flexible sprites (snes could have 2 sizes at a time genesis could do any configuration) , oam tables were also really restricted 

Genesis had a 512x512 sprite table snes had 2 128x128 tables 

Both were limited to 15 color sprites and in practice snes games rarely if ever had 256 colors on screen during gameplay

Sound was more of gems (the Genesis sound driver) sucked , badly,  snes sounded like over filtered and echoey

Graphically the snes couldn't do what the Genesis was good at and the Genesis couldn't do what the snes was good at



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