I've recently been considering the idea that a couple years down the road, I may eventually get a PS3(wow, reading back over, that sounded utterly ambiguous) I considered the 360 for a little bit, but the exclusives the PS3 is offering interest me more than the exclusives that the 360 offers (don't really care about sports games and I will NOT do an FPS with dual joysticks)

So the exclusives decided which of the HD consoles my preference goes towards, but it's still going to take a good lineup of both exclusive and multiplatform games to actually push me from considering to actually buying the thing. However, with a lot of multiplatform games, I've heard issues with the PS3 for loading times and framerate.

But that got me thinking; while there isn't much to be done about the loading time, what about the framerate? i don't own an HD TV, so I'm very likely to be playing at 480p maximum. The whole big outcry on HD games is that they often don't display at a full 720p and are just upscaled in order to save processing speed which in turn boosts framerate. So if you turned your display down to 480p, wouldn't that boost your framerate even further?

 

So basically, the question here is "Does PS3 still experienec framerate problems when being played at a 480 resolution?" Specifically, my main focus is on Orange Box and Assassin's Creed

It would probably depend on how the resolution was being handled ...

If you set your XBox 360/PS3 to output at 480p, if the game's native resolution becomes 480p you should see a much more stable framerate; on the other hand if the native resolution remains the same and the XBox 360/PS3 scales the output image to fit your 480p display you will see no improvement.

Don't expect PS360 games to have as good framerates as good Wii games. If there's one thing that Nintendo has definitely shown some standards on, it's framerate. They could have increased graphical detail to the detriment of high and stable framerate, but fortunately they haven't.

A huge number of PS360 games suffer from framerate issues , and I have never seen reports of this varying with output resolution. Orange Box is much better on 360 than PS3 from what I've heard, don't know about Assassin's Creed though.

 

Grey Acumen said: I will NOT do an FPS with dual joysticks) ... Specifically, my main focus is on Orange Box and Assassin's Creed

Huh?

On topic, if you're wondering about something a few years down the road, I would wait until then to begin asking these questions. As it stands now, the 360 handles most multiplats either equally or better than PS3, but the situation is getting better on the PS3's end, so I would ask this again when you're ready to purchase as it might be a different story. 

 

Well I switch my 360 between my SDTV and my PC monitor (I prefer watching DVD's on the TV or playing some games while my PC is still on) and as one example, GTA4 definitely has a much smoother frame rate going for it when on the TV. As for 480p, well I can't make any comment but I imagine you would see quite an improvement on alot of visually hefty titles and it'll still look good too.

Alot of people underestimate 480p when it comes to image quality, but remember it's still outputting at a higher resolution than an SDTV and it does show.

EDIT: Grey Acumen I just re-read over your post and you say you don't own a HDTV, am I right in guessing that you're either going to get one in future or you're one of the few people out there with an EDTV?

I'd hate to come across as patronising but if you're not completely aware - Standard Definition TV and 480p are not the same as each other. Before the term ED (Enhanced Definition) came along, 480p was still considered a HD resolution and you're either going to need an ED or HDTV to display it. 

Thats because no reviewer is playing games in 480p and there are very few 1080p games. Apparently Gran Turismo-p had a tiny difference between 720p and 1080p. So its possible that you will have less framerate issues.
Although they are exaggerated, Assassin's was probably the only game where they annoyed me (mostly because the presentation was so beautiful and flawless otherwise.) The orange box had almost no problems (or at least I didn't notice them over the terrible and unacceptable load times.)

But my take: Cheap LCD Tvs can be purchased for less than a PS3. Try to get one. Its so much sharper and looks so much better. Its hard to get back once you made the switch though.

Onyxmeth said: Grey Acumen said: I will NOT do an FPS with dual joysticks) ... Specifically, my main focus is on Orange Box and Assassin's Creed Huh?

Yeah, I know, seems contradictory, but Orange Box honestly has enough style to it that I'd be willing to set that aside. I'm reffering to pretty much every other FPS

MrMarc said: EDIT: Grey Acumen I just re-read over your post and you say you don't own a HDTV, am I right in guessing that you're either going to get one in future or you're one of the few people out there with an EDTV? I'd hate to come across as patronising but if you're not completely aware - Standard Definition TV and 480p are not the same as each other. Before the term ED (Enhanced Definition) came along, 480p was still considered a HD resolution and you're either going to need an ED or HDTV to display it.

No, I own a standard defenition TV, I just used 480 as the resolution and then attached a p to the end of it since I was considering the idea of running Orange box at 480p instead of 720 or whatever else, since framerate is more important to me than screen size, if I ever did get a HDTV.  For my current situation, I'd still end up using 480i, which shouldn't even need as much video power as 480p. Could be wrong though.

 

 

I believe that a console still processes the game data itself with the native resolution at which it was created, then converts the output image to whatever display setting has been chosen by the user. As such, I don't think a difference in frame rate occurs when lowering the output resolution. I don't know for sure though; maybe I should do some tests...

AC is pretty much the same on both consoles, but Orange box has longer loading times on the PS3. I don't know about frame-rate though. In the gametrailers comparison (LOL), the frame-rate looked to be comprable.

i have had next to no frame rate problems on my PS3, and i run it at 1080i.