Quick video card question.

[Sofa King Kool]

Everybody is always telling me that games look better on PC's then they do on consoles. But of course that it depends on how good the video card in the computer is.

I am not technical at all, so I'll probably sound like a complete idiot for asking this, but I'll ask anyway. Will my "ATI Radeon X1600 Pro" give me better graphics then my 360? I'm assuming no, because I have Quake 4 for the PC and I can't run the game on the highest setting. I just thought I'd ask.

[Vinny]

Well, it depends. PC games continually require newer hardware whereas consoles are stuck with what they have for 4-5 years. And the 360's GPU is like a X1900XTXTXT (yes, I meant that) so it's quite a bit more powerful. It's only being tapped so the graphics don't seem very good yet.

My GPU can outrun anything on the 360 (and run at 1600x1050) but soon it'll be outdated. It won't be able to handle something like Gears of War unless I upgrade the GPU.

In short: it depends on your PC hardware.

[Dezuria]

I've seen it said that the Xbox 360 is comparable to a Radeon X1800 but, that's still just a guess. Naturally, PC games look great not only because of the video cards, but because of the super clarity of a monitor, especially compared to a standard TV.

[Sofa King Kool]

Ok, I'll never really understand how it all works, but that still helped. I started this thread because I was trying to decide if I should get Gears of War for my PC or my 360. I'm defiently gunna get it for my 360 after what you guys just told me. Plus, I'm getting an HDtv, so it gunna look phenomenal on the 360.

Thanks guys.

[Dezuria]

Gears of War looks pretty graphics intensive, and probably won't run too great on a X1600.

[Vinny]

Gears of War won't run on anything less than a Core 2 Xtreme and 1950XTX/7950GX2 I'm guessing. On a computer, a lot of the processing power is lost to OS/background apps and there isn't anything with more than 2 cores at the moment (whereas the 360 has six).

[Photomotoz]

Gears of War won't run on anything less than a Core 2 Xtreme and 1950XTX/7950GX2 I'm guessing. On a computer, a lot of the processing power is lost to OS/background apps and there isn't anything with more than 2 cores at the moment (whereas the 360 has six).

Actually it only has 3(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360).

I doubt that Gears of War would require that high end of a computer. That would exculde %95 percent of people who would buy the game. I am sure you could run it on a 2.8 P4 with a X1600 at the lowest settings.

Anyway, PC hardware is actually much more powerful than consoler hardware on average. The difference is that for a console a game can be optimized to hell and back for performance. On a PC they have to accomodate different processors, graphic cards, sound cards, RAM configurations and a mulitude of other combiations. I mean imagine having to make something that works on 1000s of computers. It would be impossible to make it run as well as on a system that only has one truew configuration. So if you were to just make Gears of War for your system only then it would run just as well.

[tomfoolery]

It's not just the video card but all the parts combined that make stuff rule. The more ram you have the better the game will play, the video card(of course) has tons to do with how it looks, processor speed(is it overclocked also), even the sound card could cause issues if the drivers are not properly updated. I know the X-fi's were having issues but the latest drivers seem to have resolved all of that(i never had any issues with it). My recomendation is an eVga nvidia based 7900gt ko. I bought that about 2 months ago and I've played Fear, Prey, HL2, etc and they are all played on the highest settings with 16x ansiotropic and 4x-8x anti aliasing. Certain games are meant for ATI or Nvidia also so check that out.

With all that said, there isn't a console that will ever look as good as a PC game can. Consoles just don't have the power under the hood to make it happen. They still look great, but it's not as good as the PC.

T. Foolery

[Dezuria]

"Certain games are meant for ATI or Nvidia also so check that out."

That's just wrong. :) Games are meant for Direct3D! (or sometimes OpenGL..) ;)
No game is "meant" to be played on a specific brand. When you see an Nvidia or ATI advertisement on a game, it's just that. Advertisement.

Sometimes games will run a little better on one brand over another, but it's usually a very small difference, and changes with driver releases.

What sense would it make to a company to alienate half of their customers, by making games for specific brands? Anyone remember 3Dfx and Glide?

[espy605]

PC games ran on top of the line gamer hardware will almost always look better than their console counterparts. However, this is because PC parts are constantly updated and consoles are set with a specific hardware configuration until the next console release. The release of the Xbox360 is the closest a console has ever come to the PC's level.

However, consoles are much more cost-effective, user-friendly, usually less glitchy, and personally, I find more fun playing in front of a TV than a monitor.

[Dezuria]

^^ Nothing beats sitting on a cozy couch in front of a nice big screen. :)

[Photomotoz]

Well I guess this thread went into a small PC Vs. Console discussion.

One thing people forget is that it is not very hard at all to hook up your PC to your TV. Although it will not good as good a monitor unless it is HD. And you can hook up console controllers to a PC to play any games. You can have the best of both worlds with just a little bit of work.