How the PC is making consoles look out of date

[theogt]

This isn't true and there are hundreds of games that prove the "gameplay" isn't the easy part. You are speaking for things you do not know or understand, but we all know thats your expected behavior.

As for the A5 proc being faster than Tegra 2 as you noted in another thread (which I'm not that big a fan anyway) is only minimally true. It preforms better in the Linpack test which is a linear algebra test. (which is why 3D preforms better) On almost all other tests, it doesn't beat the Tegra 2 chip. (which as I said early, I'm not all that impressed with anyhow)

So, the iPad can spin the most polygons or maybe crank out more folding@home results, but that is where it stops.

I'm sure either of them are fine general use or the limited gameplay on these types of devices anyhow. I'm know 90% people I know who have them use them solely as a reader anyhow. (WSJ, NYT, web, email)

I figured you'd post those tests at one point. They've been thoroughly discredited in the tech blogosphere. Just poke around a bit. LOL. Regardless, the iPad 2 renders graphics better and surfs the internet faster. That flies in the face of the Apple-haters creaming all over the Xoom hardware stats. And that's where Apple shines -- getting more out of their hardware because of their mastery over their product. It's a clean, smooth, fast user experience; whereas the Xoom is a glitchy, broken system.

And yes, gameplay is the easy part from a hardware point of view. Learn to read.

 

[Hoofbite]

There are so many more MLG gamers on pc. GO PC

MLG is a joke.

I think it's funny that a group that prides it self on being major league would have to create a subset of rules that not only standardizes gameplay between titles but also excludes a good part of the games such as certain weapons.

 

[YosemiteSam]

I figured you'd post those tests at one point. They've been thoroughly discredited in the tech blogosphere. Just poke around a bit. LOL. Regardless, the iPad 2 renders graphics better and surfs the internet faster. That flies in the face of the Apple-haters creaming all over the Xoom hardware stats. And that's where Apple shines -- getting more out of their hardware because of their mastery over their product. It's a clean, smooth, fast user experience; whereas the Xoom is a glitchy, broken system.

And yes, gameplay is the easy part from a hardware point of view. Learn to read.

Discredited? It's a freaking benchmark test against standard hardware. Who discredited them? AppleFanBoyBlog.com? Probably so.

Call me when you run out of memory loading those 3D games the A5 runs so well. You are well aware that 3D games are generally very memory intensive right? Yep, Blondie. Get your 512M of memory ready.

 

[YosemiteSam]

MLG is a joke.

I think it's funny that a group that prides it self on being major league would have to create a subset of rules that not only standardizes gameplay between titles but also excludes a good part of the games such as certain weapons.

All professional sporting organizations have rules about games. The MLB doesn't allow metal bats and gloves are limited on how big they are. Most professional softball leagues have rules against certain types of metal bats. (Orange Crush for example)

NASCAR has rules about their cars. It's common place, not sure why you are complaining about it. Obvisouly if you don't like it, don't worry about it. You don't have to join them.

 

[theogt]

Discredited? It's a freaking benchmark test against standard hardware. Who discredited them? AppleFanBoyBlog.com? Probably so.

Call me when you run out of memory loading those 3D games the A5 runs so well. You are well aware that 3D games are generally very memory intensive right? Yep, Blondie. Get your 512M of memory ready.

HELLO! McFly! The iPad has been shown to blow the Xoom out of the water on 3D rendering.

Sorry it burns you so bad that Apple created another killer product.

 

[dback]

This isn't true and there are hundreds of games that prove the "gameplay" isn't the easy part. You are speaking for things you do not know or understand, but we all know thats your expected behavior.

As for the A5 proc being faster than Tegra 2 as you noted in another thread (which I'm not that big a fan anyway) is only minimally true. It preforms better in the Linpack test which is a linear algebra test. (which is why 3D preforms better) On almost all other tests, it doesn't beat the Tegra 2 chip. (which as I said early, I'm not all that impressed with anyhow)



So, the iPad can spin the most polygons or maybe crank out more folding@home results, but that is where it stops.

I'm sure either of them are fine general use or the limited gameplay on these types of devices anyhow. I'm know 90% people I know who have them use them solely as a reader anyhow. (WSJ, NYT, web, email)

In general Linpack should not be used to compare two different processing architectures and really only tells you how well optimized your BLAS library is. Every CPU/GPU has some theoretical peak "computing power" in units of FLOPS (floating point operations per second) which depends on a processing unit's internal hardware such as size (and number) of integer registers and processing speed. On a dual-core processor, such as the ARM Cortex-A9 MPcore CPU, each core would have the same theoretical peak and thus the total theoretical peak FLOPS of the dual-core would be twice that of one core.

Achieving these peak levels depends on how well a piece of software exploits a processor's parallelism and how well it utilizes a processors inner hardware. Ideally, for each processor architecture, any mathematical software library should be hand optimized for performance and is often done so by the manufacturers of those processors. For example, AMD has the ACML library, Intel has the MKL library, IBM has their own BlueGene math libraries, etc. There is an open-source BLAS library called GotoBLAS2which is was hand optimized by a scientist who could write assembly as if it were a second language. In it you can see some of the many different kernels for the different processors.

The point of my rambling is that the person who wrote the article that your figure came from really performed a linpack comparison without really giving the full story. The numbers in that table must be a linpack test of the GPU instead of the CPU since the A5 and the Tegra 2 have the same processor. I would suspect that the author who performed that benchmark also used a threaded library for the PowerVR benchmark and a single threaded library for the NVIDIA one.

I am just curious, do you have a link for that table? I would like to read his methodology for his benchmark.

 

[YosemiteSam]

I am just curious, do you have a link for that table? I would like to read his methodology for his benchmark.

I've seen several places with these benchmark results, but here is one of them from PC Mag.

Link to Article

 

[theogt]

I am just curious, do you have a link for that table? I would like to read his methodology for his benchmark.

The results came from a PC Mag article.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,281.../pcmag/breakingnews+(PCMag.com+Breaking+News)

The author was confused by his own results and didn't know what it meant ("What does this mean? I have no idea, but I'm working on it, and I could use your suggestions."). Like I said, others have discredited the article.

 

[dback]

Sounds like this guy just downloaded some benchmark programs for the heck of it without first outlining a comparison strategy. I would agree that the article is not that useful and those results should not be used to credit or discredit any of those processors listed.

The author didn't even list any useful specifications of the processors to be compared and used a lot of speculative language. Must have been running up against a deadline of some sort and just rushed a little bit.

 

[Cythim]

Well you give a good breakdown of why console gaming is simpler and I'd have a hard time proving it wasn't.

But I think the advantages far outweigh the fact that you have to install and update your game. In fact, updates are what makes the games so good.

Cost association is huge as well, despite what the computer lovers around here want you to believe. Over the last 8 years I have spent about $1000 on console hardware and at least three times that on computer hardware and right now my computers are worse than my consoles. I've given up on keeping my computers updated with technology that will become useless in 6 months. The casual gamer, which dominates the market, will prefer the console over the PC because it is cheaper and easier.

 

[tupperware]

My computers usually last me 2 years, at the end of that 2 years my setup might not run the latest and greatest at maximum settings, but the option is there to upgrade if you want.

It's about buying smarter, not more expensive. Usually in your subsequent PC builds many parts can be moved over.

Monitor
Case
Keyboard
Mouse
Hard Drive
CD/DVD Drive
Memory (Sometimes, depends)
Power Supply

So for a new build/upgrade you'll actually purchase:

Motherboard
CPU
GPU

 

[Cythim]

My computers usually last me 2 years, at the end of that 2 years my setup might not run the latest and greatest at maximum settings, but the option is there to upgrade if you want.

It's about buying smarter, not more expensive. Usually in your subsequent PC builds many parts can be moved over.

Monitor
Case
Keyboard
Mouse
Hard Drive
CD/DVD Drive
Memory (Sometimes, depends)
Power Supply

So for a new build/upgrade you'll actually purchase:

Motherboard
CPU
GPU

Memory has evolved quickly over the past several years and typically needs to be upgraded as well. Both of my systems are still running DDR2.

Hard drives and optical drives that are using SATA will need to be upgraded as well. Both of my monitors are old and outdated (one is a CRT for cryin out loud) and I had to upgrade my power supply last time to keep up with the demands of the newer CPUs and GPUs.

For my family to play games together I can either upgrade all of my computers or just make sure I have more than one controller for the consoles.

 

[tupperware]

Memory has evolved quickly over the past several years and typically needs to be upgraded as well. Both of my systems are still running DDR2.

Hard drives and optical drives that are using SATA will need to be upgraded as well. Both of my monitors are old and outdated (one is a CRT for cryin out loud) and I had to upgrade my power supply last time to keep up with the demands of the newer CPUs and GPUs.

For my family to play games together I can either upgrade all of my computers or just make sure I have more than one controller for the consoles.

Yeah I'm not sure where this is headed, I never claimed PC gaming to be cheaper and even noted that it can be more cumbersome if you're not technically inclined, and sometimes even if you are.

Perhaps ease is the only thing a gaming console has over its PC counterpart when it comes to gaming.

 

[Baileyneverfailey]

This whole argument is moot in the context of video gaming, because hardware superiority has never and will never be the driver of success in video games. Just like the Wii outsells all the other systems, and just like Xbox live drives a lot of people to the 360 even though it's not as powerful as the PS3, there are too many variables to consider.