The state of computing at the moment

Mr. Smith

Mr. Smith

New member
Consoles have never looked as appealing as they do now.

Nehalem's architecture stops OC'ing by removing the current leverages we exploit (fsb etc) and you can only OC the uber expensive platform/chip. I imagine 45nm OC’d will probably match the new architecture.

GPU's have stopped being revolutionary and become evolutionary.

Major game studios/developers are stopping PC exclusives or simply stopping due to piracy.

I was thinking my rig prob cost me £2K as it is excluding all the random crap I bought from when I started. The whole time my mate has had the 360 and it cost him fook all. I’m starting to think enthusiast PC’s is a mugs game.

Is it just me? Discuss.
 
There is a pro/con discussion to be had on the console scene - what I would say is that when they work - they work very very well.

On the gaming pov, it can depend highly on what sort of gaming ur after.

On the pc side of things, because of the newer things coming out aren`t mindblowingly better than things that have been out for a fair while, previous generation things aren`t as expensive - and, to be fair, put up a heck of a big fight against new stuff. Cpus, gpus - memory!

Add to that that, 1 or 3 games to one side `maybe`, pc games don`t push the boundries imo.

Think ever since the release of the 8800GTX/Ultras, around perhaps the turn of 2007, there`s been a hill of a rize in performance, as opposed to a mountain that we should be used to. And of course we`re still single core gaming.

Taking the top of the line equipment and building a PC the mid of 2008 - I personally don`t think it would SPANK! a pc build on the first day of 2007. It`d beat it for sure.

That aint progress to me.
 
I'm with you in part

The PC platform will continue to drive innovation and development in the game space and platforms build off of this innovation. Processors and GPU's will convinue to evolve and drive up performance. I think you'll find the server market is going to keep being a bigger and bigger driver for this.

Having said that, consoles are awesome for gaming, there's no doubting it. Pick up and play and turn off when you want. Game patches delivered when required automatically and you know that if a new game comes out on your console you won't be having to buy a new GPU just for it. You also don't have to worry about shutting down a game, then a PC, installing (if necessary) is done for you and doesn't take long and some games (UT3 etc) even use a keyboard and mouse if you like

Game Studio's see consoles as revenue generators as:

* The games are much harder to pirate

* Branding is stronger

* Hardware is unchangeable

* They can legitimately be given support from one or two company's without too much abuse (i.e. Sony/Microsoft as opposed to Nvidia/Intel)

* The price is higher for games and stays higher than PC games

* There is a known installed user/target base

I think those are all legitimate reasons for developing for consoles.

Unlike yourself though, who is at odds with slower progress on the PC than it was, I think a slow-down is needed and welcomed and should help win back some developers. It's not going to stop and I'm sure we will be able to overclock the new Intel chips, but it was getting silly for an while there.
 
There`s no longer a *geeky* tag attached to consoles either I don`t think.

I`m almost having the feeling that 1 day Intel/nVidia/AMD - whichever - will announce a new product, as a generation, and there will be zero performance increase. The gain will be smaller scale and less power usage (voltage or ampage). Think we`re almost there now.

Pirate wize I don`t really agree. It used to be true that u had to be heavily `in the know` to get these sorta things, but I can`t agree when I saw gta4 available for download, cracked, a short while b4 the shops had it. Not on any underground source or anything, it was a popular torrentsite. If ur inclined and can find a music cd, u can find the game so it seems. When it "says" cracked btw, I would also assume that means non-mod - as that is what that would regularly mean - no protection. If not, that`s my bad assumption and the phrase shouldn`t be used.

I don`t really think developer`s are or have any feeling on the lack of progress. My personal feeling, as many will know, is that these guys (and I have to admit to meaning all of them) - suck as programmers. Now I know that`s easy to throw out, and I haven`t been in programming for maybe 20 years and haven`t written anything in anger for maybe 10 years. Things move on, and I personally would be chomping at the bit to see how I could use more and more cores that hardware people are throwing at me. Doesn`t work like that tho. Games are made increasingly from packages, the likes of Gamebryo that was used to make Oblivion, there`s about as much programming in that as there is to manage a website. It`s all tools, designs, aides - and to be fair, the newer Gamebryo handles multiple cores - alledgedly, but none of the games made with it use them. Read the book wrong in the compile process ? How long we had cores for now ?

Meh, that`s a rant. I think the software industry on a whole sucks.

Anyway, consoles..

.. I think they`re brilliant tbh.
 
name='Rastalovich' said:
I`m almost having the feeling that 1 day Intel/nVidia/AMD - whichever - will announce a new product, as a generation, and there will be zero performance increase.
Click to expand...

On this day, i will cry. Or go pick on someone to make myself feel better.

I rekon that the issue, if it can so be called, lies in the fact that consoles are no longer simply plug and play games machines. They are in effect PCs, just with a custom OS with the user friendliness (arguably the idiocy rating :rolleyes:) scaled right up.

Look at what X-Box live has done. Collage mates of mine have all come in raving about this and how great it is to be able to keep track of their friends, talk to them over headset, check on their game progress etc. While im sitting there thinking, yeah, I've been doing that for years... with the PC. Just the live experience is just SO much simpler to use than a combo of the programs you need on the PC.

There will always be the console vs PC argument. As there is the console 1 vs console 2 argument. There wont ever really be a winner.

It comes down to the experience you want. If you want to play games alone or with friends, get a console. If you want to be able to game, tweak, upgrade OC, bench, and blow huge piles of money (which, tbh, is awesome fun), go for a PC.

And lastly, ill leave you with this:



someone will appreciate it :p
 
I think consoles seem ok, altho I don't really like using a gamepad for everything. I like fighting games and driving games on a gamepad, but trying to play a FPS, RTS or RPG on a gamepad seems annoying.

It depends on what sort of person you are as to whether you like a xbox over a pc and also what type of games you play.

As Ham said, people who have xbox's think it's all a new thing to be able to track friends and talk to them when ingame. In reality pc gamers have been doing it for years, just some people cba and like things to be simple.

In terms of price for performance looking at it in a gaming only perspective, an xbox or whatever is possibly cheaper and better value.

Personally I try to limit my spending on my pc. I had my previous one for 3years+ and my current one is over 1.5years old, yet I don't really feel the need to upgrade to dx10 etc. On building my current system, I limited myself to £1000 aswell.

When I look at some people's systems, I think that there isn't really much value in their over-priced, over-hyped components.

I guess it depends on personal preference, but there does seem to be a slight shift in the way consoles are viewed. They are really just PC's with limited capability, the main thing is the low price in comparison.

From a developers POV, I guess piracy is not as bad as on a PC because of the console's are on a limited platform. When they start getting games with support for keyboards and mice I think things could change even more.
 
Piracy on PC's is at a ridiculous level and the games consoles just don't have the huge amount of people cracking and using cracked games like the PC does, it's as simple as that. Add to that the fact that PC games sell for 1/2 the price and you've got a less popular format with a developer

Consoles are PC's with all the arsing around taken out and that is not a bad thing, even I find it refreshing to turn on a console, slide in a game and go without faffing around. Xbox Live and PSN are pretty decent too as a mix of social networking, IM-like Xfire-esque and also a single place to download all game demo's/movies etcetc. Deffo not a new idea but it's all there laid out in an easy to access manner in one place. I'm no n00b but its awesome to have everything you want for gaming and entertainment set out in one place, including a very very good Blu Ray player in the PS3's case

I mean we say 'just PCs with limited capability' but that is pretty awesome: we all love our PC's here! The fact that you get almost the same capabilities in the instance of games and graphics in a package from £150-£300 is stupidly good

I won't get rid of a PC and keep my consoles, but my consoles are here to stay, that's for sure
 
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