XBOX 360 - Perspectives

Hey lads. Got about an hour to kill before I have to hit the road to head to a country race track [horses] for a few pints of the good stuff and a bet or two. I know we normally talk politics etc but well I wanted to ask you guys anyway.

Call me a dumb ass, and I am a dumb ass, particularly when it comes to hardware, and tell me that I am stupid for thinking that the XBOX console coming out near Christmas will make my new pc that I want to purchase within the month - the same specs for a machine that I have been salivating over for the last 5 years - look horribly obsolete? I am a little concerned by Toms independent view on the new console machine: 3.4 GHZ x 3 for cpu architecture etc makes me think that any pc I put together now will look old hat when thrown up next to my nephew's new, shiny, slick-white-faced games machine.

For some its porn, for others its booze, and for the lucky few its surfing in a clear blue ocean all day, but for me its pc gaming that I've come to know as one of my favoured hobbies and 90% of my time on pcs (apart from work) is spent chilling out with a good strategy game.

That said, do you guys think it foolish to buy at the moment? Will there be a quantum leap in pc power from Intel and AMD that I might miss if I shell out a small fortune now? Its the old Golden rule isn't it with pcs: todays best is mediocre at best in 6 months time.

Any perspectives?

<b><font color=green> "I dont get heart attacks MothFu#@er, I give em'" Jim Brown. </b> </font color=green>

Hold off for Dual Cores at least. Those will promise tremendous performance increases once developpers figure out how to assign tasks to each core. It is amazing what they can already do in video editing. Have you checked the Athlon 64 X2 and Pentium D articles out from THG? If you didn't, go now. It is amazing and has tons of potential.

So I say wait for those. They should be priced fairly competitively, so you can expect the A64 X2 4200+ to be priced for the mainstream.

Video card wise, well, if you want, wait up on the new generation. You'll basically get almost the exact same video card as the XBox 360 (if you go ATi), though it likely is even more strong as the PC version.

No one knows yet how far these consoles will go in capabilities. We do know the specs are beyond today's PCs, for sure. 3 PowerPC cores in multithreading mode, at a whopping 3.2GHZ (which is WAY beyond a G5!) each, is nothing to laugh at. It's probably over twice faster than an Athlon 64 FX-55. But it has to be used well first, to be worthy.

But then again, it all boils down to whether the PC feeling is better for a certain game genre and console for another. Do you feel comfortable playing strategy games in your living room with a badly positionned keyboard extension to the XBox 360, or even using a controller? Or do you prefer the screen up close, keyboard on your desk and mouse near you, with full control in strategy games?
Just like you would tend to prefer playing adventure and 3rd person shooter games on consoles because of the easier control and flexibility in 3D movement. Also, party games, like Mario Party, are still awesome console games, because they reunite your friends in one room to have fun. That's still an element that no developper should ever forget, hopefully. The console experience is not for the user alone, but his surrounding too. Nintendo seems to succeed in that everytime a new console is launched.

So while there is a good chance the new consoles WILL be stronger than PCs, it doesn't mean anything regarding what YOU make of your gaming experience.

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I have to admit the Cell CPU would be amongst the most interesting ones to try for such. 8 CPUs in one console.

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Fantastic advice gentlemen, and I thankyou for it. It was interesting to read and educational all at the same time.

Whats ridiculous for me is that I have waited, and waited, and waited to build my new dream machine. You keep telling yourself to wait just that little bit longer to get a better deal all round and then bingo: another six months to a year flows by and you're stuck using a P3 800 with a Riva Tnt2 Pro vid card [I feel like a downright fool putting the word 'Pro' next to 'Riva Tnt2'].

But whats another 6 months? Thanks again for the input, guys.

<b><font color=green> "I dont get heart attacks MothFu#@er, I give em'" Jim Brown. </b> </font color=green>

*GASP*


...

*silence in the audience*

You...................................


</font color=blue><b><font color=red>HERETIC!!!!!!</font color=red></b>

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The <b><A HREF="http://snipurl.com/blsb" target="_new"><font color=red>THGC Photo Album</font color=red></A></b>, send in your pics, get your own webpage and view other members' sites.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Eden on 05/14/05 10:28 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

It's interesting Microsoft is tooting 1 TF of processing power with 3 cores at 3.2GHz. However the Cell processor prototype they were showing off for the PS3 was running at 4GHz and has 9 cores (kinda, 1 main core and 8 SPEs) had only 256GFs of processing power. Kinda weird no? I can't see this PowerPC derivative being that much more powerful than the Cell...

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