Bottleneck or not???

[CoolBarn]

Hi guys,

I have read a number of posts where people with older CPUs who wish to upgrade their graphics cards have asked which card they should get, and many people's replies have run along the lines of "you should upgrade your CPU before the graphics card because the CPU is the bottleneck in your system". My question in response to this is how then does the X-Box generate such great graphics with "only" a 733 MHz processor? In one post a guy who had a 733 PIII was told to upgrade to AT LEAST 1 GHz before even contemplating buying a high-end graphics card. Why is this???

(I apologize if this question has been asked before, I did search the community before I posted and there were no responses to the phrase "x-box").

Thanks for your time.
Cool Barn.

 

[bront]

The X-box, and similar systems, are specificly designed to avoid the system bottlenecks between the CPU and the GPU, therefore getting more out of the CPU. It is not burdened memory and system wise by having to run any true OS in the background beyond something very rudimentry programed in ROM. Also, any game can be programed with GPU specific commands much easier than todays games, which have to worry about people with less than state of the art GPUs. Also, a video game consol only needs to produce 30 FPS, as that's about what a TV refreshes at.


Put that all togeather, and you get the reasons why a consol can do more with less than a PC.

On the video card front, it realy does depend on what card you want to buy, and what your system specs are. There is no point anymore to be running a PCI video card, as most cards use over AGP 2x, which is at least 4x faster than a PCI slot, in addition to being a dedicated BUS for the card. It also depends on the CPU, and the old video card. Any CPU under about 600MHZ I would recomend upgrading over the video card easily in just about every case. At the same time, if your card isn't even DX7 ready, (TNT, and I think TNT2) you probably want to think about upgrading the video card. In cases where both apply, you're probably best thinking about a completely new system. It depends on too many factors to give a blanket answer though.

Hope this helps.

I want to be your Opteron... Why don't you call my name - Peter Gabriel?

 

[CoolBarn]

Thanks for your reply Bront. This leads to my next question then, that all things considered (os, running processes, etc) what specs would a pc currently need to outperform an x-box? Is this possible, or are there too many variables/too difficult to say?

Thanks for your time

 

[flamethrower205]

I'm not totally sure, but I guess in terms of 3d rendering and opengl in games, my 1.2Ghz, Quadro DCC pc would beat an XBOX.

Sig of the week.

 

[CoolBarn]

How does the Quadro DCC compare to a Ti 4600?

 

[williamc]

it doesnt...its a pro ed development and rendering card with drivers that are not optimized for gaming...

TI 4200 and up and radeon 8500's are technicall superior to xbox. In a practical sense however, xbox's halo will will always loook just slightly "prettier" when viewed on a HDtv since its made just one specific piece of hardware they could super optimize it. However, the latest PC graphics are capable of technically much more advanced environments and more interactive and larger worlds.

nVidiot: Message board Troll employed by nVidia to terrorize aTidiots.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by williamc on 05/01/02 10:10 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[bront]

since its made just one specific piece of hardware they could super optimize it.

Exactly.

You do have the advantage of a hi-res monitor with the PC, but there is no universal hardware, so things aren't written to aim at the high end and use every single capability in general.

I want to be your Opteron... Why don't you call my name - Peter Gabriel?