Consoles Versus PCs
However, there has always been a debate between what plays best-consoles versus PCs. The difference is greater than you think, with PCs sporting big hard drives and non-standard controllers, consoles placed in living rooms and connected to TVs, computers in 2nd bedrooms with big monitors on desks. Which brings us back to the three consoles now vying for space in our living room, the first almost indistinguishable from the PC, the second straddling the two, and the third the only pure-play gaming console. These are, respectively, Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's Playstation 2, and Nintendo's ATI-powered GameCube.
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| Header Cell - Column 0 | XBOX | PlayStation | GameCube |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 733 MHz Intel | 300 MHz Toshiba | 486 MHz Power PC |
| Graphics Processor Unit | 233 MHz custom chip, jointly developed by NVIDIA and Microsoft | 150 MHz Proprietary | 200 MHz "Flipper" |
| RAM | 64 MB | 32 MB | 43 MB |
| Memory Bandwidth | 6.4 GB/sec | 3.2 GB/sec | 3.2 GB/sec |
| Polygon Performance | 125 M/sec | 66 M/sec | 6-12 M/s |
| Simultaneous Texture Fills | 4 | 1 | N/A |
| Compressed Textures | 4 g/sec | 2.4 g/sec | N/A |
| Storage | 2-5x DVD, 8 GB hard drive, 8 Mb storage card | 4x DVD player, 8 Mb memory card | 1 Mb digicard |
| I/O | 4 Game controllers, Ethernet 10/100 | 2 game Controlle, USB, Firewire, PCMCIA | 4 Game controllers, high speed serial port x 2, high speed parallel port |
| Audio Channels | 256 | 48 | 64 |
| 3D Audio Support in Hardware | Yes (64 3D channels) | No | N/A |
| Midi and DLS Support | Yes | Yes | N/A |
| Hardware Audio Filtering and EQ | Yes | No | N/A |
| DVD Movie Playback | $30 remote accessory required | Yes | No (Optional in Japan_ |
| HDTV Movie Support | Yes | No | N/A |
| HDTV Game Support | Yes | No | N/A |
| Maximum Resolution | 1920 x 1080 | 1280 x 1024 | N/A |
| Maximum Resolution (2X 32 bpp Frame Buffers + z) | 1920 x 1080 | 640 x 480 | N/A |
| Operating System | W2K Kernel | Closed, Sony proprietory | Closed, Nintendo proprietory |
| US Launch Date | 15-Nov-01 | October 2000 | 18-Nov-01 |
| Broadband Enabled | Yes | Future upgrade | Future Upgrade |
Source: Dundee Securities Corp.
