Ok, let me stop you here. This is a pointless exercise. Comparing how the two stack up against each other on paper may seem nice, but in PRACTICE, the 8600 will never give you the performance you need to compete with a console. End of.




I'd be very reticent doing this. As I said before, you HAVE to maintain your PC, especially if you want to use it for gaming. Anyone who comes to you to build them a computer will ultimately put you on their Tech Support list.


Mad Cat

Yeah, I know my current budget PC could eat the PS2 for breakfast. My next PC, in a few years, will probably do the same for the current next gen consoles.

If I were going to get a console I'd probably get the WII; I'm much more interested in it's alternative approach to gaming than I am with the other consoles' horsepower and shiny paint jobs.

With Crysis, yes, but I don't think the DirectX 10 cards are having as much troubles with BioShock or other DirectX 10 games - Crysis was essentially designed to push DirectX 10 to its limits. Other games should work better.



Not very often. Every few months worst case, every few years best case. I do happen to value stability, I don't choose hardware that crashes, and I choose hardware that will last me a while.



Despite my attempts to compare OEM computers to the consoles, they are actually generally pretty bad. My parents were getting slowdowns and crashes all the time with an OEM computer. I'll give you that.

My parents have suffered a lot of crashy OEM computers in the past (Compaq, 'nuff said), so I built my parents' computer with a configuration I know doesn't crash so I could avoid the tech support. Haven't heard much since.



I haven't used the 8600 myself, but I know that every video card I've touched recently uses antialiasing on all resolutions, while every console I've touched will not do antialiasing at any resolution. The effects on the 360 are very good, but nothing I haven't seen on a PC. Maybe my new 9600 spoils me, maybe I'm not looking for the right things, I don't know, but I'm not impressed at all with the latest generation of consoles.

As far as I know, BioShock et al are all DirectX 9.0c games, NOT DirectX 10. Even Age of Conan currently only supports DX9.




By maintenance I meant mainly software maintenance, like updating your OS and drivers, doing malware checks, ensuring your registry isn't loaded with garbage, defragmenting your harddrive, the kind of stuff most average users are absolutely clueless about. The most you'd have to do with hardware maintenance is clean the dust out of the hardware about once a year. I'd wager that the vast majority of crashes happen because of a lack of software / OS maintenance by the user and not because of hardware issues.


Mad Cat

Pcs have almost always had better hardware then other systems... the problem ISNT with the hardware its with the OS.

Lets drop the memory and performence decreases from the OS directly and move onto something more important.

In the days of DOS
Newly designed hardware HAD to be designed to work with the programs already around... companies couldnt bring OUT something new without supporting the old in the device.

Lets take a brandnew SVGA videocard.. to run in SVGA resoloutions it had to run in VESA mode.. a new agreed upon standard(by most) for videocards.
However if a old ega game wanted to run it had in its bios the required data to do that.

The data and mode switching path
To Run the game the data from the game request follows
Game-dos-Videocard-game
or it can be.
game-videocard-game

In say windows you want to run the SAME thing.
OS-Game-OS-Drivers-Videocard-Drivers-OS-Game

To explain it.
Think of DOs as a Person.
To meet the person Graphics card and find if he can run in ega mode... you dont know where he lives so you ask dos.. dos tells you where he lives and sends you on your way and with the message if you have any trouble talking to graphics card come back and he will try to sort something out. You goto Videocard and ask him, and while he is a bit miffed your not using his better abilities he is still happy to help.

IN windows
You have to ask windows where videocard lives, ask permission to talk to videocard, get turned down because only windows and videocard drivers are allowed to do that so you ask windows if you can talk to videocard drivers directly, windows tells you sure, but only while he is around watching..
So you meet up with Videocard Drivers with Windows there too constantly interupting your conversation while you ask Videocard drivers if Videocard can run in EGA mode, Videocard drivers asks videocard and videocard tells videocard drivers that infact it cant, but videocard drvier tells you that it can actually trick videocard and make it do it anyways, but that you need to ask if its alright with windows, so you ask windows and he says yes but only if it still allows videocard to run as he currently is at the same time...

So Videocard drivers lie to videocard and to windows and pretend to support both modes at the exact same time, and as long as videocard drivers doesnt make any mistakes while he has ALOT of paperwork to do to trick both videocard and windows and you will get slow responses from him.. the fraud should go undetected.





Many bugs in PC games come about as direct result of drivers and os incompatabilities
There are SO many drivers around that its impossible for any company to even TEST that there product works on even a 5% base of the possible combinations.


What needs to happen is for the Drivers to be put back in the bloody hardware on PCS

Quite a few PC game houses have gone bankrupt.. not from poorly selling games but by techsupport costs brought on by bugs caused not by there software directly but bugs there software FOUND in drivers for hardware.

Sorry to disappoint, but BioShock supports DirectX 10 if you have it, and it's not alone. Most new shooters are in fact taking advantage of DirectX 10 when it's available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_10_support
http://www.novatek.com.au/news/confirmed-dx-10-games.html

"Minimum" and "recommended" requirements are just an indication of what machines it will run well on, not necessarily an indication of whether or not it takes advantage of DirectX 10.

Generally first person shooters jump on technology before other game styles do.

I'm not at all surprised that AoC hasn't jumped on yet - MMORPGs tend to lag because of the huge worlds and large numbers of objects they have to render, which means pushing a card to its limit isn't a good idea for a MMORPG.



Oh, those? Automated. They run while I'm at work. Same with my parents' computer.

You can automate updates of ATi drivers on XP or Vista?


Mad Cat

Dunno. I use nVidia.

You are one seriously lazy shit if you pick a console over a PC because you might have to update a video card driver to play a new game. That's a brain dead simple operation that any idiot can do. I can understand the fear of learning the more difficult stuff, but anyone that wont do such simple maintenance is just lazy.

. . . and I only update video drivers only once a month or two anyways ([sarcasm] Five minutes every two months, boy, that's really painful [/sarcasm]), and since my parents don't play games, their video card drivers haven't been updated since the day I installed them.

. . . and even for myself, the current drivers are totally stable and fast and I really don't need to upgrade them anymore anyways. These days I mostly do it because I feel like it, not because I really need to.

. . . and being a programmer, yes, actually, I could automate it.

you id be suprised how thick headed some people are

My estimate would be that the VAST majority of PC users haven't got a clue these drivers exist, let alone know they should update them every once in a while, let alone know how to update them.


Mad Cat

. . . and guess what? Most people will do fine with the generic drivers, and really don't need to be constantly updating them. Only the serious gamer trying to squeeze the last bit of performance of out his system is going to care about getting the latest drivers from the video card manufacturer.

Mostly true - however individuals should be aware of the need to do so from time to time. Design teams will often use "features" only available in latest drivers. Whilst by in large they will still default to a lesser effective feature in a driver set, hassles with a game should still be looked at from a Driver angle at any early stage of fault diagnostic.

Its hardly rocket science to update a driver. The problem tends to be people will not ask for help - or are just plain lazy. Its astonishing how many times ego gets in the way. More fool them frankly.

Regards
Zy

It's not just always upgrading drivers, sometimes it's upgrading hardware or other things that get in the way. It's not just time, which is worth a fair deal, but also money. I've never heard anyone switch to consoles for update reasons, but it hurts to buy new hardware so you can play a game as opposed to playing it on a >$500 platform that you don't have to upgrade the hardware of.