E3 2011: Is Xbox 360 Starting To Show Its Age?

I’m surprised the PS3 fanboys haven’t replied. Both consoles are outdated imo. WHile first party devs can usually push the machine they favour. The PS3 isn’t all it makes out to be. Its bandwith suffers as well as 256MB of RAM less than the 360. While its spu’s can be utilised to some degree. The PS3 still is outdated and those that differ obviously don’t know what they are talking about.

The outdated technlogy is something console owners have to put up with until we are offered a console that can upgrade the GPU or RAM we will have the suffer the consequences of the ease of gaming. PC gaming imo is too expensive and just a hassle to make sure you have a card that runs the latest unreal engine or Direct X.

I’ll happily still game on consoles as I’m not a graphics whore, as long as it is fun and I can play online then I’m happy

Ok, you are taking a statement and leaping to an assumption that the XBox 360 is the only console that is ‘downgraded’ for graphics.

Unless Sony has delivered a newly set of optimized platform tools for the PS3, the PS3 will also have ‘downgraded’ graphics.

Yes, they are both outdated in terms of what can be offered by PCs today, but there are clues that should prevent you from making any assumptions that the XBox 360 is falling short or is starting to fall behind the PS3 in the current console technologies.

Following these clues along with the realization it is a fact the PC technology available is a massive jump from what is in either console, and not just a slam at the XBox 360 specifically.

Things that are often overlooked in the PS3 vs XBox power comparison wars and flames, that should be in the clues and also give XBox 360 users reassurance:

1)…….DX11
DX11 – This is what new games are using on the PC, and it offers a high level of graphical features and abilities. It gives developers the ability to shove a ton of graphical and data processing at high end GPUs.

The side note on DX11 is first version of DirectX on the PC that INCLUDES all the DirectX features available on the XBox 360 is DX11. DX10 didn’t include all the XBox 360 DirectX features.

Which makes DX11 more appealing to developers as cross platform PC/XBox development is fairly seamless, with only having to deal with interface and asset changes, instead of working around missing features in DX10. (As it was easier to stick with DX9 technologies and port ‘up’ to the XBox DirectX, than it was to recreate the technologies for DX10 and then still have to port up the XBox DirectX feature set.)

It also means that XBox/PC titles are still getting better, as the DX11 features in the XBox are now being used, that were often overlooked in the previous generation games.

(Examples of DX11 features in the XBox 360 is Tensellation, and the more advanced Direct Compute technologies, that did not exist in DX10)

DX11 and XBox 360 DirectX features are also more advanced than the feature set possible on the PS3, as even OpenGL doesn’t meet these features well, and the version of OpenGL that does, won’t run on the PS3.

2…..GPU….. Xenos
This is more important than the usual arguments of the post-processing AA and HDR arguments that we see from the PS3 and XBox fans.

Xenos is credited as an ATI designed chip; however, the core design came from Microsoft and Microsoft hardware engineers. They are the ones that introduced the concept of a ‘unified shader’ and other aspects that make this GPU technology important for the XBox 360 and also what is at the basis of virtually all GPUs technology produced since then.

Beyond who actually developed the technolgy, the Xenos is a unified shader based GPU. The PS3 was to have a ‘new’ GPU technology by using a custom chip that worked with and on the Cell processor. This fell through, as Sony was not even close to being able to provide what the Xenos Microsoft introduced was capable of doing. Sony scrambled, and made a deal with NVidia, which is where the PS3 PSX comes from.

The PSX in the PS3 is a under clocked NVidia Geforce 7900 GPU. So its base performance is somewhere between a 7800 and 7900 NVidia PC video card.

More importantly, the PSX is a PS/VS GPU design, meaning it is not a unified shader GPU, thus running each shader side starved or overloaded based on the screen content produced. It also is missing other more technical GPU design features as it is very much of the DX9 era of GPU design – meaning most DX10 and DX11 features are not even possible on the PS3 GPU. (So no tensellation, no direct compute like abilities.)

3)….CPU….
The CPU differences between the PS3 and XBox 360 should have been ‘bigger’, as the PS3 Cell in theory should be able to ditch the XBox 360. However, with the lacking GPU, post processing and other features being handled by the XBox 360 GPU, are being compensated for on the PS3 by using the Cell processor. Which this alone negates the Cell advantage.

Sony’s gaming development platform tools and the compiler capabilities available to PS3 developers are not the best. The parallel processing that should be happening on the PS3 Cell CPU is getting strangled by overhead in managing the cores and the threads.

4)….NT…
The XBox 360 is basically running Windows NT, a forked version that is somewhere between Windows 2003 Server and Windows Vista.

This gives the XBox some ‘abilities’ the OS of the PS3 just can’t do. Primarily the way the XBox version of Windows NT handles the GPU is a pre-cursor to the WDDM/WDM technologies of Vista.

This is why and how the XBox 360 can easily use the ‘shared’ RAM for system and video, and also the OS can ‘schedule’ GPU threads for GPU computing, just like Vista and Windows 7 does. (Vista and Win7 is more mature in these technologies as they are handling multiple 3D games/applications on screen at the same time, and can schedule the GPU threads pre-emptively, something no other OS current can.)

….Conclusion….
So, yes, the jump between the hardware power of the XBox 360 to today’s PC hardware is a jump. However this is also true for the PS3.

The XBox 360 has some tricks that haven’t been used yet, like the DX11 features that were just skipped because tensellation wasn’t available on the PC or any other platform. The XBox 360 also has the benefit of ‘current’ generation GPUs as it is a unified shader based technlolgy, unlike the DX9 era PSX GPU in the PS3, which is a massive difference in hardware abilities, that the PS3 will NEVER be able to fully compensate for without completely strangling the Cell CPU. Just AA and basic HDR that the Xenos does for free, eats a lot of PS3 CPU performance, as the GPU is not capable of doing both at the same time.

Want updated console in 2012 xmas. Thought Wii U might fill that void, but that controller looks terribly uncomfortable. Plus specs dont seem to surpass the 360/ps3. Very dissapointed.

God of war team / Sony Santa Monica also obviously knows how to push the SKU’s to another level, and who knows if even they and Naughty dog have fully squeezed the ps3’s power out. They say they havent yet……

After looking at games like Skyrim and Rage, there is clearly still some juice left in these systems.

But when you look at Battlefield 3 on PC and than COD MW3 you see how big the difference is there. But it wont matter, COD MW3 will still outsell it, there is no need for new hardware for at least a couple years.

I actually prefer a controller-just how I roll.

I also feel that the games aren’t yet to the point a console (PS3 or Xbox 360, and I have both so I’m not going to argue which one is better, just that -personally- I use my PS3 more because my Xbox 360 is the generation before the current and therefore the WiFi isn’t there…sadly), excluding Nintendo’s, needs to consider upgrading right now. Maybe this is a little because I have both consoles and also know I don’t want to spend another near thousand on two new consoles just yet. But I think until consoles start crashing everywhere because of power failure due to the graphics then it’s time for a new console-for now, I think they’re doing just fine.

Re: Xbox 360 being more “outdated,” I agree it’s probably the disk format, but in the current life cycle of that console I think Microsoft, with all its billions, could certainly figure a way to include a new component that updates it.

and to that guy who said the dash on 360 is like that of a fork out windows 2003 and windows vista 360 doesnt even have a web browser for fck sake fail