Next-gen being PS4/Xbox361.
What were "last-gen" PCs like for games such as Quake IV, Prey or Bioshock (Xbox 360 launch-ish titles)? Did people need to upgrade? Or were the games pretty good for a mid-range PC of the time?
Will mid-range PCs play next-gen ports?
do you have a pc right now that you are thinking about using to play next gen games, or are you going to buy a midrange pc right now?
no one can accurately answer this without a crystal ball really, no one knows how much effort developers are going to put into making things run ok on pc, and no one really knows how much of a jump the new consoles are going to be from the current ones.
I have a mid-range PC right now and it's pretty flawless at 1080p gaming, games like Sleeping Dogs and The Witcher 2 look magnificent, but I wonder what games like Epic's Samaritan (or Fortnite) or Square Enix's Philosophy would be like. Would they be playable if the resolution were lowered/some settings lowered? Or would the rig "min specs" the developer chooses be a bit too high end to be playable?
@1m4d34g4m3w1thz0mb13s said:
I have a mid-range PC right now and it's pretty flawless at 1080p gaming, games like Sleeping Dogs and The Witcher 2 look magnificent, but I wonder what games like Epic's Samaritan (or Fortnite) or Square Enix's Philosophy would be like. Would they be playable if the resolution were lowered/some settings lowered? Or would the rig "min specs" the developer chooses be a bit too high end to be playable?
PCs can always do this for a while. My computer is now old enough to be my uncle but if I turn the right things down I can play games. Also with the install base for the xbox I have a feeling we will have a long tail of games that are half way between xbox and durango and same for sony. Therefore keep rocking your PC until it feels like its getting in your way too much then upgrade. Same mission since I got diablo 1 to load for the first time.
Bioshock is a 2007 title - not launch-ish, the 360 came out in '05.
I don't think last generation's transition is a good comparison because PC gaming and console gaming were still pretty separate. These days, you won't see a Quake IV or a FEAR or other games that come out on PC first and are then ported to console. Now, when the consoles jump forward, then the PC probably will as well. Probably. We can't know for sure.
Which means that you should probably keep the rig you have - this transition to higher system requirements will not happen instantly and even then your PC will probably still run most things with lower settings until you can upgrade. Just have the money set aside to upgrade and if you find that you need to, do it. And if you don't, then you've got some extra cash laying around.
We discussed this in another topic recently. Yesterday, actually.
If you have a PC that's capable of playing most current games with all the bells and whistles (or, at least, very close to max) with a decent framerate, you won't have many performance problems when the next generation of consoles come out. You have to realize that the graphical fidelity that we have today on PC (e.g. Sleeping Dog's on DX11) is what the PS4/next Xbox will try to achieve, but you can already get all that today on PC.
Now, if you have a mid-to-low range PC, you'll probably start struggling a lot more. But that's just the way incremental upgrades work: you have to try and keep up as best as you can.
@JoeyRavn said:
We discussed this in another topic recently. Yesterday, actually.
If you have a PC that's capable of playing most current games with all the bells and whistles (or, at least, very close to max) with a decent framerate, you won't have many performance problems when the next generation of consoles come out. You have to realize that the graphical fidelity that we have today on PC (e.g. Sleeping Dog's on DX11) is what the PS4/next Xbox will try to achieve, but you can already get all that today on PC.
Now, if you have a mid-to-low range PC, you'll probably start struggling a lot more. But that's just the way incremental upgrades work: you have to try and keep up as best as you can.
I don't know that I really agree with this. Even assuming they're using parts that are in current PCs right now (Not necessarily true, they could use be using the next gen graphics, which will be coming out around the same time as the new consoles) They often use the BEST parts available which is a line even high-end computers don't always reach (Not everyone is rocking 690s under their hood, even on high end systems.) and even THEN, because the consoles are much more streamlined then computers (In theory, that's been changing obviously) they can achieve better results with the same hardware as a computer. Also, developers don't always "Port down" when a console comes out, so the early games might have trouble running on a PC that is at all slower then a console.
But this is all speculation. The guy with the crystal ball answer had is pretty right. They might run fine, but they might not. Personally I'd only buy/upgrade a new pc after the new consoles came out to be sure to avoid this.
I remember Oblivion being the game that forced me to upgrade my video card. It was funny then and it's still funny now, but I can't believe I bought a brand new AGP video card in 2006 to play Oblivion. AGP! It was probably one of the last ones before they exclusively made PCI-E cards.
The good ol' Radeon X850 Pro, with a whopping 256 MBs of RAM which at the time I considered to be the most amount of RAM a video card would ever need. 6 years later and I've got over a gig in mine. I kinda love progress.
So if that's any indication, then yeah a mid-range PC will probably need an upgrade a year into the next generation, but that's probably obvious anyway.
@SamDrugbringer said:
I don't know that I really agree with this. Even assuming they're using parts that are in current PCs right now (Not necessarily true, they could use be using the next gen graphics, which will be coming out around the same time as the new consoles) They often use the BEST parts available which is a line even high-end computers don't always reach (Not everyone is rocking 690s under their hood, even on high end systems.) and even THEN, because the consoles are much more streamlined then computers (In theory, that's been changing obviously) they can achieve better results with the same hardware as a computer. Also, developers don't always "Port down" when a console comes out, so the early games might have trouble running on a PC that is at all slower then a console.
No. There are far too many problems with your line of reasoning. First of all, if new consoles are to be announced during this year's E3, probably to be released by the end of the year, then both Microsoft and Sony will have to have very concrete technical specifications right now, which means that they must have been working on these consoles for some time now. It is highly unlikely that they will be using an AMD 8000 Series or GeForce 700 Series GPU in their new consoles.
Second, no, they don't use the "BEST parts available". Can you even imagine how much the cost of putting a GTX 690 (or equivalent) in each unit would be? If you want to go down, even a GTX 670 (or equivalent) is way to expensive. And that's just talking about the GPU. You need to put a strong CPU to take advantage of that GPU too. Throw a $250 i5 in there and watch the price skyrocket. You even acknowledge the fact that consoles don't NEED that much power, because they are closed, highly specialized systems designed to do one thing, and the games are coded to squeeze as much performance they can from the hardware. That is, of course, in the best of cases. The Xbox 360 uses an ATi Xenos CPU, which is mostly equivalent to an ATi 1800, the lowest of the High-end cards. The 1900 and 1950 perform better, so, no, again, that was not the BEST hardware available. (And the R600 series launched a couple of months afterwards, just like the new GPUs will do this year).
I don't get what you're implying with the last part of your post. Yeah, some ports suck. That's due to bad porting, not because a PC is more or less powerful than a console. What does that have to do with anything?
In a nutshell: PCs will continue to be more powerful than consoles. Going by what's been the trend in the last couple of generations, if you have a decent PC today you will be able to play just fine next-gen games.
@JoeyRavn said:
@SamDrugbringer said:
I don't know that I really agree with this. Even assuming they're using parts that are in current PCs right now (Not necessarily true, they could use be using the next gen graphics, which will be coming out around the same time as the new consoles) They often use the BEST parts available which is a line even high-end computers don't always reach (Not everyone is rocking 690s under their hood, even on high end systems.) and even THEN, because the consoles are much more streamlined then computers (In theory, that's been changing obviously) they can achieve better results with the same hardware as a computer. Also, developers don't always "Port down" when a console comes out, so the early games might have trouble running on a PC that is at all slower then a console.
No. There are far too many problems with your line of reasoning. First of all, if new consoles are to be announced during this year's E3, probably to be released by the end of the year, then both Microsoft and Sony will have to have very concrete technical specifications right now, which means that they must have been working on these consoles for some time now. It is highly unlikely that they will be using an AMD 8000 Series or GeForce 700 Series GPU in their new consoles.
Second, no, they don't use the "BEST parts available". Can you even imagine how much the cost of putting a GTX 690 (or equivalent) in each unit would be? If you want to go down, even a GTX 670 (or equivalent) is way to expensive. And that's just talking about the GPU. You need to put a strong CPU to take advantage of that GPU too. Throw a $250 i5 in there and watch the price skyrocket. You even acknowledge the fact that consoles don't NEED that much power, because they are closed, highly specialized systems designed to do one thing, and the games are coded to squeeze as much performance they can from the hardware. That is, of course, in the best of cases. The Xbox 360 uses an ATi Xenos CPU, which is mostly equivalent to an ATi 1800, the lowest of the High-end cards. The 1900 and 1950 perform better, so, no, again, that was not the BEST hardware available. (And the R600 series launched a couple of months afterwards, just like the new GPUs will do this year).
I don't get what you're implying with the last part of your post. Yeah, some ports suck. That's due to bad porting, not because a PC is more or less powerful than a console. What does that have to do with anything?
In a nutshell: PCs will continue to be more powerful than consoles. Going by what's been the trend in the last couple of generations, if you have a decent PC today you will be able to play just fine next-gen games.
I cannot agree with this man more.
@SamDrugbringer said:
@JoeyRavn said:
We discussed this in another topic recently. Yesterday, actually.
If you have a PC that's capable of playing most current games with all the bells and whistles (or, at least, very close to max) with a decent framerate, you won't have many performance problems when the next generation of consoles come out. You have to realize that the graphical fidelity that we have today on PC (e.g. Sleeping Dog's on DX11) is what the PS4/next Xbox will try to achieve, but you can already get all that today on PC.
Now, if you have a mid-to-low range PC, you'll probably start struggling a lot more. But that's just the way incremental upgrades work: you have to try and keep up as best as you can.
I don't know that I really agree with this. Even assuming they're using parts that are in current PCs right now (Not necessarily true, they could use be using the next gen graphics, which will be coming out around the same time as the new consoles) They often use the BEST parts available which is a line even high-end computers don't always reach (Not everyone is rocking 690s under their hood, even on high end systems.) and even THEN, because the consoles are much more streamlined then computers (In theory, that's been changing obviously) they can achieve better results with the same hardware as a computer. Also, developers don't always "Port down" when a console comes out, so the early games might have trouble running on a PC that is at all slower then a console.
But this is all speculation. The guy with the crystal ball answer had is pretty right. They might run fine, but they might not. Personally I'd only buy/upgrade a new pc after the new consoles came out to be sure to avoid this.
I can't guarantee that a mid-end computer today will run console ports next year, but I can guarantee you without a shadow of a doubt that they will not be putting anything close to a 690 in a console. That single card costs more than most people would even consider spending on a computer, let alone a gaming console.
No, having a 670/680 maybe keep you inline with next gen, but the second that DX 11 becomes the norm and every game under the sun uses things like tessellation as almost a necessity any mid tier computer won't keep up. It's already showing it's age since it can't play things like Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3, Crysis 3 at Max. It's not just graphics, but physics and things like AI will make a huge leap forward in the next gen. They'll be able to push some of that more on the gpu this go around. So if what we're getting next gen is just Far Cry/ Crysis 3, then it's already not going to work out.
The 360's card had feature sets that weren't commercially available at the time and it wasn't till a year or 2 where the cards caught up. If the xbox and ps4 don't go conservative and they are technical powerhouses, you'll have to wait to buy a card to be released that will keep up to date with those consoles. If you were to build bought a mid tier PC next year, than I would say you'd be somewhat safe if you just wanted to stick with a PC. If what we have been show is to believe, The jump from 600 series to 700 series for NVidia is going to be huge. I would hope AMD is in the same boat.
I'm just waiting on how long until I have a 4k monitor and a gpu that can handle it. That's where the obvious gap will be come next gen and where PCs will be at the time.
Right now I have a 6870 which plays a lot of games pretty nicely. But I think I may start upgrading by the time GTA V comes to something like a 7850 or something around that which would hopefully play most game at pretty high settings for a while.
@JoeyRavn said:
@SamDrugbringer said:
I don't know that I really agree with this. Even assuming they're using parts that are in current PCs right now (Not necessarily true, they could use be using the next gen graphics, which will be coming out around the same time as the new consoles) They often use the BEST parts available which is a line even high-end computers don't always reach (Not everyone is rocking 690s under their hood, even on high end systems.) and even THEN, because the consoles are much more streamlined then computers (In theory, that's been changing obviously) they can achieve better results with the same hardware as a computer. Also, developers don't always "Port down" when a console comes out, so the early games might have trouble running on a PC that is at all slower then a console.
No. There are far too many problems with your line of reasoning. First of all, if new consoles are to be announced during this year's E3, probably to be released by the end of the year, then both Microsoft and Sony will have to have very concrete technical specifications right now, which means that they must have been working on these consoles for some time now. It is highly unlikely that they will be using an AMD 8000 Series or GeForce 700 Series GPU in their new consoles.
Second, no, they don't use the "BEST parts available". Can you even imagine how much the cost of putting a GTX 690 (or equivalent) in each unit would be? If you want to go down, even a GTX 670 (or equivalent) is way to expensive. And that's just talking about the GPU. You need to put a strong CPU to take advantage of that GPU too. Throw a $250 i5 in there and watch the price skyrocket. You even acknowledge the fact that consoles don't NEED that much power, because they are closed, highly specialized systems designed to do one thing, and the games are coded to squeeze as much performance they can from the hardware. That is, of course, in the best of cases. The Xbox 360 uses an ATi Xenos CPU, which is mostly equivalent to an ATi 1800, the lowest of the High-end cards. The 1900 and 1950 perform better, so, no, again, that was not the BEST hardware available. (And the R600 series launched a couple of months afterwards, just like the new GPUs will do this year).
I don't get what you're implying with the last part of your post. Yeah, some ports suck. That's due to bad porting, not because a PC is more or less powerful than a console. What does that have to do with anything?
In a nutshell: PCs will continue to be more powerful than consoles. Going by what's been the trend in the last couple of generations, if you have a decent PC today you will be able to play just fine next-gen games.
Looking into it, you're probably right. The last part was that when the consoles were new they didn't always put a lot of effort into "Porting down" software to run on computers that were less powerful then the new consoles, but you're right about the hardware, I recalled the PS3 and 360 shipping with more powerful GPUs.
@SamDrugbringer said:
@JoeyRavn said:
@SamDrugbringer said:
I don't know that I really agree with this. Even assuming they're using parts that are in current PCs right now (Not necessarily true, they could use be using the next gen graphics, which will be coming out around the same time as the new consoles) They often use the BEST parts available which is a line even high-end computers don't always reach (Not everyone is rocking 690s under their hood, even on high end systems.) and even THEN, because the consoles are much more streamlined then computers (In theory, that's been changing obviously) they can achieve better results with the same hardware as a computer. Also, developers don't always "Port down" when a console comes out, so the early games might have trouble running on a PC that is at all slower then a console.
No. There are far too many problems with your line of reasoning. First of all, if new consoles are to be announced during this year's E3, probably to be released by the end of the year, then both Microsoft and Sony will have to have very concrete technical specifications right now, which means that they must have been working on these consoles for some time now. It is highly unlikely that they will be using an AMD 8000 Series or GeForce 700 Series GPU in their new consoles.
Second, no, they don't use the "BEST parts available". Can you even imagine how much the cost of putting a GTX 690 (or equivalent) in each unit would be? If you want to go down, even a GTX 670 (or equivalent) is way to expensive. And that's just talking about the GPU. You need to put a strong CPU to take advantage of that GPU too. Throw a $250 i5 in there and watch the price skyrocket. You even acknowledge the fact that consoles don't NEED that much power, because they are closed, highly specialized systems designed to do one thing, and the games are coded to squeeze as much performance they can from the hardware. That is, of course, in the best of cases. The Xbox 360 uses an ATi Xenos CPU, which is mostly equivalent to an ATi 1800, the lowest of the High-end cards. The 1900 and 1950 perform better, so, no, again, that was not the BEST hardware available. (And the R600 series launched a couple of months afterwards, just like the new GPUs will do this year).
I don't get what you're implying with the last part of your post. Yeah, some ports suck. That's due to bad porting, not because a PC is more or less powerful than a console. What does that have to do with anything?
In a nutshell: PCs will continue to be more powerful than consoles. Going by what's been the trend in the last couple of generations, if you have a decent PC today you will be able to play just fine next-gen games.
Looking into it, you're probably right. The last part was that when the consoles were new they didn't always put a lot of effort into "Porting down" software to run on computers that were less powerful then the new consoles, but you're right about the hardware, I recalled the PS3 and 360 shipping with more powerful GPUs.
You have to take the PC and console markets around the time of the launch of the current consoles into consideration. They were pretty separate and bad PC ports were not a surprise and consoles remained being dominant. Fast forward to today and you have Steam more powerful and easier to use than ever before. There will certainly be a shift back to consoles once the next-gen arrives but PC won't fall to the wayside like last time.
Steam will be making headlines soon with their "Steambox" device which should keep the PC out there and noticed among the hoopla of new console announcements. The indie scene will continue to grow and get stronger and I wouldn't be surprised to see that scene flourish even further on PC because developers won't have to suffer strict rules laid down by console manufacturers (hopefully they will get the hint and ease off a bit). PC is just more open. PC ports have come a long way and I won't be surprised to maybe see a couple of bad ones come when the next-gen hits but it's going to be harder to ignore a growing PC market that demands good ports.
2013-2014 is going to be fucking exciting to watch unfold.
Using history as a guide to the future, yes, a mid-range PC should be as powerful as a console, at launch. (Depending on your definition of mid-range, I guess).
If you recall the chart NVIDIA rolled out about a year and a half ago, they claimed that when the 360 and PS3 launched, PC GPUs were more powerful than consoles at a factor of 1.5:1. By 2007, they were 3:1, 5:1 in 2008, 8:1 in 2010 and 9:1 by 2011.
Remember that, optimized or not, consoles are built with commodity hardware that must fit into a tight and low price range.
When new consoles come out (and I'll buy them all, at launch), the games are going to look nice. However, anyone with a GTX 670 (or maybe lower) will just be seeing the consoles catching up putting out what we've already been getting for awhile on the PC (and likely having been doing it at a higher resolution).
@Colourful_Hippie said:
2013-2014 is going to be fucking exciting to watch unfold.
I could not agree more with this statement.
@Branthog: Yeah buts its going to be nice to have nice ass looking games, and not having to worry about which shadow setting or hbao or ssao or shit like that. I have spent alot of time in graphics settings trying to get the most out of my settings instead of just enjoying the game.
@WasabiCurry said:
@Colourful_Hippie said:
2013-2014 is going to be fucking exciting to watch unfold.
I could not agree more with this statement.
I completely agree. I am a fan of technology quickly evolving. Life is short and I want as many advancements to come as quickly as possible and I don't care how much I have to pay for consoles and how often to experience that (on top of PCs, too, of course). I'm also one of those people who, while completely aware of and critical of overly commercial super-hype, don't mind letting myself get lost in the fun. E3 is one of my favorite times of year (though less so the last two or three, since no new hardware) and so are console launches. Even as someone who is die-hard PC, console launches offer something unique. The PC landscape is something constantly evolving in bits and pieces every few months -- there's no "BLAM -- here's a whole new set of everything" like there is with consoles.
I can't wait for the rumors. The leaks. The outrageous presentations. I hope that when the consoles are launched, they're done with great flair and we're all left drooling. I want cash to be burning a hole in my pocket, right up until the launch date. I want to be frantically hunting for people I can pay to wait in line for me on launch night (because there's no fucking way I'm going to stand out in the cold in line at my age -- and when I should be working).
I'm already getting giddy. If we don't hear anything at E3, I'm going to be bummed. If we don't get anything all year and it turns out our expectations of even having consoles this year are wrong, then I'm just going to . . . fuck, I don't know. Drink more scotch.
@Bourbon_Warrior said:
@Branthog: Yeah buts its going to be nice to have nice ass looking games, and not having to worry about which shadow setting or hbao or ssao or shit like that. I have spent alot of time in graphics settings trying to get the most out of my settings instead of just enjoying the game.
Yep. I have less patience for this, every year. I spend all day long looking at code and debugging intricate data to find the one fucked up thing causing problems. I don't want to do this in my recreation, too. I don't mind tweaking things a bit, here and there, but when I have to wait two months after a game launches (and I have bought it) just for it to be finished and playable on the PC, I get frustrated. When performance is worse on the PC -- no matter what -- I get frustrated. When I'm told that I have to install third party crap, tweak some hidden configuration files, fiddle with various settings that are in relation to each other by unknown ratios, I get put off. As much of a PC die-hard as I am -- more often than not -- I just want to sit down and play a fucking game. I have actually started to have experiences where I regret buying something on the PC, because I know I could have gotten a fine enough experience if I just caved in to Sony or Microsoft and bought it on the console. :/
@Branthog: It is a breath of fresh to see new consoles that I am so excited about. I may not be an advent console player because I am a PC player first and foremost, but I would be lying to say that I am excited to pounce on any new information about the Xbox or Playstation console. In the coming months ahead, Microsoft will inevitably release the real specs of the console. The internet will afterwards take sides on which is better or how it completely sucks.
Either way, it is just simply another way to experience video games. I want Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and Valve to fight for their audience. Competition isn't always a bad thing.
Edited for missing word~
@iam3green said:
it will probably play decently. direct X 11 is what PC have now, xbox 360, ps3, have directX 10.
we dont' really know how its' going to come out. developers can just port PC games horribly where high level computers play the games midrange.
360/ps3 are DX9 (and equivalent OpenGL) actually.
In the end of the day it will be your graphics card that determines everything (mid range cpus will be way more powerful than the next gen chips).
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