The PC (Personal Computer) is a highly configurable and upgradable gaming platform that, among home systems, sports the widest variety of control methods, largest library of games, and cutting edge graphics and sound capabilities.
@sodiumCyclops: Look up the specs on wikipedia. The XBox 360 and PS3 GPUs are pretty old by now. By Moore's law, you should expect to find something four times faster for the 2006 price. :)
360 and PS3 generally runs games at 720p or less at medium-high settings with a minimal amount of AA with medium to high framerates. This is in the range of about a $500-600 PC. I could give you an exact setup, but you'll have to forgive me as it's a rather large of waste of time.
Xbox360 gpu: ati radeon 2600 pro cpu: dual core 3.0Ghz ram 2 gigs of ddr2 ram hardrive for both are probally sata
"
Actually 360 needs 512mb ram and PS3 I think is 256mb ram. As for the CPU's 360 needs a overclocked AMD Tri-Core at 3.2ghz. I think you can actually buy Laptops with the Cell Processor as well for the PS3.
360: Processor: 3.2Ghz Tri-core PowerPC (Not sure why they took a PowerPC processor...) RAM: 512Mb GDDR3 @ 700Mhz GPU: ATI Xenos (Which is the equivalent of a ATI Radeon 1800XT-ish, maybe a little more powerful but not hugely)
PS3: Processor: 3.2Ghz x8 Cell Processor (technically x7 since one of them is only used in case another fails. Also there is and won't be a PC equivalent for a little while.) RAM: 256Mb GDDR3 @ 700Mhz + 256Mb "XDR" @3.2Ghz (Search up what the XDR Ram is because I don't really understand it myself.) GPU: Nvidia RSX (Which is the equivalent to an Nvidia 7800GTX.)
Edit: Also, you have to put in consideration that these machines are built for one sole purpose. To game. They don't have any formal operating system and when they play games they have nothing running in the background. So the amount of ram they need is very small in comparison to the resource whore that we call Windows.
@Will1Lucky: I'm just creating a real world pc setup that's similar in regard to the memory or an approximation. A pc these days wouldn't run on 512mb of ram or less, it needs at least a gig or two for ram at least. For videocards I am just trying to show a pc equilvent for the power which is low, yet it's okay for 720p. However for the cpu maybe your right, the xbox360 might resemble more of a amd tricore, however in terms of power for processing, I wanted to show more cores vs less cores. For today's pc gaming, there is no need for more than quad cores. I could say the ps3 is like an i7 processor, however quad core is already more than necessary since i'm factoring the spe's as not real cores, rather seperate synergistic processing units from a propiretory design chip instead, I think the quad cores will be a better approximation which is already quite powerful. Maybe I could say an i5 quad core chip instead. Remember the pc platform even with similar type of hardware runs very differently, pc requires alot more power and memory to get it running with an operating system at higher resolutions. Also the entire game is cached in the hardrive and streams from there which is very different. That's why I am just showing an approximation in regards to a pc, not directly technically saying it has this many cores so it must be the same on pc.
Pc is alot more powerful, there is no need to run 1080p games with flawless textures, high framerates around 60-80 frames per second averagely ect on consoles with full anti aliasing on consoles. You shouldn't discount how powerful a pc rig really is in terms of gaming. It's just developers these days doesn't care too much about good optimization, they just throw a pc multiplatform game at your rig and however it runs is how it runs which in most cases for me it runs really well. It's a contrast to consoles where everything is geared towards 720p at 30 frames per second.
@sodiumCyclops: I built my computer last year, and its been doing just a bit better that my ps3 or xbox graphics wise. It's a quad core 2.4ghz., 4 gigs of ram, and a 9500gt. it cost me around 700 bucks last year, if you include the 22inch monitor. So im sure you could build it now for WAY less money. or you could get a better card, and have something that has even better graphics. Its not hard to surpass the consoles these days.
Theres also a matter of different architecture design on consoles which are built primarily to be tight and fast, often utilize shared memory etc which in certain cases speeds up the software a lot. PC on the other hand is designed to be a multi-purpose expansive machine and suffers slightly for that reason.
So, the hardware in the consoles might be kinda old, but it's paired and plugged for maximum performance. Therefore PC does need a slightly more powerful specs to match the console hardware.
" @Will1Lucky: I'm just creating a real world pc setup that's similar in regard to the memory or an approximation. A pc these days wouldn't run on 512mb of ram or less, it needs at least a gig or two for ram at least. For videocards I am just trying to show a pc equilvent for the power which is low, yet it's okay for 720p. However for the cpu maybe your right, the xbox360 might resemble more of a amd tricore, however in terms of power for processing, I wanted to show more cores vs less cores. For today's pc gaming, there is no need for more than quad cores. I could say the ps3 is like an i7 processor, however quad core is already more than necessary since i'm factoring the spe's as not real cores, rather seperate synergistic processing units from a propiretory design chip instead, I think the quad cores will be a better approximation which is already quite powerful. Maybe I could say an i5 quad core chip instead. Remember the pc platform even with similar type of hardware runs very differently, pc requires alot more power and memory to get it running with an operating system at higher resolutions. Also the entire game is cached in the hardrive and streams from there which is very different. That's why I am just showing an approximation in regards to a pc, not directly technically saying it has this many cores so it must be the same on pc. "
Ahh of course I hadn't considered the amount of Ram needed to even run the OS. The Cell CPU though is a real tough one due to its design but yes a Quad Core would likely suffice. And I completely agree with the GPU's chosen.
Xbox360 gpu: ati radeon 2600 pro cpu: dual core 3.0Ghz ram 2 gigs of ddr2 ram hardrive for both are probally sata
"
Actually 360 needs 512mb ram and PS3 I think is 256mb ram. As for the CPU's 360 needs a overclocked AMD Tri-Core at 3.2ghz. I think you can actually buy Laptops with the Cell Processor as well for the PS3. "
PCs require more RAM because of the way they process things, on the other hand gaming consoles don't need quite as much because of the way THEY process things. I believe the terms are "in order" and "out of order" processing... Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Raw specs wise the consoles aren't super great. The 360 has a decent GPU and the PS3 a good CPU. The consoles are designed much more efficiently in a lot of ways for games than a PC, so even on a hardware level the consoles are very efficient. Try to run Windows on them or a word processor and it'd be painful. Then when you consider the extra efficiency a single hardware make allows for the consoles, they gain another layer of efficiency. Finally consider the reduced backgrounds processes a console has and that adds yet another layer of efficiency.
Neither consoles will scale as well to higher resolutions than many videocards, but shader performance is very good for both. Basically there are more complicated strengths and weaknesses, for example : Both consoles are more efficient at shadow mapping yet far less efficient for shadow volumes than a gaming PC. It has to do with the kind of math the consoles are good at as opposed to a PC, which has to generalize (and has strengths in other areas).
The end result can be consoles delivering a very poor performance in Quake 4 (which was undoubtably poorly coded for 360, still I doubt the consoles would ever be much more efficient than say, a Geforce 7800 at Quake 4), yet excellent performance in GTA4 (which was undoubtably poorly coded for PC, yet again however the advantages the console CPUs have with certain types of math make them hugely efficient).
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