Will the next gen consoles be powerful enough...for HD?

[The Kernel]

Well, yes, but 1080p is (as I noted) fairly rare. Most people won't be able to afford it for quite awhile.

I would guess that it will become a much bigger checklist feature on midrange TV's over the next twelve months. The technology gap between 1080i and 1080p isn't that large or expensive, there just hasn't been much demand for it lately. This will probably change--manufacturers just LOVE giving people a killer new feature to make them upgrade their sets.

[Praxis]

Hmm, consider myself corrected regarding interlacing.

And we need next gen games, not current.

I don't think you understand the way console hardware evolves.

Computer hardware is constantly scaling up, small improvements that happen every couple months... someone puts out some faster RAM, or a few hundred more megahertz in a processor, or a graphics card gets an OC upgrade... either way, every three, four months, computer hardware has taken another small incremental step forward...

Consoles, conversely, grow in leaps, but on a longer time scale... every five years or so, they get triple, quadruple, quintuple the quality. On a long-term scale, averaged out, computer hardware and console hardware advances at about the same rate... it's just that consoles make quantum leaps on the scale of years, while PC hardware makes tiny leaps constantly.

WHICH MEANS... when a console is first released, it smashes the average PC but good. This is accomplished with more efficient design, standardized hardware, etc. Of course, a console will, after two years or so, become surpassed by the average computer, and by the end of its lifespan it will be beaten by even a low-end PC. Then, of course, a new console comes out and smashes PC's all over again...

Anyway. Enough blah-blah from me. I'll be back in my corner if anyone needs me.

Oh, definitely, I understand that.
My question is, when the console is first released, how does it compare to top-line PC's?

Will the XBox 2 or PS3 or NR be able to get higher FPS in Far Cry than my PC could if I put a Geforce 6800 Ultra in?

[The Dude]

No, progressive scan is 30 frames per second. You are correct that interlaced is 60 fields per second.

With 30fps source (like a game console, or deinterlaced TV) a progressive display will draw each full frame twice, for a total of 60 frames per second. With 24fps source (like deinterlaced movies), it will draw half the frames twice, the other half three times. Progressive HDTV can display 60 unique fps. In any case, the tube/projector is drawing 60 full fps.

[Vertigo1]

I say screw both HD and the CRT. Make the fuckers with a DVI output and run that to a bigscreen.

You are aware that many big screen televisions are CRT-based, yes?

No shit, really? I read his post as looking like he was referring to a standard computer monitor hense my DVI comment.

[Shogoki]

And how much did you pay to get that quality again?

Looking at my newegg.com receipt and totaling the PC, under 1800$.

In a $300 console, whoopee

Wow, you got a next generation console capable of outdoing what he's showing already? and for $300?

Man i thought those prototypes where a few hundred thousand dollars and i bit hard to come by.

[SPOOFE]

Will the XBox 2 or PS3 or NR be able to get higher FPS in Far Cry than my PC could if I put a Geforce 6800 Ultra in?

That's iffy. My immediate bet would be "yes", based on the history of consoles. Any lack that a console has in terms of CPU speed or RAM size is easily made up for by its efficiency and ability to squeeze every erg of processing power out of its components. Hell, Halo 2 rivals the graphics of the high-end PC FPS's (Far Cry, Doom 3, HL2), and that was done on a glorifed P3 733, 64 (or is it 96?) megs of RAM, and a tweaked GF3. Considering you need double or even triple the PC specs in order just to run any of the PC equivalents, that's a pretty damned impressive display of computational power.

I'd guess that all three of the next-gen consoles are going to get graphical units equivalent or superior to the GeForce 6/Radeon X-series processors, when all is said and done. The Xbox successor is getting a Radion r500-derived graphics chip, which is the series that will follow the x800.

[Vendetta]

The PS3 will be based on next generation nVidia chips.

Remember as well that both next gen consoles are based on humongously powerful CPUs, which it will take some time, and possibly major architectural changes, for PCs to go beyond.

In previous generations the PC has always been able to throw more power at the environment, but the current x86 architecture is reaching it's limits, Intel are already fairly convinced they're not going to get much more out of the push for more hertz, hence the climbdown from 4GHz and move towards multi-core.

[Arrow]

Gamespy has "news" on the XBox Next's specs. Link

It looks impressive. It has an R500 and three 3.0 GHz PPCs. I'm interested in exactly which PPC cores they're using - thoses things range from dirt cheap to arm and leg expensive. And it does 720p with antialiasing. I might actually buy a console if these specs are true and the price is some what reasonable.

[Praxis]

I suspect its a POWER5 based PowerPC, after reading about the Cell processor.

TeamXBox reported that the XBox 2 would have 3 POWER5 cores.

I recall reading that the Cell processor would be using up to a 4.6 GHz POWER5 core, and I also remember somebody posting after reading the specs (it was either here, on SD.net, or on Macrumors) that it was apparently an extremely stripped down processor (was it less pipelines or something?) and IIRC no AltiVec.

So its basicly going to be a highly clocked tri-processor G3 w/64-bit. Though thats simplyfing it quite a bit.

Then again I could be completely wrong and they could be PowerPC.

[phongn]

Considering you need double or even triple the PC specs in order just to run any of the PC equivalents, that's a pretty damned impressive display of computational power.

There is the advantage that the Xbox only has to render to 640x480 and NTSC has an inherent degree of anti-aliasing that cannot be taken for granted on the higher-quality monitors used on PCs. I've seen H2, it looks good, but computers are capable of a lot more even with double or triple the spec -- the deveopers are almost certainly using a bunch of tricks to increase visual quality, and those tricks should be applicable to PC as well.

Then again I could be completely wrong and they could be PowerPC.

POWER5 uses the PowerPC ISA and most of its newer features over POWER4 (besides SMT) are geared towards servers and mainframes and whatnot.