OK, I can see we have differing views on graphics. I haven't seen the things you've seen running (games at 2500x1600 on a 8800 GTX). I have my own views on the importance of increasing resolutions (especially on displays smaller than 40 inches), but I'll go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt that those games all look better than GOW (at least until GOW hits the PC and is playable at 2500x1600 ). Otherwise, we'd be arguing over pointless things, and my lack of experience with this probably wouldn't help (though I doubt it would matter too much). I actually had a fairly lengthy post typed out, but I realized that our views are pretty much completely different, and we'd be arguing all night over nothing pretty much. I'd like to avoid that. All that said, I would like to propose another statement about this subject, which is basically my original statement with a slight modification. I think it should be clear that if you're playing these games at "normal" resolutions (say a max of 1920x1080 or something near equivalent), then the 360 (thus far) has been able to produce better graphics than any PC based on the games released so far. Here are some pics that I think show off the best the 360 has to offer (not including GOW): Spoiler (wish I could find a better pic of Dead Rising with a ton of zombies) Probably some other games (NBA 2K7 comes to mind, except the faces suck), but those are some that I grabbed quickly. Also, one of these games doesn't even have a native resolution of 720p (more like 600p IIRC)...wonder if anyone can tell which game it is. If for some reason you disagree with me on this, then show me some PC games that look better. Remember, I'm talking at normal resolutions, so you don't have to grab some 2500x1600 direct feed image of Half Life 2 or anything like that. I'll go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt that it looks better. Also, not sure if my post came across as implying this, but I know the 8800 GTX kicks all sorts of ass, and that it pretty much outclasses the GPUs in the consoles by a large factor. In fact, IIRC, the 360 GPU actually isn't all that powerful (think the raw performance is around the X1600 and X1800 or so, but with additional features since it is basically the precursor to the R600). The graphics card I have in my PC (a 7900 GT @ 550 MHz) that I bought in April is probably more powerful than the RSX GPU in the PS3 (though it might have the edge in some areas, and Cell rapes my AMD dual-core setup).
oh hell yeah, that will be SERIOUSLY insane. I'm already drooling at that I don't really have a problem with that statement, except with the caveat that it would only really be one 360 game, GoW of course. honestly, for any other 360 game I don't think they're way above the best PC games out there now running at say 1600x1200, maxed settings. taking your example shots, you showed a lot of facial model pics...well IMO, I think HL2's facial models look just about as good. at least the Episode 1 and Lost Coast version of the engine, not the original HL2 engine since as we said before it didn't have HDR and Color Correction, and other optimizations/upgrades. which added a lot of depth and quality to the visuals , especially on facial shots. as for Dead Rising, personally I never considered that to be an incredible graphical game. the only awesome thing it does is the number of models it can render in real-time, but as far as world texture quality, lighting, etc goes, I would never call it spectacular. as for GRAW, well that's already on the PC. and to your question of which game isn't 720p, I already knew the answer to that is PGR3, I saw that a long time ago but like I said, GoW is amazing for sure. if all 360/PS3 games from now on will look like that, or close, then there would be no issue from me regarding the PS3's RSX, that is actually a really damn great GPU. from what I know, it's better than the 7900GT for sure...so the PS3 has got it covered there. I think only the 8800 series is better
You have any pics of HL2 at that res? I played HL2 (and Ep 1), but not at those resolutions (usually at 1280x1024...damn I need to get a better monitor). The faces were really good, but I don't really think they're quite on the same level of the pics I showed. The textures in the faces are really good (Valve has great artists), but they all look relatively low-poly (at least compared to the 360 games I've showed). Certainly doesn't look all that great here (best shot I could get of just the face): Spoiler I haven't played it a while, so I might need to check it out again. I know the faces are one thing it was praised for, but that was like back in 2004. I don't really see that being the case anymore. FWIW, here are some better shots that aren't so zoomed in (to be fair to HL2): Spoiler If nothing else, the overall models definitely look better (IMO anyway). I find it incredible because of the number of models. I was trying to find that pic of like a hundred zombies piled around a car, but I couldn't find it. That takes a large amount of polys, which I haven't seen from any PC games. I was just trying to find different things to show off what the 360 can do. GRAW for the 360 is a different game than GRAW on the PC. This is GRAW PC: Spoiler I never really paid attention to it since most of the pics I saw of it looked worse than GRAW on the 360 (at least at the resolutions I saw it at). OK, but would anyone else have noticed that from the screens I gave. Well yeah, a 7900 GT at stock speeds is slower (I forgot the stock speeds...like 450MHz IIRC for the core). My card is clocked at 550MHz, 50MHz faster than the RSX GPU (assuming the downgrade was true), not to mention the memory was also faster (but that's not really a big deal for consoles AFAIK). So if the RSX is technically just a slightly modified G70 clocked at 500MHz, my graphics card probably beats it by a little bit in raw performance. Unless of course "slightly modified" means "way better at a bunch of things." I don't recall if there has ever been any confirmation of what it can do better, although after opening the PS3 and checking out the die size of RSX, I think some sites are guessing it has larger caches (some of which are for improving the communication with the XDR memory pool in the PS3). Not completely sure if that makes up for the 50MHz disadvantage it has compared to my card (not to mention the possibility of any disabled vertex shaders or ROPs...but I would hope that wouldn't be necessary). Whenever I bought my card, I kind made note of how similar it would be to the RSX GPU, so that's why I brought that up. There's no doubt the 8800 GPUs beats it though. Back when RSX rumors were at their peak, I was hoping RSX incorporated some of the tech that went into the G80, although I'm guessing that didn't happen. That would have been sweet if it had, although that might have meant a $700-$800 PS3 (and I'm not talking ebay prices). Not that this really matters too much. From what I understand, Sony considered using a GPU that was MUCH better in terms of raw specs (guessing it would have been on par or better than the 8800 GTX, at least in some areas), but they decided to go with something that would be a little more friendly for developers. Can't say that I'm all that disappointed with that decision.
I don't have any HL2 pics right this second, I would have to take some personal screenshots from my own comp since I play HL2 at 1600x1200. I'll do that tomorrow sometime on the GRAW subject, this is something that I actually can't say with 100% authority since I don't own the game nor have I seen it personally (the PC version I mean). however, I read a bunch of reviews for it back when it came out, and my recollection of the whole thing was this...the graphical engine for both versions of GRAW was basically the same, if not identical. the difference between the games was that the campaigns and missions were all different. however, the game required some SERIOUS horsepower and was very unoptimized. you had to have a total monster of a system (back then, I'm sure a 8800 GTX would be fine now) to run it at high resolution with maxed settings. but those who could said that the game looked just as great as the 360 version, and therefore maybe a little better if you run it at over 1280x720. that's what I remember anyway and on the RSX, yeah what we both don't know is exactly what modifications were made to it. because I'm pretty sure it's not just a copy of any of Nvidia's PC card lines. I seem to recall, just as you stated, that any changes made to the architecture were for the better. so it's definitely got some great potential...lazy devs just need to get off their asses and take full 100% advantage of it in conjunction with the Cell
