Oh really? Where? Show me..

I second that. I mean, you can get a decent looking case for $75, a graphics card that can play dx11 with maxed out graphics will cost you $400, a nice amount of RAM like 12 gb will cost you $200-$300 and that's not even including the motherboard or hard drive and etc. I think your really underestimating Skyrim.

Well, you'd have to include your monitor resolution, and if you ran games in native resolution. Any midrange graphics card in the past several years is more powerful than console GPUs, especially at 720p which many games actually fake on consoles, because it can't handle it. Games are often 544p or ~600p or some bizarre resolution.

Really doubt you ran the games at 544p. Also, "Max Settings" does not in any way relate to the console experience. "Ultra High" settings in Oblivion far outdid the Xbox version. Try Medium/High settings for the Xbox experience, and that sentiment extends to most games which are multiplatform.

You gotta love all the people saying you will need a $1000 PC to play Skyrim better than the 360. It is simply not true.

First of all, the $700 Crysis Warhead PC that Crytek was marketing in 2008 could run Skyrim 10x better than a 360 could. That was 2 years ago, 3 by the time of Skyrim's release. PC hardware has now advanced so far that that PC is now obsolete, yet still capable of maxing out any game on the 360.


The thing is, I desperately WANT Skyrim to force me to upgrade my PC. I have had the same hardware for years now, and no matter what I throw at it, nothing brings it to its knees. The reason? Consoles. Games developed to run on 6 year old machines, even with some awesome eye candy thrown in, wont max new hardware.


I WANT Skyrim to have all the new flashy features such as DX11 tessellation, enhanced physics, volumetric lighting and fog effects, god rays, high resolution textures and so on. The fact of the matter is though, rather than make high res textures for the PC and then just lower the resolution for the consoles, and instead of taking advantage of awesome new tech to make the game look amazing, then just toggling those features off for consoles, so EVERYONE would be happy, developers are content developing for the lowest common denominator, then just giving the PC users low res textures, huge UI's, no enhanced graphics other than the standard PC Higher resolution, AA, AF and sky high framerate. So the PC users get screwed out of anything that pushes their system and the console owners all get exactly what they want. Not everyone wins.


It would be like a world where the PS3 never released, and instead of the 360 with the most powerful hardware being the lead platform, the PS2 and Wii were always the the main dev platforms, and the 360 just got higher res versions with better framerates. 360 users would not be happy their new system is not being used to its full potential would they not? (Being a 360 gamer myself I can say yes.)

Now I would love to be wrong, and I would love Skyrim to be the reason I run out and buy a shiny new graphics card to get the most out of the game.

However, what will likely happen is my PC, which is years old now, will run Skyrim maxed out, and while it will look amazing, it will not live up to its potential. It will still have the same resolution textures as the 360 version, the same lighting, the same physics, even though it is capable of being so much more.

So this is why a $400.00 PC will likely play Skyrim better than the 360 ever will, because Skyrim for PC is really just a 360 port, until modders come in and get it to where it should be at launch. (Years later)


And just to drive the point home.....

THIS was running REALTIME on a PC Graphics card that is now 2 card generations old. And can be bought for sub $75.00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YjXCae4Gu0


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiX5d3rC6o&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5yVjHaJ0PI

Well, to be fair and balanced, although I do agree, there are some issues with some of this.

Namely, for me (and a lot of people) it's hard to say "No" to anything but the best. You don't want to go with a $700 computer because it seems kind of el-cheapo. That's where a lot of these "consoles all the way" people get their ideas about PC gaming. Yes, even a $700 PC will be superior to the consoles these days. But you have to think about monitor resolution namely. I have a 27" monitor. To render games in native resolution I would be pushing a whopping 4x the pixels, at least. Some console games render in sub-720p because the consoles can't handle it at that, even. Of course I would have a 4x better looking image, and 4x the resolution (ability to resolve detail I mean, not screen resolution). Then that means you probably have to have a GPU that is 4x as powerful as what is in current consoles. My case is an extreme one, and you don't *have* to render in native res, but a lot of the ideology behind PC gaming is that you're doing it because it's superior, and it's hard to settle for anything less than maxed-out.

I know if I got a PC for Skyrim, it would be a $3000 extravaganza. Including two SSDs, and possibly SLI/CrossfireX. Even if initially it wasn't worth it for Skyrim, I'd be preparing for a wealth of visual- and content-enhancing mods. And this brings me to my next point.

At the very least, we've got to commend Bethesda for dedicating the time to releasing their internal editor for us. That's huge. We can assume with an editor available we will still have the capability to override and add assets. I'm making this assumption for the rest but I could be wrong. Like Oblivion, we will have a wealth of not only visual enhancements but content enhancements. Some things like Better Cities are both, and it even optionally "opens" the cities which can be an amazing experience. But in contrast to Oblivion, I suspect with the engine improvements, like object culling in Fallout 3, and so on, that even consoles will have much better visuals. The engine improvements would in addition realistically let modders replace actual meshes with higher poly ones, and things like texture upgrades will have less of a performance impact because the engine won't be working so hard to render hidden geometry. It was very hard to upgrade the look of the meshes in Oblivion because it was so bogged down from poor occlusion culling.

Which is why things like RAEVWD and related mods absolutely killed performance. RAEVWD was actually a compromise because of the terrible framerates. But in Skyrim I expect they will have a proper culling system in place (even better than FO3's), and thus things that aren't actually visible won't be rendered. This then opens us up to the possibility of a "true" (RA)EVWD mod with little compromise. And of course things like Better Cities will just blow people out of the water when they get made. Because in Oblivion you have Better Cities but it may render at 15 FPS for lots of people, but with proper culling a similar city mod should stay capped at 30/60FPS easily, depending on the layout of the city, of course. There were also AI issues with some mods, but let's just hope they've fixed the non-rendering part of the engine too. I know Fallout 3 performed much better.

...

Anyway, your other points...

The video examples all go against your points. The Ruby video was supposedly 2 of those cards in Crossfire, but it looked like a pre-rendered raytracing demo to me. Someone said the same thing in the comments. *shrug* The Image Metrics video is probably also pre-rendered, they say nothing about it being on a realtime GPU. Better examples would be Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noir which use the same technology, and again that kind of goes against what you were saying because those are on consoles.

Now, generally, I don't disagree with you. I want a superior PC experience. And I'm hoping they enhance the PC version. They at least had some enhancements in Oblivion. You say the textures were the same resolution, yes, but they sure look much worse on Xbox, even before 2-16xAF. Then there were at least all kinds of sliders and settings for graphics enhancement. Like turning way more water reflections on in the INI, grass/object/NPC distance, even loading more cells around you for less of the awful looking LOD.

Well, for me it's official, I'm in the xbox camp now. Best Buy had a smokin deal yesterday and I was able to get a new 256 gig xbox and 5 new games, 2 controllers, and a battery recharge pack for a pretty decent price. I just can't bring myself to spend loads of cash for a PC these days.

It makes perfect sense. The xbox 360 doesn't have to worry about the same OS background processes as a computer does. So just because a $400 computer has a little better hardware than a 360 doesn't mean it's going to play the game better. There are a myriad of background processes that have to run on a PC that do not on a 360.

Edit: Also the video you showed above that was on a graphics card that is two generations old and is $75, it played a video.....big deal, a netbook could play a video. Trying to run a game is much different than trying to run a video. Not to mention, when playing a game, you have more than one avenue of how well the game plays, it is a combination of GPU, CPU, RAM and the read time of your hard drive. Not to mention your BUS speed and etc. It's not like you just pop in a new graphics card and it fixes everything.

uhm skyrim wont take anymore than 4gb recommended -.-. If you're a gamer, you'll probably never go past 4gb, 6gb if u need the little boost. 8gb is still overkill

Ill hope my 4670 and 4gb ram with a athlon 64 x2 4800+ ~2.5 ghz will be playing skyrim 30 fps.

indeed

I'm going to be playing Skyrim with 16gb :tongue:

I play GBA games most of the time, but when I see a game like Crysis I start to drool. Sure, graphics aren't everything, but they sure are a lot.

Well i bought all of the parts separate from Newegg and was able to build an amazing gaming computer for 650$. and it is still better at running any non gaming products for windows. it still costs 300$ more but you also get all the things of a computer.

PS: By ruinning well i can run BFBC2 and f:NV at max settings and get around steady 60 - 70 fps.

EDIT: and of course you have to build it but if you are willing to pay a friend or somebody 50 $ for an hour or two its still about 700$ for a 900$ish value.

EDIT # 2. i can also play Starcraft 2 at max/extreme settings at around 50-60 fps.

The Graphics should look fine for all 3 consoles. PC obviously getting the edge because of the hardware but still the game is going to look good regardless of what console your playing it on.