Overall which system would run games better gamecube or a computer. I don’t really know all the technicalities of all that and me and my friend have an unsettled debate over this so if anyone who really knows what they’re tallking about could reply and give some info i could base my arguement on i would really appreciate it. My arguement is in favour of the computer with these stats: amd athlon 2600+ tbred (333 fsb)
ati radeon 9600 pro 128mb
1 gb 400mhz ram
win xp
The basics anyway. I still think they could run a game better then the gamecube. Give me a bunch of specs and technical info so i can make my friend look like a dumbass.
Moderator’s Note: This is more suited to our “In My Humble Opinion” forum, so I’ll move it over there.
You’re both going to look like dumbasses. Games for a Gamecube CPU and video engine are coded very differently than games for a PC and employ different tradeoffs. It’s comparing apples and oranges.
A more useful head to head comparison (though still not directly comparable) is between the X-Box which is quite similar hardware wise to a fast PC (like the one you spec’d) and the gamecube.
See here
This is a really tough question to answer since we’re talking apples and oranges. The PC, while technically more powerful, doesn’t have games designed (typically) for full utilization of the available tools since PCs vary so much from one another. Different configurations can have vastly different results. While the computer you mentioned is fairly robust with power, it’ll still choke when pressed by newer games running at higher resolutions (again, this varies, you can - depending on the game - adjust copious settings for optimal performance).
As for the GameCube, the games are designed specifically for that one platform; every GameCube is identical thus the developers can aim for full utilization of GC’s processing power without worrying about dire consequences resulting from various hardware configurations.
Again, it’s apples and oranges, but I’ll have to say that the GameCube will run software more consistently than a PC since the games are designed specifically for that platform and will never exceed the system specs.
Astro, that was an interesting article, despite it being dated. While technically the Xbox is more powerful on the whole (not in every regard mind you), most people are unable to discern the difference between the two. And I’d even go so far as to say that the games designed specifically with either of the two platforms in mind look equally stunning; thus making it impossible to truly determine the “superior console”. I offer Halo and Metroid Prime as proof of this.
Oh, and I just want to add on a totally unrelated note that F-Zero GX rules.
Despite the difference in coding in each system, I would say your machine is easily more powerful than a Gamecube. You probably can run many games at 1600 by 1200 or 1024 by 768 resolution without any problems, but a Gamecube is outputting to a TV, which is approx. 640 by 480. That and the fact that the Gamecube has IIRC a 400 mhz CPU and 24 megs of RAM, your machine wins easily there.
For reference: The XboX contains a 733Mhz Intel Celeron processor (often erroneously called a Pentium III), nForce-IGP chipset with integrated Geforce3 GPU, and runs an embedded version of Windows NT 5.0, with 3D support being provided by something that is, more or less, the DirectX8.0 API. I would expect graphics performance to approximately equal a Radeon 9000 (though the Radeon supports much more advanced graphics), probably falling a little lower in actuality.
Any modern computer will completely dominate a console in both general processing power and graphics performance, but will cost a lot more to do it. This is due to increased complexity, as well as the fact that consoles are subsidized by manufacturers hoping to recoup the money on games.
And I would have dumped my N64 in a second had Goldeneye, F-Zero, Mario Kart, Lylat Wars, Perfect Dark etc been released on the PC. ninTENDo ruLeZ!
Silly Pushkin, you can’t play Mario Kart with a mouse and keyboard 
I think Alereon has it right.
Sorry, but no current console on the market compares to a current high end PC in terms of graphics quality and processing power.
The bad news is: It’s a lot more expensive to remain in the high end of things in computer gaming than it is to have the latest console gear.
Comparing a console and a PC isn’t very useful because console architecture is so different (except for the Xbox).
A PC has a lot of very powerful components connected by tiny little pipes. Why does your video card need 128 MB of memory when you already have 512 MB of system RAM and 80 gigs of disk space? Because moving data back and forth between the video card and RAM or hard drive is slow and undesirable. A PC game preloads a lot of data into the video card, then does all the game processing on the CPU, and only sends the geometry for each scene to the video card.
On the other hand, a console like the PS2 has less powerful components, but it has more of them and they’re connected with much bigger pipes. Instead of doing all the gameplay and physics calculations on the CPU, then sending a scene to be rendered on the GPU, a PS2 game can do all the processing in stages as the data moves from memory to the I/O processor to the CPU to one GPU to another GPU and so on. The PC can only work on one thing at a time, but the PS2 can do several simultaneously.
I’m not as familiar with the GameCube hardware, but this is the type of difference you might expect to find in a console.
Of course, any brand new top of the line PC is going to beat the pants off a 3 year old console. That’s Moore’s Law in action. If you want a fair matchup, compare a $200 GameCube with the best PC you could buy for $200 when the GameCube was new.
Eh, no. That is not a fair comparison.
It’s been stated that computers ARE more expensive. So why base the comparison on price, when it’s performance we are trying to compare?
Bottom line is, when the x-box came out into the market (arguably the most powerful console system cout currently herein the U.S), the cutting edge PC’s that could be had where considerable more capable that the X-box.
Of course, games didn’t catch up to that potential until a year later (where as x-box games where using every trick the x-box offered).
But a year later the difference is magnitudes higher than what an x-box could hope to offer.
Because you can’t compare the performance of a GameCube against the performance of “a computer” - there are as many different computer setups as there are dollar amounts.
It should be obvious that even when the GameCube was brand new, there were plenty of computers that could beat it in any comparison, if you were willing to spend the money to buy them. It’s not fair to compare a $10,000 graphics workstation against a $200 video game console, then conclude that computers are better because the expensive workstation is faster.
You bring up an interesting point, though: What exactly are we trying to compare?
If it’s just performance, then computers win hands down; there’s never been a point in history where a consumer game console was more powerful than every computer for sale at the time.
If it’s just price, I’d say computers win again; I believe you can buy a new computer that’s cheaper than any new console, if you’re willing to sacrifice performance.
The comparison really becomes interesting when you look at bang for the buck, though, as in “If I want to do such and so and spend as little (money and/or time) as possible, should I buy consoles or computers?”
Xboxs and PS2s cost $179, GameCubes cost $149. You’ll never get a brand-new PC at that price unless it’s a 486 or something.
Price is pretty much the biggest factor in the PC vs. console wars these days. It got me to switch sides–it would have cost me several times more to upgrade my PC than it would to simply buy a PS2.
There are a few listings on Price Watch for under $149, including an Athlon XP 1800+ system with 128MB RAM, 3D graphics, and 10/100 Ethernet for $139 including shipping. Of course, there are usually strings attached.
This always comes up in these discussions as well, but since nobody has yet in this particular thread, it should be noted that PC’s and consoles have different strengths when it comes to games. No console can ( yet, anyway ) match a PC in terms of strategy games, pure simulators or rpg’s. On the other hand, consoles are better optimized for action/shooters.
So it also depends on what you play.
- Tamerlane
I disagree; I think Tamarlane has the right idea. Price isn’t the biggest factor, the type of game you’re looking to play is the biggest factor. As well as the consideration of whether you’re planning to do stuff other than play games with the machine, of course.
People still insist on dragging out system specs when talking about game performance, when that’s no longer the issue. (And IMO, that’s a Very Good Thing.) I’m happy to see that people are finally starting to get to the stage where they talk about games in terms of how much fun they are, not how many pixels or polygons that throw around.
The industry is getting more cross-platform, so you’ll see the biggest titles ported to every console and the PC as well, but the same title can “feel” very different on a PC than an Xbox, or GameCube, or PS2. The current batch of consoles are all technically underpowered when compared to a PC based on CPU speed and available memory, but they make up for it in the video card and in having an OS tailor-made for games. You’d be hard-pressed to find a brand-new PC made today that isn’t technically better equipped to run any given game than any given console, but that in no way means that a PC “runs games better” than a console.
So when you say “which plays a game better,” you’ve got to look at the whole experience. Is it a strategy game? Better on a PC, where higher resolution display than a TV means the text and interface is better equipped to present all the text & info you need. RTS? Better on a PC, where you’ve got a mouse and keyboard. First-person shooter? Depends, but IMO better on a PC because of the mouse & keyboard. Third-person action game, or a platformer? Better on a console, where it’s been designed to make best use of the controller. Multiplayer game? If you’re going against people on the internet, the PC is best for now (although Xbox Live is pretty damn cool), but if you’re looking to play against buddies in the same room, nothing beats a console for that.
It is easy to say that a computer is more powerful than a console. However that does not mean that a pc will run a game better than a console would.
When developing PC games you have to develop them for a much more broad audience. You must develop the game so that it will run with acceptable performance on low end machines. This is why all PC games have a Minimum System Requirement listed on the box.
During the development process you must also tweak and adjust your game based on video card drivers. It is very common and distracts from better optimizing the game for a specific hardware.
This is where consoles come on as the better of the two when playing games. Consoles are designed with one purpose in mind, to play games (duh! :)). Because of this when you develop a game you know exactly what you are writing code for. You optimize the game for this specific hardware and your done.
Another thing with console games is constant frame rate. You generally don’t get choppiness and slow downs on console games. Although it does happen with some games. Most games are locked at 30 frames per second. Some are locked at 60fps. This allows for less variance in frames, which is very good because the more the frames per second fluctuate the easier it is to tell there is a fluctuation and distract the player.
So in general games do run better on consoles. Games can run better on PC… but generally because they are optimized they run better on consoles.
Game selection is the whole reason I switched to consoles. Easier to use plus better games plus cheaper minus graphics equals an easy choice. Plus graphics aren’t not nearly as important as gameplay as I’ll take Chrono Trigger anyday over FF X and others like it.
Games can run in a fluid fashion on a console because they only have to be rendered at 640x320@60fps. Any PC made in the last 5 years can do that without flinching. On a PC monitor, users expect 1024x768 or higher at 60fps, as well as much better sound and graphics. Look at Half-Life 2 or Doom3, for example. It’ll be 5 years before we see anything that cool on a console, possibly more.