by BeautifulGarbage 36 Replies latest social entertainment
Xander,
I do appreciate your comments. Thanks.
I really do want as much information as possible. See, I'm a tightwad. So, I tend to cogitate when it comes to spending money. Especially on something I consider to be frivolous. Too many years of hard struggling.
However, be gentle with me
Andee
PC:
The graphics are only as good as counsoel when you have a top calss desktop.
And its alot of trouble to get four player games on pc.
PS2/1:
More games but Sony most definately will have a new sysetm coming in the next 3 years. By then the others would have progressed.
You have to buy the four player slot?
How long have you been wating for online games?
Gcube:
kiddy games.
No hdd.
No dvd
Not internet ready
Xbox:
Better in every way expect
!) price - but its coming down
2) online support - its coming soon
3) games - there in the making
4) Bugs - Sony ps2 alos had alot of problems when it first came out
5) Not internet ready
The counsoles are becoming like pc s themselves
Ps1 can but put as an antique
PS2 is best for right now
What was nintendo thinking?
But xbox will improve when it gets more games
The graphics are only as good as counsoel when you have a top calss desktop.
???
Beg pardon?
Any PC graphics card made within the last several years can do better than 640x480 resolution (what TVs are limited to). In fact, the XBox has (sort of) a Geforce3 graphics card as its core. PCs are already up to Geforce4 cards, and the next generation nVidia card is due out in August.
Unless you are buying a very, VERY low-end system, PC graphics capabilities are far superior to console capabilities.
And its alot of trouble to get four player games on pc.
Not true. Games that are designed for it (Serious Sam, for example), work just fine splitting the screen into four parts. Plus, each panel is still easily readable since you aren't now forced to live with 320x240 resolution per frame.
I just don't understand why you would want to do that, though? I mean, 4 players? I regularly get my Tribes on at night with 32 players at once. FOUR players!?!?!
(And, if you did get a third computer, go ahead and network them together like my home LAN. Then, you can easily get three players together in the same house on the same game playing on the net against other people - which is quite awesome!)
Gcube:
kiddy games
Uh, yeah, and she has a 10 year old and a 6 year old, so...
Especially on something I consider to be frivolous. Too many years of hard struggling
I know exactly where you are coming from, and that's why I'll never own a console. It's not that I'm not a gamer - far from it, I'm quite the hardcore gamer myself.
HOWEVER, that said, because I am frugal, I am only going to invest in something that will allow me to do productive work as well as play the latest games.
Incidently, my system:
AthlonXP '1800+'@'2100+'
Shuttle AK31 v3.1 mobo
512 MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
GeForce3 Ti500 (270/597)
Xander F
(Unseen Apostate Directorate of North America - Ohio order)A fanatic is one who, upon losing sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts.
--George Santayana
I agree that PC games are good which is why the XBox has so much going for it - it is a PC !
However, to play PC games you need some beefy hardware and the XBox gives you that at a very low (subsidised) price. You can pay more for just a graphics card than for the XBox!
I have PC's but I got an XBox for games because you can just turn it on and play and there are no config / driver problems to worry about.
Because the PS2 does not have the modem and HDD built in, it is less likely that support for them will be built into as many games (as they are not part of the 'standard setup' that most users will have).
The online support for the XBox is what will set it above the others IMHO combined with the 4 player support.
You have not lived until you've played multi-player HALO. I haven't tried it yet but I imagine 4 against 4 (ie. 2 XBoxes) would be gaming heaven.
I agree that PC games are good which is why the XBox has so much going for it - it is a PC !
Well, yeah, a PC that can't get on the net unless you have broadband, can't websurf anyway, no word processing, etc....
Not trying to be *too* pushy, but I think a lot of people dismiss PCs as gaming platforms out of hand, and really shouldn't be, IMNSHO
no config / driver problems to worry about.
Well, if you have someone else do the hardware setup for you, and use WinXP with 'standard' hardware - nVidia graphics cards, Hercules or Soundblaster sounds cards, etc, you're generally ok.
played multi-player HALO
Nah, I just can't get over the crummy user interface. Shooters were meant to be played with a keyboard and mouse. Multiplayer Tribes 2 is better - up to 64 players on a match. Tell me that ain't kewl. Especially when you have 3 PCs in the house, and can man all three positions on a heavy bomber. Ohhh, yeahhhh.....
Xander F
(Unseen Apostate Directorate of North America - Ohio order)A fanatic is one who, upon losing sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts.
--George Santayana
*sighs*
Anyone remember Pong? I thought it was sooooo cool!
Things were so simple in the good ole days.
Andee
PS2
is the way to go for vid games, it is the better option, overall
clearer graphics, more game options, built in dvd player, option to switch disc mid game so as to play a music cd (not applicable to all games)
the Xbox is simply a PC mother board with an NVidea graphics card, ---which IS a sweet vid card (standard on a mac g4) ---that is what you are really paying for in the end if you go the xbox route,
asides from giving mr gates some Xtra cash for his latest innovations, it doesn't allow for the same cool options that the PS2 does
I think Coleco still makes consoles...
Sincerely,
District Overbeer
and actually since you ARE getting this system for your kids, go with the NCube,
if frugal and money is your concern you can probably still get a N64 for minimal cash if you can find one and the games will be dirt cheap now --- check out walmart
Xader made some good points as to why go the PC route, it is cheaper to build in the long run,
but this simply comes down to what your gaming needs are,
and who is going to be playing them
Erm, I have yet to see a PC match the 100 megavertex/sec throughput rate of the Xbox. Remember, the Xbox doesn't have a great big bottleneck (the AGP bus) that the average PC is stuck with. The Xbox uses a modified UMA system for memory access, which means that things such as vertex and render-to-texture rates are enormously higher than any PC. PCs will inevitably overtake the Xbox pretty soon, but for now, the combination of that freaky UMA with the MODIFIED NV25 sub-micron die ensures that the Xbox will still continue kicking the PCs ass for sheer vertex/pixel throughput for MANY months to come. Also, the Xbox is purely limited in resolution by the hardware it is outputting to, (usually a TV, with a low resolution to start with), and it can technically pump out resolutions of 1920x1280 without a problem, although games are now being designed with sub-800x600 resolutions in mind. Xander, the pixel fill rate is usually more important than the maximum resolution, primarily because if the fillrate is low, any high-resolution game is going to run like a dog.
Graphics cards on the PC to watch out for are the astonishing 3DLabs unnamed monster that has 16 parallel vertex shader pipelines as well as 4 simultaneous pixel shaders, which is nearly 4x that of the GF4. The Matrox Parhelia is also interesting, apparently supporting PS1.4 (only the ATI 8500 does this ATM), which is a very flexible pixel programming language compared to PS1.1 (as implemented by NVidia), and it also has other features like TripleHead (run 3 separate monitors from 1 card) and stuff. The PC market is heating up, but the AGP bus bottleneck is still present nonetheless.
"Vaccination has never saved a human life. It does not prevent smallpox." The Golden Age, Feb 4 1931 p. 293-4 - The Sacredness of Human Blood (Reasons why vaccination is unscriptural)
