Graphics issue

360fanboi

360fanboi

Hi all! I just made a character in SR2 using the exact formula posted on this video:
However, I've noticed that the graphics in my game is inferior compared to the videos posted by that youtube user. This is what my games looks like on the max setting: http://i.imgur.com/t7Ttu.jpg
As you can see it clearly looks worse than the youtube video, does the console version look better?
 
No, games on (a good) PC/computer allways look better than the console versions.

You sure you have the graphic settings maxed out? Can you're computer handle it at max settings?
 
Damn nice chick, I might use those sliders the next time I create a new character in SR2. I don't think the comparison pic looks too bad and besides you are comparing one character that does have makeup to another that doesn't.
 
Answer: The 360 version does look better then the PC version.

Saints Row 2 was ported very poorly from the 360 resulting in poor visuals, and jagged frame rate. So, basically games CAN look better on the PC, but graphics have little to do with hardware and more to do with optimization. It takes a PC three times more powerful to match a consoles optimization. Hints why we have 8 gigs of memory instead of 512 mb, and graphics cards with a gig of memory only for graphics.

I love my PC, but the 360 and PS 3 are no slouches. 3.2 ghz triple core processor waiting to do one thing. Play the fudge outta games. The only thing that gives the PC an edge is memory. Heck, in theory, a developer could dump graphics duty on the PS 3's additional processors or one of the 360's cores to improve visuals. Those things are wickedly well designed. Especially for being 7 years old.
 
tonicmole said:
Answer: The 360 version does look better then the PC version.
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Not on my setup :) Same monitor for my 360 and my PC too.

tonicmole said:
Saints Row 2 was ported very poorly from the 360 resulting in poor visuals, and jagged frame rate.
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Yeah, it's a bad port.
tonicmole said:
So, basically games CAN look better on the PC, but graphics have little to do with hardware and more to do with optimization. It takes a PC three times more powerful to match a consoles optimization. Hints why we have 8 gigs of memory instead of 512 mb, and graphics cards with a gig of memory only for graphics.
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It's massively to do with hardware. A PS3's GPU is basically a cut down GeForce 7800. A 360's GPU is a strange hybrid of a X1800 and a HD 2900, but performs more like an X1800. Consoles are typically rendering games at horribly low resolutions to get the frame rates they do - GTA4 on a PS3 renders at 1120×630, on a 360 at 1280×720 and on a PC at whatever you like (I used to play it at 1080p). So the PS3 version is only really rendering 705600 pixels, a 360 is rendering 921600, and a PC is rendering more like 2073600. If a PC can get the same frame rate while rendering almost 3x the number of pixels, it's way more powerful. (this is a horribly flawed way of comparing, but it works ish for a quick comparison). Consoles are generally rendering at as close to 30 frames per second as they can reach. For comparison, most PC games are going to be run at 60 FPS - if you have a 3D monitor that will be 120FPS. Consoles usually have to disable antialiasing just to get 30 FPS, and even then many games struggle to manage even that.

When you use antialiasing, a GPU is typically rendering the image in a much higher resolution - probably 2x in each direction - and then downscaling. If we assume 2x in each direction for our previous 1080p estimate, that's now 8294400 pixels. That's nearly 12x what the PS3 is rendering, and the PC is doing 2x the number of frames a second too, so make that 24x the amount of work.

Edit: This is merely comparing fillrate - this is not where games are really limited at the moment, that's more on shaders. However, it's a nice way of making a quick n' easy comparison - I'm not really claiming that a PC is 24x more powerful than a PS3. I would not be surprised to see 5x or more performance out of a modern and reasonably affordable card though.

tonicmole said:
I love my PC, but the 360 and PS 3 are no slouches. 3.2 ghz triple core processor waiting to do one thing. Play the fudge outta games. The only thing that gives the PC an edge is memory. Heck, in theory, a developer could dump graphics duty on the PS 3's additional processors or one of the 360's cores to improve visuals. Those things are wickedly well designed. Especially for being 7 years old.
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The 360 and PS3 share very similar PowerPC cores for the main parts of their processors. These processors are really simplified IBM PowerPC 970s. They only have a single execution unit per core and perform only in-order processing. This means that they are only approximately half the speed of an equivalently clocked PowerPC processor in an old Mac G5. Don't take my word for it, here are some numbers: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/5089
This is a geekbench result - geekbench is a processor benchmark and does not test GPU or similar. The baseline score (1000 in all tests) is a single core Mac G5 at 1.6GHz. The PS3 can't even beat that using the general purpose cores at 3.2GHz! An average modern processor, the Core i3 2100 - dual core, 3.1GHz - (http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1619699) gets a result of 5519 - almost 6x faster. The 360's processor cores are almost identical to the PS3's. Now you also mentioned the PS3's SPUs - these are nice but very specialised processing units for very specific tasks - they are extremely bad at general purpose computing. They're also very hard to write good code for, and therefore go almost completely unused by most game developers.

Modern PCs - and even relatively contemporary PCs - are massively more powerful than either the 360 or the PS3. The 360, PS3 and the Wii are holding back PC gaming and have been since release. Bad PC ports do not help the reputation of the PC as a gaming platform, but a well written game looks and runs far better on PC than it ever will on consoles.

360fanboi said:
Hi all! I just made a character in SR2 using the exact formula posted on this video:
However, I've noticed that the graphics in my game is inferior compared to the videos posted by that youtube user. This is what my games looks like on the max setting: http://i.imgur.com/t7Ttu.jpg
As you can see it clearly looks worse than the youtube video, does the console version look better?
Click to expand...
The video is downscaled to 360p so it will look smoother and sharper at that size, the video's character has makeup applied - yours doesn't, you're not using antialiasing on your PC, etc. You're also far closer to the screen on a PC than you are on a typical console setup, so fine detail (or lack of it) is far more noticable.
 
Actually I'm pretty certain that the Cell processor is duel threaded and though the master is a triple core much like the 360's, it has seven slaves for gaming, not counting one locked for the OS only and I think the other is locked for shits and jiggles. What I'm saying is that a set spec requirement can often beat power. Example, the 360 often out performs the PS 3, despite the fact the PS 3 is more powerful because of optimization. PC games CAN out perform consoles, but that doesn't mean they do because it's up to the games engine to use the power properly. Games don't just magically become better running on a PC that the coding has never seen before. Certainly resolutions can be better, textures crisper, and higher FPS, but that is not guaranteed. Maybe you have an AMD GPU and the game doesn't get along with it. Maybe your drivers aren't optimized for that specific game. Also, I'll admit that a 3.5 ghz 6 core processor, with a 2 gig Geforce 690 will likely out run the hell out of a console outta pure obscene power, but that's a $3000 PC, and not the norm.

The more common specs are around a 2.4 ghz quad core, with a 1 gig mid-range GPU, 8 gigs of ram.....and so on. In closing, all of this is on a game by game basis, and as for Saints Row 2, the console wins. Unmoded, it has a terrible frame rate, and utterly poor performance. That's why you guys host the mod to fix it.
 
Thx for all the reply! Despite the framerate issues, stupid glitches and broken mechanics, the more I play SR2 the more I enjoy it over SR3. SR2 has a much better story, the city is bigger and there is so much more stuff to do and more cars to steal. Most of all in SR2 the main character was so much better and more badass, he/she was someone who was ruthless and sadistic and didn't take shit from anyone. In SR3 he/she just turned into a pussy who let losers like Zimos and Kinzie and Angel push him/her around.

SR2 has a much better soundtrack too, the songs on the SR3 radio channels are horrible.

Admin edit: Stop double posting, dammit.
 
I feel that SR 2 has the best over all design, were as SRTT is the best mechanics and moment to moment fun. To be fair SRTT's development was cut a little short do to THQ going under. You have to tip your hat to the lead developer over at Volition. You can see that they had a larger concept for three, but due to limited money and time, Volition focused on quality versus quantity. Most dev teams would have misjudged their time and budget ending up releasing a broken game.
 
tonicmole said:
Actually I'm pretty certain that the Cell processor is duel threaded and though the master is a triple core much like the 360's, it has seven slaves for gaming, not counting one locked for the OS only and I think the other is locked for shits and jiggles. What I'm saying is that a set spec requirement can often beat power. Example, the 360 often out performs the PS 3, despite the fact the PS 3 is more powerful because of optimization. PC games CAN out perform consoles, but that doesn't mean they do because it's up to the games engine to use the power properly. Games don't just magically become better running on a PC that the coding has never seen before. Certainly resolutions can be better, textures crisper, and higher FPS, but that is not guaranteed. Maybe you have an AMD GPU and the game doesn't get along with it. Maybe your drivers aren't optimized for that specific game. Also, I'll admit that a 3.5 ghz 6 core processor, with a 2 gig Geforce 690 will likely out run the hell out of a console outta pure obscene power, but that's a $3000 PC, and not the norm.

The more common specs are around a 2.4 ghz quad core, with a 1 gig mid-range GPU, 8 gigs of ram.....and so on. In closing, all of this is on a game by game basis, and as for Saints Row 2, the console wins. Unmoded, it has a terrible frame rate, and utterly poor performance. That's why you guys host the mod to fix it.
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I'm sorry, did you even read what I said? The CPU test I showed uses all the cores in a machine. The PS3 test clearly was ~5x slower than the i3 2100 test - which is a normal dual core - NOT an expensive processor. My performance quotes for graphics cards were also for midrange GPUs with ~1GB of graphics RAM. On any game that is sensibly written a spec like that will _trash_ any current gen console, even the Wii U.

And as I said - because the SPUs are unique to the PS3 and are incredibly awkward to program for, no-one uses them to any degree.
 
Even on a 4.0 ghz turbo i7 Saints Row 2 will run slow because it was optimized for Xbox 360's 3.2 ghz. So, I think we are both looking at different things. You're talking about THEORETICAL performance. What I'm saying is that a game optimized for a specific machine, needs less wiggle room. Example. Let's build a PC with the exact same specs as an Xbox 360.

3.2 ghz Triple core processor
512 mb ram
Ati Radeon x1800

Now, let's play Skyrim at 1080! Uh oh! Well, we might be able to run it at 720.....at 15 FPS......no shadows.....no AA.....or reflections......it still crashes....almost always. So, you are definitely correct that our modern PC's are faster then home consoles from 2005, but raw power doesn't always equal better performance. Look at ID's game Rage. It runs better on consoles, no matter how much power you throw at it, because bad code cannot be just strong armed through those cores. You can run it at higher resolutions, and bump a little more out of it, but you'll still get stutters, and horrible texture pop in. Not because of lack of power, but because of bad development. So we are really debating two different things. Your talking about power, and I'm talking about games being coded correctly.
 
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