The New Eternal Debate: PC or Xbox 360?

[Plaster]

Actually, I'd give it about a year. The new Conroe processors are plenty powerful enough to emulate the original Xbox. When they become widely available, it will be awesome for everyone.

I'd rather buy an actual xbox for 1/10th the price.

[RamonGTP]

Uhh, the original xbox was using a hybrid Celeron/P3 processor running at 733mhz. PC's have had enough power to "emulate" the original xbox for many years now.

[Plaster]

Uhh, the original xbox was using a hybrid Celeron/P3 processor running at 733mhz. PC's have had enough power to "emulate" the original xbox for many years now.

Then why aren't there any emulators? There's a Halo 1 "Emulator" that consists of a recompiled executable. That's it.

Look at it like this. The PSX isn't fully emulated, neither is the Saturn. A PS2 emulator surfaced a few months ago, but requires a 3+GHz CPU and a 7800 or higher GPU just to get 15fps. Just because the CPU is x86, does not mean current PC's have the power to emulate the xbox. If they did, it would have happened already.

[Magua]

I guess it comes down to how much $$$ you're willing/able to spend, .

Although if you think about it, gaming on a PC really isn't that much more expensive. The PS3 is going to cost what, $500 for gimped package and $600 for a comprehensive package?

If you accept the fact that everyone needs to buy a PC of some sort for daily activities, and your middle of the road non-gaming Dell runs about $600 you tack on your PS3 budget and your looking at $1200...easily enough to make a Desktop that can run any game out on the market and any future games for atleast a good amount of time.

[RamonGTP]

Then why aren't there any emulators? There's a Halo 1 "Emulator" that consists of a recompiled executable. That's it.

Look at it like this. The PSX isn't fully emulated, neither is the Saturn. A PS2 emulator surfaced a few months ago, but requires a 3+GHz CPU and a 7800 or higher GPU just to get 15fps. Just because the CPU is x86, does not mean current PC's have the power to emulate the xbox. If they did, it would have happened already.

It is because emulators are inefficient, not becuase PC's just now started to catch up to the original xbox's power.

[Rabbitrunner51]

Why run somethng cheesy as emulators ... Just save and get an Xbox360 if you have a computer

Honestly... Just for the ake of getting to play some of the games on consoles not on PC.. I wouldn't mind having one... but whats the point. I'll never play every game out there anyways..., no matter waht thy are or how long i survive in this world...

Even though we brought this up before... I still would like to play Halo 2 .., even if the critics say its no big deal... fun game for fantasy shooters.

I got this game 'Conflict Global Storm'..,which is also a PS3 game ..so there ARE some games made for both good enough for me...

The only game i hav e on an emulator is Super Mario Bros. lol

[Plaster]

It is because emulators are inefficient, not becuase PC's just now started to catch up to the original xbox's power.

You said that the PC has had the power to emulate the original xbox for many years now. That is simply not true. You couldn't for example emulate the xbox on a 1GHz PC with a GF4. You couldn't even pull off the emulation on the meanest machine today. Emulation requires much more computational power than is provided in the original hardware.
It doesn't matter if the original hardware shares similarities with the PC. The original xbox will probably be emulated fully around the year 2012. That's if anyone even bothers.

BTW, it's not the emulators that are inefficient, it's PC's themselves. More to the point, the OS. It takes a PC with a magnitude greater computational power just to run a game that the original xbox runs with ease. I'm talking same graphics, framerates, audio quality, the works. But hey, if you think PC's have been strong enough "for many years now" more power to you.

[RamonGTP]

And if you think it's the PC's... More power to you... I couldn't disagree more

[Magua]

You said that the PC has had the power to emulate the original xbox for many years now. That is simply not true.

Ok are there emulators for the PC that run any Xbox games? No. Atleast I don't think so. You have a point there, you win...sorta. Well, maybe not. PCs have MORE than enough power to run the games, if coded to run on PCs. Remember that emulating Xbox games games would be illegal, and the 'ports' are done haphazardly and hardly professionally. But lets take a look at actually running an Xbox game on the PC

Example? The Halo port done to PC. Granted the coding was pretty shotty, but a PC is easily able to not only run the game, but do so with better image quality. I don't think we need to wait till 2012 for a PC to catch up with Xbox . In fact Xbox was roughly equal with a PC at its release and has been falling further behind ever since.

You couldn't even pull off the emulation on the meanest machine today. Emulation requires much more computational power than is provided in the original hardware.

I don't quite get what you mean with that second sentence, but playing Halo on the PC hardly requires the meanest machine of today. I'm confused, am I misreading something?

BTW, it's not the emulators that are inefficient, it's PC's themselves. More to the point, the OS. It takes a PC with a magnitude greater computational power just to run a game that the original xbox runs with ease.

Yes, PCs are required to run an operating system. And yes, that operating system does draw some resources away from the hardware. We are talking maybe 200megs of RAM and a couple CPU cycles...nothing that would even come close to orders of 'magnitude of greater compuational power.'


Are you seriously arguing that a modern day gaming computer lacks the power of the original XBOX? I must be missing something in your posts, because I can't imagine thats the case.

[Plaster]

The PC is quite capable of running the Halo version ported to the PC. It isn't able to emulate the xbox version. The recompiled "emulation" isn't even playable. It just loads the title screen.

The comment about 2012, was with actual emulation in mind. Not recoding the game software itself. There is a difference between emulation and code hacking.

As for the current PC tech "lacking the power of the original xbox", absolutely not. It lacks the power to fully emulate it. My argument had to do with the xbox's similarity to a PC. The similarities are there, but you most certainly wouldn't get the same quality of gaming (framerate, graphics quality, audio quality, or resolution) out of a PC with a P3 700, GF4, 64MB of shared RAM and a 10GB HDD. If you stop and consider that you need at least a 450MHz Pentium II to emulate the 1.8MHz NES, you'll see where the power comment is coming from.

[Magua]

Yea but that has absolutely nothing to do with the power and capabilities of a PC vs that of an XBOX and everything to do with the fact that XBOX games are not designed for a PC...whether the XBOX architecture is similar to that of a PC or not.

Your saying the PCs are crippled because the run an OS in the backround, but the processing power of today's PC ... even with backround programs ... dwarfs the capabilities of an XBOX, and is easily on par with that of an XBOX360 (for about 3 months, when the XBOX360 will start falling behind like every console in the past).

Your saying that Halo dosen't count because it was ported from Xbox to PC? What do you expect? XBOX halo was never meant to be run on a PC, why should it work at all? I don't see the XBOX running any non-ported PC game emulations either...which I suppose it should given the amazing raw power of the XBOX. Right?

[Plaster]

Yea but that has absolutely nothing to do with the power and capabilities of a PC vs that of an XBOX and everything to do with the fact that XBOX games are not designed for a PC...whether the XBOX architecture is similar to that of a PC or not.

I never once said the PC is less powerful than the Xbox. Where you, or anyone else got that idea is beyond me. I was arguing something similar to what you just said, stating that the PC has to be quite powerful (none are strong enough) to fully emulate the Xbox. For no other reason than what you just stated. The games were made for the xbox, not the PC.

Your saying the PCs are crippled because the run an OS in the backround, but the processing power of today's PC ... even with backround programs ... dwarfs the capabilities of an XBOX, and is easily on par with that of an XBOX360 (for about 3 months, when the XBOX360 will start falling behind like every console in the past).

Nope, never said that PC's are crippled. I said the OS makes the PC have to have more power to do certain tasks that consoles simply don't have to worry about. With a PC, the games have to talk to the PC through the bloated OS. Console OSs are much more streamlined, almost to the point where the games virtually talk directly to the hardware.

If you want a good example of the streamlined nature of a console, grab an old PC with similar specs as the xbox, throw in Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 and see how playable the games are at the absolute lowest settings possible. In both instances you'll find that not only does the PC version run much worse, but it doesn't even remotely approach the Xbox versions graphic quality. Is this because the PC is weaker than the Xbox? Absolutely not. It's because the Xbox has a standard spec. The PC on the other hand has millions of possible configurations. So many that most PC games are pretty much running a pseudo form of emulation themselves.

Your saying that Halo dosen't count because it was ported from Xbox to PC? What do you expect? XBOX halo was never meant to be run on a PC, why should it work at all? I don't see the XBOX running any non-ported PC game emulations either...which I suppose it should given the amazing raw power of the XBOX. Right?

Nope, not saying that Halo for the PC doesn't count. I'm saying that the hacked Xbox Halo doesn't count. One was ported to the PC, the other was a hacked Xbox game. That's two completely different pieces of software.

This isn't a PC vs. The original Xbox comparison. I'm arguing that current PC's cannot emulate the Xbox. If you read the thread again, you'll see the individual saying he'd rather emulate the xbox on his PC than play the games on an actual Xbox.

BTW, there are quite a few PC ported emulators for the Xbox, not to mention games. They run quite amazingly considering the lowend specs of the Xbox.

[RamonGTP]

I'm willing to bet if a big software developer actually took the time to properly code an emulator, it would work just fine on today's PC's... However, most if not all emulators are developed by some noname company, or developed by freelance programers just doing it becuase they can.

The closest thing to a real emulator was bleem which actually wokred well on the games it was compatible with.

[Plaster]

I'm sure if MS wanted too, they could possibly put out an xbox emulator. Then again, look how much trouble they're having with the backward compatibility on the 360.

Then there's the whole issue of PC DVD drives not being able to read Xbox media.

As for Bleem, it's got nothing on current PSX emulators. Try ePSXe or pSX Emulator. Those are far and away the best PSX emulators currently available.

[MadPistol]

Look, I don't believe that computers right now are able to emulate the original xbox simply because it is too much information to run under a different translated code that was on the xbox. because the coding technique was different, it means the cpu has to "emulate" the xbox's architecture. The architecture was severely different from a PC. That's the reason you don't see Xbox's running copies of windows. If it was capable of running windows, it's guaranteed someone would have done it and published it by now. It is simply not possible, and there is a reason. it's like you're trying to run the entire xbox as a program. That's what emulators do. It codes the architecture of the console, and then lets the processor run all the information as if it were that console. The N64 emulator runs in such a way that the 3d accelerator on your computer does all the geometry processing. For some reason, it works really well, but do you realize that the N64 ran on a 99 MHZ processor? in terms of emulators not taking advantage of computers power, I don't think that's the case at all. I think console designers have gotten smarter lately and started designing their consoles differently from traditional computers. By doing this, it makes it much harder for conventional PC's to emulate their architecture, thus requiring more power from computers to emulate them. It's quite smart, because everyone knows that the best gaming PC's easily walk all over the Xbox 360.

Therefore, I don't think it's the PC's power at all. I think it's due to the efficencies of consoles and the inefficiencies of PC's on traditional architectures that stem from priciples that were established some 10 to 15 years ago. PC's need to be redesigned to be more efficient because right now, our computers are beginning to reach their limits.