9 replies to this topic

[Fig]

Clearly, I'm no tech head. This question has been burning me for a while now. Nobody can seem to give me a straight answer.

It seems to me that there is no answer. It's this sort of ambiguous, subjective measurement that nobody can define, but are quick to use in an arguement. In other words, person A's 10x more powerful is person B's 4x more powerful. Is there some specific unit of measure that is used? Are there different areas that are used to measure "power" individually, or is each measurement combined and then an estimated single result is used? Is there a standard unit of measure for power, i.e. the metric system for measuring (meters, kilometers, etc.)?

And it also seems to me that people aren't sure whether or not "power" is restricted to graphical output. It is my impression that power includes graphics, physics, AI, and the ability to add scope to a game.

[Keviin]

I think there is indeed no real answer. For example, you can off course have 8x more RAM than a previously released console, but how do you rate CPU power?

[andodel]

When xbots and PS3 fanboys say their consoles are more powerful, they have no idea what they are talking about. Hell, most of them probably don't even know what RAM or CPU stands for. The fact of the matter is, there is no real measurement. Rather, its based on specific parts. Example, if the Wiiu has 2 GB of RAM, then it has 4X more RAM than the Xbox 360 since it only has 512 MB. However, that does not mean the Wiiu has 4X better processing power. When it comes to graphics, there is no real measure. It's really just "This graphics card is newer, so its better". I guess you could get into some technicalities and say it is X more powerful, but that would be kinda redundant.
As for my definition of power, I believe its based off of speed. To me, that's more important. Since the Wiiu can show Hd graphics, I couldn't care less if its graphics card is slightly worse. Now devs can easily make ports. What I want is a nice framerate.

[Hinkik]

Everyone seem to think that you can measure power in a single number that is not possible.

Tflops means nothing actually. And when they say A is x times more powerful than B that is just BS. Well you may be able to say A is x times more powerful than B in Blahblah game cause it's one particular title.

Different machines is good at different things. If it was so easy to tell how something was more powerful than something other or just tell the power in tflops then we would not have mulitplie benchmarks for just one GPU for example.

Another example is CPU. CPU A might be better at some sort of calculations or multithreaded calculations. While the other one is good at some other sort of calculations or single threaded calculations.

When xbots and PS3 fanboys say their consoles are more powerful, they have no idea what they are talking about. Hell, most of them probably don't even know what RAM or CPU stands for. The fact of the matter is, there is no real measurement. Rather, its based on specific parts. Example, if the Wiiu has 2 GB of RAM, then it has 4X more RAM than the Xbox 360 since it only has 512 MB. However, that does not mean the Wiiu has 4X better processing power. When it comes to graphics, there is no real measure. It's really just "This graphics card is newer, so its better". I guess you could get into some technicalities and say it is X more powerful, but that would be kinda redundant.
As for my definition of power, I believe its based off of speed. To me, that's more important. Since the Wiiu can show Hd graphics, I couldn't care less if its graphics card is slightly worse. Now devs can easily make ports. What I want is a nice framerate.

Framerate depends most on GPU. So better GPU = higher framerate.

[Fig]

So basically, people need to be more specific. Instead of saying its x times more powerful, they should say, this is better than that because the gpu does xyz better, and the cpu does abc better...?

[Crackkat]

it doesn't mean anything, there really isn't any such thing as x times more powerful. technology doesn't work like that. there are numerous components to a piece of hardware and each console is designed differently. one console might be able to do better textures whilst the other might be able to get more polygons onto one game, or it might be able to multi task better etc. the whole power debate is pathetic, about 0.0001% of the people who talk about console power actually know what they're talking about. the power debate is absolutely pointless. also this is why you only ever hear anonymous sources telling you a console is x times more powerful than another but the open devs never say it. they just say console a is "very powerful" or "does 1080p very easily"

[Nollog]

It's just a quick illustration.
If I said there's twice as many gummy bears in this pack than the other, you'd say there's more gummy bears in the pack I'm holding.

[Fig]

It's just a quick illustration.
If I said there's twice as many gummy bears in this pack than the other, you'd say there's more gummy bears in the pack I'm holding.

mmmmm gummy bears, though I'm partial to gummy worms.

I've determined the power debate is the classic, "mine is bigger than yours" argument.

Edited by Fig, 26 June 2012 - 04:12 PM.

[009soulmaster]

the only way to measure to truly prove which is powerful over another is a game looks better over each console for exacption Batman: Arkham City/ Armored Edition,

[Feld0]

the only way to measure to truly prove which is powerful over another is a game looks better over each console for exacption Batman: Arkham City/ Armored Edition,

Even that isn't an accurate assessment of a console's power. Some developers are more experienced with one console than another and will thus be able to make a better-looking game on it.

The "Console A is X times more powerful than Console B" statement is a fallacy. While it is clearly possible to peg the Xbox 360 as more powerful than, say, the Nintendo 64, it is impossible to accurately quantify the actual difference in power in a single statement like that. There are far too many variables and differences both large and minute between most hardware systems to make such a comparison reliable.

There are times when such a comparison is possible - for instance, you can get a pretty good idea of just how much more powerful an Intel E5 processor is over an Intel E3 - but it gets increasingly more difficult to do so as the complexity of the hardware in question increases (comparing two CPU's is very different from comparing two complete consoles).