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6'th gen hardware wars: Game Cube vs Xbox OG vs PS2 vs Dreamcast

pawel86ck

Banned
VG tech just benchmarked splinter cell 3 on xbox x but also on xbox classic. It's funny but I have completed entire game on xbox classic for the first time yet I dont remember framerate problems 😂🙂. 18-24fps dips on xbox classic so it looks like SC3 has pushed xbox hardware even above it's limits.


Screenshot-20190706-140752-You-Tube-2.jpg

And BTW. like I have said xbox emulation on xbox 360 was much worse
 
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Gamecube was cheap when I got it and had more games that appealed to me at the time.

The best Paper Mario game, the best Pikmin game (2), the best Console Pokemon game (Colloseum) and introduced me to Zelda via Wind Waker.

Billy Hatcher, Super Monkey Ball and having Skies of Arcadia is a bonus!

Owned a PS2 and got into Final Fantasy thanks to that.

Xbox interested me but was heavily advertised in the UK as a Man's console (Best footy game, Western RPGs, Dead or Alive aka Jiggly Tits Fighter and Halo) so I missed out on the gems that they did get.
 
VG tech just benchmarked splinter cell 3 on xbox x but also on xbox classic. It's funny but I have completed entire game on xbox classic for the first time yet I dont remember framerate problems 😂🙂. 18-24fps dips on xbox classic so it looks like SC3 has pushed xbox hardware even above it's limits.


Screenshot-20190706-140752-You-Tube-2.jpg

And BTW. like I have said xbox emulation on xbox 360 was much worse

On top of higher poly counts, re4 runs pretty smooth. Every time i play re4 Wii edition I am *still* impressed at what they achieved.

As i said before, Xbox games like Riddick that use normal maps and stencil shadows do too much for their own good.
 

Breakage

Member
The only gen where I owned all three machines. You didn't have to be a tech head to notice the difference between Xbox games and those on other platforms.
 
If I were going to pick up an og Xbox, was there a specific version that was better or more reliable?

Also, for ps2 the fat versions could take a 40+ GB hard drive. I picked up a 160GB I plan to put a bunch of games on. Did Xbox have anything like that?

And did Xbox have HDMI or RGB Scart, or was it just component?
 

Romulus

Member
On top of higher poly counts, re4 runs pretty smooth. Every time i play re4 Wii edition I am *still* impressed at what they achieved.

As i said before, Xbox games like Riddick that use normal maps and stencil shadows do too much for their own good.

Riddick looks incredible for the time period. You're literally the only person downplaying it. Re4 looked great on the cube, but again it's not pushing any crazy polygons. It looks like a faily low poly game actually other than leon and a few npcs. An xbox port would be much cleaner than GC and remedy one of the worst problems--low res textures everywhere. I wouldn't even doubt they could get it running at 720p or some middle ground res on hdtvs on xbox.
 
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If I were going to pick up an og Xbox, was there a specific version that was better or more reliable?

Also, for ps2 the fat versions could take a 40+ GB hard drive. I picked up a 160GB I plan to put a bunch of games on. Did Xbox have anything like that?

And did Xbox have HDMI or RGB Scart, or was it just component?
Xbox only has component afaik, dunno about scart in the US but its output is actually the cleanest of the 3 consoles provided you have good cables. Monster brand s what i have for Wii
 
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Romulus

Member
Disgusting quality upscaler. Ossc or if your tv still has component just use that.

Disgusting? According to who? You didnt even know it existed until now and suddenly you're an expert? Component is better but not everyone has the setup. Pound cable is a viable option for those people.
 
Disgusting? According to who? You didnt even know it existed until now and suddenly you're an expert? Component is better but not everyone has the setup. Pound cable is a viable option for those people.
I knew about the pound cable sunshine. It's garbage. Esp. If you feed it via composite. Talking about what games are impressive and you're talking composite upscale lmao

Talking to you in this thread is like arguing with a religious fundamentalist, it's like you're fighting a war lol. Kamiya style block
 

pawel86ck

Banned
In regards to xbox classic cables, it's not so easy to find good quality component cable for xbox classic these days. I bought really cheap component cable at first, but picture quality was really bad (strange vertical lines and noise). Later on I have bought modified x360 component cable (with tweaked AV port input) and now picture quality is perfect. The difference in sharpness between 480i vs 480p is really big so component is a must, but TV is also very important factor. On my 4K HDTV 480p looks really blurry no matter what but on my old HDready plasma pucture is really sharp.

BTW I would like to see something like NES mini, meaning small xbox, PS2, GC consoles with HDMI output and ISO support. These old consoles are slowly dying, especially DVD drives. I had to soft mod my xbox classic because DVD drive wasnt in good condition and I can only play games from HDD.
 
I knew about the pound cable sunshine. It's garbage. Esp. If you feed it via composite. Talking about what games are impressive and you're talking composite upscale lmao

Talking to you in this thread is like arguing with a religious fundamentalist, it's like you're fighting a war lol. Kamiya style block

Pound isn't terrible, it isn't great, but at least on Ps2 it's actually RGB, but I don't use it anymore. OSSC Scart works great as 480p/1080i converter. I use it with one of my PS2s and the framemiester with the other. Since Xbox does component I'll probably use the OSSC, assuming the majority of games are at least 480p capable.

One thing about the PS2 though, it was the only console of that generation that had good sized HDD support. This made GC and Xbox incapable of running games like FFXI.

And Riddick isn't pushing that many polys, it's pushing quite a bit but It's just using the light information baked from higher poly models. That's pretty much normal maps. Some sections looked pretty bad to me due to the poly counts on some objects not really being high enough to make a believable map, but it's been years since I played it or owned an Xbox for that matter. So my memory could be foggy. I know all the Team Ninja stuff was really more impressive to me.

Still, pretty damn crazy when you think a console from that Era was doing normal maps.
 
Pound isn't terrible, it isn't great, but at least on Ps2 it's actually RGB, but I don't use it anymore. OSSC Scart works great as 480p/1080i converter. I use it with one of my PS2s and the framemiester with the other. Since Xbox does component I'll probably use the OSSC, assuming the majority of games are at least 480p capable.

One thing about the PS2 though, it was the only console of that generation that had good sized HDD support. This made GC and Xbox incapable of running games like FFXI.

And Riddick isn't pushing that many polys, it's pushing quite a bit but It's just using the light information baked from higher poly models. That's pretty much normal maps. Some sections looked pretty bad to me due to the poly counts on some objects not really being high enough to make a believable map, but it's been years since I played it or owned an Xbox for that matter. So my memory could be foggy. I know all the Team Ninja stuff was really more impressive to me.

Still, pretty damn crazy when you think a console from that Era was doing normal maps.
That's exactly right, these games would've looked better if they hadn't pushed normal maps and expensive shadows.

It's an impressive feature set for Xbox, but all the really good looking games don't use them. Sans rallisport 2 but it gets away with it as a racer. God i wish that was bc on 360, as i have no og Xbox ATM.
 

Romulus

Member
I knew about the pound cable sunshine. It's garbage. Esp. If you feed it via composite. Talking about what games are impressive and you're talking composite upscale lmao

Talking to you in this thread is like arguing with a religious fundamentalist, it's like you're fighting a war lol. Kamiya style block

lol you didn't have a clue there was an Xbox HDMI, you even said in your post:

Xbox only has component afaik

And what a bizarre flip around. You were originally talking about the component cables, but suddenly when someone else does it's not okay? I posted a 4 word sentence and you go all crazy calling the HDMI trash etc, yet you didn't even know there was an HDMI option 3 minutes previously.

Now your other off the wall posts make perfect sense.

And since your post indicated you have no experience with the Pound on Xbox, I do. I have OG Xbox components from the factory(expensive), cheap Chinese knock-offs, Monsters, and I owned a Pound Cable on my previous setup. Pound on Xbox is a great option, it holds up even better than the PS2 Pound I owned. I've spent the time and done the comparisons. Again, not everyone has the ideal setup for components.

Edit now others are mentioning cables(which I didn't even bring up initially) and you suddenly stop policing. It's fine all of a sudden.
 
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If I were going to pick up an og Xbox, was there a specific version that was better or more reliable?

Also, for ps2 the fat versions could take a 40+ GB hard drive. I picked up a 160GB I plan to put a bunch of games on. Did Xbox have anything like that?

And did Xbox have HDMI or RGB Scart, or was it just component?


the thompson drive was considered bad I have an xbox that originally had one, I cannot blame it too much since I used that xbox for some "experiments" but it started with read problems and I bought a samsung drive and works to this day just a bit slow

on PS2 you can use usb flash cards too, or even read games from ftp there are issues in each method for certain games
 

JLMC469

Banned
1. XBOX
2. Game Cube
3. PS2

From what I can remember, the Chronicles of Riddick (XBOX) looked significantly better than anything on the Game Cube and PS2.
 

Romulus

Member
Another gem. The visuals were really good overall, but there was inconsistency, environmental specifically. A couple of levels look incomplete(the first level oddly) while others are some of the most impressive on the system. Character models were serviceable for the era, but the sound and gritty Star Wars feel were great. I loved the shadows too at the time and effect of stabbing an enemy and blood splattering the visor.


 

pawel86ck

Banned
I remember that water in Morrowind was like nothing else at the time. Even most PCs couldn't render it.
Morrowind was the first game I have played on my PC that was using shaders for water rendering. Water in Morrowind may look really dated today, but back then I was really impressed.

That's how water looked like before games started using shaders, there are many screenshots here so I will hide them in spoiler


Half Life
Ichthyosaur-beta-scientist-Half-Life.png


Evolva
MV5-BNTUw-ZDE1-OTUt-NTY3-Mi00-NTc3-LWE1-Mz-Ut-ZDQ0-NGRj-OTE3-ZGZm-Xk-Ey-Xk-Fqc-Gde-QXVy-Mzc4-MTA5-NA-V1.png


Unreal 1 - probably the best looking water before games started using shaders
Clipboard02.png


And finally Morrowind and water rendered with shaders (screenshots from xbox version emulated on x360)
Clipboard05.png

Clipboard08.png

Clipboard10.png

Clipboard01.png

Clipboard04.png


But I have to say besides water Morrowind looked like early voodoo 3dfx game :p. Low poly models, low resolution textures.

Clipboard09.png


I dont have PC version, but I'm guessing there are mods that improved water rendering and textures

Besides Morrowind I also remeber water in Splinter Cell 1 (screenshots from xbox version emulated on x360)
Clipboard06.png

Clipboard01.png

Water in SC1 was also impressive but wasnt reflections objects but water in SC2 had objects reflections (in the xbox version, I dont remember PS2 and GC version but I can make some comparison tomorrow)
Clipboard03.png

Clipboard04.png


What's strange water in SC 3-4 looked worse than in SC 2
Clipboard01.png


Clipboard014.png


Water in half life 2, I remember it had awesome water ripples although xbox version below had no reflections unlike PC and x360/ps3 versions.
FFFE07-D220190706153431123.png


Far Cry Instincts on xbox classic had awesome water reflections too
FFFE07-D220190706163906955.png

Clipboard02.png

Clipboard09.png

Clipboard11.png

Clipboard01.png


But even the best looking water on xbox classic had flat surface, on xbox 360 however water in some games had waves (far cry 1 instincts x360 remaster, gta 5, or assassin creed 4)
555307-DC20190707004819268.png

3.png


Water in AC4 with waves
maxresdefault.jpg

AC-VI-Comparison-22-2.png

AC-IV-Comparison-19-2.png

AC-IV-Comparison-18-2.png
 
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SonGoku

Member
The Nagasaki and Oita manufacturing plants they worked on with Toshiba were again cheaper than a 7nm plant would be now, much much cheaper, served them from the PS1 to the PS3 with retooling and expansions, and allowed then higher and higher manufacturing volumes, earlier launch, and higher profit margins as they scaled up production and lowered the MSRP too.
The plants were not exclusive to PlayStation HW production and Sony would have likely wanted to control production even if they went with a third party supplier.
PowerVr doesn't manufacture hw they could have licensed the GPU for Sony/Toshiba to build
A very interesting what if scenario
ATI proper had no console parts and would have been an nVIDIA like partner,
ATI would had been much more collaborative unlike nvidia who made MS bleed money
 
Morrowind was the first game I have played on my PC that was using shaders for water rendering. Water in Morrowind may look really dated today, but back then I was really impressed.

That's how water looked like before games started using shaders

Half Life
Ichthyosaur-beta-scientist-Half-Life.png


Evolva
MV5-BNTUw-ZDE1-OTUt-NTY3-Mi00-NTc3-LWE1-Mz-Ut-ZDQ0-NGRj-OTE3-ZGZm-Xk-Ey-Xk-Fqc-Gde-QXVy-Mzc4-MTA5-NA-V1.png


Unreal 1 - probably the best looking water before games started using shaders
Clipboard02.png


And finally Morrowind and water rendered with shaders (screenshots from xbox version emulated on x360)
Clipboard05.png

Clipboard08.png

Clipboard10.png

Clipboard01.png

Clipboard04.png


But I have to say besides water Morrowind looked like early voodoo 3dfx game :p. Low poly models, low resolution textures.

Clipboard09.png


I dont have PC version, but I'm guessing there are mods that improved water rendering and textures

Besides Morrowind I also remeber water in Splinter Cell 1 (screenshots from xbox version emulated on x360)
Clipboard06.png

Clipboard01.png

Water in SC1 was also impressive but wasnt reflections objects but water in SC2 had objects reflections (in the xbox version, I dont remember PS2 and GC version but I can make some comparison tomorrow)
Clipboard03.png

Clipboard04.png


What's strange water in SC 3-4 looked worse than in SC 2
Clipboard01.png


Clipboard014.png


Water in half life 2, I remember it had awesome water ripples although xbox version below had no reflections unlike PC and x360/ps3 versions.
FFFE07-D220190706153431123.png


Far Cry Instincts on xbox classic had awesome water reflections too
FFFE07-D220190706163906955.png

Clipboard02.png

Clipboard09.png

Clipboard11.png

Clipboard01.png


But even the best looking water on xbox classic had flat surface, on xbox 360 however water in some games had waves (far cry 1 instincts x360 remaster, gta 5, or assassin creed 4)
555307-DC20190707004819268.png

3.png


Water in AC4 with waves
maxresdefault.jpg

AC-VI-Comparison-22-2.png

AC-IV-Comparison-19-2.png

AC-IV-Comparison-18-2.png
Then theres the GOAT, which doesn't use shaders 😊
sunshine1.png


Also obligatory :
BoQzLqdCYAAtmkJ.jpg

Lol
 
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SonGoku

Member
On top of higher poly counts, re4 runs pretty smooth.
There's more to games than poly counts, SC looks more impressive than RE4 its almost next gen.
That said i think the GC had the best designed chips of the gen.
One thing about the PS2 though, it was the only console of that generation that had good sized HDD support. This made GC and Xbox incapable of running games like FFXI.
What does HDD support have to do with FFXI?:messenger_dizzy:
on PS2 you can use usb flash cards too, or even read games from ftp there are issues in each method for certain games
Dont know about phat but PS2 slim has limited external storage support i think, i have a modded slim, search forums and apparently many games have performance issues running of external storage others wont run at all
 
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There's more to games than poly counts, SC looks more impressive than RE4 its almost next gen.
That said i think the GC had the best designed chips of the gen.

What does HDD support have to do with FFXI?:messenger_dizzy:

Dont know about phat but PS2 slim has limited external storage support i think, i have a modded slim, search forums and apparently many games have performance issues running of external storage others wont run at all
Play re4 on real gc or Wii hardware, it's still impressive. It uses specular, water deformation, nice dynamic lighting etc. etc. Just a masterpiece by that development team and Mikami.

Splinter cell is one of the weaker looking Xbox games that is always mentioned.
 
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Agreed the game is a masterpiece
PC remaster not as good?
Apparently the ultimate edition has all the original effects and cube texture work? I'm not exactly sure on the port's quality. The ps4 version is trash. Not to mention if you run any of these games at 60fps ; a lot of animations are half rate.

Wii version, at 30fps is the best hands down, god bless ir pointing
 

pawel86ck

Banned
Apparently the ultimate edition has all the original effects and cube texture work? I'm not exactly sure on the port's quality. The ps4 version is trash. Not to mention if you run any of these games at 60fps ; a lot of animations are half rate.

Wii version, at 30fps is the best hands down, god bless ir pointing
PC version + hd texture pack and graphics fixes is easily the best version.
Far cry Instincts is another game that I don't think was possible on GC or PS2.
There's also far cry expansion (predator), with even bigger levels. Xbox was only console that could run these far cry games.
 
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PC version + hd texture pack and graphics fixes is easily the vest version.

There's also far cry expansion (predator), with even bigger levels.

I'm a purist for that game so even that fan made mod is a no go. That game is like the Mona Lisa to me lol. Wii mote gameplay is perfection.

Plus it looks kinda weird with super high res textures and then keeps geometry and lighting the same in places. Still, a great effort by that guy/guys hope they have a job waiting.

I actually think the Xbox version of far cry looks better than the original 2004 pc game.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius



This game pushed PS2 to its limits and looks the same on xbox aside from resolution.
D dark10x a comparison of these two for DF RETRO would be amazing


... and one of the tech leads behind its engine was... yeah you guessed it: Frank Stallone... j/k, it was Sean Murray founder of Hello Games.
 

Tesseract

Banned
good posts itt, not a lot of nonsense

instincts stands out to me on xbox, seemed to be pushing around the most muscle
doom 3 was pretty nutty, shame the multiplayer never got there

re4 on gc put those fixed functions to work, lots of clever stuff that got trimmed down in subsequent versions

the level 5 guys deserve a shot for pushing the gc pipeline so hard at launch, wave race too
 
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pawel86ck

Banned
I'm a purist for that game so even that fan made mod is a no go. That game is like the Mona Lisa to me lol. Wii mote gameplay is perfection.

Plus it looks kinda weird with super high res textures and then keeps geometry and lighting the same in places. Still, a great effort by that guy/guys hope they have a job waiting.

I actually think the Xbox version of far cry looks better than the original 2004 pc game.
I have compared PC version and GC version running on the emulator and it looks like GC version has a little bit different colors

RE4 on doplhin emulator
Clipboard02.png


RE 4 HD
pc1.png
 

Romulus

Member
Not just resolution and texture quality, but why are the lighting effects cut back so much on GC? It's not like it was just that one Splinter Cell game either. Chaos Theory showed even more of disparity. Is the lighting handled by the GPU?
 

Romulus

Member
Interesting info on Doom 3 on why it never came to GC or PS2. I remember at the time having it on PC and being very impressed with the Xbox port when I eventually saw it.


programmer John Carmack said, We just didn't feel that it would be true to what the experience was really designed around. The GameCube and PS2 just don't have the graphics horsepower to drive the lightning technology or what we're trying to do with the bump maps and normal maps


John Carmack made some really good decisions in architecting the engine for scalability. We knew that PS2 and Gamecube were out of the question due to particular graphics requirements (global illumination, normal mapping, shadow volumes etc.), but we knew Xbox had a shot.The key concerns were memory and performance. With only 64MB RAM on the Xbox and a 733Mhz processor, we knew it would be quite challenging --- but not impossible. The team here was really excited to be working on this project --- a chance to work on Doom! --- so we were definitely going to take it on and prove that a great Xbox version could be made. Now, after many months of development, I think it's safe to say that players will be stunned when they see the type of graphics fidelity that Doom 3 is able to present on the Xbox.


http://www.gamer-talk.net/preview105.html


Then you have the most physics intensive game of generation Half-Life 2 wasn't even attempted on GC or PS2 either.
 

pawel86ck

Banned
Interesting info on Doom 3 on why it never came to GC or PS2. I remember at the time having it on PC and being very impressed with the Xbox port when I eventually saw it.


http://www.gamer-talk.net/preview105.html


Then you have the most physics intensive game of generation Half-Life 2 wasn't even attempted on GC or PS2 either.
To be fair Doom 3 and Half Life 2 looks much worse on Xbox compared to PC anyway (I have added screenhots from both games to 10# post on the first page), but I still enjoyed playing xbox version.

Not just resolution and texture quality, but why are the lighting effects cut back so much on GC? It's not like it was just that one Splinter Cell game either. Chaos Theory showed even more of disparity. Is the lighting handled by the GPU?
Lighing in splinter cell depends on shaders, characters and objects are shaded (even certain textures for example metal surfaces), they have implemented god rays and it also looks like some fake HDR was implemented thanks to shaders. Xbox also had shadow buffers technology, so it could render insane amount of high quality dynamic shadows. Besides splinter cell many xbox games use shadows buffers, jet set radio future, fable, far cry, even PGR2.
 
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Romulus

Member
To be fair Doom 3 and Half Life 2 looks much worse on Xbox compared to PC anyway (I have added screenhots from both games in my 1 and 2 post), but I still enjoyed playing xbox version.

Yep, rarely has a console game ever matched a graphical powerhouse PC game, especially 3-4 years after the console's launch. It's already a relic by that time, often times at launch it is.
 
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