Radeon equivalent to Xbox 360 over $500

If you're also a PC owner like me you find out quickly that you like a slightly larger case. Even lucky enough to have a 1.7Ghz laptop with 32MB of Nvidia ram, plays Hitman 2 and the like so not too shabby.
Say I just downloaded "Fight Night 3 demo" and I'm awstruck with how gruesome-looking the face of the fighter on the recieving end of my flurry on my normal TV...glistening dark blood out the mouth and sweat so real I think I could get wet from it(on my normal TV as I mentioned) on a respectable 32" set. "Brrinnng" a buddy calls and says he snuck one by his wife and conned her into a massive 60" HDTV. I ain't unplugging my Monster tower, all it's cables, Keyboard, Mouse, Power brick just for a few hours of enjoyment elsewhere and gee, where's my two-wheeled dolly when I need it?. The Xbox 360 has that take anywhere portability no laptop can touch and can hook up to huge variety of items, Component, Composite and what-not.
Oh, did I mention? "Brriiinnnnggg" Phone rings again, my tech-head brother couldn't resist dropping 6-months of pay on (click my link) 160" Quad screen PC monitor and wants to seriously put it through it's paces. I pick up a Xbox 360-to-VGA cable I notice they already offer, download the NFS Most Wanted and PGR3 demos using the free Silver account and commence eye bleeding amazement. It'll happen, right. Please phone ring please?
Just putting things in perspective. I'll still 30th in line for a PS3 from that short/funny fellow that hasn't missed too many meals K.Kusag...sumthin'. I'm a gamer to the core!!! Lord help let me find that final TV stand that will hold all my entertainment equipment without causing a fire danger to I and my neighbors. thank you for listening.

I'm not going to say that PC games now look better than or as good as most 360 games. What I will say is that it is ridiculous and illogical to think that the 360 will be able to stay ahead AT ALL in the graphics department, considering the low MSRP of the whole unit. PC gamers pay alot of money for high-end video cards. You get what you pay for, plain and simple. You cannot compare an xbox 360 that costs less than 500 bucks to a gaming monster PC that's had over 2-3 grand invested just to make it a gamer. You may as well tell me a dime is worth as much as a quarter.. comeon.

Well guys. again bang for you buck....

Also the 360 cost ~$700 to produce. Anyways you cant compare the two. Play on your HDTV witha sleek wireless controller, Xbox Live Community. Thats what I want. Its mainly a conveinence factor I believe. PC you must build, unless you buy an Alien Ware or Falcon PC or sumthin. Then messy wires, ahh, i hate it. 360 is simple to setup, you dont have to know anythign really. Well no matter what anyone says. they are both winners. personal preference people. Well Ill read more later after another few hours of PGR3 and Full Auto. my 900 MHz celeron, 32 MB ATI Radeon, adn 384 megs of RAM cant play crap. hehe.

You can’t compare the two. The xbox360 has a Unified Shader Architecture for those 48 pipelines and a sister core for anti-aliasing. Both of which may never become standard on its PC counterpart.

and the 512 ram is shared with the proc its not unified VRAM

Calm it down fanboy, we all know that xbox will look better for a long while. It's okay.

NewEgg.com is already selling these cards for $579:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814142065

Not worried about it being obviated, just shocked at how expensive the alternative is. The graphics don't mean the world to me anyhow; it's Live that makes the 360 what it is.

Well, it does seem VERY like the Xenos in the 360, with the 48 pixel shaders, using the same kind of RAM, etc. It might seem more powerful but also you got the fact that the PC is a VERY unoptimized platform, unlike consoles. That is due to the fact that not everyone has the same hardware, everyone has different processors, motherboards, sound cards, etc. and also drivers, OS upkeep, etc. can play a roll too.

And if your getting a new computer, it would get allot more expensive. First $600 for this card, then $300 for a motherboard and processor, $40 for RAM, and more for a case, monitor, mouse and keyboard, etc. Or if you get a OEM computer (like a Dell), you pay $350-$750 and then $600 for this card.

You also got the fact that PC games are developed for the "lowest common demoninator" of consumers, meaning there isn't going to be games that will use this GPU fully for quite some time.

The 360 will present graphics that are similar to this card due to its MUCH better optimization and it doesn't have to worry about drivers, OS upkeep, and/or applications running in the background (besides the guide).

The 360 is also not being used to its fullest at the moment (its like that for every launch console) but developers don't have to worry about making it for the "lowest common denominator" since everyone has the same hardware.

I would recommend the 360 over this card, you would get the same graphics for $200 cheaper, and you get the whole setup ready to play games. You also get games and features that won't be available on the PC.

Don't forget about the 3 CPU cores. Once leveraged properly by developers, that will distance the platform even more.

I doubt PC developers will seriously consider dual core possibilites any time soon, let alone more than 2.

But you seem to forget the console's "lowest common denominator," the Nintendo Revolution. Besides a few 1st party and exclusives titles, most will be released on all three consoles.

The r580 does NOT have 48 pixel pipelines. It has 48 ALUs - 3 per pipe. 1 scalar, 1 vector and 1 general. It only has 16 pipes.

This is really the primary reason I went with the Xbox 360 vs trying to get my sub-par gaming computer up to par ... the final cost. Microsoft is losing money on the hardware so we'll spend money on the other stuff (peripherals, games and Live).

Of course the other reason I did it was to be able to play my games on a big screen in HD and surround sound.

#5 "The graphics don't mean the world to me anyhow; it's Live that makes the 360 what it is."

I agree with you 100%. I love the new live service. It is truely addicting.

This article is bull. PC graphic cards of today can produce graphics better looking than the Xbox 360. Just go look at games like FEAR or Half-life 2: The Lost Coast or FarCry with the 1.3 update. Nothing on the Xbox 360 or PS3 will compare to that. All Microsoft and Sony have done is add support for their respective GPUs to display games at a resolution of 1280 by 720 or 1920 by 1080. PC graphic cards have been able to do this since the Ati 8500 was introduced. Current graphic cards from ATI and Nvidia support a max resolution of 2048x1536@85Hz.

Furthermore console GPUs are different from PC GPUs, The Architecture is completely different. Therefore a comparison of the two really can not be made.

PCs are optimized. All PCs follow the Intel X86 standard. This means that all CPUs, Graphic cards, Sound Cards, Networking Cards, and etc will work with all motherboards that support the hardware. For instance AGP graphic cards will work with all AGP Motherboards and All PCIE graphic cards will work with all PCIE Motherboards.

Next time do a little research about PCs before making such outlandish claims

Patrick Martin:

"PC graphic cards of today can produce graphics better looking than the Xbox 360."

Man what r u smoking? None of the games on the X360 now r taking any advantage of the hardware. In fact, launch games have never been indicative of the true performance capabilities of a system so how can u compare anything on the X360 now w/ PC games like FEAR?

As much as u would like to believe the article is bull, the fact is that both the X360 and PS3 will eclipse anything on the PC front for at least a year. Of course, this is not in consideration of overclocked or extreme modified components; those items r not standard.

Wait a minute Patrick, so your computer has a triple core processor running at 3.2 GHZ, with a high-end graphics card that is selling for $500, and no operating system overhead at all?!

Wonder if the PC card compatibility is limited to only twenty current games like the 360...

this is a pointless arguement

the reality is the 360 is $400 all in.

We all know you can always get better if you are willing to pay but i honestly think that we are getting tot a point where the current graphics quality of the xbox 360 and ps3 is more than good enough

very very few games on the pc actually take advantage of these new cards (maybe 4 games a year at most)

The X1900XT is *far* superior to the xbox360 graphics card. It's probably a good 3 or 4 times as fast.

The extra mhrz combined with the *massive* increase in ram speed are what make this possible the X1900 series of graphics cards are made to run a game with absolutely everything on max, including 16xAA/32AF at over 1600x1200.

The xbox360 graphics card isn't made to run anything over 720p (1080x720 i believe) at 4xAA

Of course, the main difference is that you're paying for a graphics card for more than it takes to pay for the entire xbox360 system.

The X800 or 6800series is more comparable to what the xbox can actually put out, except the xbox has lower resolution. (Mainly due to the ram speed).

What I think people are forgetting here is that there is virtually no way to get an xbox360 for its stated price right now. I need to pay 999 at amazon for the system and 7 games - do the math and we're looking at 600 for an xbox system stated to be worth 400 bucks. so the price arguments are all invalidated.

What I think people are forgetting here is that there is virtually no way to get an xbox360 for its stated price right now. I need to pay 999 at amazon for the system and 7 games - do the math and we're looking at 600 for an xbox system stated to be worth 400 bucks. so the price arguments are all invalidated.

Well, true this card is more powerful than the 360's GPU. But look at what the original Xbox did on its GPU, which was supposedly a GeForce 3 equivalent GPU, which was also weaker at the time as well, and a very weak GPU now. It did some pretty good looking games, games I was suppressed that kind of hardware could do, like Forza Motersport, Ninja Gaiden, DOA, Halo 2, etc.

But I do agree, PC optimization is getting better, which is why you see things in games saying "Runs best on Intel Pentium 4" or "Runs best with ATI video cards" or something like that. But the thing is, though those cards are powerful and can get some good anti-aliasing and whatnot, there isn't many games that will use them for all the horsepower that’s truly behind them beyond games such as UT2k7, ESIV: Oblivion, etc (which both are coming to 360). So personally, it’s better off at the moment just to get a far cheaper video card that will run most of the games out there just fine.

Also, games like Half Life 2: Lost Coast and FEAR could be done on the Xbox 360 hardware and run pretty well (heck, Monolith did develop both FEAR for PC and Condemned for Xbox 360), so I don't know where that comes into play.

But also, comparing PC to consoles is a very hard thing to do, almost like comparing apples to oranges. Both of them are completely different animals, aspects of them are very different, and coding for both of them is pretty different. Yes, they both have CPUs, GPUs and RAM, but that’s where the similarity ends. They use very different motherboard and hardware build architectures, very different code bases, different kernels/BIOSs, different runtimes, etc.

But it is kind of a tradeoff, as PC hardware keeps on getting more powerful and better, the graphics on console games get better. So if you’re a gamer on either realm or on both, you should be pretty happy with whatever you might get.

Just as long as you can play the games you want, and whatnot. Which both 360 and PC are getting some very good games coming out in the next few months.