Quick question for all the gammers....How come the XBox which is essentailly a computer with a P3 chip and ram and Geforce3 video card much faster and better than any computer game with equal or better specs? Is it all in the software coding? I dont get it..

When a developer develops a game for the XBox, they know EXACTLY what hardware is in each system and optimize for that platform. When developing for the PC, some concessions need to be made to accomodate varying pieces of hardware that is found in most PC's.

That said however, developers usually include enough settings in PC games to make a game look just as good if not better than the average console if you have the appropriate hardware.

Short version: Optimization

Xbox developers don't have to support some random generic "white box" video card that is only for sale at select pawn shops or whatever. When a specific hardware config is know, every last bit of power can be squeezed out of it.

They know every Xbox will have a PIII 733, 64MB of ram, and that specific Nvidia hardware. No exceptions.

No need to support 4MB ATI Rages from 5 years ago, things like that.

There's a significant amount of optimization done in the system kernel and API's as well, but I probably can't talk about those.

-Naan

Naan, what about driver updates for the Nvidia card? Nvidia has a reputation of increasing speed with more mature drivers. Will we see an update disc for that?

I would assume any driver updates for the integrated nVidia chip would be embedded into the the actual game disc along with any updated version of DirectX. Although it would be cool I guess to see what Halo could look like with some updated and optmized drivers.

Now it all makes sense....thanks for the quick response guys!

You will and you won't.

All the required title libraries are compiled in with the disc when it is created. So different titles could in fact use different "drivers" in an abstract sense, but the libraries compilied in with a title will always be the ones it uses as far as I know.

-Naan

another good reason is because there's no background software running, taking up CPU processing: ie. windows, virus checker, task manager, etc, etc. Heck, with nothing open, but the most basic utilities: NAV, Zonealarm, Task Manager, I'm still at less than 70% capacity (with 384 mb ram in win 98se).

Tuan Jim

no one is inside XBOX "tweaking" important settings causing problems.

ok...here is a stupid question...

Lets say someone has a computer case with a motherboard
p3, 64 megs of ram, dvd drive, and an Nvidia video card.

Is it possible someone could rig something up to play x-box
games?

I know anything is possible in the long run, but how likely
is it? Any chance at all?

andrew: Unlikely since the bus architecture is significantly different than that of your standard PC. So while it has all the same components, you have a much larger bus interacting with those components for better performance.

Not to metion that you'd have to crack the copy protection and have the ability to run the Xbox runtimes, the ability to decode 5.1DD, and probably a whole slew of other things.

Impossible? Of course not, but I wouldn't expect it to be very likely.

Now that I've said that some cracker group will probably release an emulator tomorrow just to make me look like an idiot.

-Naan

Yeah, thats what I figured, but after that whole Bleem
thing happened, it really got me thinking. After that
anything seemed possible. PS on computer...just nuts,
then the "bleemcast" games to run games on dreamcast,
that I heard can even look batter than when they are on
the playstation.

I have seen neither of those working, but I have heard
if you have a good computer, bleem workds great.

I'm just wondering what will happen when it is a game system
the boasts its use of familiar manufacture's parts. It just
makes me wonder what the next step in piracy is going
to be in games.

Figures:

WARNING: Not tested, virus scanned, validated in any way. Use at your own risk. No blaming me if your machine explodes.

Xbox Emulator


-Naan

Various places are reporting it's a fake. So especially use at your own risk.

-Naan

It's supposed to be a fake, and you may get a trojan from it.

Hence my big bold warning. I haven't tested it, but know that some people are interested in such things.

It's probably only a matter of time before this happens, but as far as I know, the encryption on the Xbox discs is still intact.

-Naan

Really funny: half the files in there are renamed from other programs including wolfenstein, and some messenger programs.

Also, it lists UFC: Tapout as a working game when it hasn't even been released yet.

Tuan Jim