Pc vs Console Gaming

[Nero]

Thanks to custom pc for this one (http://www.custompc.co.uk/features/601944/pcs-versus-consoles.html)
With Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all pushing so-called next-generation consoles, can the PC hope to compete as a gaming machine? Alex Watson plays judge and the Custom PC team are the jury as we pit the PC against its three console rivals in a series of exhaustive tests.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife, and also a so-called 'next-generation' gaming console. Expressing an interest in games no longer makes you a social pariah but the PC is often prejudged by polite, mainstream company as an unsuitable gaming option for normal people.
It isn't just from the outside that PC gaming is under pressure: 2007 saw a huge number of pricey new graphics cards released, along with pressure from Microsoft to upgrade to Vista. It isn't surprising, then, that PC enthusiasts have started eyeing up their bank balances and wondering if a console wouldn't be a cheaper partner than a decent gaming rig. The number of games that would have been PC-only in the past, but now routinely appear on the Xbox 360 (referred to herein as the 360) and PlayStation 3 (PS3) has only strengthened the allure of the console for disaffected PC gamers.
There's also the fact that one of the PC's strongest backers, Microsoft, also has a console to push. It's no wonder PC gaming feels like the ugly duckling of the family. So we decided that it was time to compare the 360, PS3 and Wii with a modern gaming PC to find out which really is the best gaming machine going.
Rules of engagement
We spent a month playing with all three of the current consoles. Each was connected to a 32in LCD TV, the gorgeous 720p-capable Philips 32PFL9632D, using HDMI for the PS3, component for the 360 and composite for the Wii.
For sound, both the PS3 and 360 were connected via optical S/PDIF to a set of Logitech Z-5450 5.1 speakers. As the Wii lacks an S/PDIF audio output, we connected it to the TV using the supplied phono connectors, and then plugged the TV into the Z-5450s. We felt this reflected a high-end, but not over-the-top, lounge setup.
To make it a fair fight, we needed a comparable gaming PC. The obvious choice of CPU was Intel's 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600. We've mentioned this chip a lot but it has proved itself worthy of all the praise we've thrown its way. A P35 motherboard is the Q6600's natural companion, and we opted for the Asus P5K Premium WiFi-AP, along with our usual motherboard test kit: a 250GB Samsung SpinPoint P120S S-ATA hard disk and 2GB of Corsair PC2-6400 memory. For graphics, we used a BFG GeForce 512MB 8800 GT OC. We connected the gaming PC to a 22in TFT, an Asus PG221, using DVI and, as with the 360 and PS3, an optical S/PDIF output from the on-board sound to the Z-5450s. A fresh installation of Windows Vista Home Premium completed the build.
SETUP
Three versions of the 360 are available: the diskless entry-level 360 Arcade, the 360 Elite, which is black and has a 120GB hard disk, and the standard 360, which packs a 20GB hard disk. Microsoft sent us a standard model. The box features a good selection of kit: there's the slightly off-white 360, now with an HDMI port as well as its proprietary AV output, plus a component video and audio cable, and an integrated optical S/PDIF output. A single wireless gamepad with two AA batteries and a headset are supplied too, along with a massive external PSU. If you've built your own PC, setting up the 360 won't be a challenge, and several neat design touches mean the first hour is full of nice surprises. Out of the box, the 360 configured itself to run at 720p, and was pre-paired with the wireless gamepad, which can also turn the console on and off.
The 360 has a 10/100 Ethernet port for networking. If your router supports DHCP, the 360 will grab an IP address and configure its networking settings automatically, just as a PC would. There's no denying the 360's Microsoft parentage: the first thing it did with its Internet connection was to patch itself, reboot and then download another update. Unlike with a PC, you can't do anything else with the 360 while it's patching.
The setup procedure strongly encourages you to create an account for Xbox Live, the 360's online play network. Mercifully, you can connect a USB keyboard to make entering data easier. When you sign up to Live, it generates a Gamercard, which shows your name (Gamertag), a profile image, reputation and an overall score (sorry, Gamerscore). This ties neatly into other Microsoft products: you can combine your Gamertag with your Hotmail/Passport login, and the 360 can log in to MSN and tell you which of your contacts have Gamertags, so you can add a few friends to your account.
You can also access your Gamercard from www.xbox.com, where you can tinker with a host of Facebook-style profile settings. The integration between PC and console is slick (deep inside Microsoft, it's probably termed 'leveraging platform synergies'), and I wasn't surprised to find that many of my PC gaming friends also turned out to be 360 owners.
In its first hour, the 360 made only a couple of false steps. The lack of built-in wireless networking isn't ideal for a machine designed for the lounge, and means that you must either run an Ethernet cable to your living room or shell out an eye-watering £59.99 for Microsoft's official WiFi adaptor. Cash is at the heart of the second issue too: changing your profile picture to anything but the handful of generic images costs, as does changing the 'theme' of the 360's OS. Finally, when registering you need to tell Microsoft your phone number and address whether or not you're adding a credit card for online payments, which is an invasion of privacy.
Like the 360, there are several versions of the PS3. At launch, Sony blessed the British with a unit featuring a 60GB hard disk, four USB 2 ports and a flash card reader, plus backwards compatibility with PS2 games. This is the version we tried, but it has since been replaced by a design that drops two USB 2 ports, the card reader and PS2 compatibility, and has a 40GB hard disk. Both models have a Blu-ray optical drive, 802.11b/g WiFi and Gigabit Ethernet, along with an HDMI port, optical S/PDIF and a proprietary AV output. The PSU is internal.
At first glance, the contents of the PS3's box don't compare well with those of the 360, the biggest absence being a high-definition video cable. All you get is a composite lead, through which your shiny PS3 will produce some distinctly murky graphics at the retrograde resolution of 576i (720 x 576), rather than the 720p (1,280 x 720) most HDTVs support. There's no headset included either. However, much of the PS3's hardware is industry standard, which isn't something we're used to saying about Sony products. The single wireless gamepad has a built-in rechargeable battery, and charges using a standard USB-to-mini-USB cable. You can use any Bluetooth headset, too.
When setting up the PS3, we found it deeply unpredictable. While the gamepad can turn the console on and off, as the 360's does, the one in the box must be synched manually with the PS3 before you can use it wirelessly. Far more irritating is the PS3's failure to detect an HDMI connection automatically - we had to trawl through system menus, and set it manually to output 720p through HDMI. Admittedly, you need to do this with a PC too, but aren't consoles supposed to 'just work'? We also had to check manually for a system update - even Vista does this automatically.
The resolution woes don't end once you've set up the HDMI connection. If you turn it off at the mains, the PS3 sometimes forgets which controllers and AV outputs it's supposed to use. Some TVs, such as our Philips, detect the blackness of its game loading screens as a change in resolution, causing 'no input' messages to appear and the kind of annoying flickering that belongs to the era of the Lumiere Brothers rather than that of pixels and processors.
The PS3 goes online as easily as the 360, as it also uses DHCP. It's far less insistent on you creating an account for its online system, the PlayStation Network. The option is there, though, and as with the 360, you can use a USB keyboard. There's a lot less to the PS3's online account than the 360's - once you've grabbed a name, given it an email address and password, and picked a profile picture, you're done until you find some friends with PS3s. There's no PC interaction either.
Setting up the Wii was simple. The console has no standard video or audio outputs, so you're reliant on the proprietary composite video and RCA stereo cable. As with the other two consoles, there's a single controller and AA batteries to power it, along with a wrist-strap to stop you hurling it into orbit and a sensor bar to read the controller's movements. The Wii has a small external PSU and built-in 802.11b/g WiFi, along with DHCP support (but no built-in wired networking), two USB 2 ports and an SD card slot for adding storage - there's no hard disk. The only real complication with setup was making the display look good on our Philips LCD TV: you need to set the Wii manually to run in widescreen, and we also had to tweak the position of the picture. As its video output options are limited to composite, SCART and component, all you get is a 576i signal. Still, it looks far better than the PS3 did at this resolution, as the Wii has been designed to run at standard TV resolutions.
The Wii is supplied with a single pre-synced Wii Remote, so it's ready to go straight away. The Wii has an online play network, the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, but it's even more basic than the PS3's. To add friends, you need their 'friend code', and they need yours. This 12-digit numeric string is automatically generated by your Wii's WiFi ID and a game.
A far greater priority for the Wii is the creation of a 'Mii', which is essentially a local user account, although to apply such dull language to it is like referring to Everest as a big rock. Each Mii is a little person, drawn in a simple, distinctive oval art-style that's partly based on Kokeshi, traditional Japanese dolls.
You can customise your Mii's appearance, and it's easy to see this as a game in itself. You can try to create an effigy of yourself or opt to mimic Mr T or a Cylon. The Wii will then track stats for your Mii, which also appears as your player in a variety of games.
Setting up a PC is something we have, to put it mildly, covered in some detail in the past, and while the process is both enjoyable and satisfying, we'd be the first to admit that building a PC isn't without its frustrations. This time around, our gaming PC POSTed first time, and as Vista is much easier to install than XP, we had our gaming machine up and running very quickly. The only problem we experienced was connecting the motherboard's Intel HD Audio to the speakers: it supplies only a stereo signal over the optical S/PDIF as there's no Dolby Digital or DTS encoder. Installing drivers is an activity to which most CPC readers are probably very accustomed. Given the choice, however, I suspect it's something we could live without, especially with the escalating size of the drivers to download and the increasing frequency of updates. Authenticating Windows takes less time than setting up either the 360 or PS3's online account and, for all the outcry over it 'phoning home', you don't need to add payment or personal details as you do with both the 360 and PS3.
Of all four machines, the 360 is the easiest to set up, and it also makes great use of Microsoft's existing PC technologies, which is something CPC readers will appreciate. The Wii is easy to set up, aside from some tinkering to get it working with an LCD TV, and the concept of the Mii is charming. From the moment you turn it on, the entire experience feels like a game.
Getting a PC up and running with Vista is much easier than it was with XP, thanks to its more capable installer (no need for RAID drivers on a floppy, for instance), and a comprehensive set of default drivers. While building your own PC is a rewarding process, it's time-consuming, and assembling the hardware means that irritations will happen. Still, we prefer the PC to the PS3 when it comes to setup; build a PC and you know what you are (and aren't) getting. Sony's machine is unpredictable and unhelpful, and the fact that it lacks an HD output cable in the box when it's clearly designed, marketed and sold as an HD console is just mean.
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[Nero]

INTERFACE
The 360's OS, the Dashboard, looks nothing like Windows. It comprises a series of bright, colour-coded 'blades', a sensible response to the fact that movement with a gamepad rather than a mouse is far more tightly tied to horizontal and vertical axes. Flicking left and right with the pad's stick shuffles between blades as if they were giant cards in a Rolodex, with each card filling the screen and focusing on a specific subject, such as media or downloaded games. Irritatingly, navigating around each blade involves hopping between hotspots, which are arranged in a grid that's not entirely predictable. As a PC user, I missed the freedom of a mouse. The confusion is compounded by the fact that some blades mix adverts with links to stuff you've already downloaded.
When an event happens - such as friend signing in - a small message pops up, accompanied by the X graphic, which indicates that you can respond by holding the X button on the controller: simple and intuitive.
Getting to the Dashboard at any time is easy, and the 360 does a good job of explaining the implications of your actions - if it needs to quit a game to perform a task, for example. In this respect, it's better than the PS3, which often leaves you guessing. For instance, you can set MP3s playing on the PS3 and then navigate around the main menu, but if you go to the PlayStation Store, the music suddenly stops. On the other hand, you can set a demo downloading from the Store, and then play an album.
That said, the PS3's System Software looks far cleaner than the 360's Dashboard. Its interface is organised around the clumsily named but elegant Xross Media Bar (XMB). The XMB spans the screen horizontally with icons pegged to it. The icon in the centre of the screen drops down a vertical list of its contents, so if it's music, for example, you'll see albums and media servers, or for games you'll see downloaded titles and whichever disc is in the drive. Scroll down, hit the one you want and it loads. As the XMB has one background and doesn't change colour, font or layout until you focus on a game disc or file, it feels more grown-up than the 360's Dashboard, and more like a real computer. It isn't too showy, and its simple lists are easier to navigate than the 360's system of blades and unpredictable hotspots.
The PS3 does a reasonable job of the simple file management tasks for which a mouse is better suited. You can copy files and group them, two features that the 360 lacks. However, the XMB is all but unreadable at standard TV resolutions, which is tricky when that's the default. Worse, using a gamepad to scroll vertically through an alphabetised list becomes impractical when the list is over a certain length. There's a reason why magazines and books are divided into pages, and why mouse pointers move at such speed and with such precision. Using the PS3 to look through my 42GBs of MP3s on my server was painful. After a while, I gave up listening to anything other than Arcade Fire and the Beatles - getting to the White Stripes took too long. One final annoyance with the PS3's interface is the default RSS ticker, which displays such cheery and essential news stories as 'Have a Blu-ray Christmas'. At least you can turn it off.
The Wii Menu looks fine at 576i, if a touch fuzzy on the Philips TV, and its low resolution and the size of the menu options mean there are multiple pages of options to scroll through.
We're giving the PC ten out of ten in this category, not because Vista is perfect - far from it - but because, as a full computer operating system, its frustrations pale when compared with the limitations of the 360 and PS3. As soon as you move away from launching a game on a disc in the drive, the consoles' operating systems prove to be frustratingly limited and unpredictable. The 360 can't copy files over a network and peppers its blades with adverts and hyperlinks when you simply want to see the games you've installed. The PS3 has nothing but long lists to show you, and both struggle with multitasking, even though it's second nature for modern computer users. For all its annoyances, Vista, like any full computer OS, is far more flexible than those of the consoles. It can multitask properly and you can select files freely. Simplicity is important, but not when it creates endless waits and leaves you guessing as to what's possible and what isn't.
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CONTROL
Both the 360 and PS3 are supplied with a single wireless gamepad. The 360's pad is comfortable to hold, but it's big and heavy. In comparison, the PS3's pad is so light it feels like a toy. Both gamepads bristle with 11 buttons plus two analogue sticks, which can be depressed, and analogue triggers. Both pads are wireless, although the 360's use a proprietary technology, while the PS3's pads use Bluetooth. The PS3's gamepad also senses motion along three axes, but it has no rumble feedback, unlike the 360's pad. Sony plans to add rumble to its gamepads this year, but you'll need to buy them separately.
Sony and Microsoft have tried to produce gamepads that can handle FPS games and, provided those FPS games are slow, ponderous efforts that require neither reflexes nor accuracy, they can. To the PC gamer, the weaknesses of using a gamepad for an FPS are obvious. You just can't simply whip around to cover your sides or back at anything like the speed you can on the PC with a keyboard and mouse. If somebody manages to sneak beside you, they can strafe around you in safety as you try to bring your crosshairs to bear with all the pace of a vintage Dalek. If the lack of speed wasn't bad enough, you also lose precision. The gamepad isn't nearly as sensitive as a mouse with a several-thousand-DPI sensor, so precise aiming is laborious. What's more, all the controls of an FPS are crammed onto a pad that you control with only the thumbs and forefingers of either hand, whereas a keyboard and mouse use all ten digits and your palms. This provides much finer control and better reflexes as more functions have a finger over them.
The gamepads proved to be more adept at racing games, such as Need for Speed: Pro Street and Motorstorm, thanks to their mix of analogue and digital control options. Not many games use the PS3 pad's motion-detection capabilities, but in those that do were fun and surprising. The Tomb Raider-like Uncharted: Drake's Fortune lets you use it to keep your character's balance when crossing tricky sections of the level, for instance.
The PS3 gamepad's capabilities are a curio compared with the Wii's motion-sensing abilities, though, which are key to its games. The Wii Remote has two parts: a small TV remote-sized controller, and a 'nunchuck' attachment that plugs into the bottom of the main remote. If you're unaware of the Wii Remote's powers, you must have been born with genes that suppress hype (lucky you). To recap, it can sense direction and speed of movement along three axes, as well as its orientation, and it has a small built-in speaker and rumble.
The Wii is bundled with Wii Sports, a selection of mini-games based around sports such as tennis and baseball, all of which use the physical nature of the remote to involve you. It's a strange experience to describe, because it's both simple and nuanced. In tennis, for example, you control your character's shots but not their movement on court, yet you can apply spin to the ball. It does a great job of levelling the playing field between players. Your hundreds of hours of practising headshots in Counter-Strike: Source don't count for much with the Wii.
The downside is that the remote isn't as precise as you might think or want; mini-games that require very specific actions can be irritatingly difficult. Also, while third-party publishers are making games that use the Wii Remote, the results are rarely great. NFS: Pro Street lets you use the Wii Remote to steer the car, but the fact that the controller has to be held suspended in mid-air made it feel more like piloting a magic carpet than wrestling with the wheel of a fast-moving racing car.
Despite its physical nature, the Wii Remote isn't realistic. Being good at Wii Sports Tennis requires its own videogame skills more than a talent for tennis, but the tactile controls can make games more immediate and purely fun than those on the 360 and PS3.
The PC's keyboard and mouse combo has its downsides too, but different controllers are available - you can even use a 360 gamepad. The PS3 lets you use a USB keyboard and mouse for some games, such as Unreal Tournament 3, which seems to recognise the fact that a gaming mouse with more sensors than the Mona Lisa's case at the Louvre is the best way to translate the player's arm and hand movements perfectly into on-screen movement. It's the greatest human interface device in history; the unity of man and computer in a way that wins, as it doesn't cause intense irritation. You think it, you move your fingers and hands, and it happens in the game. Perfection.
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APPEARENCE
Microsoft's original Xbox had all the visual charm of a lost suitcase sitting on a deserted Heathrow baggage carousel, but the company has clearly tried to make the 360 sexy. Dressing it in an off-white plastic that probably had beige tendencies in its youth is hardly endearing, but its distinctive, gently curving shape and chrome drive tray are pleasing - although it looks odd next to most LCD TVs, which tend to be black or silver.
The PS3 is the largest of the three. Like the 360, it can stand on its side or lie flat, but it seems less well-suited to standing tall. The general opinion was that when laid flat, the worst that could be said of it was that it looks like a mean George Foreman grill. However, despite its size it's reasonably neat and tidy, thanks to the built-in PSU. The black colour and its confluence of curves also hide a multitude of vents: every surface apart from the top and the side on which it stands is perforated to allow heat to escape.
The top honours in this round are shared by the Wii and the PC. The Wii's shiny white plastic and blue illuminated drive mouth are cool, and its tiny size renders it both sweet and discrete.
So why does the PC rate so highly? Simple: if you don't like the way it looks, you can buy a new case and your choices range from mammoth towers to tiny boxes.
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GRAPHICS
Discussing the power of the PS3 compared with that of the 360 is a favourite sport of console fanboys and the mainstream media, but the differences between the gamepad architecture of both machines and a PC makes a head-to-head comparison in terms of numbers pretty meaningless. Far more important are the end results - and in this respect, it's easy to compare the consoles and the PC because of the number of games available across all three platforms.
First, however, a quick rundown of the processing power that the 360 and PS3 have available. It will come as no surprise to CPC readers that the consoles split along party lines - ATI makes GPUs for the 360 and Wii, and Nvidia provides the GPU for the PS3. The 360's GPU features a unified shader architecture but, with only 48 stream processors, and clocked at 500MHz, its Xenos GPU doesn't seem to compare particularly well with even mid-range graphics GPUs such as the GeForce 8800 GT (112 stream processors clocked at 1.5GHz, with the rest of the GPU running at 600MHz). It still has some interesting cards to play, particularly the fact the GPU is paired with a 10MB embedded RAM module on the same die. Data can be transferred between GPU and the eDRAM at 32GB/sec, around half the speed at which the GeForce 8800 GT can access its memory. The eDRAM die also contains logic for functions such as Z-buffering, alpha blending and AA, to the point where using 4x AA doesn't result in much of a performance penalty.
In addition to the eDRAM module, the 360 has 512MB of GDDR3 system memory, clocked at 700MHz (1.4GHz effective), which both the GPU and CPU can access. There's around 22.4GB/sec of memory bandwidth for both chips, compared to 12.8GB/sec for the PC's CPU and 57.6GB/sec for the 8800 GT. The 360's CPU is a 64-bit PowerPC chip, built by IBM, but it was designed specifically for the 360. It has three cores, each of which can handle two threads at a time. Each core is clocked at 3.2GHz, and has 2 x 32KB of Level 1 cache, along with 1MB of Level 2 cache shared by all three. As with AMD's Phenom quad-core CPUs, the three cores communicate via a crossbar switch.
The PS3's GPU, the Reality Synthesizer (RSX), is at heart a GeForce 7-series GPU, with discreet pixel and vertex shaders (remember those?). Its specs are very similar to those of the 7800 GTX: 24 pixel processors, eight vertex shaders and six ROPs, all clocked at 550MHz. As with PC graphics cards, the RSX has its own separate framebuffer - 256MB of 700MHz (1.4GHz effective) GDDR3, giving 22.4GB/sec of bandwidth.
The PS3 has 256MB of XDR system memory for its Cell CPU. Like the 360's CPU, the Cell has multiple cores, is in part PowerPC-based, and is clocked at 3.2GHz. However, its eight cores, aren't identical. The heart of the chip is the Power Processor Element (PPE), which can process two threads at once, similar to an Intel CPU with Hyper-Threading. There are then seven smaller, simpler Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs), 128-bit RISC processors with 256KB of embedded memory each. The Cell design has massive floating-point performance thanks to the SPEs, but they're less suited for bigger, more general computational tasks.
On paper, the PS3 and 360 sound radically different, but in the CPC test lounge, they 'd either ironed out their differences, or the developers of cross-platform games have done it for them. This isn't to say there are no graphical differences between the two - there are, but they differ from game to game. Burnout Paradise, for instance, moved far more fluidly on the PS3 than on the 360. Call of Duty 4 looked slightly cleaner and sharper on the 360. If you're interested in how the two machines compare in detail, Eurogamer has run a series of very detailed comparisons (see http://tinyurl.com/2usgf2) between them in a variety of cross-platform games. What we care about is how both compare with the PC and, unless your PC is old or riddled with the spyware equivalent of rickets, the answer is not brilliantly. Neither console produces bad-looking graphics, but if you have a decent PC and monitor, it's unlikely that you'll be impressed by a PS3 or 360 game. In particular, if you're used to gaming above 1,280 x 1,024 with AA and AF, you'll notice both 360 and PS3 games suffer from horrible aliasing. In Call of Duty 4, power lines, vehicles, buildings shimmer and crawl so vigorously that it might actually make you skin creep too. At first, we thought that this aliasing was noticeable only because we knew it wasn't there when we played the game on a PC with AA enabled, but even in the console-only titles, we found that the aliasing problem was obvious.
Several factors make aliasing noticeable on the consoles. The first is the fact that while 720p counts as HD in the lounge, at 1,280 x 720, it's a low resolution by PC standards. This small number of pixels is then also usually spread out over at least a 26in screen, so each pixel is bigger than those on a PC display, where 1,280 x 1,024 is confined to 17 or 19in panels. Finally, there's the fact that while the consoles might be outputting a 720p signal, the games are often rendered at lower resolution and upscaled just prior to output. The forums of 3D tech site Beyond 3D (http://tinyurl.com/2lhb4a) are buzzing with pages of detailed discussion, but suffice to say on 360 and PS3, Call of Duty 4 is rendered initially at just 1,024 x 600.
This isn't to say the consoles produce bad graphics, and the 360 in particular has played a part in raising the graphical standards of PC games, as it's boosted the minimum standard at which developers aim. The PS3, while having older GPU technology, is still capable of putting on a good show too: we were impressed with mucky racer Motorstorm. The mud might look like chocolate sauce in places, but in general, its dirty landscapes and battered vehicles tear along terrifically. It makes you wonder at the wastefulness of the PC when it comes to graphics power. A GeForce 7800 GTX can probably be had for around £30 on eBay and will struggle with even older games such as F.E.A.R., yet in the PS3, it's still capable of creating enticing graphics.
The most telling comparison between the consoles and the PC is, of course, Crysis. Unluckily for Halo 3, it begins in almost exactly the same way, begging a direct comparison. In both games, you're an elite soldier dropped into a conflict set in the jungle. After playing both, Halo 3's environments feel flat, confined and almost interior. It's as though the valleys are simply corridors with leaf textures and green colouring, and the forest clearings just large rooms. The idea that it's a jungle doesn't seem believable - not when you've come over a ridge in Crysis and seen a mile of jungle, beach and ocean unfold in the mellow dawn below you, or when you've seen the sun rise and the tide roll and, from the comfort of your shimmering stealth suit, the ratty huts and bored faces of the North Korean soldiers, and certainly not when you've flattened their security checkpoint and left it in smouldering pieces.
Nintendo has tried hard to take away the focus from graphics for the Wii and, as with the 360 and PS3's best-looking games, if the art style is good, you can forget that what you're playing is powered by a GPU clocked at 243MHz with only 88MB of memory. However, there are occasions when the Wii is just viciously ugly. Need for Speed: Pro Street looks simply horrendous.
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[Nero]

NOISE
From the moment you turn on the 360, the fan makes a loud noise and never lets up until you turn it off. It quickly renders the idea of using the 360 to play music or watch videos faintly ridiculous, unless you want every scene that doesn't involve a marching band or an exploding helicopter to be accompanied by its wailing.

The PS3 is quieter than the 360, but in the hush of the lounge, it certainly isn't silent, especially when it's upscaling DVDs, playing DivX video or games. The tone of its noise is much lower and easier to live with than the 360's hoarse humming.

Noise levels will differ from PC to PC, but now 120mm fans are commonplace in even the cheapest cases, and quiet and inexpensive HSFs are easy to find. Reference coolers on newer graphics cards such as the 8800 GT are also better behaved than on earlier cards, so there's no reason for your computer to sound like a Chinook. That said, the number of fans involved in any PC - in the PSU, cooling the CPU and GPU - means that true silence is very difficult and expensive to achieve, so we can't give the PC a perfect score here. In contrast, the Wii barely makes a sound, and the fact that it's designed specifically for playing games means that even when it does make a noise, you'll be too busy waving your hands around to notice.
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LOAD TIMES

To compare how quickly each system powers up and loads games, we powered each system on into its OS using its controller three times and took an average. As Call of Duty 4 is available on PC, 360 and PS3, we timed how long each system took to load a save game. For the Wii's game test, we used Wii Sports, and timed getting on to the grass for a single player game of tennis.

Both the 360 and PS3 use 2.5in 5,400rpm S-ATA laptop hard disks. The 360 takes marginally longer than the PS3 to boot, but on average, it's nine seconds quicker at loading CoD4. While the PS3's game load times were virtually the same each time, indicating that the system software isn't caching or prioritising frequently used files, the 360's final run was nine seconds quicker than its first, even though we turned it off between each run. Both consoles were far slower than the PC at game loading, but the PC obviously took much longer to load up , although Vista does feature Sleep and Hibernate modes, which enable a PC to cut its start up times. You can also optimise loading on a PC by cutting out the optical drive, too - either by paying to download the game or using a no CD tweak.

While PC games load quickly, they need to be installed, but this is no longer unique to the PC. Demos downloaded to the PS3 must also be installed.

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ONLINE GAMING

The 360's online service, Xbox Live, is considered its crowning glory. Your Gamercard records the games you've played most recently, along with your Gamerscore. Every 360 game has a certain number of achievements that yield a number of points. In Call of Duty 4, these are based around completing the missions, but in other games, the achievments are more creative. Guitar Hero 3 has one called Tone Deaf, which you get for 'beating any song on expert difficulty with the game's sound turned down to zero'. Xbox Live tracks your progress, and your friends' progress, so in Geometry Wars, for instance, you can see a leaderboard with your friends' scores. When your friends are online, you're notified. You can chat with people using the headset, or send audio, video or text messages, and it's easy to send invitations to friends to play specific games. However, in some games, this requires a subscription to the premium, Gold version of Xbox Live, which costs £39.99 a year. As well as better friend management (a chillingly Orwellian phrase), the ability to be matched to other players based on skill, Gold gives you early access to demos content. This meant that until we paid for Gold, we couldn't get hold of the new Burnout Paradise demo - until we switched on the PS3, that is, as Sony doesn't charge for online services.

While PS3 owners may gloat at this, it's a good job Sony doesn't charge, as it does a lot less. Some players have complained that the quality of the PS3 online is patchy; while Microsoft runs all the Xbox Live servers, Sony requires each game company to support their own games' servers. We didn't have any reliability problems though, with only one dropped game in a month. Technical issues aside, in terms of features, the PS3's online mode seems half-finished. Sony has admitted as much, as it's working on a Second Life-style 3D community exploration program called Home. For now, there's only a rudimentary friends list that shows whether or not they're playing a game, and simple text and voice messaging.

The Wii features a Nintendo-organised online experience that's consciously simpler and more limited than what Xbox Live sets out to do. The use of friend codes can be a pain, but if you want to play online against your real-life friends, swapping codes with them is fairly easy. Wii multiplayer allowed us to easily hook up and play Guitar Hero 3 in co-op mode online.

Again, we were more interested to see how the consoles compared with the PC than with each other. Little of what we've described so far will strike PC players as revolutionary, although in part, this is because the PC's best online gaming service, Steam, takes some design cues from Xbox Live. Skype and Teamspeak make chatting easy, while for sending messages, there's email, forums, MSN, Facebook - hundreds of choices, in fact. Many games feature their own communication systems and server browsers, but while the PC's flexibility is its strength, its lack of unity is also a problem. By default, Vista includes only MSN, so keeping every piece of software up-to-date can be very time-consuming, not to mention the piles of log-ins required.


Both the 360 and PS3 have online stores that provide a mixture of free downloadable content, such as game demos, videos and movie trailers, alongside paid-for material. This ranges from add-ons for games, such as new tracks for Guitar Hero 3, to full games. Some are new, and others are ports of old games. The 360's store (Xbox Live Marketplace) has far more on offer than the PS3's (PlayStation Store), particularly when it comes to retro titles, with games such as Streets of Rage 2, Speedball 2 and Sensible World of Soccer available, most with online play added. Xbox Live Marketplace was recently updated to include movie rentals, some of which are in HD. The big annoyance is that it insists on charging you in Microsoft Points, a bizarre non-currency that you have to buy in 500-point blocks (costing £4.25), whereas downloadable games cost between 200 and 400 points. The PlayStation Store isn't much better - although prices are shown in actual money, you can't simply buy them if they're below £5, as there's a £5 minimum purchase.

The Wii also has an online store, the Wii Shop Channel, which allows you to buy old console games to play on the system. Again, you need to pay for items using points. Both the Wii and the PS3 have web browsers available, although both offer a very limited experience compared with a PC.

Steam is the PC's most high-profile downloadable content store, although there are lots of alternatives, including game rental services such as Metaboli. Most annoying for PC gamers is how tricky it can be to get hold of newly released demos quickly. The best bet is a service such as Fileplanet, although at $3.33 a month for a year ($39.96) it seems a pricey way to experience what are supposed to be free game demos. Overall, we feel that no one has got it right just yet. The PS3 is clearly a work in progress, and the Wii's online mode is a little too simple. The PC is a patchwork that can be a pain to maintain, and while the 360 is top, its online mode tends towards the overly engineered and complex.

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COST
To compare the cost of gaming, we decided to tally up the cost of a console, along with the kit needed to get each machine into a state we considered suitable for our typical high-end lounge setup. For the PC, it's obviously trickier to assess. Buying an entire PC for the price of a console is difficult, but not impossible, but as you can upgrade your machine, you may not need a completely new one. To reflect the PC's hardware costs, we included the price of the key components for turning a base unit into a good gaming machine: a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card and PSU, along with gaming peripherals, a headset and wireless networking to make its spec as similar to the consoles as possible. To this hardware we then added a selection of games for each gaming system: one exclusive title and a range of cross-platform games. Where the cross-platform games weren't available for the Wii, we substituted another top-tier title.

It's clear just how much cheaper PC games are. Guitar Hero 3, with its controller, costs only £44.99 on the PC, 30 per cent cheaper than the 360 version. Call of Duty 4 was £10 cheaper on the PC, and the Orange Box was, at £17.98, half the price it was on both 360 and PS3. Overall, the bundle of six games was around a third cheaper on the PC than it was with the 360 - proof that the 'console tax' is alive and well. Nintendo games were cheaper than PS3 and 360-only titles, although non-Nintendo Wii games such as Guitar Hero 3 and Need for Speed: Pro Street were a similar price to the 360 and PS3 versions.

The Wii is the cheapest system, in part because there isn't much else to buy besides another controller and some games. The PC was the most expensive, but not by a massive margin - it's priced within £120 of the 360's cost, and with the PC, you get a full computer that can do a lot more besides playing games and media. In fact, if you were to focus hardware buying solely on the graphics card, the component that most determines how a PC can handle games, the PC looks cheap, and the more games you buy, the bigger the difference between consoles and the PC will be.


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GAMES
Judging the games available on all consoles in a single subsection of one article is a tall order. We've already touched on the issues that we feel affect the games in general - online, controls and graphics - so we'll focus on two areas here. Firstly, games that are unique to each system, and secondly, whether the PC can handle the social, arcade-style games at which consoles excel.

The Wii has the most distinctive games, although this isn't entirely due to the controller. More influential is the iron-will with which Nintendo has released games based on its two key franchises, Mario and Zelda. Indeed, if there's any criticism of the Wii, it's the fact that despite the innovative controller, its library of games still largely focuses on Mario platformer games, Zelda adventure titles and mini-game compilations - just like every Nintendo console has for the last 25 years. This may be too cynical though. We all laughed when playing the Wii, and it's the only console that caused Clive to yell as advice, 'You've got to move your hands or the watermelons will hit you in the face!'

The PS3 has been criticised for lacking games, and while there's some truth to this, Sony offers a couple of high-profile games such as Motorstorm and Drake's Fortune, which are good-looking, addictive and even somewhat innovative. The 360's strength is the number of games available, particularly online; its weakness, especially for CPC readers, is the fact that many of its big titles, such as BioShock and Oblivion, are better on the PC both graphically and in terms of controls. Halo 3 never impressed us - why it's so critically lauded is a mystery, as the plot is clichéd, the action and atmosphere inferior to both Crysis and Call of Duty 4 and, worst of all, the aliens jabber like Ewoks. The 360's two big racing games, Project Gotham 4 and Forza 2, are excellent, though, and outclass the Gran Turismo: HD Concept download on the PS3.

PC gaming certainly has areas of outright weakness. If there's ever been a good PC fighting game, feel free to let us know, and PC driving games have never been quite as good as their console counterparts since the demise of Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix series. Thanks to its graphics and controls, however, the PC is superior choice for FPS, strategy and RPG games.

The common heritage of the 360 and PC's hardware is both a blessing and a curse. The console's impaired control system means game design has to change to accommodate 360 users. Whatever you thought of BioShock overall, there's no denying that its slow, stiff combat was the product of a good Xboxing, so that console players could stand a chance of hitting their enemies. On the other hand, the only reason that Guitar Hero 3 is on the PC is the 360 version - even the guitar with which it's bundled is the same. How enjoyable it is on the PC, of course, depends on your PC. If it's buried under crisp packets and coursework in your bedroom, shoved in a small corner and connected to a tiny screen, then the power of rock will be somewhat constrained. If you have a reasonably large TFT, some chairs for a few friends as an audience and decent speakers, Guitar Hero 3 on the PC is just as good as it is on a console. This, of course, is the beauty of the PC: you can build it yourself and change the hardware to suit a variety of uses, and the limits are your own imagination and/or fiscal liquidity. With a console, the limits are those set down by the machine's designers years ago, when they finished their work. The fact that consoles can now go online allows them some room to manoeuvre, but they're still boxes of hardware and software run by one company.


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MODDING

In the past, modding consoles generally involved having chips soldered to the board to enable them to boot homebrew and pirate software. These days, you don't necessarily need a mod chip to get the console to execute unofficial code, because the complexity of the OSes means that loopholes can be found. As a result, it's easy to download and run pirate 360 games, but Microsoft has fought back by banning consoles from Xbox Live.

Sony has typically taken a very dim view of people who want to run unofficial code on its consoles, endlessly revising the PSP's firmware to block hackers. However, the PS2 supported Linux, and so does the PS3. Sony officially supports a distro called Yellow Dog, but there are PS3-specific versions of Ubuntu available and other distros work. Microsoft is less keen on users running Linux on its console, although it isn't impossible. You can install several distros, but you'll need to use a software hack.

Aside from installing Linux, PS3 users can also install Folding*home. It can't be run in the background as the PC client can, but it can play music and offers fancier graphics than the PC version.

Modding means more than just tinkering with the software. Consoles share so much PC technology - in particular USB and 12V DC internal power - that PC mods can be easily applied to a console. Side windows and extra cooling, from 80mm fans to water-cooling, are popular mods, particularly with the noisy 360. Crack open the case and, with a multimeter, you can quickly find the 12V wire to add lights and fans to your heart's delight. The problems occur when something goes pop. On a PC, you can find a spare from the parts drawer and hobble along with that until you can afford a replacement. If you screw up a console while modding, the most likely outcome is that you're left with a paperweight. At least if you make only cosmetic mods, Microsoft and Sony have no reason to ban the units from online play. Only Sony allows any official mod to the internals of its console; the hard disk can be replaced with any FAT32-formatted 2.5in S-ATA hard disk.

Modding is alive on the Wii, but at the moment it seems mostly confined to mod chips. There's a project to get Linux running on the console, but it's in its infancy, as there's still no way to get unsigned code running. The fact that the Wii Remote is a Bluetooth controller means it's ideal for tinkering with, though. We've covered using it for the PC before.

While Sony's decision to allow people to run Linux and Folding on the PS3 is certainly welcome, the PS3, along with the 360 and Wii, is still a very tightly controlled system compared with a PC. And of course, you can mod PC games, and overclock the PC.

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MEDIA CENTRE APPS

Both the 360 and PS3 play media files, including audio, images and video. Both support a similar range of codecs - MP3 and WMA for songs, JPEG for images and XviD and DivX for video files. Both can play files from USB devices, rip CDs to their hard disks and stream media over a network, either by browsing folders or connecting to a DLNA media server/sharing program such as Windows Media Player 11. There are caveats for both. The 360, to its credit, understands iPods, so if you plug in one, you obtain access to all your songs. It can't, however, copy files from external drives or across a network. The PS3 can copy files, but in a moment of supreme churlishness from Sony, it's incapable of understanding an iPod's file structure. Well, it's only the most popular MP3 player on the planet. Even more annoyingly, by default, the PS3 lists MP3 files alphabetically.

Despite the fact that the PS3 supposedly supports Xvid and DivX, we didn't find it very consistent in our tests. Given a selection of TV episodes, all compressed using the same codec, it decided to play the first two shows without a hitch, before calling the third 'unsupported data'. This causes the file to be permanently flagged as 'unsupported data', so you can't even try to play it again. The 360 was much more dependable - it handled every sample of downloaded DivX video we had. The only problem is that it's horrendously noisy.

The PS3 can upscale DVDs and also has a Blu-ray drive for playing back high-definition movies; if you want this on the 360, you can either rent HD movies from the online store or buy the HD-DVD drive addon. The Wii's media functions are limited to a photo viewing channel.

We've certainly been critical of the PC acting as a media centre in the past, but we still feel it's better than any of the consoles, if only because it's easier to tolerate its flaws. Getting all the right video codecs for a PC is annoying, as is the fact that each media playback app has a different interface, but unless you're going to use the consoles in a very limited, rigidly defined manner, we challenge anyone who is accustomed to the power and options a PC offers not to get frustrated with a console.
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CONCLUSION
The most attractive aspect of both 360 and PS3 is their small form factors, and that they're designed for lounge-based gaming. The problems they have are twofold. Firstly, the Wii tackles this social, purely fun type of gaming - the traditional strength of gaming consoles - better than both, despite a limited library of games and disappointing graphics. Secondly, both the 360 and PS3 try to do more, and we felt that every time they did, their failures were obvious. The PS3 really tries to be a computer, but its OS, when compared to any computer OS, is so woefully inadequate that it's tempting to describe its much vaunted media playing abilities as tickbox features.

The 360 succeeds better than the PS3 in this respect, as it's less a computer, and more a box tied to an online content library. Its problem is that its core games are for the most part done better on the PC. Indeed, as a PC gamer, the 360 is faintly depressing. It's as if someone has looked at the PC and instead of attempting to improve it and make the best of its potential, designed a new machine, which opts for an inflexible, expensive and narrow definition of gaming. That the designer of this console is Microsoft - perhaps the one firm with the financial power, industry clout and technical resources to have radically improved PC gaming - is all the more galling.

The best bits of the 360 - its convenient wireless controller, slick online play and comprehensive store - could have been easily added to the PC to complement its strengths, which are wide-ranging, but perhaps best summarised as the fact that many, many people contribute to it. From the companies designing hardware and games, to the individuals who code freeware demos, set up and admin their own servers, forums and blogs, PC gaming is built on the efforts and imagination of millions. It's just better by numbers.

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ARGUE WITH THAT:Rone

[majorcrabs]

you dont really mod a pc its kinda already there in the os so that should have been exempt or that poll should have been taken off


as for the final scores the pc should have been lower than 99 because when you think about it the pc doesnt have much that the consoles now adays dont offer

and for price score the wii should have gotten a 10 because lets face it if you cant afford a wii which is the cheapest thing of those then why even bother looking at this lol


but all in all the way they ranked it pc number 1st wii number 2nd and ps3/360 tied for 3rd sounds about right to me

[Nero]

the pc does loads that a consoles cant crabs and will continue to as long as consoles "are built for games"
and ive done some extensive modding to my pc, from the case up to how much power goes to certain chips, overclocking is considered a mod you know!
but yeah, if you read the full article its as fair as it can be imo, i think they hit it on the head for each catagory

[Tyrael]

dude no denying that the pc as a multi-purpose platform is the best, and no console ever will be better.

But we as gamers which do we prefer.
i'm a person who believes that western style RPGs, like diablo and neverwinter nights, FPS and strategy games for PC, and no console counterpart will ever be as good as a pc fps, and thats why i wouldn't get unreal 3 on the ps3. hectic gamplay and rapid movemnet is best fit on pc, not the sluggish controls of a gamepad. nothing will beat a keyboard and a mouse.

Now or other stuff, like adventure, action and sport sims and racing sims, gamers prefer to play these on consoles, as their controls are alot simpler than pc controls, but the pc gamepads did bridge the gap to an extent, but still, it's preferable on consoles.

As a media player a PC is always best, for modding, pc are the best platform for modding, as there is alot of freedom for modding a pc.

So i just say that for my gaming needs, i will stick with a console, unless i want to play rpgs or fps games. The rest is better done by a good pc.

[Sladey]

the pc does loads that a consoles cant crabs and will continue to as long as consoles "are built for games"


And thats what consoles have always been made for games and nothing more. PC's are designed to be multi purpose machines. Consoles and PC's are 2 completely different things. Would u want to write and print something out on Word on a console? No cause thats just stupid. Would you want to play 2 player on say Tekken on a PC? No, cause thats just stupid as well.

Multimedia on a PC will always outshine a console, as will general purpose things always outshine a console. Because a console is made purely for gaming alone, with sometimes a few extra's thrown. A PC is only really good for FPS and RTS games, and nothing more.

Like for example, how stupid would you sound if you went out to the pub with ur mates, and after that decided to come back to your place to have a few rounds on Fight Night R3, or Pro Evo soccer. What you going to say? "come on lads, fuck the console, lets all gather around my PC and play it cause the graphics are better", it aint gonna happen. PC's are more of a personal thing, hence the Personal Computer.

Also one more thing, you get a game, with a console you just slap it right into the drive load it up and away you go. With a PC, you got to spend 10 mins installing it, then another 12 years downloading patches and installing them, then you got to configure the settings to make it play decently, while all the time a console gamer could have completed the game by then.

Consoles will never be as powerful as a PC because a PC is infinatly upgradable (at a hefty price too), but at the same time, a PC can never beat a console for gaming.

All this thread shows is that you sir are infact a PC Fanboy. And you were the one who complained about fanboys the other day, ur no different. :icon_tup:

[Lagmonster]

1. pc games have way more control! you loose yourself more in pc games than in console. why? because you get to customize everything. From the way it looks to where your buttons are. Something that consoles haven't caught on yet. with the minor sensa tweaks.
2. Aiming with a mouse is way easier with a mouse than a controller.
3. pc's have been running next gen console graphics (256mb) before next gens came out.

this is just of coarse my opinion but you can take that to the bank!

[Nero]

The sites best avatar and a solid opinion!
thats a keeper lol

ha ha ha ha, right, i am a pc gamer, i have said this from the start, which is why i choose to fight that corner.
now the article was written by a pc mag (so yes its biased, but no more so than each platforms respective publications) to deside which was better, not as a platform but to GAME ON.
if you youve read the start of the article you will see that they set the pc up with a 22inch monitor, so you couldnt get a few mates round that?
thats funny as i use a shitty little 17" at the minute, but we got 4 of us round it the other night playing san andreas with the civilians have rocket lawn chairs cheat.
so thats not really a valid point
granted it aint a 32 inch, but thats not to say you cant game on a 32 inch with a high res setting, as it states the HD gaming of the next gen consoles is using resolutions pc games have used for years now.
the multimedia section is in my opinion an insight for pc users (its a mag about customizimg, overclocking and moding for pc users) on the multimedia capabilitys of each console.
that over with

[venom33]

wel you make a good piont but i dont think pc has to worry to much but they should look over the shoulder with the likes of ranbow six 2 and other games that seem to be xbox and ps 3 based micro will need to step up there game sooner or later. if not they will get left behind

[ShaneCamp]

vegas 2 was released for PC as well man.

[Nero]

woooooo hoooo another pc fps ffs, step up the game devs!!!

[GameAddict20]

I much prefer Pc gaming but i can't aford the prices to buy the required kit, at least with consoles its a one off payment and it plays all. Another problem I have is that sometimes getting a PC game to work properly takes alot of time, somethimes i just want to stick in the disk and play. But PCs are still better :)