news Rumor: Leak shows Xbox 720 specs, should rival a high-end gaming PC

quote The Slayer

Don't forget that the xbox doesnt have to be as powerful as a PC to play games just as well. Computers have a ton of background tasks to run along with the game. They have to keep Windows running as well as 60+ background programs. All of that stuff running in the background uses resources. A console only has to play games, with very few background tasks running. So it can play games just fine on lower end hardware.

I'm actually surprised it has 8gb of ram, I figured 4gb would be plenty (the 360 only has 512mb). It would be awesome if the ram could be used as a type of ram-disk, where the game could have a large chunk of data loaded onto the ram so it doesnt have to read from a disk or hard drive.

CPU is really nice, though oddly not very fast.

The big part of it is that unlike with PC, the developers can write directly to the GPU because it's standard, and they don't have to use a go-between (like DirectX/OpenGL). DirectX and OpenGL are intended to compensate for the lack of standard between GPUs on PCs, so a game that works with one piece of hardware will work with one model of GPU will still work with other models, assuming they're close enough in power (or more powerful).

Consoles, on the other hand, have standardized GPU hardware, so the developers know exactly what they're dealing with and can eke out every last bit of the GPU's power because they know that every user will have the same hardware and there is nothing to compensate for.

When new consoles come out, they tend to have more potential usable power than the average computer that comes out around that time (that's not to say a good gaming rig won't still be more powerful than it, but said rig WILL definitely cost a lot more than the console, obviously), but considering a console sticks around 5+ years usually, it's not surprising it gets very out of date. Consoles hold back the PC gaming market because many AAA games, at least those of which are multiplatform and support both PC and at least one console, tend to conform their capabilities to what consoles can do, rather than what PCs can do.

Consoles are good bang for buck in terms of visual capabilities because the cost to the consumer is subsidized by the maker, because for said companies the money comes from software licensing fees, not hardware sales and having hardware that's too expensive would mean a lower install base and less software sales, and thus they won't make as much money in the end.

If you wanted to build an equivalently powerful PC it would cost a fair bit more than the list price of a console because the hardware has to be sold at a profit by whatever retailer you're using, and never mind the power lost through DirectX/OpenGL (which would require you to bump up the hardware specs to compensate for having to use that go-between).