PC graphics just not that much better

[davesom555]

They are probably in a lot of cases going to use shared graphics resources between pc and console.

Check out stuff like Far Cry 3 on the pc (not sure if there's a console version) but that looks amazing to me, especially 1080p High settings! Also been playing planetside 2 on relatively high settings, the graphics there are nice, although you'd not be able to compare it to a console

[KeyboardDemon]

Far Cry 3 is out on console but the PC version was made with some specific additional graphics settings for it, this article from http://m.hardocp.com/article/2012/12/17/far_cry_3_video_card_performance_iq_review#.UVdwV1AgGSM has all the details.

[lmaolmao]

what i think is best is the framerates. even if it looks the same quality wise, theres something about 60fps that is just awesome.

[Jingee]

I wouldn't say a GTX 680 is a waste at 1080p. I have an OC'd 670 that runs faster than a stock 680, and coupling that with a 120hz monitor means I get the ultra-smooth gameplay I crave.

[Pob255]

One thing I often find funny is that if you watch "pro gamers" playing fps games they will generally have added graphical features turned off, they want high and Stable frame rates and minimal graphics "clutter" that detracts from spotting and reacting.

One fallacy I'd like to clear up is "pc ports" very few are ports these days what is far more common is multi-platform development, designing and developing a game with the simple goal of minimal alteration to make it work across consoles and pc.
That's not to say that games are not being held back by 5-6 year old console hardware because they are.

One current thing you'll see with today's games is that pc versions will have higher resolution textures and will run at higher frame rates (remember most console games only run at 30fps)
In part it's hardware but also console API, the 360 is only running a modified version of DX9 API (it's sort of half way betweendx9 and dx10) and the ps3 uses a modified version of opengl 2 (and I think the wii u api is also based on opengl2)
The big difference between console and pc api's is that console api's are created for one specific set of hardware where the cpu + gpu + ram and more closely linked where as pc a[i's have to be a more broadly written set of instructions and the hardware has to conform to the api's
What this broadly means is that most games are still basically DX9 with dx10/dx11 features tacked on, granted dx10 was dx9 with added features tacked on but dx11 does have thee capability of being solely dx11 api calls although we've yet to see anything other than tech demos written solely for dx11

[Gremlin_FLG]

anyone played tomb raider?

[Preacher]

anyone played tomb raider?

Yeah, had it on the ps1. Great game!

[oralpain]

It's also worth mentioning that many PC games simply do not have good stock presets and require tweaking or modding to achieve an optimal performance/IQ balance.

[Gremlin_FLG]

What i was referring to graphics on tomb raider was to the graphics.. Heck even the crysis 3 single player graphics are good.. So I am sorry dont agree with the OP post about PC graphics not that much better...

With a PC, you need a good graphics card with a decent cpu to help you out.. If you dont sorry it will not run good..

[crossy]

It's also worth mentioning that many PC games simply do not have good stock presets and require tweaking or modding to achieve an optimal performance/IQ balance.

Totally agree - and worse still (sometimes) are the ones that have an "optimal" setting. Most usually I use that as a starting point and then tweak onwards. Saints Row 3 and Just Cause 2 are two particularly bad (or should that be good?) examples - I managed to dramatically improve the frame rate on these by some reasoned fiddling with the settings.
What I'd like to see is some game that actually allowed you to select an "optimal" setting that was smart enough to benchmark it's settings and retweak - so if you were getting less than 25fps then it could dial the graphics back. JC2's "optimal" settings gave me minimums of 6fps - which is utterly unplayable - last time I bench'd it I got 6x that (and without dropping resolution).

With a PC, you need a good graphics card with a decent cpu to help you out.. If you dont sorry it will not run good..

But as noted above, you can also get games which run better on a particular graphics card family or particular cpu. For example, I've got a (old) hexacore PhenomII - some games really work well with this, other seem to prefer the improved single thread performance of Intel's cpu's. And I'm sure we've all seen comment on Hexus reviews about titles that prefer Geforce over Radion (or vice-versa). I'm not disagreeing with what you said, merely pointing out that there's more complexity.

And I suppose therein lies the attraction for some people - being able to tweak and tune your rig to extract every last fps from your favourite titles.

[amicii]

Well multi platform games often are not be much better on PC, usually it's just higher resolution and Anti Aliasing which sharpens stuff up. But there are exceptions like Battlefield 3 and Crysis etc, or quite a big improvement if they put the effort in. But there is also quite a lot of stuff which really pushes a PC and shows off the power, you just have to wade through all the stuff that doesn't. The first thing that comes to mind is Arma3 which not only looks great, but it achieves that while being a huge open world with no loading and lots of other stuff happening at the same time (very complex AI etc). Games like that couldn't run on consoles, perhaps even the next generation consoles due this year. It's just such a big and demanding game.

But also, check out the screenshots of Skyrim with "100 mods". It looks incredible and I assumed it would be unplayable, but I can actually play it like that, and I don't even have top end gear. Here's the link:
http://kotaku.com/5961994/what-skyri...0-mods-at-once

I only average about 30fps but that's enough for me, it's an RPG after all, and I'm just glad it can be playable while looking that good.