Will there be Next-Gen consoles at all?

[Killian Kalthorne]

Console < PC. End of discussion.

 

Only if you plan on doing more than just game.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Console < PC. End of discussion.

 

Only if you plan on doing more than just game.

 

Incorrect. Given the choice between gaming on a console and gaming on a PC I will almost always choose the PC - even if gaming is all I was going to do on it.

[Rhomal]

Console < PC. End of discussion.

 

Only if you plan on doing more than just game.

 

Which is exactly the case he is trying to make.. and failing at which I pointed out.

 

I also think, the console excels at certain games as does the PC. I do not subscribe to the fact all games work better on one platform or the other. Fighting, racing and certain FPS's I'd say the console has the edge. CRPGs, MMO's, strategy and sims PC has the edge.

[alanschu]

I was wondering about that 16G of RAM. Do any OS recognize that much?

 

All 64bit OSs can recognize that

 

 

What's the cap at the moment? I heard they don't recognize the full 64-bit addressing at this time.

[Mamoulian War]

I also think, the console excels at certain games as does the PC. I do not subscribe to the fact all games work better on one platform or the other. Fighting, racing and certain FPS's I'd say the console has the edge. CRPGs, MMO's, strategy and sims PC has the edge.

 

Finaly something on which we agree \o/

[alanschu]

While I find building and using a computer easy, as a PC Gamer I still contend that a lot of people find it more intimidating than using a video game console.

[Rhomal]

I was wondering about that 16G of RAM. Do any OS recognize that much?

 

All 64bit OSs can recognize that

 

 

What's the cap at the moment? I heard they don't recognize the full 64-bit addressing at this time.

 

4 terrabytes is the max ram for 64bit OS. On a retail/comsumer level I don't know any PC that has even come close to that cap. However systems with dozens of gigs have been made using win64 without issue. Not sure what you 'heard' but I have not read or see any issue with high amount of ram in win64 or linux64.

[Deraldin]

Not sure what you 'heard' but I have not read or see any issue with high amount of ram in win64 or linux64.

 

Supposedly there is a much lower limit on RAM depending on what version of Vista you are using. 8GB for Basic, 16GB for Premium, 128GB for everything else. I dunno if that's accurate, mainly because I don't know anyone who has more than 7GB of ram in their system.

[Rhomal]

Not sure what you 'heard' but I have not read or see any issue with high amount of ram in win64 or linux64.

 

Supposedly there is a much lower limit on RAM depending on what version of Vista you are using. 8GB for Basic, 16GB for Premium, 128GB for everything else. I dunno if that's accurate, mainly because I don't know anyone who has more than 7GB of ram in their system.

 

oh I see what you are saying... you are talking about coded limits in the OS not the 64bit spec itself. On that level it may be, don't quite recall if MS put a cap on it. But even if true with those caps you posted the odds beyond a handful of ppl will reach/break that is slim and mostly a non-issue.

 

Since myself and many others in the tech industry I know are simply going to skip vista and go strait to win7 from xp32/64 will be interesting to see what the hardcoded limit is on it, if any.

[taks]

unfortunately, my laptop came corrupted with winders visitor.

 

taks

[alanschu]

I was wondering about that 16G of RAM. Do any OS recognize that much?

 

All 64bit OSs can recognize that

 

 

What's the cap at the moment? I heard they don't recognize the full 64-bit addressing at this time.

 

4 terrabytes is the max ram for 64bit OS. On a retail/comsumer level I don't know any PC that has even come close to that cap. However systems with dozens of gigs have been made using win64 without issue. Not sure what you 'heard' but I have not read or see any issue with high amount of ram in win64 or linux64.

 

I had heard it was still in the Gigabytes (100s or so)

 

 

EDIT: Following your posts you seem to indicate that it's a hardcorded limit of 4 Terabytes. Why is the limit of memory addresses limited to 4 terabytes for 64 bits? That doesn't make any sense. It should be able to address much, much, much, much more. I mean 32 bit addressing hit 4 Gigabytes.

 

Regardless, even if the current cap for 64 bit OSes is 4 terabytes, then we haven't even touched the amount of memory 64-bits can truly address.

Edited February 5, 2009 by alanschu

[Rhomal]

I had heard it was still in the Gigabytes (100s or so)

 

 

EDIT: Following your posts you seem to indicate that it's a hardcorded limit of 4 Terabytes. Why is the limit of memory addresses limited to 4 terabytes for 64 bits? That doesn't make any sense. It should be able to address much, much, much, much more. I mean 32 bit addressing hit 4 Gigabytes.

 

Regardless, even if the current cap for 64 bit OSes is 4 terabytes, then we haven't even touched the amount of memory 64-bits can truly address.

 

My bad... did some research to refresh my memory you are right it is vastly more.. but still when we are talking about this amount of RAM odds are nothing we have to worry about for quite some time, theres lower OS limits then the h/w ones in either case. from wikipedia (technology one of the few topics at pedia that I give credit to);

 

Most 64-bit microprocessors on the market today have an artificial limit on the amount of memory they can address, because physical constraints make it highly unlikely that one will need support for the full 16.8 million terabyte capacity. For example, the AMD Athlon X2 has a 40-bit address bus and recognizes only 48 bits of the 64-bit virtual address[1]. The newer Barcelona X4 supports a 48-bit of physical address and 48 bits of the 64-bit virtual address.

 

The primary benefit of moving to 64 bit is the increase in the maximum allocatable system memory (RAM). A single process on a 32 bit Windows operating system is limited to a total of 2 GiB by default or upto 3 GiB if special switches are passed in the Boot.ini file. Windows XP x64 can support much more memory; although the theoretical memory limit a 64 bit computer can address is 16 exbibytes, Windows XP x64 is limited to 128 GiB of physical memory and 8 tebibytes of virtual memory per process.

Edited February 5, 2009 by Rhomal

[alanschu]

Yes most of that is in sync with what I expected with for the hardware limits.

 

I figured any restriction on the 2^64 possible memory addresses would be either in a limitation in hardware, or software.

 

I agree that we likely will not need to worry about running out of this memory addressing for quite some time, and much of this I knew.

 

 

I was confused because you had mentioned that 64-bit OSes could address 16 GB, so I was curious what the limit of OSes were, and when you said 4 TB it seemed significantly higher than what I had heard, which was likely the 128 GB version of Vista. But then it seemed you were claiming that that was a limitation of 64-bit in theory (which you now mention was stated in error) and it just made me more confused.

 

 

My favourite part is when people expect 64-bit computing to be twice as fast as 32-bit computing because there's twice as many bits

[Meshugger]

Yes most of that is in sync with what I expected with for the hardware limits.

 

I figured any restriction on the 2^64 possible memory addresses would be either in a limitation in hardware, or software.

 

I agree that we likely will not need to worry about running out of this memory addressing for quite some time, and much of this I knew.

 

 

I was confused because you had mentioned that 64-bit OSes could address 16 GB, so I was curious what the limit of OSes were, and when you said 4 TB it seemed significantly higher than what I had heard, which was likely the 128 GB version of Vista. But then it seemed you were claiming that that was a limitation of 64-bit in theory (which you now mention was stated in error) and it just made me more confused.

 

 

My favourite part is when people expect 64-bit computing to be twice as fast as 32-bit computing because there's twice as many bits

 

True, but it is a tad difficult to explain to those, who are not belonging to the PC-superhumanmasterrace, that 64-bit computers are not twice as fast. They also have a difficulty to grasp the whole "2^32 times more adress-space" either.

 

I usually go with: "Well, with 32-bit processors, you usually could do a couple of things at the same time. But 64-bit you can do sh*tload more, but do not get fooled by the numbers, they're just there to confuse you, the actual amount is actually immeasurable"

Edited February 6, 2009 by Meshugger

[Humodour]

While I find building and using a computer easy, as a PC Gamer I still contend that a lot of people find it more intimidating than using a video game console.

 

That's off-track, no? Most people don't build their own PC, they buy it.

 

Anyway, whatever the anecdotal stories and intuitive guesses are, there's some real hard data for us to actually look out coming out of Valve's steam (which is a pretty unbiased cross-section of the gaming population AND has a multi-million person sample size).

 

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Edited February 7, 2009 by Krezack

[Moatilliatta]

You can't argue that the steam survey isn't partial to a specific part of the gaming demographic, Krezzy. I do agree that people should look at it.

[Humodour]

Huh. Look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-...o_game_consoles

 

If the console industry is booming, why did it seemingly peak in the 1990's? There are more people alive today, people are richer, and the current consoles are far superior to their earlier brethren. PC's certainly haven't wasted any time in this regard.

 

Seems like the PR and spin we here in the media may not tell the full story.

[Humodour]

You can't argue that the steam survey isn't partial to a specific part of the gaming demographic, Krezzy. I do agree that people should look at it.

 

Well, yes, there's a bit of a self-selection problem evident in that only the people with computers sufficiently powerful to run Steam games will use Steam. But pretty much any computer around these days can use Steam. This is certainly a sample space problem, but it's minor enough.

[Hell Kitty]

Huh? PS2 and Gameboy top those lists. What exactly is it you think The Media is not telling us?

[Moatilliatta]

Are you drunk krezzy?

 

Unless my reading comprehension have reached a new low then the PS2 is the peak at 140 million and that was released in 2000 and the current gen can still beat it.

[Humodour]

Huh? PS2 and Gameboy top those lists. What exactly is it you think The Media is not telling us?

 

Um, that's my point: console gaming seems to have peaked in the 90's.

 

Are you drunk krezzy?

 

Pardon?

 

Unless my reading comprehension have reached a new low then the PS2 is the peak at 140 million and that was released in 2000 and the current gen can still beat it.

 

It was a generalisation obviously. 2000 is still almost a decade ago. The offerings since seem to have relatively lack-lustre install bases.

 

Specifically I'm talking about this:

 

Nintendo Wii 2006 044960000 44.96 million[5]

Sony PlayStation 3 2006 021300000 21.3 million[14]

Microsoft Xbox 360 2005 028000000 28 million[10]

 

Microsoft Xbox 2001 024000000 24 million[11][12]

Nintendo Nintendo GameCube 2001 021740000 21.74 million[3][13]

Sony PlayStation 2 2000 140000000 140 million[1]

 

Sega Dreamcast 1998 010600000 10.6 million[16][17]

Nintendo Nintendo 64 1996 032930000 32.93 million[3]

Sony PlayStation 1994 102490000 102.49 million (shipped)[4]

Sega Saturn 1994 017000000 17 million[15] or 9.5 million[16]

 

Scuse the formatting - just order by year on the actual site. But the groupings show a fairly clear pattern of massive sales for each generation collectively, up until the current one. Even taking into account they've only been around for 3 or 4 years they seem low comparatively and given the trends I mentioned in my post above.

Edited February 7, 2009 by Krezack

[Mamoulian War]

Ehm... you forgetting that PS2 is 8 years in sale and still selling...

 

Let's talk about peak of the consoles after Wii will be 8 years on the market... If the buying of it will continue in same pace we should be at around 150millions at that time... simple math...

Edited February 7, 2009 by Mamoulian War

[Morgoth]

Sooner or later I'll decide to get me one of these PS2 thingy-thing myself. My Gamecube is totally rad, so I think the PS2 should be also...

 

Any kewl exclusives I should get?

Edited February 7, 2009 by Morgoth

[Mamoulian War]

Final Fantasy XIII and versus XIII if you are into JRPG, Gran Turismo 5 if you are into racing, Metal Gear Solid 4 if you are into ... well Metal Gear Solid series , Little Big Planet if you are into family stuff, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction or Uncharted: Drake's Fortune if you are into action-adventure, Killzone 2 if you are into FPS

[Moatilliatta]

Ehm... you forgetting that PS2 is 8 years in sale and still selling...

This is what I was trying to say in not so classy way.

 

I'll gladly laugh at the console once they've had their shot.

 

Also the people who run steam are likely to be part of the so-called hardcore and not a good view of gamers as an actual demographic.

Edited February 7, 2009 by Moatilliatta