- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I've seen some sweeet PC stuff, for sure. I know the newer hardware has much more potential than the Xbox, but I suspect that the Xbox still has potential for stuff beyond what's blowing it out of the water now.
My friend's PC has more than a dozen times the hardware capability of my Xbox in almost every respect, but no game will exist that comes remotely near taking advantage of everything that hardware could possibly have to offer. There's just too many compatibility issues with sooo many different manufacturers, chipsets, third-party cards, bus speeds, bioses, drivers, hard drive setups, toolsets, and custom configurations of everything. There isn't a singe component in one PC that's the same as in everyone else's! Any PC built in the last few years has way more theoretical potential than the Xbox, but that won't be tapped. Everything your favourite PC game does is probably threaded through your OS and competing with whatever else's running in the background for the resources of a machine where everything's inefficiently integrated with ancient standardized connections, so it runs hot trying to play that game. The Xbox isn't being pushed hard yet; it's so specialized that mine doesn't even need its blamn cooling fan to play Halo, Unreal Championship, MechAssault or whatever. Microshaft even removed the fan from the design 'cause it's not being needed! I hope to see games catch up to where we see a cooling accesory or retrofit kit... I would love to see any hardware used efficiently and pushed to its limits with perfectly optimized software. That might happen with a standardized console, but not a PC.