xbox/xbox 360 performance Q

[crackers]

So back in the day I had my Xbox for a while, and then Half-Life 2 came out, which I was stoked for, and I snatched that sucker up. Everything ran fine, until it came to stuff like big explosions, suddenly everything just about ground to a halt until the explosion was finished, then it would speed up and everything was fine again. I figured it was the game, pushing the Xbox to it's limits so I didn't worry too much. Then, I got my 360, and played it again, and it does the same thing. Why does it do this? Is it a software thing? You'd think with the processor the 360 has it would handle HL2 with no problems. But then I noticed a little lag in games like Bioshock too, usually with large explosions, it would get a little laggy. Anyway, can anyone explain to me why it does this, especially with HL2. It's not a huge deal, but it's something I've always wondered about.


Jon

[FudgeNuggets]

So back in the day I had my Xbox for a while, and then Half-Life 2 came out, which I was stoked for, and I snatched that sucker up. Everything ran fine, until it came to stuff like big explosions, suddenly everything just about ground to a halt until the explosion was finished, then it would speed up and everything was fine again. I figured it was the game, pushing the Xbox to it's limits so I didn't worry too much. Then, I got my 360, and played it again, and it does the same thing. Why does it do this? Is it a software thing? You'd think with the processor the 360 has it would handle HL2 with no problems. But then I noticed a little lag in games like Bioshock too, usually with large explosions, it would get a little laggy. Anyway, can anyone explain to me why it does this, especially with HL2. It's not a huge deal, but it's something I've always wondered about.


Jon



I've not played half-life on the 360 but I can tell you this for a fact. When the 360 first came out they tried to improve the look of old games much like Bleem! did back in the day. They took Forza 1 and upscaled it to 1080 then maxed out the AA/AF on it and it looked OUTSTANDING but it did suffer from some nasty slowdown when there were a bunch of cars onscreen at the same time. To fix this MS issued a patch that took away all the AA/AF and upscaling too. I'm not sure but they may have slowed down the clock speeds to match the original Xbox too.

As for BioShock. I do not own it, I rented it and noticed no slowdowns at all. I haven't really had any slowdown issues with any 360 game except for Oblivion but that was fixed when I did the cache clearing trick.

Do you ever see any artifacting on screen? Maybe your GPU is overheating?

[crackers]

Yeah it does it every once in a while, usually happens when HL2 is loading the next map.

[TollhouseFrank]

you also have to remember that each xbox game is running in an emulator/shell that you have to download from the internet from microsoft, so since there is software hinkery and magery going on, some things just may never get better.

[shard]

Most 360 games have a target FPS of about 30ish, but many times you will jump between 60 and 30 alot depending on what is on the screen. Something like that can really give the perception of 'slowing down'. Also some games do dip in the mid-20's or so for brief moments. Partly due to the fact many developers do push the hardware as far as they know how. But either bad programming or just limitations in hardware (the 360 only has 512mb ram for instance) can also cause those choke points.

[FudgeNuggets]

But either bad programming or just limitations in hardware (the 360 only has 512mb ram for instance) can also cause those choke points.

The PS3 only has 256.mb.

[deathman20]

The PS3 only has 256.mb.

Actually the PS3 does have 512 Megs just that 256 is dedicated for GPU and 256 is dedicated for OS/Other game objects.

360 is similar but memory can be used by both.

[Niku-Sama]

Most 360 games have a target FPS of about 30ish, but many times you will jump between 60 and 30 alot depending on what is on the screen. Something like that can really give the perception of 'slowing down'. Also some games do dip in the mid-20's or so for brief moments. Partly due to the fact many developers do push the hardware as far as they know how. But either bad programming or just limitations in hardware (the 360 only has 512mb ram for instance) can also cause those choke points.

The PS3 only has 256.mb.

Actually the PS3 does have 512 Megs just that 256 is dedicated for GPU and 256 is dedicated for OS/Other game objects.

360 is similar but memory can be used by both.

you guys have to remember still they arent really computers things, when all its doing is games it doesent need nearly as much.

[shard]

More to the point, with today's games textures take up a sizable amount of memory, and when you have alot of high-detail ones ie. Gears of War 2. You can start seeing slowdown in some areas.