Faster games

[- Wrath of God -]

I have an idea on how to make games run faster on PC's, but this would probably have to be programmed into the OS. Think about the old 1 process operating systems like DOS. If nothing else was running, wouldn't your games run faster? Isn't the X-Box's internal architecture incredibly similar to a PC's? If so, then why can't PC's with the same specs run games as fast as an X-Box can? It's because of the Multi-Processing. All of the applications that are running take up RAM and processing power; and if Microsoft were to put in a single application mode - for gamers or something - there would be a huge speed increase, maybe even to console standards. Hell if Microsoft were to include a feature like this, I would actually BUY their OS.

So what do you guys think? And feel free to say it wouldn't work - just say why.

 

[Sevael]

Just one thing to remember is that PC games typically run in much higher resolution, which takes a lot more processing power. A PC game running in 1280x1024 resolution requires more than four times the video processing power than a console game running at 480p (640x480 resolution). They cannot simply be compared 1-to-1.

But yes, a console's situation makes it easier for programming games to run at higher speeds because the software only needs to be programmed for one specific video card, sound card and input device, instead of made to work with many. That certainly makes things easier.

There are a lot of differences. But when you break it all down, a PC running a game at 480p (640x480 resolution) should have the capability to perform much better (hundreds of frames per second) than a console game (usually 30 or 60 frames per second). Not always the case, but in a general sense that is mostly true.

 

[Lukeage]

While it theoretically would be possible for Microsoft to do this, it wouldn't be worth their time. Their primary markets are coporate and OEM (i.e. Windows coming preinstalled on new computers) and neither of those markets would really gain any share from having this option.

The other part you are missing is that a console has a fixed hardware set. You'll notice that games released closer to the launch of a console tend to be 'technically' weaker than those which occur towards the end of the consoles life. This is due to the fact that programmer start to understand the systems and 'cheat' to produce algorithms which are very efficent. For example, there may be a quirk that nvidia cards have with rendering a certain effect that cannot be transferred across at a lower level to ATI cards because they do not have this same behaviour.

 

[Helmut]

The problem with modern computer, is that the OS have to manage plenty of things which consoles don't have to. And making a very ergonomics OS need also many more processus to run.
Anyway, when you'r playing (or even while using the OS), most of the processus are sleeping, waiting for an interuption (a key pressed or any other signal) to wake up. While sleeping, they take up RAM (or HDD swap files) but they don't use any processor ressources.
Such an OS would be useless to improve your gaming performence. The only thing you can do, is to make an OS which take less RAM (by removing all the useless processus) and you will have some more RAM for your games.

And here you have the main difference between Windows XP and Vista. Both use pretty much the same processor ressources but Vista need way more RAM to store all its wonderfull new processus like Aero.

So why PC can't with the same spec as a console can't run the same game as fast? Simply because for console, textures and models complexity are lower than on PC. You can't compare a PC game running in "high" settings with a console game (which is certainly not on "high").
Since XBOX/XBOX360 games are made with XNA, which is a developpement environement which can compile games in both xbox and pc format (and both run on some sort of a directX), codes, textures & models should be the exact same. At least for Xbox360 (xbox SDK hasn't a so good portability). It also depends on the developpers will; look at the Halo 1 port, I beleive that microsoft made an awful port to convice poeple that their console are far better than a PC (and that's ridiculous since Xbox has a PC architectur and run with a special Direct X).

So if you want an OS made for gaming, just take your favorite OS and tweak it. Desactivate all the processus you don't need.
My Windows XP takes less than 200Mo in RAM with firewall and so on.