Teraflops, what relevance does it have to games systems?

leeroyMarv

leeroyMarv

New Member
Recently I've seen a great deal of stuff on the comparison between the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, most notably the fact that the 360 runs at 1 teraflop and the ps3 at a theoretical 1.8 teraflops. This is not a debate thread by any means, I was simply was wondering if someone could tell me what relevance the amount of Floating Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS) have to do with either console, I don't exactly see these consoles doing maths, as they are run primarily to play games. It seems reasonable for only a scientific or maths computer, one used for mathetical formulas to use this measurement. Is there something I'm not getting here, i.e. does the execution and running of programs require constant mathematical computations or something? I was under the impression that the console was only running a set of instructions and not doing any real calculations, could someone please clarify this for me.

Thanks in advance
 
It's basically a way to determine the processing power of a CPU. And games run alot of complex math operations actually.

Even basic coding such as "if blank falls on target 3, then reduce health by 5%" obviously thats not actual code, but you get the idea.
 
So what you're basically saying is regardless of the fact that the console simply reads the code it still has to implement the code and roughly calculate different possibilities for each scenario, i.e. like for physics game engines
 
Pretty much. Physics has alot to do with it, since physics is basically just complicated math equations, the processor has to work out the physics for all the movable characters and materials on the screen.
 
leeroyMarv said:
I don't exactly see these consoles doing maths, as they are run primarily to play games. It seems reasonable for only a scientific or maths computer, one used for mathetical formulas to use this measurement.
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Playing games is ALL math. So the consoles are always doing math and it's what they are designed for. What did you think computers did? Twiddle their thumbs? :D

Oh, and consoles are basically non-upgradable computers now.
 
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Math is the language for games and an international language, too. Man, you need to stay on this forum just a little bit more.

Besides, consoles blow, a good gaming PC could beat the living crap out of a PS3 or 360. Stupid people at school think they're 360 or PS3 can beat my gaming PC, BS!!!
 
Styrak said:
This is true. I hate those kind of ignorant/arrogant people.
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Pure spec wise, PC's blow consoles away. However since consoles have certain hardware then never changes, games can be written specifically for that hardware, to take advantage of everything it offers and squeeze all the juice from it as possible.

It's like why the original XBox with its extremely slow CPU and video card could play Halo and Halo 2 very well.
 
uh a giga flop is enough for dna isnt it? is tera bigger or smaller, i thought bigger. physics calculations is what the games do alot of right? for example, x-planes(i know, computer gme not console, infact sim not game) has a table you can see all the equations on, the giga flops it can do i guess sis how many time it could run the caluculation and change the results per scond per calculation like 1 gigaflop, 10 items,, each does a1/10 gigflop persecond and it comes down to the more calculations you can have it do. with methig only 2nano meters like dna, or cells which are 10 apporx. you need alot and lot of control. i know the math isnt done right and stuff but its the idea and the layout, i probably sounded really bad but i understand it and know hwo it works.
 
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