iDevices' Potential

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by JBRUU, Jul 3, 2012.

  1. JBRUU

    JBRUU Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2012
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    I have a question for you developers: just how powerful are recent iDevices? Apple feeds us consumers the "premier gaming platform" line, but I'm curious to
    see what the facts are: can A5 and/or A5X devices push the polygons of, say, an xBox (original)? Putting aside controls and budget, do modern iOS devices pack the graphical grunt to run even last gen console games?

    I'm not a developer of any iOS games or apps. I do dabble a little in HTML 5 and recently picked up Codea on the App Store to fiddle around with Lua, so I'm not totally unfamiliar with coding.
     
  2. jthreatt44

    jthreatt44 Member

    Apr 22, 2012
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    Most definitely! For starters, you have complete relaunches of games that were on last gen consoles such as GTA III, which run perfectly, and then games that practically supercede pervious generation consoles such as Mass Effect and arkham asylum for ios devices--most impressive about it is the fact that they practically run 60 fps on a device that fits in your pocket. I would even go so far as to say qualitywise, A4/A5/A5X devices compete graphically with current gen PCs that are set at low to moderate settings.
     
  3. Greyskull

    Greyskull Well-Known Member

    Dec 13, 2009
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    "Current generation of" can mean a lot
    Of things. Does the PC in question use an ultra low voltage CPU? Is the graphics chipset integrated or not? How much on board memory is installed, and at what speed? How about virtual memory?

    I sometimes come across posters who simply look at iDevice specs and come to irrational conclusions. Don't mistake me, I'm not referring to you; rather those who, for example, believe it would be possible to port Skyrim.

    Forget the spec sheets. There are limitations inherent in a smartphone, and I'm not referring to the price most people are willing to pay for mobile games.

    Heat. Cell phones have no fans and limited venting. This, along with a reliance on rather small batteries, puts a cap on how much voltage is used at a given time. How is over clocking done? Simple. You crank up the electricity. A Pc with a modest power supply can push it's components much farther than a cell phone/tablet can.

    Less memory. Shared video memory. It's not high end anymore to have a pc with 4 gbs system memory, 1 gb graphics memory. compare that with 512-1gb shared.

    This memory is further limited by the fact that a smartphone needs to be able, to reserve a decent chunk of that memory for cell radio/gps etc.

    The A series chips might be nice, what with being multi core now. You know that a (far from top of the line) external graphics chipset for a PC has HUNDREDS of cores now? Pc's now usually hand off the mathematically intensive physics work to the graphics card now.

    How about the memory cache for the CPU? On smartphones they are tiny, compared to pc CPUs. Does the "system on a chip" found on smart phones have to decode audio? They don't on a pc.

    How about virtual memory? You can't exactly keep a multi-gb disk cache running on the type of storage found on an iPhone.

    I have rather pricy MacBook Pro with a core i7. Specwise it's a modern PC. What happened when I played Oblivion on it? It kept overheating and shutting down. So I put it ony desktop. No problems.

    There is no way in hell any current smartphone or tablet will be able to match the performance of a one year old top of the line MacBook Pro, which can't touch a 3 year old (not a lousy HP, though) desktop in the world of heavy duty 3d graphics/physics/large world/a.i./triggered events galore style gaming.

    Not without frying itself, that's for sure.

    Oh, I forgot to mention memory bridge speed. Some other time ;)
     
  4. JBRUU

    JBRUU Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2012
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    That's about what I was suspecting, Greyskull. Dispelling the heat is a huge problem, not to mention budget and revenue.
     

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