Re:The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers
by masklinn on Sunday December 08, 2019 @06:49AM
(#21735454)
> Compared to PCs of the same era they were very underpowered.
Compared to top-of-the-line PCs of the same era yes. But the GPU alone of "PCs of the same era" would set you back as much as a 6th gen console, and you'd have a shiny graphics adapter sitting in a box.
The 7th gen is where consoles started really falling behind (though somewhat ironically also where MS decided to go with somewhat more bespoke hardware than the "PC in a box" Xbox).
(The lack of ram was definitely the biggest issue, and the thing that held back PC games the most as levels had to be made a lot smaller than they could have been otherwise - Destiny and Final Fantasy XIV are two concrete examples, both released expansions with much larger playable areas as soon as PS3/360 support was dropped).
Compared to other consoles of the same generation they were on par though.