"Why is it that a Playstation allows high-quality graphics, as seen in 
Final Fantasy VII-VIII and many other games, while a PC with 2 MB of RAM 
and a 33 MHz processor couldn't even run Windows, let alone any 
high-quality games?"

The primary things that effect this are due to a PC's rather old 
architecture.  The old x86 design which you still see to this day is old 
and inneficient.  The problem is that people need thier computers. and 
have to have total backward compatibility with existing software and 
standards.  That is mainly why we have stuck with the CISC instruction 
sets and designes in todays PCs.  Add to that- Windows based operating 
systems are resource hogs and could use some refining. The PSX uses a 
33mhz custom RISC processor.  This processor was designed specifically 
for PSX use. It contains a reduced instruction set (RISC) for faster 
computing, and probably has a lot of transistors.  PC Processor 
manufacturers are slowly adding RISC code to thier processors to 
increase speed, but try to retain most backward compatibility.  Also, 
people often base clock speed in mhz as the basis for how fast a 
computer runs, but that contributes to only a small percentage of speed 
difference.  Generally, a machine with more transistors will operate at 
faster speeds (e.g. comparing a 486dx4 100 to a pentium 100.)  You 
cannot even compare a 33 mhz PSX RISC processor to a PC's ancient 33 mhz 
CISC processors.  Also, factors such as refined floating point units 
control calculations that especially effect 3d processing.  Early PCs 
had rather pathetic floating point units.  One more thing to consider is 
that the PSX games are designed for all of the exact same machines that 
everyone owns.  Everyone's PC is different, and must clone the older 
architecture while every PSX is the same- with a few minor revisions 
that don't effect speed.  PC programmers are getting lazy lately and 
don't really refine code and make it very efficient.  I guess they 
figure that it isn't neccessary on todays fast PC's.  You would be 
surprised at what kinda machines some of todays games could run on, if 
only the programmers would refine thier programs a bit more.

Synthboy

---
I was reading through your letters section, and as a professional
programmer I took particular interest in the letter asking why a 33MHZ
PC (386 and up are 32-bit) with 2MB of RAM couldn't even run Windows
much less a high quality game.  You cited overhead as the reason.  What
you said about Windows hogging resources is true to some extent, but
that's not the real reason a Playstation or N64 can destroy older PCs in
game quality.  The real reason is the specialized graphics hardware that
game consoles have.  Older PCs were equipped with standard VGA cards
which were all-purpose cards with almost no support for any special
rendering (you could trick the VGA into doing sprites in hardware with
ModeX).  The N64 has hardware to do texture mapping, anti-aliasing, and
a whole host of graphical effects too numerous to list.  The Playstation
also has lots of hardware for doing 3D graphics.  PCs had nothing of the
sort, not to mention the PC is an all-purpose machine (a jack of all
trades but a master of none).  However, try putting a Voodoo2 in a shiny
new Pentium 2, and it will blow the doors off even the N64.  My point is
that specialized hardware is what makes the difference.

Scott Kessler <sdkess@geocities.com>