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John Carmack tweeted:

For the same given paper spec, a console will deliver twice the perf of a PC, and a PC will deliver twice the perf of a mobile part.

Normally this is the sort of claim I would take with a really big grain of salt, but considering the man's pedigree. I'm inclined to take at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

I'm mostly interested about the first part of said claim, the one involving PCs and consoles, I'm well aware of the power and heat issues that mobile parts have to deal with so the latter part is more believable.

To formulate this concisely: What factors could explain that a specific (and fixed) hardware setup can have twice the performance as generic setup made from off the shelf parts considering that on paper both of these are deemed to be equivalent?

Can it really be down to just really optimised drivers?

P.S: Any resemblance to this question may or may not be intended.

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Borgleader
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1 Answers1

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I believe what he was referring to is a broad view on the amount of additional software that is necessary on today's pc's which creates more hoops for processes to jump through (unlike the days of playing Double Dragon in DOS).

On the other hand a console that was manufactured for a sole purpose (and doesn't have any extra hoops to jump through) thrives in its own environment because it is lacking unnecessary steps on the way.

I came to this conclusion after reading his response to a comment on this tweet. https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/436012724791681024

Trae Abell
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