The graphics API is more important for what? Gameplay? AI? Load times? Physics? Or did you mean rendering triangles, because indeed graphics APIs are very impor

The graphics API is more important for what? Gameplay? AI? Load times? Physics? Or did you mean rendering triangles, because indeed graphics APIs are very important for that. I think it is extremely naive to assume that the CPU's underlying architecture and microarchitecture are utterly mundane details abstracted by the C++ compiler, ESPECIALLY in the case of consoles. Consoles are underpowered by today's standards, and making today's game run on them requires a deft maximization of both the GPU and CPU, not a mindset like "well C++ will take care of the CPU stuff". In case you hadn't figured it out, common C/C++ stuff from Havoc Physics to little old memcpy() and strcmp() are all hand-optimized for their platforms -- sometimes multiple implementations that make use of various ISA extensions. Try stepping through them in a debugger sometime.