Console and PC Price to Performance Examination

[TurbulentWinds]

8 hours ago, tatte said:

I'm currently at 2025.05 euros for everything Xbox One related, including a preorder for the One X and 100 (122) games (excluding backwards compatible titles). My current PC setup has cost a total of 2845.84 euros, not including any previous parts or a single game.

 

It's easy to make lists to prove whatever standpoint you want, real life is a whole another matter. The bottom line with the whole cost debate is that you run out of things to get for your console much, much sooner than you run out of better things to get for your PC. That doesn't tell anything about which one is inferior or superior. In the end it's all about games, and arguing about those is much like arguing about where and how to get your fast food.

 

Grow up and just play the damn games.

You do not understand the premise of this analysis. This was intended for people who are on a budget and do not have a preference for what games they play who only care about having the best experience in said games. There are great games on all platforms but they are not the point of this argument. This is why games are not mentioned. This is an analysis of hardware pricing only. You are not the target audience if you have that amount of money to drop on systems. This is for kids going off birthday money and people with very tight budgets that will not be able to save more. Again, this does not really apply to the real world except in cases, like me, where a person just wants to have the best experience possible playing good games (who doesn't have ones they want to play, in that case just buy the system for the games) on the cheapest system. 

[TurbulentWinds]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Why does this seem very skewed towards PC?

Oh right, because it is.

 

Right off the bat, Windows is missing, and that's an extra $80-120, depending on if you go the cheap route of OEM or the easier route of retail.

Second, if we go off of titles that launch the day as, then all platforms will be $60USD. Generally titles eventually drop prices on all platforms.

Third, where the hell's the keyboard and mouse? Good keyboards and mice add another $100-160 total to the price tag.

Fourth, the average person will want a more attractive case and a PSU that'd help in upgrading in the long run.

 

That's four points that you blatantly ignored, and I'd bet there's more.

Thank you for reminding me about windows. Its been so long since I've had to install that bloatware. Game are not included in this. I resent that keyboards and mouse's need to cost $100. I game happily off of $20 of keyboard, mouse and speakers same with all my friends. I will update this accordingly, the insult was not nessicary for action to be taken. If you have anything else to say, I will listen. 

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, TurbulentWinds said:

Thank you for reminding me about windows. Its been so long since I've had to install that bloatware. Game are not included in this. I resent that keyboards and mouse's need to cost $100. I game happily off of $20 of keyboard, mouse and speakers same with all my friends. I will update this accordingly, the insult was not nessicary for action to be taken. If you have anything else to say, I will listen. 

It's fair to say that you won't need a $100 keyboard; many would do just fine with a cheap wired keyboard. But I'd definitely argue a good mouse is a necessity. It really helps, especially in FPSes.

[TurbulentWinds]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

It's fair to say that you won't need a $100 keyboard; many would do just fine with a cheap wired keyboard. But I'd definitely argue a good mouse is a necessity. It really helps, especially in FPSes.

I will update the price to $40 dollars. You can get a decent mouse for $20, speakers for $10 and a keyboard for $10.

[handymanshandle]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

It's fair to say that you won't need a $100 keyboard; many would do just fine with a cheap wired keyboard. But I'd definitely argue a good mouse is a necessity. It really helps, especially in FPSes.

tf2 on a $20 logitech m325 I don't know how I managed it before I got my corsair m65. but yeah keyboard doesnt matter as much as the mouse lol

[TurbulentWinds]

5 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

It's fair to say that you won't need a $100 keyboard; many would do just fine with a cheap wired keyboard. But I'd definitely argue a good mouse is a necessity. It really helps, especially in FPSes.

I believe that it is fixed now. Please post any concerns about the fix.

[Nedkely]

Comparing new PC build with the 4 years old hardware? 

Do pc gamers really have to go so low today? Get some prices and parts from 2014 so we could be fair in those "measurments" 

Also you have count the full price for the PS plus, i could get a 1 year card for like 70% of the original price, you could have get 1 year membership on ps plus just for 40$ one week ago... 

If you are counting everything into the account, count furniture for PC, get cooling on that CPU, get electricity bill gap between using PC and a console, get a money back from the games you sell away on consoles as well. Counting a second PC into the pure gaming system cost is literally retarded, the job you are asking for could be done by smartphones, or used laptops that are like 100-200$ on second hand stores...  Which i dont know who wants to do that, if they simply could use smartphone anyway, used laptops are sorrowful. 

And the second, why are you bringing up a newegg here, where there are multiple promotions and price drops for each hardware piece, count a full release price for the PC parts as well. Your GPU you have given here is used for 142, get a new one for 160 instead. Why dont you bother to get into account that someone actually going to buy a console on a black friday, where the price was like 350$ or even less for ps4, with a game and a controller and a charger. We could go even deeper and get second hand consoles with a bunch of games. 

Where is a controller price on your PC, consoles comes with them in the box. 

Also, how long are you going to game on that pc before you will be forced to upgrade it some day? Consoles could play new games just fine, when a pc with that build will struggle to even play Shadow of mordor, not even to mention final fantasy XV... Are you going to play league of legends your whole life?

Sure you will increase lifespan of your pc, but thats kinda meh since when upgrading it several generations across you will meet a wall, where you have to build the whole pc all again, the only thing that would remain the same will be your HDD, so thats not really all that flowers and sugar you are trying to show off here. 

I have been playing on PC for 16 years already and dropped it for consoles nowadays. To the people trying to build a budget gaming pc all i want to tell is DO NOT DO IT, the nerves and time wasted to optimize that kind of crap is totally jackass. If someone going into PC, he have to get some real money, otherwise he will struggle, and the struggle is real, since developers dont care about PC optimalization, if you cant play their game then suck it. 

 

 

 

[TurbulentWinds]

19 minutes ago, Nedkely said:

Comparing new PC build with the 4 years old hardware? 

Do pc gamers really have to go so low today? Get some prices and parts from 2014 so we could be fair in those "measurments" 

Also you have count the full price for the PS plus, i could get a 1 year card for like 70% of the original price, you could have get 1 year membership on ps plus just for 40$ one week ago... 

If you are counting everything into the account, count furniture for PC, get cooling on that CPU, get electricity bill gap between using PC and a console, get a money back from the games you sell away on consoles as well. Counting a second PC into the pure gaming system cost is literally retarded, the job you are asking for could be done by smartphones, or used laptops that are like 100-200$ on second hand stores...  

And the second, why are you bringing up a newegg here, where there are multiple promotions and price drops for each hardware piece, count a full release price for the PC parts as well. Your GPU you have given here is used for 142, get a new one for 160 instead. Why dont you bother to get into account that someone actually going to buy a console on a black friday, where the price was like 350$ or even less for ps4, with a game and a controller and a charger. We could go even deeper and get second hand consoles with a bunch of games. 

Where is a controller price on your PC, consoles comes with them in the box. 

Also, how long are you going to game on that pc before you will be forced to upgrade it some day? Consoles could play new games just fine, when a pc with that build will struggle to even play Shadow of mordor, not even to mention final fantasy XV... Are you going to play league of legends your whole life?

Sure you will increase lifespan of your pc, but thats kinda meh since when upgrading it several generations across you will meet a wall, where you have to build the whole pc all again, the only thing that would remain the same will be your HDD, so thats not really all that flowers and sugar you are trying to show off here. 

I have been playing on PC for 16 years already and dropped it for consoles nowadays. To the people trying to build a budget gaming pc all i want to tell is DO NOT DO IT, the nerves and time wasted to optimize that kind of crap is totally jackass. If someone going into PC, he have to get some real money, otherwise he will struggle, and the struggle is real.   

 

 

 

To address your first question, I am comparing the latest of the mainstream consoles against the latest PC parts. We are in the here and now. Yes, I will count the full price of a PS4 if I am to count the full price of PC parts. I was unaware of the fact that you can purchase discounted memberships. I will add that as an option. The Ryzen 3 1600 comes with a stock cooler if I am not mistaken. I decided not to count the cost of furniture for several reasons. The biggest is that it varies quite a bit and is applicable to both sides. It is assumed that if you are going to purchase one or the other you have the space for it. Everyone I know, if they have a PC or not, has a desk they could put one on just as they have a place by their TV to put a console on. You can not do everything on a smartphone. Soon you will be able to, but for now in terms of being able to write quickly and effectively they are not a good option. You seem not to have checked how much the additional PC cost added: $200 for a new Chromebook or such like. Newegg is a good point. Thank you for bringing it up. Now that I check on current prices they seem to have gone up since I bought my 1050 Ti for $140 new. I will fix that and thank you for pointing out that mistake. Why don't I bother to get into Black Friday? I don't bother because of people like you. No matter what percent knockoff I put on things, someone will not agree. Black Friday is not predicable in terms of a year to year basis. If you can find me correct numbers for all parts and consoles on Black Friday I will update it with said number. For now, I am not going to bother. I did use second hand console prices that I saw on EBay. If you look at the parts list, the keyboard, mouse and speakers are purchased for $40. This is more than the $20 I payed, but $40 seems to be the sweet spot for most people. I gamed on a 750 Ti and a i5 3470 for quite a few years and continue to game on it today. I needed to upgrade my rig for programming, VMs, and simulations but it is still very usable. I game on a EliteBook 8570W from 2012, I think (specs below). I would say for most people, who are ok with comprises, they can last 5 years before an upgrade as I stated in the original post. Yes, it will be able to run those titles. Shadow of Mordor has a min GPU spec of 660-670 I believe for 1080p and Final Fantasy is not even an argument as it has not released on PC yet. The 1050 Ti is a great card and it will slay in pretty much everything with tweaking the settings. No, I will not play League of Legends my whole life, because I don't play toxic games. There is a wall when upgrading a PC. I consider it to be about 10 years in where a rebuild is need. However, there will have been, assuming a 5 year cycle, 4 consoles in that amount of time. I disagree with the last statement but you will not change your view of course so I will not argue with you. Thank you for pointing out the PC system must be at launch price as well and for pointing out that Newegg has discounts. I will change the pricing accordingly. If you found any fault in what I said please reply so I don't continue to make a fool of myself. Have a nice day!

[Nedkely]

Quote

Soon you will be able to, but for now in terms of being able to write quickly and effectively they are not a good option.

What do you want to do with the smartphone? 

Whenever i am out from the house i am taking my smartphone and could use it just well, i could have many many card on the mobile chrome, could write to people on facebook, watch movies, listen to music, these all things you could do with 170$ xiaomi, which we shouldnt take into consideration since having a smartphone today is necessity and is far more reliable than random surfbook. 

Why bother buying a laptop, even a 50$ tablet does its job just properly, thats the matter of getting used to it. 

Do you still have to get one? Boom 87 pounds just here 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHEAP-LAPTOP-Dual-Core-WINDOWS-10-2GB-4GB-Ram-1-YEAR-WARRANTY-14-1-Screen/231764525170?hash=item35f63e0072:m:mFqAMnuxlRpMbdaCKD8bFmg 

Cheap as dirt. 

 

Quote

It is assumed that if you are going to purchase one or the other you have the space for it.

It still needs a good and specific desk to fit everything on it. 

There should be 50$ for a cheap desk at least. 

 

Quote

Why don't I bother to get into Black Friday? I don't bother because of people like you. No matter what percent knockoff I put on things, someone will not agree. 

Because some people see it biased. 

Why are you counting price cuts and promotions on pc parts, when it happens on console as well? The people i know who bought the console most of them got it when it had its price dropped, with PC parts is more of a luck, you either get a price cuts on your build or not, or try to fit into budget with other build, thats not easy task to do. Consoles promos happen even on mainstream retailers, like in the shops where seller doesnt even know the difference between gtx 960 and 760. 

 

Quote

Black Friday is not predicable in terms of a year to year basis. If you can find me correct numbers for all parts and consoles on Black Friday I will update it with said number. 

https://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2015/11/12/walmarts-black-friday-2015-in-three-words-deals-availability-simplicity 

299$ for a ps4 with uncharted game

2014: 

https://www.polygon.com/2014/11/20/7253475/walmarts-pre-black-friday-sale-kicks-off-friday-ps4-apple-game-price 

Coming with 50$ giftcard 

2014 

https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/24/7254213/black-friday-deals-2014-xbox-one-playstation-4 

400$ coming with a 60$ game. 

Xbox one even cheaper than that. 

The mouse and keyboard 40$ price is fair enough. 

 

Quote

 I gamed on a 750 Ti and a i5 3470 for quite a few years and continue to game on it today. I needed to upgrade my rig for programming, VMs, and simulations but it is still very usable. I game on a EliteBook 8570W from 2012, I think (specs below). I would say for most people, who are ok with comprises, they can last 5 years before an upgrade as I stated in the original post. Yes, it will be able to run those titles. Shadow of Mordor has a min GPU spec of 660-670 I believe for 1080p and Final Fantasy is not even an argument as it has not released on PC yet. The 1050 Ti is a great card and it will slay in pretty much everything with tweaking the settings.

Do you realize, nvidia is dumping down to the toilet driver optimization for their older GPU's? That happens with the new games. 

You cant compare a gaming system that has its games designed specially for the current hardware, to the gaming system where you are forced to upgrade it each generation if you want to play newer games with the quality you are used to. 

Its a plain pain in the butt to play for example gta 5 in 60 fps and then find out the similar game has drops to 30 fps. 

It will last you for long and it will play games, but worse and worse. 

Compare gtx 960 with the current 1050, basically 960 is slightly more powerful, but that means nothing, nvidia focus on the current gen and the games play smoother on 1050. 

Check it out 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-960/3649vs3165 

 

The build you have shown us here is 623$ that excluding OS and including blueray player and wifi card. And its playing the games just like ps4 pro does, just barely, since console run it on higher resolution and is keeping up with the same amount of fps in the cross platform games, the build will be inferior to xbox one x anyway. A standard price for ps4 pro is 400$ and xbox one x 500$, even including some shaddy laptop for social needs it will be cheaper to buy the console. 

And sure you will argue about that paywall for online content on consoles, but its a thing you really are not forced to buy if you are not playing online often. But its worth to get anyway, for the sake of the games you get each month and the special deals and price cuts for subscribers, i have bought 2 games in the store with that sweet 70% price drop already and i enjoyed it as well as two other games i got for free as a ps plus member. So i could consider my own membership beneficial. 

The other thing you should consider is power usage, within the year of using each systems it really makes a big difference. Even if its 100W difference and 4 hours of gaming each day on average its 146 KW/h in a year, depending on the power price, in my house it will be a 20 pounds difference on the electricity bill yearly, that matters if we taking into account yearly console sub that is like 40 pounds in the UK (i actually got it for 38), taking that from that gives you 20 pounds yearly for maintaining the console. 

 

Again, with that GPU i dont believe it will last long enough to run new games on it, its not worth of investment at all, the GPU has the same power as my gtx 970m in my gaming laptop, and i struggle to play new games on it anyway. 

 

The thing with consoles is not that it is superior in performance comparing to the gaming pc because its not the case here. 

It delivers easy to maintain gaming system that will just work and run the games you want without worrying about the specs or setting up options for hours. 

There is nothing that could go wrong when buying a console, but a PC? Oh god, the amount of time friends of mine called me to fix their crap was enormous, there was even a case where gtx 980ti had compitability issues with several number of games and i was not able to fix it at all. 

With the time i have spent on playing with PC specs and hardware i could have spend at work on overtimes, i would have pay a console sub for my whole life for both consoles. 

You can either buy a gaming system for 400$ that you need to buy 40$ yearly sub and give little to zero interest into it, just enjoying the games. 

Or you could invest into god save us budget "gaming" pc build that will deliver you a ton of time and nerves wasted because something is not working as it supposed to work. 

Pay 400+200/300$ for the console lifespan, or lose life and health on cheap PC, i choose first one over anything, and thats what i recommend people who are asking me what to do. 

And the best part of it, i could share my console across my family and we could play together as well, playing on couch in a living room, i could take this plastic box and plug 2 cables bom job is done. 

 

Consoles are way more reliable and easier to use, oh and you should also take the gifts from the family as a part of the calculations. Its easier for parents or sister/brother to buy you a console game on your birthday/christmas than it is for PC or steam they have no idea about how it is even working. 

 

[noobs guid to marsterrace]

12 hours ago, Nedkely said:

Comparing new PC build with the 4 years old hardware? 

Do pc gamers really have to go so low today? Get some prices and parts from 2014 so we could be fair in those "measurments" 

Also you have count the full price for the PS plus, i could get a 1 year card for like 70% of the original price, you could have get 1 year membership on ps plus just for 40$ one week ago... 

If you are counting everything into the account, count furniture for PC, get cooling on that CPU, get electricity bill gap between using PC and a console, get a money back from the games you sell away on consoles as well. Counting a second PC into the pure gaming system cost is literally retarded, the job you are asking for could be done by smartphones, or used laptops that are like 100-200$ on second hand stores...  Which i dont know who wants to do that, if they simply could use smartphone anyway, used laptops are sorrowful. 

And the second, why are you bringing up a newegg here, where there are multiple promotions and price drops for each hardware piece, count a full release price for the PC parts as well. Your GPU you have given here is used for 142, get a new one for 160 instead. Why dont you bother to get into account that someone actually going to buy a console on a black friday, where the price was like 350$ or even less for ps4, with a game and a controller and a charger. We could go even deeper and get second hand consoles with a bunch of games. 

Where is a controller price on your PC, consoles comes with them in the box. 

Also, how long are you going to game on that pc before you will be forced to upgrade it some day? Consoles could play new games just fine, when a pc with that build will struggle to even play Shadow of mordor, not even to mention final fantasy XV... Are you going to play league of legends your whole life?

Sure you will increase lifespan of your pc, but thats kinda meh since when upgrading it several generations across you will meet a wall, where you have to build the whole pc all again, the only thing that would remain the same will be your HDD, so thats not really all that flowers and sugar you are trying to show off here. 

I have been playing on PC for 16 years already and dropped it for consoles nowadays. To the people trying to build a budget gaming pc all i want to tell is DO NOT DO IT, the nerves and time wasted to optimize that kind of crap is totally jackass. If someone going into PC, he have to get some real money, otherwise he will struggle, and the struggle is real, since developers dont care about PC optimalization, if you cant play their game then suck it. 

 

 

 

PC's don't get wors over time Linus even did a video on this. Black Friday deals are unpredictable and you can get PC components too. Getting used games is as bad as pirating them. What you have to optimise budget PC's? Most games are optimised for the pc and it's only a small amount of games that run terablely. 

The HDD is the most common thing that people upgrade now so.

[noobs guid to marsterrace]

3 hours ago, Nedkely said:

What do you want to do with the smartphone? 

Whenever i am out from the house i am taking my smartphone and could use it just well, i could have many many card on the mobile chrome, could write to people on facebook, watch movies, listen to music, these all things you could do with 170$ xiaomi, which we shouldnt take into consideration since having a smartphone today is necessity and is far more reliable than random surfbook. 

Why bother buying a laptop, even a 50$ tablet does its job just properly, thats the matter of getting used to it. 

Do you still have to get one? Boom 87 pounds just here 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHEAP-LAPTOP-Dual-Core-WINDOWS-10-2GB-4GB-Ram-1-YEAR-WARRANTY-14-1-Screen/231764525170?hash=item35f63e0072:m:mFqAMnuxlRpMbdaCKD8bFmg 

Cheap as dirt. 

 

It still needs a good and specific desk to fit everything on it. 

There should be 50$ for a cheap desk at least. 

 

Because some people see it biased. 

Why are you counting price cuts and promotions on pc parts, when it happens on console as well? The people i know who bought the console most of them got it when it had its price dropped, with PC parts is more of a luck, you either get a price cuts on your build or not, or try to fit into budget with other build, thats not easy task to do. Consoles promos happen even on mainstream retailers, like in the shops where seller doesnt even know the difference between gtx 960 and 760. 

 

https://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2015/11/12/walmarts-black-friday-2015-in-three-words-deals-availability-simplicity 

299$ for a ps4 with uncharted game

2014: 

https://www.polygon.com/2014/11/20/7253475/walmarts-pre-black-friday-sale-kicks-off-friday-ps4-apple-game-price 

Coming with 50$ giftcard 

2014 

https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/24/7254213/black-friday-deals-2014-xbox-one-playstation-4 

400$ coming with a 60$ game. 

Xbox one even cheaper than that. 

The mouse and keyboard 40$ price is fair enough. 

 

Do you realize, nvidia is dumping down to the toilet driver optimization for their older GPU's? That happens with the new games. 

You cant compare a gaming system that has its games designed specially for the current hardware, to the gaming system where you are forced to upgrade it each generation if you want to play newer games with the quality you are used to. 

Its a plain pain in the butt to play for example gta 5 in 60 fps and then find out the similar game has drops to 30 fps. 

It will last you for long and it will play games, but worse and worse. 

Compare gtx 960 with the current 1050, basically 960 is slightly more powerful, but that means nothing, nvidia focus on the current gen and the games play smoother on 1050. 

Check it out 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-960/3649vs3165 

 

The build you have shown us here is 623$ that excluding OS and including blueray player and wifi card. And its playing the games just like ps4 pro does, just barely, since console run it on higher resolution and is keeping up with the same amount of fps in the cross platform games, the build will be inferior to xbox one x anyway. A standard price for ps4 pro is 400$ and xbox one x 500$, even including some shaddy laptop for social needs it will be cheaper to buy the console. 

And sure you will argue about that paywall for online content on consoles, but its a thing you really are not forced to buy if you are not playing online often. But its worth to get anyway, for the sake of the games you get each month and the special deals and price cuts for subscribers, i have bought 2 games in the store with that sweet 70% price drop already and i enjoyed it as well as two other games i got for free as a ps plus member. So i could consider my own membership beneficial. 

The other thing you should consider is power usage, within the year of using each systems it really makes a big difference. Even if its 100W difference and 4 hours of gaming each day on average its 146 KW/h in a year, depending on the power price, in my house it will be a 20 pounds difference on the electricity bill yearly, that matters if we taking into account yearly console sub that is like 40 pounds in the UK (i actually got it for 38), taking that from that gives you 20 pounds yearly for maintaining the console. 

 

Again, with that GPU i dont believe it will last long enough to run new games on it, its not worth of investment at all, the GPU has the same power as my gtx 970m in my gaming laptop, and i struggle to play new games on it anyway. 

 

The thing with consoles is not that it is superior in performance comparing to the gaming pc because its not the case here. 

It delivers easy to maintain gaming system that will just work and run the games you want without worrying about the specs or setting up options for hours. 

There is nothing that could go wrong when buying a console, but a PC? Oh god, the amount of time friends of mine called me to fix their crap was enormous, there was even a case where gtx 980ti had compitability issues with several number of games and i was not able to fix it at all. 

With the time i have spent on playing with PC specs and hardware i could have spend at work on overtimes, i would have pay a console sub for my whole life for both consoles. 

You can either buy a gaming system for 400$ that you need to buy 40$ yearly sub and give little to zero interest into it, just enjoying the games. 

Or you could invest into god save us budget "gaming" pc build that will deliver you a ton of time and nerves wasted because something is not working as it supposed to work. 

Pay 400+200/300$ for the console lifespan, or lose life and health on cheap PC, i choose first one over anything, and thats what i recommend people who are asking me what to do. 

And the best part of it, i could share my console across my family and we could play together as well, playing on couch in a living room, i could take this plastic box and plug 2 cables bom job is done. 

 

Consoles are way more reliable and easier to use, oh and you should also take the gifts from the family as a part of the calculations. Its easier for parents or sister/brother to buy you a console game on your birthday/christmas than it is for PC or steam they have no idea about how it is even working. 

 

Where do you get this idea that NVIDIA makes their GPUs wors over time i've had my GTX 1060 for 1 year and it's only gotten better. Besides it's been measured by lots of different people AMD GPUs get better over time. There are more split screen games on PC than on PS4 and Xbox combined. I built my first PC last year and spent 30 max making it and there's places you can go and get a PC made of you. Basically you just don't know what your talking about.

[Ithanul]

1 hour ago, noobs guid to marsterrace said:

PC's don't get wors over time Linus even did a video on this. Black Friday deals are unpredictable and you can get PC components too. Getting used games is as bad as pirating them. What you have to optimise budget PC's? Most games are optimised for the pc and it's only a small amount of games that run terablely. 

The HDD is the most common thing that people upgrade now so.

Wow, that is a new one.  People sure having wacky logic now a days.

Used games are gray market.  Like most of the used market.  If going to apply that type of logic, may as well apply that across all the used market.

 

Gaming is a side hobby/entertainment.  A person has to personally decide how they want to spend money on it.  Do they want the convenience of console or the flexibility of a PC?  That decision is up to the person.  Some value convenience and something that just works.  Others value customization and the ability to upgrade.

 

TurbulentWinds post is not a bad take on comparing costs.  Not super in depth.  But, to do a real in depth comparison would take a lot of data and time.  Considering you can get really into trying to compare launch price of games, sale price of games, refurbished consoles, open box hardware, used hardware, new hardware, and sellers like GMG that sell Steam keys.

 

45 minutes ago, noobs guid to marsterrace said:

Where do you get this idea that NVIDIA makes their GPUs wors over time i've had my GTX 1060 for 1 year and it's only gotten better. Besides it's been measured by lots of different people AMD GPUs get better over time. There are more split screen games on PC than on PS4 and Xbox combined. I built my first PC last year and spent 30 max making it and there's places you can go and get a PC made of you. Basically you just don't know what your talking about.

The idea started from Nvidia no longer improving the drivers for Kepler GPUs.  People started crying bloody murder saying Nvidia was gimping the cards.  No, it is not gimping.  Nvidia just stopped improving the drivers for Kepler and worked on improving Maxwell (the new arch at the time).  The reason we don't see it with Maxwell is Pascal is just a refined Maxwell, so any improvements for Pascal partial translate to Maxwell.  Probably once DX12 and Vulkan become the norm, people will cry bloody murder again when newer GPUs can leverage those APIs but the older ones can't take full advantage (tends to happen when a new arch comes out).

[Nedkely]

1 hour ago, noobs guid to marsterrace said:

Where do you get this idea that NVIDIA makes their GPUs wors over time i've had my GTX 1060 for 1 year and it's only gotten better. Besides it's been measured by lots of different people AMD GPUs get better over time. There are more split screen games on PC than on PS4 and Xbox combined. I built my first PC last year and spent 30 max making it and there's places you can go and get a PC made of you. Basically you just don't know what your talking about.

But you still are using a current gen GPU so thats still fine, but wait till they will make another gen. 

Your GPU will not get magically worse, but instead it will get worse and worse optimization patches and drivers for the newer games, the thing just happens on 900 series right now. Drivers are being wrote to focus on 1000 series, to make them running new games smoothly, thats simply it. 

If you want to stay competitive with your gaming pc and keep those 60 fps on max settings for the years, you will be forced sooner or later to invest into new gen gpu. 

To straight it up, you will be able still to play your games you used to play in 2016-2017 on ultra with good frame rates, but will struggle to get it working in newer games, and lets just hope the AMD will not actually bring up HSA solutions into the chips and console will get suddenly much better than they are now, because it will drive down pc GPU+CPU architecture obsolete in few months. 

You are never sure whats going to be tommorow, thats a bad soul of the pc gaming. One day you can play all new games, and the other you are left behind by everyone miles away. 

Just like it happen when the 7 gen of consoles came out, that was an PC gaming armageddon, the thing was way softer on 8 gen since console companies focused more on delivering extra medias like watching movies, streaming and etc not just gaming. 

[noobs guid to marsterrace]

21 minutes ago, Nedkely said:

But you still are using a current gen GPU so thats still fine, but wait till they will make another gen. 

Your GPU will not get magically worse, but instead it will get worse and worse optimization patches and drivers for the newer games, the thing just happens on 900 series right now. Drivers are being wrote to focus on 1000 series, to make them running new games smoothly, thats simply it. 

If you want to stay competitive with your gaming pc and keep those 60 fps on max settings for the years, you will be forced sooner or later to invest into new gen gpu. 

To straight it up, you will be able still to play your games you used to play in 2016-2017 on ultra with good frame rates, but will struggle to get it working in newer games, and lets just hope the AMD will not actually bring up HSA solutions into the chips and console will get suddenly much better than they are now, because it will drive down pc GPU+CPU architecture obsolete in few months. 

You are never sure whats going to be tommorow, thats a bad soul of the pc gaming. One day you can play all new games, and the other you are left behind by everyone miles away. 

Just like it happen when the 7 gen of consoles came out, that was an PC gaming armageddon, the thing was way softer on 8 gen since console companies focused more on delivering extra medias like watching movies, streaming and etc not just gaming. 

Games won't perform wors and that's just because your GPU isn't good enough it's the same for consoles

[Nedkely]

12 minutes ago, noobs guid to marsterrace said:

Games won't perform wors and that's just because your GPU isn't good enough it's the same for consoles

Games will not perform worse, but you should not expect the same GPU running new games on the same performance as the old ones if the new generation GPU will came out from nvidia. 

Too bad they have a monopoly on the GPU department, but well. 

The consoles doesnt really suffer, in order to get a licence for a game to release it on a console your game have to meet several requirements like playing on locked 30 fps and etc. It still will be playable, because developers have an access to real time graphic scaling techniques exclusive for consoles, which got a hardware support from the chip on board and well they are forced to optimize their game to run on consoles if they want to make money thats simply it. And for those technologies, there are dynamic scaling resolution, checkerboard rendering and now dx 12 is going to get a support from the hardware as well, and it will make the optimization on consoles even easier, since it will help out jaguar cpu to show its small but sharp teeth, giving GPU on the other hand a space to work on better graphic options. 

Whatever game is going to be released you can be sure it will be playable, maybe not the best experience you had, but it will run steady. 

 

[TurbulentWinds]

14 hours ago, Nedkely said:

What do you want to do with the smartphone? 

Whenever i am out from the house i am taking my smartphone and could use it just well, i could have many many card on the mobile chrome, could write to people on facebook, watch movies, listen to music, these all things you could do with 170$ xiaomi, which we shouldnt take into consideration since having a smartphone today is necessity and is far more reliable than random surfbook. 

Why bother buying a laptop, even a 50$ tablet does its job just properly, thats the matter of getting used to it. 

Do you still have to get one? Boom 87 pounds just here 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHEAP-LAPTOP-Dual-Core-WINDOWS-10-2GB-4GB-Ram-1-YEAR-WARRANTY-14-1-Screen/231764525170?hash=item35f63e0072:m:mFqAMnuxlRpMbdaCKD8bFmg 

Cheap as dirt. 

The point of having a laptop is productivity. I can't bang out 70 WPM on a smartphone or tablet for an essay or presentation. I can't use specialized software for my business, school or work. While you do not need a laptop, it is necessary for many people to have access to a Windows computer and not a Windows S tablet. Buying a computer used is an option. Do many people buy a used computer? No. Why? Perhaps, they are not comfortable with trusting an old machine. Whichever way you look at it, the fact remains that most people are going to buy new. Used is an option and I will include it. 

 

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

It still needs a good and specific desk to fit everything on it. 

There should be 50$ for a cheap desk at least. 

Fine. I think that most people already have a desk for writing and such like but it is not a significant cost.

 

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

Why are you counting price cuts and promotions on pc parts, when it happens on console as well?

I'm not counting either. Read the original post before replying.

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

https://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2015/11/12/walmarts-black-friday-2015-in-three-words-deals-availability-simplicity 

299$ for a ps4 with uncharted game

2014: 

https://www.polygon.com/2014/11/20/7253475/walmarts-pre-black-friday-sale-kicks-off-friday-ps4-apple-game-price 

Coming with 50$ giftcard 

2014 

https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/24/7254213/black-friday-deals-2014-xbox-one-playstation-4 

400$ coming with a 60$ game. 

Xbox one even cheaper than that. 

The mouse and keyboard 40$ price is fair enough. 

Now I have console Black Friday pricing. So do I include this and not for PC?

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

Do you realize, nvidia is dumping down to the toilet driver optimization for their older GPU's? That happens with the new games. 

You cant compare a gaming system that has its games designed specially for the current hardware, to the gaming system where you are forced to upgrade it each generation if you want to play newer games with the quality you are used to. 

Its a plain pain in the butt to play for example gta 5 in 60 fps and then find out the similar game has drops to 30 fps. 

It will last you for long and it will play games, but worse and worse. 

Compare gtx 960 with the current 1050, basically 960 is slightly more powerful, but that means nothing, nvidia focus on the current gen and the games play smoother on 1050. 

Check it out 

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-960/3649vs3165 

 

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

The build you have shown us here is 623$ that excluding OS and including blueray player and wifi card.

The build includes the OS. Please read the original post.

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

And its playing the games just like ps4 pro does, just barely, since console run it on higher resolution and is keeping up with the same amount of fps in the cross platform games, the build will be inferior to xbox one x anyway.

Please read the original post. This is comparing the Xbox One S and the PS4 not the x and pro. 

Quote

A standard price for ps4 pro is 400$ and xbox one x 500$, even including some shaddy laptop for social needs it will be cheaper to buy the console. 

Again, look at the original post before commenting. I agree with this statement.

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

And sure you will argue about that paywall for online content on consoles, but its a thing you really are not forced to buy if you are not playing online often.

Exactly. If you are not playing online, get a console.

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

But its worth to get anyway, for the sake of the games you get each month and the special deals and price cuts for subscribers, i have bought 2 games in the store with that sweet 70% price drop already and i enjoyed it as well as two other games i got for free as a ps plus member. So i could consider my own membership beneficial. 

I'm not going to argue games. Some people think Steam gets you more for your money others think consoles in terms of buying games. It's really just personal experience.

 

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

The other thing you should consider is power usage, within the year of using each systems it really makes a big difference. Even if its 100W difference and 4 hours of gaming each day on average its 146 KW/h in a year, depending on the power price, in my house it will be a 20 pounds difference on the electricity bill yearly, that matters if we taking into account yearly console sub that is like 40 pounds in the UK (i actually got it for 38), taking that from that gives you 20 pounds yearly for maintaining the console. 

Good point. I'll add that soon.

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

Again, with that GPU i dont believe it will last long enough to run new games on it, its not worth of investment at all, the GPU has the same power as my gtx 970m in my gaming laptop, and i struggle to play new games on it anyway. 

As I previously stated, playing games does not mean ULTRA SETTINGS 60 FPS. It means you can get playable framerates at a decent graphical comprise. My 750 Ti can still pin new titles at 60 fps 1080p and getting a 1050 Ti was a significant upgrade for me. My K1000M can do 30 FPS on my 900p screen and that's from 2012 I think.

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

The thing with consoles is not that it is superior in performance comparing to the gaming pc because its not the case here. 

It delivers easy to maintain gaming system that will just work and run the games you want without worrying about the specs or setting up options for hours. 

There is nothing that could go wrong when buying a console, but a PC? Oh god, the amount of time friends of mine called me to fix their crap was enormous, there was even a case where gtx 980ti had compitability issues with several number of games and i was not able to fix it at all. 

Ok . . . this is not really about that sort of stuff. We are talking about hardware not personal preference.

 

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

With the time i have spent on playing with PC specs and hardware i could have spend at work on overtimes, i would have pay a console sub for my whole life for both consoles. 

Kind of a decent point but I need a better explanation to include this. Perhaps, I should find the price of a prebuilt with the same specs as the PC?

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

You can either buy a gaming system for 400$ that you need to buy 40$ yearly sub and give little to zero interest into it, just enjoying the games. 

Or you could invest into god save us budget "gaming" pc build that will deliver you a ton of time and nerves wasted because something is not working as it supposed to work. 

Not really my experience so I'll chalk that up to personal preference.

 

15 hours ago, Nedkely said:

And the best part of it, i could share my console across my family and we could play together as well, playing on couch in a living room, i could take this plastic box and plug 2 cables bom job is done. 

Hardware. We are talking hardware.

 

Quote

Consoles are way more reliable and easier to use, oh and you should also take the gifts from the family as a part of the calculations. Its easier for parents or sister/brother to buy you a console game on your birthday/christmas than it is for PC or steam they have no idea about how it is even working. 

Hardware. We are talking hardware.

[TurbulentWinds]

11 hours ago, Ithanul said:

TurbulentWinds post is not a bad take on comparing costs.  Not super in depth.  But, to do a real in depth comparison would take a lot of data and time.

Thank you. Someone who gets that I wasn't planning on wasting half my life on this.

[heimdali]

What do you suggest the update plan for a 5 year old computer is?  I don´t really see that in your comparison, other than an unrealistic $200.

 

IIUC, you can assume that the game released today will run fine on your 5 year old console.  You can also assume that you will need a new CPU, new board, new RAM and a new GPU to make the game released today run fine on your computer.  Where/how do you get that for $200?

 

You also haven´t figured in that instead of upgrading a 5 year old computer on a $200 budget, I´d add another $300 and buy the new console that is being released this month.  Then I can sell my old console for $100 (I don´t have one, but if I had a 5 year old computer, I could sell it for maybe $50 (not the ones I have, but you get the idea: I won´t get $100)).

 

As for the versatility of the computer, you can get a perfectly fine used one for $50.  So for $550 --- less than your original $620 for only a computer --- you get a computer for anything else but gaming /and/ the lastest console for gaming and whatever else it does.

 

Having that said, how would it make sense to get a $620 computer instead of a console /and/ a computer for $550?

 

[TurbulentWinds]

Quote

What do you suggest the update plan for a 5 year old computer is?  I don´t really see that in your comparison, other than an unrealistic $200.

On a 5 year old computer all you need to update is the GPU. For example, the i7-920 still runs games fine and it is 9 years old. An entry level GPU replacement will do just fine.

Quote

IIUC, you can assume that the game released today will run fine on your 5 year old console.  You can also assume that you will need a new CPU, new board, new RAM and a new GPU to make the game released today run fine on your computer.  Where/how do you get that for $200?

An equally demanding game as a game that was released 5 years ago will run fine on console. The same is true on PC. You do not need a new CPU, board, or RAM for a 5 year upgrade. An example is my laptop. It has a K1000M and is from 2012. It still runs games at a playable framerate at the intended resolution. 

1 hour ago, heimdali said:

You also haven´t figured in that instead of upgrading a 5 year old computer on a $200 budget, I´d add another $300 and buy the new console that is being released this month.  Then I can sell my old console for $100 (I don´t have one, but if I had a 5 year old computer, I could sell it for maybe $50 (not the ones I have, but you get the idea: I won´t get $100)).

Please read the original post and thread. Your concerns are already addressed.

1 hour ago, heimdali said:

As for the versatility of the computer, you can get a perfectly fine used one for $50.  So for $550 --- less than your original $620 for only a computer --- you get a computer for anything else but gaming /and/ the lastest console for gaming and whatever else it does.

Please read the original post and thread. Your concerns are already addressed.

1 hour ago, heimdali said:

Having that said, how would it make sense to get a $620 computer instead of a console /and/ a computer for $550?

Please read the original post and thread. I agree with this statement.

[heimdali]

Tell me what you would upgrade a 5 year old AMD Phenom 965 to which has become too slow after 3 years.  Changing out the graphics card alone doesn´t do it, especially not when games aren´t the reason why it has become too slow.

 

How are you going to upgrade your laptop?

 

[TurbulentWinds]

10 minutes ago, heimdali said:

Changing out the graphics card alone doesn´t do it,

Um, yes it does. My i5 - 3470 system from 2012 was starting to show its age in games. Stuck in a 750 Ti and boom. Back to 1080p 60 FPS medium. 

11 minutes ago, heimdali said:

How are you going to upgrade your laptop?

The laptop was a counterexample to this:

3 hours ago, heimdali said:

IIUC, you can assume that the game released today will run fine on your 5 year old console.  You can also assume that you will need a new CPU, new board, new RAM and a new GPU to make the game released today run fine on your computer.

I showed you that games run fine on 5 year hardware.

[heimdali]

What does it help to replace the graphics card when you´re running a couple services and software raid and the overall performance is so low that it gets annoying because you pretty much always want it to be faster.  Games are almost irrelevant --- mind you, computers are versatile, and I also played games on it.

 

So again, tell me what you would upgrade an AMD Phenom 965 to.  You claim that putting $200 into it would fix it, so show us how.

 

Games also run on 20 year old and older hardware, and they also run on the $50 computer.  Wing Commander 2 took several hours (like 6 or so) to install on hardware that wasn´t 20 years (but maybe 5) old when I did that, after you took a while to feed the 22 or so floppy disks to the machine.  Of course games run on 5 year old hardware, as did WC2.  I never even tried WC3 on that hardware, it would have been pointless, and it was a pain on 3 year old hardware that had already been upgraded.  But yes, it worked, so what´s your point.

 

[TurbulentWinds]

10 minutes ago, heimdali said:

What does it help to replace the graphics card when you´re running a couple services and software raid and the overall performance is so low that it gets annoying because you pretty much always want it to be faster.  Games are almost irrelevant --- mind you, computers are versatile, and I also played games on it.

Not for me. If you were looking for perfect performance you came to the wrong place.

11 minutes ago, heimdali said:

So again, tell me what you would upgrade an AMD Phenom 965 to.

I have no idea. I am not a person who spent much time learning about AMD chips until Ryzen. Please inform me.

12 minutes ago, heimdali said:

Games also run on 20 year old and older hardware, and they also run on the $50 computer.

I'm not telling you they run. I'm saying they will do 1080p, 60 FPS or 1080p 30 FPS on a 5 year upgrade cycle. I've done it myself multiple times. 

[heimdali]

7 minutes ago, TurbulentWinds said:

Not for me. If you were looking for perfect performance you came to the wrong place.

I have no idea. I am not a person who spent much time learning about AMD chips until Ryzen. Please inform me.

I'm not telling you they run. I'm saying they will do 1080p, 60 FPS or 1080p 30 FPS on a 5 year upgrade cycle. I've done it myself multiple times. 

You could have upgraded to an Intel CPU, which would have cost you about EUR 2-2.5k.  That might have made a slight improvement or a pretty good one --- there´s no way to tell before you do it --- and after another 3 years, you´d do it all over again.  Has anything changed about the compatibility of sockets and RAM over generations of CPUs?  I guess not because it looks as if both Intel and AMD have continued to come up with one incompatible socket after another over the years, as if RAM has become faster and incompatible, as if PCI evolved to version 3 and as if SATA has become a bit faster and is slowly being replaced by m.2 or how it´s called, which may help improving performance.

 

If your game runs well enough that it is fun to play would depend on the game.  However, I don´t do such low resolutions.  Use a console, and apparently you´re more or less granted that the game will run fine and be fun to play, without upgrading anything.

 

On a side note, I´ve had far more than enough of computers and graphics cards being too slow, so I don´t do low end graphics cards anymore since 15 years or so.  Show me a (low end) card for no more than $200 that can reasonably drive a 4k display and give you your 60 FPS which you would use to upgrade your 5 year old computer with.  You also need to show that the card makes it 5 years.  Unfortunately, they usually fail before they get that old.

 

 

I learned today that if I wanted to play a game that says "Windows 95" on the package (and I thought at first "Hey I could actually try that, I have a windoze 7 license somewhere."), I´d have to spend EUR 160 on a windoze 10 license because otherwise I´d run into driver issues.  Great, driver issues is just what I need, and there goes your $200.  So I didn´t buy the game, and it would be really hard to bring myself to pay money for the total crap that windoze 10 is.  I only touch windoze when I get payed for it, and I´d probably have all kinds of issues with it, starting with driver issues for a smart array P800 which I would need to drive the extra 8 disks (they´re all 72GB 15k SAS disks) I would have to make a raid5 of to install it.  And that would cost about 60W for the disks alone, plus 25W for the P800, and it would bring about the hassle of having to switch back and forth between two sets of disks.  Is that really better than a console?  Computers are too versatile for playing games, I guess.

 

Maybe I´m wrong, but it seems to me it´s better to play games when they come out rather than years later.  I imagine that can be rather difficult with a 5 year old computer that was crappy even when it was new.

 

[TurbulentWinds]

6 minutes ago, heimdali said:

You could have upgraded to an Intel CPU, which would have cost you about EUR 2-2.5k.

Dude. You don't need an i9 for gaming.

7 minutes ago, heimdali said:

That might have made a slight improvement or a pretty good one --- there´s no way to tell before you do it --- and after another 3 years, you´d do it all over again.

There is a way to tell: benchmarks. Why do you need to upgrade your system so often? I barely ever have to. I do it on a 5 year basis and have never had a problem.

8 minutes ago, heimdali said:

Has anything changed about the compatibility of sockets and RAM over generations of CPUs?  I guess not because it looks as if both Intel and AMD have continued to come up with one incompatible socket after another over the years, as if RAM has become faster and incompatible, as if PCI evolved to version 3 and as if SATA has become a bit faster and is slowly being replaced by m.2 or how it´s called, which may help improving performance.

I don't even know why you wrote this.

8 minutes ago, heimdali said:

If your game runs well enough that it is fun to play would depend on the game.  However, I don´t do such low resolutions.  Use a console, and apparently you´re more or less granted that the game will run fine and be fun to play, without upgrading anything.

Now we are at the root of the problem here. You are not a budget gamer. You have money to spend. You think 1080p, the standard for gaming, is "low res." If you aren't talking budget and don't understand the budget viewpoint, none of this will make any sense. This is not a guide for 1080 Ti ballers. This is for people who got years out of their 750 Tis.

11 minutes ago, heimdali said:

On a side note, I´ve had far more than enough of computers and graphics cards being too slow, so I don´t do low end graphics cards anymore since 15 years or so.  Show me a (low end) card for no more than $200 that can reasonably drive a 4k display and give you your 60 FPS which you would use to upgrade your 5 year old computer with.  You also need to show that the card makes it 5 years.  Unfortunately, they usually fail before they get that old.

This is not for 4K ballers. This is for budget gamers. You misunderstood the premise of this entire thing.

12 minutes ago, heimdali said:

I learned today that if I wanted to play a game that says "Windows 95" on the package (and I thought at first "Hey I could actually try that, I have a windoze 7 license somewhere."), I´d have to spend EUR 160 on a windoze 10 license because otherwise I´d run into driver issues.  Great, driver issues is just what I need, and there goes your $200.  So I didn´t buy the game, and it would be really hard to bring myself to pay money for the total crap that windoze 10 is.  I only touch windoze when I get payed for it, and I´d probably have all kinds of issues with it, starting with driver issues for a smart array P800 which I would need to drive the extra 8 disks (they´re all 72GB 15k SAS disks) I would have to make a raid5 of to install it.  And that would cost about 60W for the disks alone, plus 25W for the P800, and it would bring about the hassle of having to switch back and forth between two sets of disks.

Jesus Christ. You don't get that this is for people ok with compromise. Not people running disk arrays. This is for people who have a 500 GB laptop HDD that they scavenged off an old laptop.

15 minutes ago, heimdali said:

Maybe I´m wrong, but it seems to me it´s better to play games when they come out rather than years later.  I imagine that can be rather difficult with a 5 year old computer that was crappy even when it was new.

I don't even know what to say. You think a 1050 Ti and Ryzen 3 1200 are "crappy." Basically, 90% of people would be totally happy gaming on this system for years. Not everyone has or wants to spend money on a 4K setup.