Aspects of Console Gaming that PC Just Can't Match

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 hours ago, minervx said:

I don't think either PC gaming or consoles are inherently better.  Both do different things.  But there's still various aspects in which consoles are superior: gaming performance to price, convenience, form factor, user-friendliness, accessible, consistency. 

 

PC's can be like consoles in this regard, but there's too many asterisks.

 

"PC gaming is better because of graphics and frame rates"

"But it's way more expensive"

"Well you can build a PC under $500 if you find all of these insane rare ebay deals"

"But those deals are outliers and with that logic I can just get a $100 console"

"Okay, here's a more realistic $500 PC build list"

"Well now this PC's graphics and framerate are worse than consoles"

 

Which is why this debate is silly. Even if we tried to limit the prices to new hardware, even that fluctuates given the upmarket on even midrange or higher GPUs and RAM these days.

 

There's also the logic of why are we comparing modern day hardware to hardware released say 5 years ago? Would it make sense to say "I built this awesome gaming rig for $800 that totally kills this $2000 machine built five years ago!"

 

But eh, people will continue to make these topics until there is no PC or console and we all become slaves to Stallman.

[minervx]

We can compare PC's to the Xbox One which was not made too long ago and is quite modern in design.

[dalekphalm]

8 hours ago, minervx said:

We can compare PC's to the Xbox One which was not made too long ago and is quite modern in design.

The Xbox One was released in November of 2013. It's 4 years and 5 months old now. That's hardly "not too long ago".

 

The Xbox One X, on the other hand, has only been out for like 5 months or so - the GPU is very modern, but the CPU is still largely unchanged.

 

We can somewhat compare the One X to current gen PC's. But there are a lot of caveats that make direct comparison difficult.

[minervx]

I meant the One X.  Yes.

 

I'm partial to the PC personally, but I'm very envious of the Xbox One's compactness, energy efficiency, quietness, convenience and user interface.  I'm hoping that by 2020, DIY PC's come closer to this point.  CPU's and GPU's are becoming more efficient, but we need ITX motherboards to become more common so they fall in price.  We need companies like Corsair to make cases like the Loque Ghost S1 for the mainstream.

[Majinhoju]

I think consoles still win as far as simplicity out of the box.  

Just hook it up to your tv, six on the couch with your controller and you're good to go.

 

It's not difficult to use a PC on a tv but there's just a bit more work involved that most would rather just use a console.

[Mira Yurizaki]

On 4/25/2018 at 9:35 AM, minervx said:

I meant the One X.  Yes.

 

I'm partial to the PC personally, but I'm very envious of the Xbox One's compactness, energy efficiency, quietness, convenience and user interface.  I'm hoping that by 2020, DIY PC's come closer to this point.  CPU's and GPU's are becoming more efficient, but we need ITX motherboards to become more common so they fall in price.  We need companies like Corsair to make cases like the Loque Ghost S1 for the mainstream.

Most of the reason why consoles are compact is the hardware design allows them to share many things that would otherwise add bulk. For example, the Mac Pro consumes at its worst (Prime95 + Furmark) about 450W, yet it remains fine despite it's punitive size. Why? Because the CPU and both GPUs have a combined heat sink. That eliminates a ton of wasted space because the CPU and GPUs are flat against the thermal core and the only air pathway you need is through the thermal core itself. In the latest consoles, not only do the GPU and CPU share the same heat sink, they're one unit, share the same memory pool (so there's potentially fewer chips), and share the same house keeping circuitry.

 

So until something like this happens with PCs, it's never going to achieve the compactness you want. Sure things like the DAN Case A4-SFX does something like, on a 10,000 foot point of view, "sandwich" two cooling solutions around flat PCBs, but I don't think that's quite as efficient as a single heat sink for both. Not to mention the motherboard side still has a lot of wasted volume. It's also 7.5L, the Xbox One X is ~4L

[minervx]

The main issue is not that all of these merits are not practical or attainable for PC's but rather because companies aren't coordinating together and trying to minimize innovative risk.  Once one company does manage to make PC's console-like in form factor, efficiency and accessibility, others will likely follow suit. 

 

I'm not saying PC's have to be as slim as a console, but they need not 5-6 times the size of a console either.  A PC with a graphics card won't be as compact as a console in which everything is soldered to the motherboard.  Of course, consoles will eventually get even smaller beyond what a DIY PC may ever reach, but PC's can at least get to the same size as the original Xbox One.What you think will never happen is going to probably going to be happening within the next 5 years.  Mid Tower ATX form factor makes much less sense than it did 5 years ago and the industry is only going to head into smaller form factors.

 

CPU's and GPU's are getting more energy efficient over time.  This means SFX power supplies will no longer be overwhelmed .  Yes, builds like a i7-8700k + GTX 1080 are going to want a full-sized form factor but this is a small conspicuous minority of the market.  The hardware choices of most PC builders don't necessitate an ATX (or even MATX) form factor.  Builds are using less hard drives than before.  Yes, there is a niche of people who want to push their PC to the very maximum, but we're approaching a point where CPU's don't even need to be overclocked in order to offer high framerates. We can already get cheap CPU's that can crush console CPU's with minimal cooling required. 

 

A lot people just go for larger builds at the moment because they're cheaper - not because they necessarily deeply want the largest case possible - and they're cheaper because most people go for them; it's a cycle. If affordable SFX PSU's and ITX motherboards were out there, it wouldn't be counter-intuitive to build or use at all.  I highly doubt these cost more to make.  But at this point, it is a supply problem and the DIY PC industry doesn't have a company like Apple that can bring all of these individual aspects together and make it convenient.

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 minutes ago, minervx said:

The main issue is not that all of these merits are not practical or attainable for PC's but rather because companies aren't coordinating together and trying to minimize innovative risk.  Once one company does manage to make PC's console-like in form factor, efficiency and accessibility, others will likely follow suit. 

A lot of companies, and many of them major players, have tried to build console-like form factor PCs. Arguably some with interchangeable parts save for the motherboard by using socketed CPUs, SO-DIMM, and MXM modules. But none of them took off.

 

The problem is most of the DIY market isn't interested. They'd rather have ATX monsters with RGB lighting and tempered glass.

6 minutes ago, minervx said:

I'm not saying PC's have to be as slim as a console, but they need not 5-6 times the size of a console either.  A PC with a graphics card won't be as compact as a console in which everything is soldered to the motherboard.  Of course, consoles will eventually get even smaller beyond what a DIY PC may ever reach, but PC's can at least get to the same size as the original Xbox One.

Mine is a bit larger than the Xbox One. But it could get smaller.

 

6 minutes ago, minervx said:

What you think will never happen is going to probably going to be happening within the next 5 years.  Mid Tower ATX form factor makes much less sense than it did 5 years ago and the industry is only going to head into smaller form factors.

It may make less sense now, but that doesn't mean people will still buy them. A vast majority of boards on the market are ATX and I don't see that changing any time soon, or within five years. People want the option to expand, even if they never do.

 

6 minutes ago, minervx said:

CPU's and GPU's are getting more energy efficient over time.  This means SFX power supplies will no longer be overwhelmed .  Yes, builds like a i7-8700k + GTX 1080 are going to want a full-sized form factor but this is a small conspicuous minority of the market. 

SFX power supplies are up in the 800W range. And a setup like that isn't going to take up more than 300W even after overclocking. My current setup last I measured it consumes like 200W-230W.

 

6 minutes ago, minervx said:

A lot people just go for larger builds at the moment because they're cheaper - not because they necessarily deeply want the largest case possible - and they're cheaper because most people go for them; it's a cycle. If affordable SFX PSU's and ITX motherboards were out there, it wouldn't be counter-intuitive to build or use at all.  I highly doubt these cost more to make.  But at this point, it is a supply problem and the DIY PC industry doesn't have a company like Apple that can bring all of these individual aspects together and make it convenient.

ATX hardware isn't any cheaper either. People still buy $100 cases and $100 boards. They either don't see that they're getting their money's worth because they're getting less stuff for the money or again, they want the option to expand even though they'll likely never will.

 

Either way, Mini-ITX and SFF builds are going to continue being niche categories of PCs until the collective has some massive revelation they should go smaller.

[minervx]

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

A lot of companies, and many of them major players, have tried to build console-like form factor PCs.

They tried to do so in 2012-2013 back when people still needed more expansions, thermals were much worse and disc drives were still popular.  They didn't execute it well, but this does not mean it can't be done better in the future.

 

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The problem is most of the DIY market isn't interested. They'd rather have ATX monsters with RGB lighting and tempered glass.

That's the problem.  There's two extremes here.  Compact PC's can be beautiful and lavish, but most of the compact cases are generic and bland. 

 

There's no reason we can't have more PC's like this. 

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Mine is a bit larger than the Xbox One. But it could get smaller.

Nice!

 

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

 A vast majority of boards on the market are ATX and I don't see that changing any time soon, or within five years.

We can at least push for space-efficient ATX.  I agree ATX is great for the extra PCI-E slots, but even in that, there's a ton of a wasted space.

 

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

People want the option to expand, even if they never do.

But the number of expansions needed will lessen over time.  USB-C is very versatile and will be standard in a few years.  Storage is less of an issue with higher capacity drives and cloud storage.  Bluetooth will reduce our dependence on more ports.  USB 3.0/C Wifi should be good enough to where PCI-E Wifi is no longer needed.  A lot of things we thought we needed 5 years ago, PC's already do without a need for expansion.  I'm not saying ATX will be obsolete, but rather if people were given a fair choice, I don't think 90% would go ITX.

 

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

SFX power supplies are up in the 800W range. And a setup like that isn't going to take up more than 300W even after overclocking. My current setup last I measured it consumes like 200W-230W.

Fan loudness is also an issue.  120mm fans are louder than 140mm.  However, with less power consumption, that is slowly becoming a non-issue.  There is still that "bigger is better" fallacy in which people think they need 600w power supplies.  You are right though.  Power supplies are unnecessarily big and heavy out of tradition.  I'm not saying desktop PC's can be directly compared to laptops and tablets, but to see the progress they've made and to say that the desktop market can't adopt any of it is just hard to believe.

 

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

ATX hardware isn't any cheaper either. People still buy $100 cases and $100 boards.

It's not cheaper to make nor cheaper in raw materials, but Mini ITX is expensive.  Cases like the Loque Ghost S1 cost $200.  Cases like the Node 202 cost $90.  There are few to no ITX cases for $50-60 that are actually compact and don't look ugly as sin.  There are very few cases that take SFX as it is.  The EVGA Hadron Air was a great case, but you're right; it was introduced during a time when the market wasn't ready for it yet.  Right now, there are $60-80 motherboards for ATX and MATX.  But for ITX, there aren't any under $110.   Most if not all SFX PSU's are over $90-100+.  All around, the cost of going for a compact case will easily cost $100-200 more.  For budget builds, this is undoable.  For mid-range build, it means you'll be sacrificing in processing power opporttunity cost.

 

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Either way, Mini-ITX and SFF builds are going to continue being niche categories of PCs until the collective has some massive revelation they should go smaller.

PC building itself is a niche.  Either way, tech is moving in this direction.  At the moment, there are some sacrifices that must be made to achieve ITX, even if they're not a lot.  But eventually, processors will become energy efficient enough to where the PC market will basically be forced into small form factors.  NVidia and Intel are eyeing at the laptop and tablet market; they are designing their next-gen technology with this in mind.

[Stefan Payne]

On 25.4.2018 at 12:38 AM, M.Yurizaki said:

Probably not even that considering it's still Jaguar and Jaguar is a Netbook class architecture.

Jaguar isn't that bad.

Problem is the shitty clock rate.

 

Bring down other Chips to the same ~2GHz and compare it to Jaguar and see how well it performs.

 

Problem with Kabini and co is that it only has a single Channel Memory interface wich cripples the performance further and makes comparisation with PS4/XBox One APU so much harder....

[Supportsneedlove]

On 25/3/2018 at 7:06 PM, minervx said:

Operating System

Both PS4's and X1's are relatively simple, easy to use, no endless mess of menus, minimal interruptions, no driver issues and other types of issues.  No spending a half hour diagnosing OS problems.  Windows, apart from the fact that it is capable of playing games, is just not a fun OS to interact with.

 

Plug and Play

Controllers (for the most part) work instantly - no need to download drivers, DS4 and/or map the buttons.  Games install where they need to go - no need to spend time troubleshooting why a certain game won't run.  Streaming onto Youtube and Twitch can be done on console with ease; it doesn't require downloading the right video recorder (and none of the wrong ones) and then editing the settings.

 

Lower Input Cost

There's no realistic gaming PC  that can be had for $200-300.  Yes, PC gaming is cheaper in the long-run if you don't go for the high-end gear and if you don't upgrade parts every year, but we all know 90% of us don't do that.

 

Better living room experience

Being honest, PC has technically could be used in the living room, but it's not living room friendly.  Windows isn't living room friendly.  It could be tweaked to be such, but that would take a time-investment counter-intuitive to someone who is tired from work and wants to relax.  Steam's Big Picture, Geforce Experience and other launchers also need work.  

 

I prefer my PC because I do other demanding work on it, but for those that don't really need a PC, having a laptop/ipad plus a console to manage all of their needs is not bad at all.

I'd say the only aspect where consoles beat PC would be split screen. But since we're all a social nerds that isn't a problem.

[Stefan Payne]

There is also another thing:
Innovation!
 

Consoles can introduce new features, that might (or might not) be adopted to PC sooner or later.

One Example would be WiiU with the Gamepad but also the Wii.

 

But also the Touchpad on the Playstation 4.

 

A thing that nobody thinks about today is the Rumble Feature of the Controllers - that's something that came from Consoles, as did X-Input...

[minervx]

true, but split screen is rare nowadays since online play took over

[App4that]

A console does something I've never been able to find in a PC. When I go to game I know it will work. 

 

Yeah I lived through the days of the Red Ring of Death, even got the yellow light of death on my PS3. But nothing like the issues PC has. Not PC's fault. PC is a race car and Console is a Nissan Versa. Love them both for both reasons.