I agree with many of their points, especially the value aspect.
Value of Consoles vs PC *spin off*
- Thread starter Shortbread
- Start date
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I know it's unlikely to happen, but man I'd love to see it get hacked so that I could make run Windows or even Linux on it. I still fondly remember hacking my original Xbox almost purely to use as an XBMC box.
Heck, I wouldn't mind paying 100-200 USD extra for the XBSS if MS allowed me to install Windows on it.
Regards,
SB
Heck, I wouldn't mind paying 100-200 USD extra for the XBSS if MS allowed me to install Windows on it.
Regards,
SB
Completely agree and I'd go further any of these 3 consoles is going to be better value than a PC at their price points. Why is it we keep having this dumb "debate" every console launch, "if you ignore the cost of a Windows license, a monitor, peripherals, storage, etc and pretend a PC is just a M/B, RAM, CPU + GPU I could build a better PC than these for the money". Even if you could get within ballpark performance wise at the start of the gen by the end of the gen your launch Xbox One is still running the latest titles while whatever PC was it's supposed equal or better for $499 is barely functional as a NAS let alone a gaming box.
Nonsense. My brother has a 10 year old PC with a Core i5 2nd Gen, 8 GB RAM and a GTX750Ti. Granted he still games at 720p (same resolution that was standard in consoles at the time), but he can play most games still today with some settings adjustment. The original PC had a Pentium Dual Core, 4GB RAM and a GTS450 for less than 499. A few years later we upgraded the specs for what they are now with second hand parts that costed around 50 altogether. A PC is upgradeable, a console isn't.
Because it's equally silly to assume that PC gamers have to upgrade every element of their system with each new console generation. PC's are modular, its one of their key differentiators from consoles so its disingenuous to ignore that aspect.
What current PC gamer doesn't already have a monitor (or TV) or a copy of Windows 10?
Take my example, the cost of entry to "next gen gaming" for me is a new GPU and NVMe SSD. Thats it.
Now even then the consoles are a better value proposition so I'm not taking away from that at all, I just think its silly to assume PC gamers always need to upgrade or replace everything in every analysis of this sort. There are much better ways to look at this, e.g. hardware + software + service costs over the long term.
Brand new system builders are a different matter of course, but anyone doing that at this point in the generation is obviously not remotely concerned about value.
No this is specious thinking, your friend has $499 and nothing but a TV, there is no PC value proposition that will offer them console gaming quality for the same money over the same time period (5-7 years for a console generation). Sure over the life time of the device if I buy 4-5 AAA games a year taking into account more aggressive discounting on the PC retail side (but if you hunt around console discs are often not that much more expensive) you can say the lifetime costs are lower but upfront nothing touches console value.
But no-one is trying to make that claim. However that argument ignores the more realistic scenario of an existing PC gamer upgrading their existing PC to be capable of playing next gen games at or above next gen console quality.
The steam surveys (as flawed as they may be) at least give the impression that only a small percentage have specs that approach or exceed the high end console specs though with respect to only needing to upgrade fewer components. So it comes round to what the majority/mass market experience is.
Arguably, you'd want something close to the 8C/16T Zen 2 CPU too, which not everyone has.
Depending on how much you have to upgrade that can be true, I'm sitting on a 4th gen Core i5 build and I cannot build a BoM that gets me back to parity for €499. Now I am planning to wait two years and exceed next gen for rather less than €499 but right now at launch, I can't.
Yes I do agree that the consoles are exceptional value, particularly the S, even when compared to just a CPU and a GPU on the PC side. The main point of my argument is that including everything, I.e. Windows license, monitor, control pad, case etc... isn't very representative of the real world picture. Its certainly fair to say that a large proportion of the active PC gaming population would need at least a CPU/Mobo/RAM/GPU upgrade though.
True I am mostly raging against guff I see in Twitter reply threads from the kind of person who thinks LordGaben memes are legit cool. The dropping the cost of a Windows license from the BOM though is something I see very frequently, folks not understanding the limitations of OEM licenses around transferring them to other devices is near universal. Luckily suing individual gamers for not following the highly restrictive OEM license terms is not worth it for all involved.
cheapchips
Veteran
Yeah, wait two years for actual next gen games to come out and you'll pick up a 5060 that'll have the same performance for much less cash.
Yea I was really gung ho about getting one day 1.
But, perhaps it's best I just wait until I see a game I really want to play first. Like something that is going to be the most awesomeness 4K RT 60fps spectacle.
Same goes with the consoles, unless you've got something you want to play, I don't see a point in upgrading unless you're looking at TIV deals.
Weird place to be with a 1070. I want to upgrade because this thing can't do ML for shit. It's so painfully slow because nvidia borked it a 1660 would perform 100x better.
What's so bad about the 1070 for ML?
Yes but you also get alot more with a 3080 in terms of performance. It's all in perspective.
The XBox One did not exist 10 years ago. It was still PS3 and XBox 360 generation. Let me know about any recent games you can still play on those consoles. Meanwhile a PC bought in the middle of that generation and upgraded for peanuts is still playing todays games at the same resolution of the time. It's a far cry from your ridiculous assessment that it wouldn't be good enough even as NAS lol. In the end it was still cheaper than buying both console generations! Plus PC excels at backwards compatibility, no need to have several consoles to play older games. And emulation! Need I go on? It's obvious a PC will always present better value because it's way more flexible.
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Nvidia made a mistake with the 900 series in which was very popular with data science folks. Everyone bought 980TIs because they were so effective.
In Pascal consumer graphics cards they nuked FP16 to run at 1/128 the FP32 speeds -- yes take 6 TF / 128 = FP16 performance.
Basically, it's useless for ML unless you do everything in FP32, which almost no one does it's mostly FP16 and below for deep learning.
My CPU will run circles around my 1070 if the NN is set to FP16 for deep learning right now.
If you want fast FP16 during pascal you had to pony up for a professional card, then the pascal cuda cores run FP16x2
Turing and Volta resolved those issues, but costs are higher.
Ampere is actually the next logical good overall performing card at a reasonable price point.
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It must be tiring hauling those goalposts all over the field
