I'm not sure how much that matters for the wide audience. If you do blind tests for example people had a hard time telling the difference between the PS4 Pro and PS4 -
And that will only get worse due to diminishing returns.
Sony PlayStation cross-platform game strategy
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
I'm not sure how much that matters for the wide audience. If you do blind tests for example people had a hard time telling the difference between the PS4 Pro and PS4 -
And that will only get worse due to diminishing returns.
Not sure what you're on about there.
The 3060Ti launched at the end of 2020 with a $399 MSRP (and yes if you bought in 2020 you could get them for that). That's both comfortable more powerful and cheaper than the PS5.
And what 2024 GPU are you referring to there? A 4070S has an MSRP of $600 (likely similar to the Pro) and is also likely at least as capable if not moreso. And by the time the Pro launches the 5-series will be released which will bring the price for that level or performance (or more) further down.
Even if your GPU were free then your PC would have still cost more than double than what PS5 cost in November 2020. That is without a windows license, and with not even a mouse and keyboard or controller
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Btw, once again I'll say that price has little to do with whether or not someone is a PC or console gamer. Lifestyle, complexity of managing a PC and history are much more important. The people at Beyond3D consider both options, but most people don't, really.
That's why it's pointless to debate whether or not a $399 video card is better than having a PS5. That's not the decision space people are generally in.
That's why it's fine for Sony to release on PC. There's a slow bleed to PC going on, but not many people who are used to playing PS5 on their couch, with a pick up and play zero complexity experience, because it's just what they and their family have always done is going to jump ship to PC because Spider-Man 2 is going to PC two years after it came out on PS5. Not happening.
That's why it's pointless to debate whether or not a $399 video card is better than having a PS5. That's not the decision space people are generally in.
That's why it's fine for Sony to release on PC. There's a slow bleed to PC going on, but not many people who are used to playing PS5 on their couch, with a pick up and play zero complexity experience, because it's just what they and their family have always done is going to jump ship to PC because Spider-Man 2 is going to PC two years after it came out on PS5. Not happening.
I think you need take another look at PC component prices. It would not have cost anywhere near $800+ dollars to build an equivalent PC MINUS GPU to the PS5 in 2020.
And you're second point specifically referenced the GPU only (2024 GPU), so can you clarify your statement there? What do you expect the Pro to cost, and what do you expect will be required on the PC side to at least match its performance?
I am actually noticing a different trend. My nephew recently wanted to build a pc with me and most of his friends now have gaming pcs and steam decks so they can stream.
A pc without a GPU consists of:
- 16GB of ram
- a motherboard
- 850GB gen 4.0 SSD
- processor
- housing
- cooler
- power supply
The PS5 pro will cost 549 dollar or euro, and a 5060 will not match or surpass it, so a 5070 might and that will be 699 or something?
Can we build a PS5-level PC for the same $499 launch price?
With Sony's console now out in the wild, and lots of new PC hardware components on the way, prices will be dropping
www.pcgamesn.com
here they have half the amount of RAM and they have an SSD which has less capacity and half the speed so make of that what you will
Current prices on Newegg for each of those components:
- 16GB of ram - 2x 16GB - $50
- a motherboard - AM4 - $70
- 850GB gen 4.0 SSD - 2TB Gen4 - $114
- processor - R5 5700X - $168
- housing - $70
- cooler - AMD Wraith Stealth - $16
- power supply - 80+ Gold 600w - $60
Total - $548
Yes that's current prices but it's also using the modern equivalents to those parts that would have been comparable to the PS5 back in 2020. i.e. a 2TB SSD instead of a 1TB, 32GB RAM instead of 16GB, a 5700x rather than a 3700x.
So still much less than your "more than double" claim: "Even if your GPU were free then your PC would have still cost more than double than what PS5 cost in November 2020." - which means more than $800.
The Pro is expected to be 45% faster than the base PS5 in raster. That puts it at slower than the 4070 which according to TPU is 54% faster than the 2080 (a fair proxy for base PS5 performance).
The 4070 MSRP is $599
The 4060Ti MSRP is $399
So your argument is based on:
- The big assumption that a PS5 Pro will only cost $549 (less than most predictions I've seen)
- The assumption that the 5060Ti will be more than 10% slower than the 4070 (for reference the 3070 is only 5% faster than the the 4060Ti)
- The assumption that a 5070 will cost more than the PS5 Pro or be slower than the 4070
Can we build a PS5-level PC for the same $499 launch price?
With Sony's console now out in the wild, and lots of new PC hardware components on the way, prices will be dropping
here they have half the amount of RAM and they have an SSD which has less capacity and half the speed so make of that what you will
So $858 including a $400 GPU. So where does that leave your argument that even without a GPU the PC would have cost more than double (i.e. over $800) the price of the PS5?
You cannot buy those parts today and send them back in time, so you would have obviously need to have bought it back in the day. Even the SSD would have probably been like 200-250 dollar, no? Not to mention any 8GB GPU will run most high end PS5 games like ass if you were to use the same textures.
that's what I'm observing too. That being said, @arandomguy has a point in that current generations would like to have a more streamlined experience on PC, and that's MS responsibility.
I'd never use a phone for work, nor a tablet, but nowadays a Windows desktop computers can be improved in many ways to completely separate productivity from gaming. Sometimes I have the feeling that PCs are underused because of Windows, which takes resources for productivity tasks that you might never use.
In addition, when I am playing alone I don't mind tinkering with some capricious games, but when my family or a friend comes over, Windows quirks can get in the way, at least for them.
I mean Steam Big picture mode and the xbox app are really good experiences on a large tv. I use them daily. Windows keeps itself updated asking to be rebooted every once in awhile and sometimes nvidia says there is a new driver
Re-read my post. I included modern equivalents of the parts you would have needed in 2020 to match the PS5 to simulate 2020 prices.
Double the RAM
More than double the SSD capacity
A much faster CPU
So no need to "send parts back in time". In fact the link you kindly provided already demonstrates that the system minus GPU is no-where near $800+ dollars like you originally claimed.
And I'm not sure why you mention 8GB GPU's above, your earlier comment was quite clear that you were excluding the cost of the GPU in your "more than double the cost" claim.
But on the subject of those, yes there are a small handful of games where you will need to drop texture settings by a notch or two to stay within VRAM limits at PS5 matched settings, but there are also orders of magnitude more games where you wouldn't have to do that, and whether you have to or not, there are several 8GB GPU's which will still offer on balance a much better experience overall than the PS5 would. I.e. higher graphical (including ray tracing) settings outside of textures, higher frame rates, superior image quality.
I said that in 2020 if you built a PC that would match the PS5 in 2020 when it was released, it would have easily cost double the amount, even if you were to leave the GPU.
Your mental gymnastics are really only proving my point.
The GPU, if that had been included in 2020 would have very likely be a 8GB model, especially having to stay with the budget of triple the PS5 cost.
That would mean you would have spend triple the amount of a PS5, to end up with needing to turn down the textures compared to PS5 versions of games.
Either you buy a 2020 PC, or for the same amount, or you:
Buy a PS5 at launch, in 2024 buy a PS5 pro at launch, and in 2026/2027 you buy a PS6 at launch
Your 2020 PC would be running games at steamdeck-equivalent settings compared to PS6. And it would have cost more than 3 generations of playstation, were you to sell one for at least 250 dollar when you upgrade to the next one.
You need to present your price list as others have done. AFAICS the only really expensive aspect would have been the SSD, but we also know a PC doesn't need that fast an SSD. Heck, neither does PS5 at this point.
What mental gymnastics? You made a claim that a PS5 equivalent PC minus a GPU in 2020 would have cost over $800 (double the price of a PS5) and I have demonstrated that it likely wouldn't cost anywhere near that using equivalent modern components. You have further backed up that argument with your own 2020 link that shows the same.
Perhaps. Your options in 2020 would have been (using MSRP that you could have got if you moved quickly soon after launch):
3060 12GB - $329
3060Ti 8GB - $399
3070 8GB - $499
3080 10GB - $699
Any of these options would have given you a broadly equivalent or better experience to the PS5 on balance to varying degrees. Two of them would require compromises in texture settings in a very small handful of games but offer significant improvements in other areas like RT and image quality in the 3060Ti's case, and the same plus general raster settings and frame rate in the 3070's case.
Adding the cost of any of these GPU's onto the base cost of lets say $600 for arguments sake for the base PC would give you a total cost of between $929 - $1300. So yes, at the high end you are looking at slightly over triple the cost of a PS5 digital edition, but for a massively improved experience without texture compromises, where-as at the bottom end you are looking at a little over double the price of a PS5 digital for a broadly equivalent experience on balance - without texture compromises. My personal choice with a budget focus would have been the 3060Ti for a total cost of $999 which is again comfortably under triple the cost of a PS5 digital edition and would offer a universally better experience in 99% of games while offering a better experience in everything but texture settings in the remaining 1%.
Incorrect as detailed above.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that the hardware cost of consoles isn't cheaper than equivalent PC hardware at launch. It obviously is. I'm arguing against your unnecessary and incorrect exaggerations of the cost difference. If you want to make a point, make it based on the actual facts, not exaggerations for dramatic impact, because then you leave yourself open to challenge.
On your point above, if you bought the base PC in 2020 then in 2024 you would only require a GPU upgrade to match the Pro. So the total cost difference is coming down. i.e. lets say you bought the 3060Ti back in 2020, so you've enjoyed a generally better experience to the PS5 since it launched for a total cost of around $1000 - around 2.5x the cost of a PS5. You then purchase lets say a 5060Ti for $500 (the MSRP of a 4060Ti 16GB) for a likely equivalent or better experience to the PS5 Pro. You've now spent a total of $1500 on the PC and a total of $950 on the consoles using your optimistically low $550 for the PS5 Pro. So the total cost difference has gone down from 2.5x to 1.72x.
Yes a larger upgrade would be required to then bring that PC up to the spec of a PS6 - but you still wouldn't need to replace everything, and so the total costs difference at the start of the new generation will be less than the 2.5x we started with in 2020. And then the PS6 Pro refresh (if there is one) would further bring that cost difference down again.
The point here being that the total cost of ownership of a self upgraded PC over time trends towards the cost of buying new console hardware with each new console launch.
As noted above, no it would not. You would have spent $1000 using the 3060Ti example above which is only 2.5x the cost of a PS5 digital. You would have then spent a running total of $1500 to upgrade that to a 5060Ti when the Pro launched for a total of 1.72x. When the PS6 subsequently launches for lets say $550, you would by that point have spent $1500 on console hardware vs $1500 on PC hardware which for the prior 8 years offered a better or at least comparable experience on the PC on balance.
If you then spend lets say another $900 on that PC to bring it up to PS6 level, you will have spent a total of $2400 on PC hardware vs $1500 on console hardware which is only 1.6x the overall hardware cost to have a consistently comparable or better experience across 2 console generations. And that cost difference will come down again when the 6 Pro launches.
You open a whole new front on this debate if you want to factor in non hardware purchase costs. Do you really want to go there? e.g. older PC components can be sold on as well. PC games are generally cheaper, there is no charge for online on PC. Arguably you require a PC (even if that's a laptop) regardless of whether it's used for gaming so for some people that could also be factored in.
And a single PC has the library access of PC, Xbox, Mobile, and PS titles. The cost savings are significant especially if you are intending to purchase multiple consoles. And there are no online sub services to pay for.
The only thing with Better price performance value is GeForce Now. It is my next. I’m done buying hardware. I need power on the road. Give me an iPad or a laptop, a controller and insert required 4090 DLSS game here.
I can run the service for several years before it even catches the cost of a console, Nearly 8 years of service before catching a 4090. and during that time the expectation is that GeForce now gets better anyway. IMO: We are at the precipice of the nearing the end of console hardware for cheap gaming. The new generation does not play on TVs.
All I need is fast wifi or a good cellular plan which will continue to improve each year.
The only thing with Better price performance value is GeForce Now. It is my next. I’m done buying hardware. I need power on the road. Give me an iPad or a laptop, a controller and insert required 4090 DLSS game here.
I can run the service for several years before it even catches the cost of a console, Nearly 8 years of service before catching a 4090. and during that time the expectation is that GeForce now gets better anyway. IMO: We are at the precipice of the nearing the end of console hardware for cheap gaming. The new generation does not play on TVs.
All I need is fast wifi or a good cellular plan which will continue to improve each year.
Last edited:
Helping a fellow sim racer build a new PC. All in with all the PC components: cpu, gpu, ram, mobo, case, psu and aio.
That’s a 7800x3d and 4070 Super system. Without looking for deals across the shops, just from one place it comes out to 1,450gbp including 20% VAT/sales tax.
Thats a setup that will be miles ahead of any console and will last him years. In 3yrs time, he can sell the 4070 Super and grab a 6070 Super, he gets a major jump and the cpu is powerful enough to not be a bottleneck.
All the while, in purely a gaming context, he’s always going to be gaming at a very high fidelity, get games cheaper within the PC eShops and has a clear upgrade path that will carry it through to 2029 comfortably.
At an average of 10 games a year purchased on the PC, he will save 150gbp just on that alone…..
That’s a 7800x3d and 4070 Super system. Without looking for deals across the shops, just from one place it comes out to 1,450gbp including 20% VAT/sales tax.
Thats a setup that will be miles ahead of any console and will last him years. In 3yrs time, he can sell the 4070 Super and grab a 6070 Super, he gets a major jump and the cpu is powerful enough to not be a bottleneck.
All the while, in purely a gaming context, he’s always going to be gaming at a very high fidelity, get games cheaper within the PC eShops and has a clear upgrade path that will carry it through to 2029 comfortably.
At an average of 10 games a year purchased on the PC, he will save 150gbp just on that alone…..
Last edited:
