Cost of building a gaming PC *spawn

PS5 doesn't run this game at 30 fps. The video isn't showing up.


Both. Your 670 was the same price as an entire PS4. A couple years in and it was already struggling just to match a PS4. You then spent another ~$400 on a 1070. You are now at double the investment on GPUs alone not even factoring in any other upgrades you required. Console games have sales just like PC games too. Those same questionably legit key sites that sell PC games also sell console games. Console subscriptions also have sales. You can also sell and trade in/buy used console games which isnt even an option on PC. I don't agree the pricing situation will be resolved. Prices are trending upwards, not downwards for new GPUs. Your specific need for a PC is legitimate but that's a different argument.
Sorry its not easy finding a youtuber who is using DF's settings

This is what DF says the ps5 is using
1668049061250.png

You can see in their video that a ryzen 5 3600 + 2060 super will run max settings at 53fps but with thier optimized at 76fps

and here

You can see the 360 getting 57fps with their optimised settings at 1440p with no dlss


and here
 
Sorry its not easy finding a youtuber who is using DF's settings

This is what DF says the ps5 is using
View attachment 7495

You can see in their video that a ryzen 5 3600 + 2060 super will run max settings at 53fps but with thier optimized at 76fps

and here

You can see the 360 getting 57fps with their optimised settings at 1440p with no dlss


and here
Neither of those videos show any data on a 3050. They show a 3060 can give a comparable experience to a PS5 when RT is used, which no one disagrees with. PS5 is typically around 45-50 fps at native 4k RT mode in Spiderman with VRR if I'm remembering correctly.

4K-RT-p.webp


I believe that is lower settings than PS5 in fidelity VRR mode but not positive.
 
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Neither of those videos show any data on a 3050. They show a 3060 can give a comparable experience to a PS5 when RT is used, which no one disagrees with. PS5 is typically around 45-50 fps at native 4k RT mode in Spiderman with VRR if I'm remembering correctly.



I believe that is lower settings than PS5 in fidelity VRR mode but not positive.
Not sure why you aren't viewing the 3050 video I posted. DF doesn't use a 3050 only a 3060. I am also not sure why you are posting 4k benchmarks when DF says the ps5 is rendering at 1440p dynamic res down to 1080p with upscaling to hit 4k.

The 3050 will do 1080p very high settings with RT very high and gets even better performance with very high / high rt . You can further get better performance by tailoring the settings to what digital foundry says is the ps5 settings


This digital foundry review talks about Performance RT and that it tops out at 1440p but goes down to 1080p in the worse situations.


Also if you want you can get a 6650 apparently for $280 https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-gv-r665xteagle-8gd/p/N82E16814932521?Item=N82E16814932521

which is cheaper than the 3050 by $30 and even cheaper than the 6600xt by $10

So prices continue to go down

With the chart I posted before at 1440p with High quality and High ray tracing you get 45/54 (low/average) which is higher than the 3050 which gets 33/39. On your chart the 4k High quality/ high ray tracing you get 23/29 vs 20/23 of the 3050.

Here its running at 1080p with ray tracing seemily getting an average between 60-70fps

I seriously think you guys are over estimating these consoles (both the xbox and ps5) and under estimating graphics cards in these price ranges. not only that but with the new 40 series and new 70 series from nvidia/amd once the mid and low end cards start to hit the cost to performance ratio will only grow in favor of the pc


I don't own these cards. I have a 3080 so its hard to find a 100% like for like. But I think I can rest my case that the 3050 is able to give a similar experience to.

Who knows when we see the G series 7x00 series ryzen from AMD we might actually get pretty close to the series s. Figure the 6800u had 12 RDNA 2 cu's at 2.2ghz we could see the 7000 desktop chips having 20ish which would be similar to the series s 20 cus at 1.6ghz. The only issue would really be ram speed at that point.
 
All the videos you are posting show performance dramatically worse than PS5. PS5 runs 70-100 fps in VRR performance mode 1440p-1080p. The videos you are posting are either 1080p or 720p DLSS to 1080p and still not close to a smooth 60. And btw, DLSS looks pretty awful at 1080p. The reason I posted a 4k graph is because resolution is locked so performance can be more accurately compared. For sure though a 6650xt is a far better GPU than an RTX 3050 and would generally give you a comparable experience to a PS5. A 3050 though absolutely does not.
 
I seriously think you guys are over estimating these consoles (both the xbox and ps5) and under estimating graphics cards in these price ranges. not only that but with the new 40 series and new 70 series from nvidia/amd once the mid and low end cards start to hit the cost to performance ratio will only grow in favor of the pc
I dont think the arguments here were ever in support that the XBOX and PS5 are undeniably and indefinitely the top performers. Everybody knows technology improves in performance and cost and at some point they will be outdated.
But there is something I really dislike in the PC space is how manipulative companies can be with the pricing and what they decide to put in the market.
Especially with Intel and NVIDIA overpricing their products and removing products that would have been produced cheaper with higher performance, so they can sell their newer lines expensively. Since they established themselves stronger in the market compared to their competitors and thus have better support, they do this without worrying much that their premium prices will much affect their total sales and profitability. They control pricing, availability and software support.
AMD is trying to hold in the market with better prices (performance to cost), but the price bracket (ceiling and floor) is defined by what their competitors have.

So I am pretty sure there is room to get cheaper and more performance as we speak but it is not happening to the extend it should because of the strong oligopoly and foothold these companies have with the software companies that support their feature sets. For example when I bought my 1080ti (which btw was taken out of the market once RTX hit the market but performs better than most of the RTX cards out there if we take RT out of the picture), I got it because the Titan cost more than double at the time for no good reason, and NVIDIA was the safest solution for my work because 3D software are designed to support and work better with NVIDIA cards.

XBOX and Playstation may probably be allowing AMD to use economies of scope and scale to reduce costs further for their products btw.

At this point I feel that NVIDIA is overcharging but their feature sets are better supported and AMD's solutions may be cheaper but come at the cost of being less taken advantage by software to their full capabilities.
 
Your 670 was the same price as an entire PS4.

I'm not sure why you're cherry picking one individual purchase when my argument was clearly about the long term cost of ownership. I bought that 670 over 18 months before the PS4 launched and it absolutely slaughtered the PS3 in that period.

A couple years in and it was already struggling just to match a PS4.

No, that's completely false. the 670 easily exceeded the PS4's performance in the vast majority of games for a good 4-5 years after it's launch. It was only really once Pascal had become well established and both devs and Nvidia stopped properly supporting the architecture that is started to fall behind in a handful of games. And yes, I'm aware of the few games that are particularly poorly suited to its architecture like Doom Eternal where it falls well below its performance potential. They are not the norm.

You then spent another ~$400 on a 1070.

That was 4 years later, not 2. And it had nothing whatsoever with keeping up with the PS4 because at that point there was not one single game that I came across, where I couldn't comfortably exceed its performance. The reason I bought the 1070 was primarily because my 670 started having power issues and would randomly shut down the system. That, and the 1070 was a monster which provided a near generational performance leap. If I were only concerned with keeping ahead of console performance at that point at the cheapest possible cost I'd have got a 1060. Or even an older/cheaper GTX 970.

You are now at double the investment on GPUs alone not even factoring in any other upgrades you required.

Again, you're cherry picking a time period that suits your argument rather than looking across the long term which is what my original argument was.

Since the start of the millennium 22 years ago, PS2 to PS5 will have cost around $1700 in console costs. I think it's reasonable to add another $300 on top of that in additional peripherals & accessories to give $2000 in hardware costs.

My PC purchases over that time would have been very roughly $2800 on GPU's and £1500 on CPU/mem/Mobo upgrades. Let's say another $1200 over that period on supporting bits for a total cost of $5500.

So yes, on hardware alone we're looking at a fairly big gap.

But this is across 22 years. Spend an average of $50 per year over the last 9 years on online subscription fees and that's an additional $450 on the console side bringing it up to about $2450.

The average selling price of new games absolutely was and always has been higher on consoles than PC so with an average saving of $5 (you know I'm low balling that, especially in the early years) say over 10 games per year - over 22 years, that's another $1100 bringing the console total to $3450.

I'm pretty sure you couldn't have spent the last 22 years without any form of PC but let's say you really cheaped out and purchased just 2 el-cheapo units to get you by at $400 each. You are now up to $4250, just $1250 less that the PC outlay - over 22 years. $900 / 22 = $57 per year. So just as I said, very comparable over the long term and I've been ahead of console performance over that period for the vast majority of those 22 years. Granted I'm behind right now so for purity of comparison we should probably include the cost of a new GPU on there bringing the PC cost up to $6k or the average yearly difference up to about $80 in the consoles favour. But again, at that point I'll be well ahead of console performance for likely another 4 years or more.

Console games have sales just like PC games too. Those same questionably legit key sites that sell PC games also sell console games.

Yes, but they are generally more expensive on console regardless.

Console subscriptions also have sales. You can also sell and trade in/buy used console games which isnt even an option on PC.

And PC's literally have free game giveaways constantly. Half my current games library is free games. I do accept the point on second hand games though if that's something you're happy doing.

I don't agree the pricing situation will be resolved. Prices are trending upwards, not downwards for new GPUs.

I was talking about my personal situation of being behind console performance (a position I'm not at all used to). It'll be resolved as soon as the mid-range parts launch next year, even if at that point I go Ampere because they're too expensive. In any case, $500 now will put me ahead of PS5 performance. Although I'm willing to wait another few months and spend a couple hundred more for console demolishing performance. Afterall, I should be able to enjoy it for a good 3-4 years at least.

Your specific need for a PC is legitimate but that's a different argument.

Exactly, that's just my personal situation. One where I was less concerned about value vs console and more with the best performance at a reasonable cost. That just happens to have put me within $100 per year of console cost over the last 22 years but on the flip side has almost always resulted in comfortably, or massively more performance over that period.

Had I been more specific in targeting only console level performance or slightly better, I may have even come in cheaper over the long term.
 
I'm not sure why you're cherry picking one individual purchase when my argument was clearly about the long term cost of ownership. I bought that 670 over 18 months before the PS4 launched and it absolutely slaughtered the PS3 in that period.



No, that's completely false. the 670 easily exceeded the PS4's performance in the vast majority of games for a good 4-5 years after it's launch. It was only really once Pascal had become well established and both devs and Nvidia stopped properly supporting the architecture that is started to fall behind in a handful of games. And yes, I'm aware of the few games that are particularly poorly suited to its architecture like Doom Eternal where it falls well below its performance potential. They are not the norm.



That was 4 years later, not 2. And it had nothing whatsoever with keeping up with the PS4 because at that point there was not one single game that I came across, where I couldn't comfortably exceed its performance. The reason I bought the 1070 was primarily because my 670 started having power issues and would randomly shut down the system. That, and the 1070 was a monster which provided a near generational performance leap. If I were only concerned with keeping ahead of console performance at that point at the cheapest possible cost I'd have got a 1060. Or even an older/cheaper GTX 970.



Again, you're cherry picking a time period that suits your argument rather than looking across the long term which is what my original argument was.

Since the start of the millennium 22 years ago, PS2 to PS5 will have cost around $1700 in console costs. I think it's reasonable to add another $300 on top of that in additional peripherals & accessories to give $2000 in hardware costs.

My PC purchases over that time would have been very roughly $2800 on GPU's and £1500 on CPU/mem/Mobo upgrades. Let's say another $1200 over that period on supporting bits for a total cost of $5500.

So yes, on hardware alone we're looking at a fairly big gap.

But this is across 22 years. Spend an average of $50 per year over the last 9 years on online subscription fees and that's an additional $450 on the console side bringing it up to about $2450.

The average selling price of new games absolutely was and always has been higher on consoles than PC so with an average saving of $5 (you know I'm low balling that, especially in the early years) say over 10 games per year - over 22 years, that's another $1100 bringing the console total to $3450.

I'm pretty sure you couldn't have spent the last 22 years without any form of PC but let's say you really cheaped out and purchased just 2 el-cheapo units to get you by at $400 each. You are now up to $4250, just $1250 less that the PC outlay - over 22 years. $900 / 22 = $57 per year. So just as I said, very comparable over the long term and I've been ahead of console performance over that period for the vast majority of those 22 years. Granted I'm behind right now so for purity of comparison we should probably include the cost of a new GPU on there bringing the PC cost up to $6k or the average yearly difference up to about $80 in the consoles favour. But again, at that point I'll be well ahead of console performance for likely another 4 years or more.



Yes, but they are generally more expensive on console regardless.



And PC's literally have free game giveaways constantly. Half my current games library is free games. I do accept the point on second hand games though if that's something you're happy doing.



I was talking about my personal situation of being behind console performance (a position I'm not at all used to). It'll be resolved as soon as the mid-range parts launch next year, even if at that point I go Ampere because they're too expensive. In any case, $500 now will put me ahead of PS5 performance. Although I'm willing to wait another few months and spend a couple hundred more for console demolishing performance. Afterall, I should be able to enjoy it for a good 3-4 years at least.



Exactly, that's just my personal situation. One where I was less concerned about value vs console and more with the best performance at a reasonable cost. That just happens to have put me within $100 per year of console cost over the last 22 years but on the flip side has almost always resulted in comfortably, or massively more performance over that period.

Had I been more specific in targeting only console level performance or slightly better, I may have even come in cheaper over the long term.

Kepler GPUs started to falter not long after Maxwell arrived(remember the hoopla around witcher3?) By the time Pascal hit it was already quite terrible. I wasn't cherry picking I was just using the PS4 generation as a starting point As it coincided the closest with your GPU purchases.

I don't agree that console games typically cost more than PC games. You get free games with that PS subscription as well and I think being able to sell/trade in/buy used saves you more money than whatever options you have on PC other than bootlegging of course. Don't forget you can also borrow your friend's games and play for free.

I don't think it's fair to include 2 cheap PCs purchased either. Maybe in the UK it's different but in America tons of people don't and haven't ever had a PC. Most commonly they have a work issued laptop.

I wasn't aware you were referring to your own specific scenario, I thought we were debating general use for the masses. WRT your situation though, I would say you would require a CPU upgrade as well to stay ahead of console performance the way performances are trending with new SW.
 
All the videos you are posting show performance dramatically worse than PS5. PS5 runs 70-100 fps in VRR performance mode 1440p-1080p. The videos you are posting are either 1080p or 720p DLSS to 1080p and still not close to a smooth 60. And btw, DLSS looks pretty awful at 1080p. The reason I posted a 4k graph is because resolution is locked so performance can be more accurately compared. For sure though a 6650xt is a far better GPU than an RTX 3050 and would generally give you a comparable experience to a PS5. A 3050 though absolutely does not.

Well that is impressive for the radeon 6650xt to be using DLSS.

More impressive for the benchmarks I posted of the 3050 @ 1440p no DLSS to be using DLSS

one more time for prosperity
1668088762457.png


So no DLSS @ 1440p High Quality / Ray tracing high you get 33/39 for the 3050 and 46/54 for the 6650xt. These benchmarks have no dynamic resolution while the ps5 uses dynamic resolution. Further more as seen by this chart
1668088911987.png

Outside of texture quality the High settings in the benchmarks I provided would be equal too or higher than the ps5 in performance mode. I am sure if you adjust things like hair quality down to medium like Performance RT and crowd density to lower than medium and depth of field to lower than high you will get better performance on the pc cards.

Further more these are older benchmarks and I am sure the newest patch from october will provide even better performance. I believe they added support for DLSS 3 so we will have to see if there were any dlss improvements for older cards thrown in there.

Like I said , I think you under estimate what these cards can actually do.

This thread will be fun to update during the holiday. I wonder how powerful and how cheap i can build a pc with the video card sales there will be.
 
Kepler GPUs started to falter not long after Maxwell arrived (remember the hoopla around witcher3?)

What about the Witcher 3? Even though Kepler wasn't performing up to expectations compared to other architectures by then the 670 was just fine compared to the PS4. Your argument was that it was "struggling just to match the PS4" and yet it was just fine in that comparison (760 being the closest match here but mine was an OC model closer to 680 level performance):

1080_Medium-p.webp


By the time Pascal hit it was already quite terrible.

Again, I had one and compared with what you could get from a PS4 it was completely fine. Sure it may have been struggling against the bigger GCN PC GPU's that it traditionally would have gone toe to toe with by that point, but compared to the mid-range GCN based PS4 it has no issues at all. In any case this is not relevant to the original argument. The 670 was significantly better than the PS4 at launch and for a good while after. Even if by the time I got that Pascal, it was only matching it in some of the newest titles, how does that change the equation in any way? I still had better performance than the PS4 over the vast majority of the PS4's life.

II don't agree that console games typically cost more than PC games. You get free games with that PS subscription as well

A PS subscription isn't free. Free game giveaways on PC are actually free. And if you buy the games you actually want, when they launch, which you generally can't do with a subscription, then yes, they have always been cheaper at retail on PC (not counting second hand there which I've already accepted above).

and I think being able to sell/trade in/buy used saves you more money than whatever options you have on PC other than bootlegging of course. Don't forget you can also borrow your friend's games and play for free.

Just as you can borrow a friends Steam login and play for free.

I don't think it's fair to include 2 cheap PCs purchased either. Maybe in the UK it's different but in America tons of people don't and haven't ever had a PC. Most commonly they have a work issued laptop.

I'd say it's pretty ridiculous to suggest that one wouldn't have had any need for some form of personally owned computer over the last 22 years but even if you do take that position, the equation barely moves. You are now looking at about $77 per year difference up to now or $100 per year once I get a new GPU (although that will last until the PS6 arrives and thus the average will drop back down again until that point).

And all the while you've apparently been struggling along on whatever laptop you might have been lucky enough to get from work while the PC owner has been rocking a high end desktop PC for the last quarter century. Hardly a comparable scenario!

And note I didn't include the PS4 Pro in the console costs above, which the 1070 was/is still ahead of. + $400 to the console total for that too.

I would say you would require a CPU upgrade as well to stay ahead of console performance the way performances are trending with new SW.

I really don't see why. The 3700x is plenty more capable than the PS5 CPU. There has been a grand total of maybe 1 game to date (Spiderman) where it might be a tiny bit slower than the PS5, primarily due to a lack of GPU decompression on the PC - which launched earlier this week.

This changes the overall equation in no way. With a new GPU in the 4060 / 7600 range early next year I will be comfortably outperforming the PS5 in the majority of games for the rest of this generation, 3700x or not.

To bottom line this, even if you just take the hardware costs alone at $6000 on PC (including a new GPU next year) and $2400 on console (Including the PS4 Pro) then the difference over the PS2-PS5 lifespan (roughly 25 years) still only comes in at around $144 per year. I'd say that's pretty comparable and that's without me actually targeting console level performance at the cheapest possible cost. For that $144 per year I've had a faster or much faster system for about 90% of it and also a kick ass desktop home computer vs no personally owned PC at all for the hypothetical console user.

I'd say in anyone's book that's a pretty reasonable value proposition vs the console option.
 
@pjbliverpool don't forget also that you can upgrade the 3700 at some point. The 5800x3d (think thats the name) is already down to $330 and the 5700 is down to $180 on sales. So if the cpu starts to become an issue you can also drop in a replacement. I am sure in another year or two you'd be able to grab a 5700 used for $100 or less and maybe $200 or less for the 5800x3d.

Intel isn't as good with this in regards to their sockets. But on my same motherboard I went from a 1700x to a 3700 and I will likely grab a 5800x3d when they drop to sub $300

edit - wanted to add in here too that you could also increase the ram you have too and of course you can add multiple ssd's to your system if you wanted too. PC's are great because they evolve in terms of hardware vs a console.
 
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Both. Your 670 was the same price as an entire PS4. A couple years in and it was already struggling just to match a PS4. You then spent another ~$400 on a 1070. You are now at double the investment on GPUs alone not even factoring in any other upgrades you required. Console games have sales just like PC games too. Those same questionably legit key sites that sell PC games also sell console games. Console subscriptions also have sales. You can also sell and trade in/buy used console games which isnt even an option on PC. I don't agree the pricing situation will be resolved. Prices are trending upwards, not downwards for new GPUs. Your specific need for a PC is legitimate but that's a different argument.

The 670 was on kepler. Still it wasnt really struggling to keep up with the PS4, rather outmatching it most of the time. HD7870 is a better comparison though. Also, consoles have increased in price absurdly, over 700usd for a plain console, 100usd for a controller, 650 for psvr, 20usd higher priced games and increased prices for the services along with it. All the while with GPU's you can actually go as low as a 6600XT/3060 and still be outperforming the PS5.

At this point I feel that NVIDIA is overcharging but their feature sets are better supported and AMD's solutions may be cheaper but come at the cost of being less taken advantage by software to their full capabilities.

AMD gpus are actually lacking in the hardware department, its not just due to 'support'. Theres AMD supported titles too....

I bought that 670 over 18 months before the PS4 launched and it absolutely slaughtered the PS3 in that period.

I still have a 670/i7 920 combo retro system (2008 cpu, early 2012 mid range gpu), its more capable than the base PS4. All the while Kepler architecture wasnt anything to go by. 7950/7970 was actually the 670's direct competitor. Launched early 2012 aswell. Slaughters the PS4 in everything you can imagine. Closer to the Pro than the base PS4 actually.
 
I HATE whoever made this bar chart. Compare the Radeon HD 7850 results to the GTX 760 results. The minimum bar (31 vs 41) is barely any different despite a 10 FPS difference. The 760's minimum bar should be almost 30% longer. And the max FPS bar, 12 FPS difference but it looks so much longer than the minimum difference. Maybe it's an optical illusion as I haven't measured it, but it looks wrong I tell you.
 
Nice deal, in EU its much more for thar.
the deal was the $260 ram for free and then there was $50 off if you buy certain motherboards with a cpu. Was going to do a 5800x3d but they are $330 and I'd still be using my original board from the x1700. So now I'm all up to date
 
Those are really big numbers! These used to be the pricing of the professional tier GPUs.


Inflation man! As an oldy it's been instructing seeing the cost of a decent GPU skyrocket in nominal terms. When I was younger "mid range" GPU, like Ge 4200 IIRC, was maybe, $100-$200. Now it's arguably, well you could could argue but $600-$800 is "mid range" probably. Maybe more.

The other interesting thing is watching the sizes of the flagship cards grow massively. They used to literally look like puny, sparse sound cards, compared to todays monoliths.

I dont blame Nvidia one bit.

It's sort of equivalent to how $99 used to be the much talked about "mass market" "sweet spot" for consoles. Then it became 199. Now they are $500 and cant stay on shelves.

Um...$600?! I'd like to see that parts list. $1k is a stretch considering a 3060ti is ~$450, which is about the minimum for 'faster' than PS5/SX (RX6800 at $500 would stomp them though), but probably doable in that range, especially if you stick to a previous-gen CPU and DDR4. I have no idea how you would swing $600 though.

Current gen consoles are still fantastic value. Even with GPU prices plummeting. I cant remember a time when consoles maintained such price/performance value vs PC so long into the gen. A SSD, 8 core 16 thread Ryzen CPU (my websurfing PC I write this on is still only 6 cores 12 threads Ryzen 2600X for example, and I certainly feel no need to upgrade soon), Blu Ray disc, 16GB RAM and 12 TF GPU, plus high quality controller is just hard to beat for $500.

If you need a 6700XT to roughly equate the GPU in Series X/PS5, a quick check now shows their lowest price on a couple models at $370 at newegg (other models more). JUST for the equivalent GPU, nothing else.
 
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Current gen consoles are still fantastic value. Even with GPU prices plummeting. I cant remember a time when consoles maintained such price/performance value vs PC so long into the gen. A SSD, 8 core 16 thread Ryzen CPU (my websurfing PC I write this on is still only 6 cores 12 threads Ryzen 2600X for example, and I certainly feel no need to upgrade soon), Blu Ray disc, 16GB RAM and 12 TF GPU, plus high quality controller is just hard to beat for $500.

If you need a 6700XT to roughly equate the GPU in Series X/PS5, a quick check now shows their lowest price on a couple models at $370 at newegg (other models more). JUST for the equivalent GPU, nothing else.

That consoles value is fantastic has alot to do with them being essentially 2019 mid-range machines in pc terms for the most. 10TF RDNA2 gpu which is ballpark 3060/6600XT, low clocked zen2 3700x, 16gb total ram and a small SSD. Value all of a sudden is much better, but also then your on low to mid range hardware from the 2020 era.
 
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