It's been 2 or 3 years since I last upgraded my PC. What I have I bought on budget and it has given me amazing bang for my buck. I'm still able to play new games at high/medium settings at my monitors' native resolution (1680x1050) and maintain 60fps most of the time. In the past it'd be about now that I'd be looking at upgrading my rig. However, with the advent of the expected next gen Xbox/PS consoles coming late next year, it seems like a bad time to upgrade a PC.

I will be buying the next Xbox day one. No question about that. I'm expecting it to be at least on par (power wise) with any PC I might upgrade to today on my budget. So it seems sensible to hold off with the PC upgrade. Maybe I'll wait until 2014/2015 and see if PC hardware has leap-frogged the next gen consoles by then.

I do my console gaming on the same screen as my PC, so maybe I will at least replace that with a proper 1080p LED ready for that next gen Xbox. The only trouble with doing that is the higher resolution will put more strain on my current PC graphics card, so I'll probably end up with lower frame rates.

Is anyone in the same position and coming to similar conclusions?

Yeah I would hold off a bit on an upgrade. The processor market in particular hasn't moved forward that much in that amount of time really especially when playing at that resolution. I'd wait till you feel that the games you are playing give you a "need" to upgrade. That's also what pushes forward the graphics card manufacturers as they make them more efficient for the new technologies ie tessellation or physics.

Graphics isn't the be all and end all of gaming of course but to me it does make a difference. When I look at the console version of games compared to their PC versions at the moment, the console versions feel pretty much unplayable to me.

It's gotten to the point where if there is a console exclusive that I want, Halo 4 is a good example, I'm just not going to buy it at all because I know it's going to look and feel so much below what I'm currently used to on PC.

I guess what I'm saying is that as soon as the next gen comes out (and some games worth playing are out) I will switch from being a PC gamer to a console gamer. Much like I did when the Xbox 360 originally came out. So I'm not going to upgrade my PC again until that market has moved on beyond whatever the next gen consoles are.

I don't feel bad about the $800~ upgrade that I did last month. Then again, I'm not planning on ever buying any consoles again so I don't have to worry about also spending gaming money elsewhere.

I wouldn't expect the next generation console to do nothing else but match your current specs.

I would also hold off on buying one until their is something in the market that would demand more then current generation games.

I doubt we are gonna get anything with 6 cores/12 threads and 4gb of video memory, I am banking on a dual core and 1 gb of memory in the next set of consoles.

The specs of the new consoles in my opinion aren't that important. What is important is whether the graphics of the new consoles have the 'wow' factor; do they look like a step beyond what is currently available on PC? Microsoft/Sony need this to be the case, else what will be the incentive for (PC users at least) to buy the new console hardware?

The new consoles won't even come close to PC for at least a few years. It takes time for developers to figure out the new platforms and PC will always look that much better anyway. From the sounds of things your PC is far from your main gaming platform so I don't see the point in getting one if I was you. Myself, I'm PC first always. So the PC I just bought a few weeks back was well worth the money as it will last me years.

@cannonballBAM said:

I wouldn't expect the next generation console to do nothing else but match your current specs.

I would also hold off on buying one until their is something in the market that would demand more then current generation games.

I doubt we are gonna get anything with 6 cores/12 threads and 4gb of video memory, I am banking on a dual core and 1 gb of memory in the next set of consoles.

I think the Xbox's processor has three cores already, but it seems like the number of cores doesn't matter as much as their efficiency these days. Intel's quad core efforts still outperform their 8-core AMD counterparts.

EDIT: Also, I don't think the next generation of consoles are going to be much better than a PC on the high end of mid range these days. If the beginning of last generation is anything to go by, FEAR runs like crap on the 360 but it came out a good bit before the 360 did. Just a guess but if you upgrade to something like a GTX 670 now, I doubt you'll have anything to worry about when the next generation of consoles pops up unless your processor is a bottleneck.

Well if you are going to buy the new xbox when it comes out, I see no point in upgrading the PC unless you need it for something else too.

I think you should wait for now, if your PC runs quite fine new videogames just keep on using it. Keep an eye also for the next generation consoles in the meantime. Then decide. :)

I5 2500k and GTX 670 or better = Set for a great deal of the next generation.

No need to wait. Next gen consoles will not have a GPU better than a GTX 560 or equivalent performance (if that). Think about it, consoles hardware configuration are designed 2-4 years before they actually come out in order to get the supply of said hardware. This hardware will not be the high end gpus as it's just not economical to have a $300+ gpu in a console.

@believer258 said:

@cannonballBAM said:

I wouldn't expect the next generation console to do nothing else but match your current specs.

I would also hold off on buying one until their is something in the market that would demand more then current generation games.

I doubt we are gonna get anything with 6 cores/12 threads and 4gb of video memory, I am banking on a dual core and 1 gb of memory in the next set of consoles.

I think the Xbox's processor has three cores already, but it seems like the number of cores doesn't matter as much as their efficiency these days. Intel's quad core efforts still outperform their 8-core AMD counterparts.

EDIT: Also, I don't think the next generation of consoles are going to be much better than a PC on the high end of mid range these days. If the beginning of last generation is anything to go by, FEAR runs like crap on the 360 but it came out a good bit before the 360 did. Just a guess but if you upgrade to something like a GTX 670 now, I doubt you'll have anything to worry about when the next generation of consoles pops up unless your processor is a bottleneck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor)

Yeah, it is 3 cores but I thought I read that it uses the extra core to upscale so that they could say all their games were 1080p.

I also think that this next generation is going to just catch up with the current PC generation. So we may end up getting better builds for PC that include utilization of direct x 11 but only time will tell.

Hold off on it. You'll still be able to play games for at least another year on your hardware and when next gen consoles come out the tech will start advancing faster to give better performance and visuals on pc. You would be wasting money to upgrade now because you will probably have to do it again within the next year and a half

Look at the unreal 4 demo video or the Samaritan video, those are done using todays technology (ie. GTX 680). Since the 680 is being used to by Epic to tout what is possible on next-gen (The Samaritan demo was a power play by Epic to convince Microsoft that it needs more horsepower in its next gen system) I am sure that is a best case scenario for console power. That leads me to believe that the next gen consoles are going to be powered by something like a 660ti.

If you are still getting med/high setting graphics in games, I don't see the need to upgrade. If I were you, I would consider upgrading my monitor thou. Get 1920x1080 resolution at the very least. You will probably have to move down to low/med graphics with the increase in resolution, but holding off until the new wave of GPU's shouldn't be too hard.

Put off till you have to. One thing I agree with, I cannot see consoles pulling the magic hat trick again like they did this gen. What a difference..I bought 2 of them! But now the field looks level, though PC advantage in a relative way. If games are running good, lets have fun seeing what next gen consoles will do, maybe I be wrong. That would be good for console gamers..nothing I'm weird about, master race or not. I haven't turned my consoles on lately....Resistance 3 is there though. Borderlands 2 on self built pc.

As for your monitor problem, I think the obvious solution is to buy it only when you get that Xbox. Sure, your PC gaming might get slightly worse frame-rate wise, but you'll have a shiny new console to-- wait for it...

CONSOLE YOU.

I've been gaming on a 1680x1050 monitor for like 4 years and I still don't see what all of the 1080p fuss is about. This monitor is plenty good enough, so why would I want a marginal resolution increase and lowered in-game settings?

I Prefer to buy a new PC than update the old one!

Unsatisfied with gaming performance? Upgrade.

Still doing okay? Then wait for next console gen. There will be a good jump both console and PC side. Right now 4GB VRAM cards are useless and generally overpriced, but they'll probably be needed for the next gen (but don't buy one now, the card's memory won't even be fast enough to utilize it, if upgrading now GTX 660TI is the sweet spot, 670 OCed will match a 680).