@ihmishylje said:

Yeah that PC is quite overpriced, I don't know how much it'd cost in your country but I bought a 6870 for $150 2 and a half years ago. You should be able to buy something like a R7 265 and it'll be a capable gaming machine, no need for anything expensive.

Watch_Dogs just runs like garbage, it's not the hardware. Those builds could run everything else significantly better than a console and perhaps Watch_Dogs too, I don't know about that.

Yeah, you should probably ask an internet forum next time you buy a gaming PC. Especially with prices. You don't need to spend $1000 to get a pretty good gaming PC - mine was $730 when I first built it, I later upgraded it to have a total of $900 in there. There is nothing that I can't run on high and it's 2 years old at this point. It might be a bit different in Europe, but I really doubt that you would need to spend $1500 on a gaming PC anywhere to get satisfactory results. However,

this sounds like you should probably go PS4. I can't think of any big, resource-intensive games that aren't coming to both at the moment. Pretty much anything that's PC exclusive should be OK on what you have already (indie games, smaller games, kickstarted games, that sort of thing). The 2013 version of Shadow Warrior is a pretty good PC exclusive that wouldn't run on what you have, but otherwise you won't be missing out on much that has been released recently or will be released in the foreseeable future.

So, go nuts on PS4 I guess. And maybe look back into PC gaming at the end of this generation. Just ask this time, even if you're confident ask about the build before buying it.

No matter how you spin it, consoles offer the best price-performance ratio. Show me a pc with comparable specs to the xbox 360/ps3 that would have lasted all of these years. It doesn't exist. You could go ahead and build a 600 dollar pc and get a decent experience now, but in a couple of years that thing won't be able to run shit and you'll have to upgrade it. If you're willing to pay that extra money for the best performance and best graphics then go with PC. If you just want a box that will play every major game for the next 6-8 years, regardless of how it will compare to pc, then get a console.

@rongalaxy:

Buy a $100 used PC and an 8800 GT for $30 off of Ebay. That's more powerful than last gen!

A budget PC doesn't degrade, it just won't be able to run games on High after a few years.

decided to buy a ps4 instead of upgrading computer, gtx 480 and my 2600k combo still handling games effectively, i find myself not worrying too much about eye candy nowadays so i tolerate lower than ultra settings. though i'll transition to the ps4 more in the future for games that aren't shooters.

The PC can also cater to more of life's interests, say if you suddenly find yourself getting into arts or music.

@believer258: @manlyburger: I have a distinct memory of asking around for a build on the internet (maybe even here?) but everything that was suggested, ended up being outside my price range. Again, I probably didn't make the best deal possible, but I don't really know how to remedy that.

If I build a PC, I'll pretty much have to pay someone to build it for me, which in itself will run me somehere between twenty and fifty euros. I haven't got the interest to get invested in the hardware side of things, and if I buy everything from one store (no matter how cheap) it's gonna be a little costlier than buying each individual component separately. I've got traumas from a decade back when I managed to literally burn (there was smoke and everything) a motherboard by installing additional RAM.

Honestly, a smooth 30fps and 60fps are nearly indistinguishable anyway. Killzone: Shadow Fall runs at a silky smooth 30fps, and I can't really tell the difference between it and a game running at 60 frames. And like I said, I have a PC that can easily run games at 60fps. Also, a lot of PS4 games run at 1080p anyway. (or at least they're supposed to) However, it's not like 720p is really that big a problem especially if it's upscaled well. Still, the games look great on the PS4, regardless.

That having been said, it definitely seems like a PS4 is the way to go. If anything, it lets you play games with very little hassle. I already have a couple games that turned into digital coasters, because they simply refuse to work properly with my rig no matter what I tried and how much I scoured the forums. I've never had this problem with any console I've ever owned.

Dude...really? I mean...I don't even know what to say.

Please spend two minutes checking this site out - http://30vs60.com/

And I mean really look. Read the instructions, cover up the 60fps video with your hand or something and watch the 30fps side for a couple of loops, then switch. Regardless of your platform of choice, I find it difficult to swallow that people can't visually distinguish between 30 & 60 frames per second.

@tyrrael: While I can definitely see the difference between 30/60, it isn't that big of a deal for me. Yes, 60fps feels more natural, but I don't know if that's always a good thing. Cut scenes almost never run in 60fps, so it feels weird. And I don't play competitive shit anyway. I'm so used to 30fps that 60 can feel a bit weird. I guess it's the same as those 48fps movies or whatever.

I already have a couple games that turned into digital coasters, because they simply refuse to work properly with my rig no matter what I tried and how much I scoured the forums. I've never had this problem with any console I've ever owned.

I hate this so god damn much.

@geirr: In my experience recording and mixing audio isn't that cpu intensive. I've got an ok external sound card for recording music.

First of all, I said "nearly" indistinguishable. Any of those clips that I saw are nearly identical. Yes, I can tell the difference; I never said I couldn't, but it's not such a huge difference that it in any way impedes the visual fidelity, functionality or my enjoyment of the game in any significant way, so long as the framerate is smooth and stable. On top of that, giving up the hassles that often come with PC gaming, especially for someone who isn't very computer savvy, is going to outweigh the minor, and I mean infinitesimal, inconvenience of running a game at 30fps. This was important to the person that started this thread, so I commented on it. Even one of my friends that plays 99% of his games on PC at 60fps asked if Killzone ran at 60fps while I was playing it, and he was surprised when I told him it was 30.

I was merely saying that going from 60fps to 30fps is not a big problem nor are you going to be missing anything that important so long as you are getting the games you want and are able to play them consistently, even if that means at 30fps. This is especially true, since the person who posted this thread said he was having problems with his PC anyway.

I know I'm going to regret this comment. I hate this 30 vs 60 frames bullshit, but the mere fact that you have to put these clips side by side, cover one and then immediately look at the other to see a difference, just shows that most people aren't going to notice a huge difference when playing nor is it going to significantly effect their enjoyment of the game. There is a difference, and the framerate has to be a rock solid 30fps, but the difference is still negligible in terms of actually having fun with the game, which is the most important thing.

@tyrrael: While I appreciate your point of view, I think saying "most people aren't going to notice a huge difference when playing" is a little presumptuous...especially in this community.

• I have owned/had access to personal computers since the 1990s.
• I will be buying my first PS4 in September of this year.
• Both.

Under the assumption that you already don't care about console exclusives enough to make a decision on games alone, if you care enough about getting 60fps instead of 30, and demand a full 1080p or higher experience, spend the money and get a PC.

Keep in mind though, you're never going to get PS4 level performance out of a PC for $400. The real decision here is up front investment in a PC, or paying a little more for games.

I completely agree with him. Sure, 60 fps is better and it's probably a big part of twitch games like CoD or street fighter but devs make sure those games run at 60 fps on consoles anyway. A solid 30 fps in all other type of games is all I need, especially if they dropped 60 in favor of a better open world, better AI or really impressive visuals.

For me I agree with the notion that for the majority of the gaming community don't notice 30 vs 60 fps and don't see it as a major issue. What matters is if the frame rate is stable, because it really bothers me when the FPS dips. All I want is the consistent stable FPS. And I use to play WoW on a really old laptop at 20 fps, which for me was fine as long as it stayed at 20 fps.

As for the OP, I would suggest the PS4 as well. It sounds like that he wants stability and consistent performance which is what the consoles are there for. Consoles are good because developers can optimize them for the machine. It's a little rocky for the games now, but developers will get used to it as more and more games get made for them. Yeah, PCs can go above and beyond, but as others have said sometimes games are just not made to run that well on PCs because of the lack of optimization due to an infinite number of configurations. I don't think you can go wrong with getting either a PS4 or PC, but for you OP, PS4 might be your best choice for now.

First, that is taken out of context. I understand what you mean, but if you include the rest of that statement, it doesn't sound quite so presumptuous. The fact is, most people aren't going to play a game side by side at 30 and 60 frames to compare the two. The "when playing" part of that quote is the most important aspect of it. A silky smooth 30fps, in terms of playability, at the very least, is virtually identical. In twitch games, you could argue there's a more notable difference, but there are still other factors, such as internet speed/stability for online play, to take into account outside of just framerate, so long as it's a solid, stable 30. And yes, I will go so far as to say that most people will not outright enjoy the game less just because it's running at 30fps and not 60, especially if it's a damn good game.

I never intended to make it sound like the two framerates were exactly the same in every way. The most important point I was trying to make this whole time was that, in terms of playability and enjoyment, there is far less of a difference than a lot of the pc-master-race-ish individuals out there would have you believe. A console is a fine alternative to a PC, and in some ways, preferable, at least to a lot of people, for various reasons. I'm not saying one is outright better than the other all around, but I am saying that there are legitimately good reasons for choosing a console over a PC, which was the reason this thread was started in the first place, to choose between PS4 or PC?

@tyrrael: @mrpandaman: @pyrodactyl: Basically what all of you guys said. It's looking like PS4 for me. For now, anyway.

There's really only three AAA games I'm looking forward to right now: Batman, Dragon Age and the Witcher. Out of the three, it's only really the Witcher that would benefit from a (very powerful) PC, but I don't think it merits a massive investment by itself. I'm sure other games will come along, though.

But if I miss out on some great PC games that would have required a powerful PC, I guess can always invest in that later, if I have the money. The thing is, however, I'd much rather spend $1000 or $1500 on a decent pair of speakers, or travel, or something else, than a PC so that I can play five really nice looking games in a year.

Best thing is, you won't miss on really nice looking big PC releases because PC exclusives are suppose to scale down nicely since they can't count on enough people having beefy rigs and buy the game the recoup dev costs for big and great looking games exclusive to the platform.

With a 6770 you should have easily shit all over an xbox 360??? Maybe you were bottlenecked by that processor? I'm not keen on lower end intells, i've only had builds with ATI chips.

Remember a modern game (even 3 or 4 years ago) at medium/high settings is eon's above anything a 360 could produce, especially at 720p. My only guess is that processor or your power supply wasn't big enough.

I ran the witcher 2 @1440x900p, almost maxed out (no ubber sampling, lower antialiasing) 30-45fps with a 5770 and a phenom ii x4 processor with 8gb of ram and a 630 watt psu.

@oursin_360: You might be right, I don't know. My psu is a chieftec 500W 80+, I figured that would have been enough, given how much the individual components supposedly require.

The Witcher 2 ran kinda ok on medium settings @ 720p. I finished the game, it's a great game. But I couldn't really get it to run smoothly on any settings. Except like everything on low at 480p or something, but at that point I might as well just play it without a monitor.

I feel like part of the problem with PC games like the Witcher 2 is that they're designed to look really nice on the higher settings, but if your PC can't run that, and you have to use lower settings, the games start to look like garbage. At the same time, most console games can't reach graphical fidelity like that on a technical level, but they optimize the lower graphics well enough, and use an appropriate art style to cover up the rest.

I'm sure the Witcher 2 on medium settings is technically better looking than any console game from last gen, but that's not what it looks like to me. I'd probably rather have less stuff on screen, if it looked better and had a better draw distance. I've been recently playing Red Dead Redemption and that game looks gorgeous despite its age. It still looks much more impressive than GTA V, and I guess that's more due to how the environments etc. are designed than how much power they're able to get out of the console.

I was a PC gamer some years ago, but I like to play games on consoles now.

It's more relaxing to me somehow, sitting in the couch, grab a controller and just go. When I played games on a PC it was more pro-active, sitting straight up in a chair, face close to the monitor and getting those headshots lined up ;). I also find it somehow depressing to lower graphical settings. Halfway through a game I would turn down the shadows, filtering and texture quality to gain some more frames per second, because by now I would've seen the graphical fidelity and rather play it more smoothly.
I also have a desk job where I look at a monitor the whole day, so when I come home and want to play some games I rather have some more distance to the monitor I play my games on.

On the whole PC games look way better then console games discussion: well it's not really a discussion, because they do. Probably don't even need the ultra settings to surpass a PS4 for most titles. But then you are talking about resolution and diminishing artifacts from the screen. PS4 has games with lower texture res, less filtering and the output resolution is also lower. The discussion should be: does a game console need these settings anyway? The TV is not anywhere near my face, it's all the way over there, there's no way I see that difference in texture resolution when I'm not putting my nose against a PC monitor.

So yea, I'm a pretty happy console gamer right now, but for me it's all about how I want to pass my spare time; rather on a couch looking at a TV then in a 'PC desk job'- position after working hours.

the pc is just so good dude. Let the PS4 xlusive pile up then buy one and all dem games for cheap

you got ripped off on that PC rig.

could have built a cheap but decent one for cheaper than that.

amd's fx8350 are cheap but beasts in price-performance for cpus and have a high roof for OC as well, if you get lucky and can OC it to 5ghz, you just yourself a cpu worth twice than what you paid, and their mobos are cheap too, getting ram for them are cheap as well, only expensive part would normally be the GPU.

@pyrodactyl:

And people pointing at Watch dogs for "how bad PCs are" are the idiots, it has already been proved with the newly found hidden files, which not only makes the game look better on PC but also funnily enough increases performance, odd huh, it's as if Ubisoft wanted it to seem like PC ain't so strong, when they actually are. Not to forget the obvious terrible port tag.

PCs got an expensive intro price if you want to do it right, everything afterwards are small but good upgrades.

Hey, I never said PCs were bad. I just stated the obvious facts: some publishers putting out great games treat the PC version as an afterthought and PC players as second class citizens. The watch dogs thing wasn't some kind of microsoft/sony conspiracy, it was just Ubisoft being Ubisoft and not allocating enough resources to develop the PC version. That's really too bad but that kind of stuff should really weigh in on your choice to purchase your sole gaming platform. If you go PC only you'll just eat it on random games that are suppose to be multiplatform. Consoles that aren't gimped in some way never get the middle finger like the PC has in the past.

I feel like the PS4 is great, but if you're comparing it to a PC then I'd always recommend buying the PC. This guy, for example, has an awesome build for $500.

http://www.toptengamer.com/build-gaming-pc/

You could easily play Battlefield 4 on that thing.

I feel like the PS4 is great, but if you're comparing it to a PC then I'd always recommend buying the PC. This guy, for example, has an awesome build for $500 http://www.toptengamer.com/build-gaming-pc/

You could easily play Battlefield 4 on that thing.

If you have money to spend buy a PC, if you are on a budget get a PS4.

Maybe, but how much better would it have been and for how much cheaper? For the sake of comparison, where I live, a 500GB PS4, without any games, costs over $600.

I'm not trying to argue, if you can link me to a decent PC build, I could check what the individual parts cost over here. I'd much rather play games with better graphics, but at some point I have to decide whether I want games to run without any hassle or if I want to spend extra money on the PC experience.

I have other interests, I don't spend all my money (or time) on games. I'm still not sure if the average PC gamer is wealthy (I certainly am not) or if they just don't have to or want to spend money on anything else.

Edit: Also, I don't want to OC anything. It'll just use up more power -> increase in utility bill -> not worth it. Also, more fans, noise, etc. I'd rather give up some performance for a quieter machine that doesn't use up as much power.

Yeah, you didn't get the most bang for your buck with that last build. The most important parts of a gaming PC are the CPU and the GPU. A boring or cheap case, RAM with big dumb fins on it, big storage drives, motherboards with digital temp readouts, etc. won't give you better frame rates. But a good strong CPU and GPU will. Unfortunately, you bought the lower end models on both of those parts for your build, so it's just not going to deliver the performance it could have.

The cost to upgrade that rig now would probably be too great since you would need to replace the CPU, mobo, and GPU. Also understand that while the CPU, motherboard, RAM, storage drive, case, and power supply can last 4-5 years, the graphics card is typically a part that needs upgraded more often if you want to keep playing games at the highest settings. If you're not comfortable with the idea of spending a few hundred more 2-3 years down the line and selling your old card, the PC may not be a good fit for you.

At this point, you would probably be better off selling your PC and just starting from scratch if you wanted to stick with that platform. But, it's certainly easier to just go for the PS4 at this point - especially if you are playing on a TV.

Aside from better graphics - assuming you build a good bang-for-your-buck gaming rig - the major advantage of the PC is cheap games. You can spend a lot less money on games if you shop smart and wait for sales. Console games just don't get as cheap as fast since they are in part a retail product, so you wind up spending as much in the long run with the software and online services. But that may also be more practical for you to spread out that cost, rather than front load it with a PC.

@rm082e: I get your point, and I was aware of the role parts play in PCs, it was the second rig I had built. The parts I chose were the (most expensive) ones I could afford. I was aware (or mistaken?) that they would be on the lower mid-range. They were definitely not the cheapest nor least powerfult parts. I might have been able to shave off a bit from that price tag by shopping around, but not anything significant. Hardware, like everything else, is very expensive here.

I'm definitely not comfortable upgrading a PC every couple of years. When I got my PC three years ago, my previous PC was from '04. That PC was of a similar power range (or perhaps slightly more powerful) and equally expensive (as far as I can remember). I hate almost everything about PC gaming, I guess, except the better graphics, exclusives, and potentially cheaper games. The trouble is, I guess I'm a "softcore" gamer, I don't play that many games. I buy a few games a year, mostly story-driven one, and I buy them when they come out because they're usually games I've been waiting for for years. If I were patient and smart enough to wait, I'm sure I'd save more money on games on the PC. On the other hand, I'd have to spend that money (or a lot more) on the PC itself. It would have to be upgraded, and it would hog a lot of power, which is expensive as well. I've bought some games on Steam sales, but I usually don't get around playing them.

But I'm nevertheless bummed out about getting into the new console generation anyway. If I buy a PS4, that'll mean lesser graphics, and sometimes poor optimization from PC-centric games, and lack of access to the games that only come out on PC, or the potential of a cheaper game. On the other hand, I probably can't afford a "proper" PC, and even if I could, I'd probably rather choose to spend that money on something else, and not have to deal with games that just won't work, and all the other shit that comes with a PC.

Yeah PS4 is pretty much the best fit for the way you approach games. And it's a good option. Keep in mind most PS4 games are 1080p with a smooth frame rate, so it's not like your slumming it too hard. And now with Sony so aggressively getting indie titles on their platform, you probably won't miss much that you are going to care about anyway.

@rm082e: Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks for the advice!

One, both or neither.

Whatever you want to do is fine by me, really.

PC: costs more but more and cheaper games.

PS4: cheaper but games cost more and selection is more limited. PS4 exclusives might be a consideration.