MrShooter01
Storm Wind Strikeforce
Caldari State
1106
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Posted - 2014.11.21 06:01:00 -
[1] - Quote
Lynn Beck wrote:The Ps4 is the cheaper way to get that "high quality" gaming system.
My PC can run Playstation 2 graphics and it costs 400 bucks(not counting the OS, or video card which i got from a friend)
To get it to play Warframe on Ps4 levels ill need a $250 vidcard, bringing my total to 650 bucks, meanwhile i'll also need to buy Antivirus(Avast isnt cutting it) and more RAM.
My specs BTW:
AMD quad core 3.8GHZ, 4GB DDR3 ram, 9500Gt(damn thing isnt even supported anymore by Nvidia), 500Gb hard drive, and a extremely crap economy motherboard.
THAT. For 500+ bucks already, which cant even play Far Cry 3 on full blown minimum at beyond 20 FPS, and plays Warframe at 25+ until a smoke puff shows its ugly head, then its 12.
The 9500GT is practically a museum piece at this point, if you spend $100 on a card like this, you will be more than capable of playing modern games. The 750 is an extremely energy efficient video card that does not even need an extra power connection from the power supply unit, so there is almost no risk of incompatibility with your system, and it is already similar in power to the next gen consoles.
Just open up the case, unscrew the old card, drop in the new card, download and install the newest drivers from Nvidia. It will run Far Cry 3 and Warframe far, far better than the 9500 GT you're used to.
If you want to get fancy, and you check on your power supply to make sure it has the cables and wattage to support it, spending more on a graphics card upgrade will completely eclipse the capabilities of the PS4 or Xbone. You will be able to play any cross-platform game ever released on these consoles at settings as good or better than the PS4, for the entirety of the console's lifespan.
AMD in particular is gunning hard for Nvidia, trying to stay competitive after the release of the Geforce GTX 970 and 980 series. AMD has massively cut the prices of their cards in response, and is bundling free games with most of their products, including new games like Alien: Isolation and Star Citizen. Here's a $160 video card more powerful than the Playstation 4 that comes with 3 free games!
I assure you, the rest of your PC is good enough. The video card is by far the largest factor in game performance. Games are rarely processor intensive (Planetside 2 is the only exception that comes to mind), and you've got a better CPU there than my gaming PC. I can get low FPS in large battles in PS2, but when there's literally hundreds of people running around shooting guns in every direction, who doesn't have performance hiccups?
And 4gb of ram isn't that much of an issue. If you're really hurting for more ram to run more things at once, 8gb of DDR3 is only about $70 these days.
So, for your choice of between $100-230, you can turn your current PC you are lucky enough to already have into a great gaming machine far better than a PS4 
As for PS4 being a cheaper, this is a popular build around $400, depending on sales, known as the "next gen crusher". Three guesses why it's called that.
Technology marches on, parts get cheaper, faster, more powerful, more efficient. Meanwhile, the consoles which are built to rigid specs stagnate over their lifespan, rapidly becoming eclipsed by even "low-end" budget PC parts. The CPU and video card in that build are both more powerful than any of the "next gen" consoles.
It used to be true in the era of the Playstation 2 and the early days of the PS3/XBox 360 that the consoles had more powerful hardware and were able to sell it cheaper than comparable PC parts by massively subsidizing the cost of the hardware in the hopes that game sales and services would make a profit. But the lifespan of the PS3/360 has lingered on for far too long, and now even integrated CPU graphics can outperform them. Sony and Microsoft both decided that they didn't want to play the subsidized hardware game this time around, and the Radeon 78xx based chipset they both decided on was considered mid-range when it was brand new. By the time the consoles actually came out, the video chips were already a generation behind. Sub-$200 video cards already outperform them, and this gap is only going to get wider as time goes on.
Now, wanting to play with friends who own the game consoles, or wanting to play the "exclusive" games Sony and Microsoft have a stranglehold on are fair enough reasons for getting a "next gen" console. I got myself a PS3 to play MGS4 and Uncharted and of course Dust, after all. But the often repeated idea of "consoles are just more affordable" simply isn't true any more and hasn't been for a long time. |