PC for everything

[Jayson]

One way you could really cut down on the cost is to go for the budget CPUs from intel, cut down i-cores called the G-somethings. They're basically the new Celerons, but are actually pretty decent for gaming. The G840 is only 2.80 ghz but can already run circles around the 3.0 ghz e8400, which was top of the line for Core 2 Duos.

I am running a Pentium G850. It's a 2.9 ghz sandy bridge chip and it's doing great.

With a 6770 and 8GB of ram, I am running a bunch of newer games like Dishonored, Battlefield 3 and Sleeping Dogs at medium to high settings, 1360x768, 40-50FPS. It's still a dual core chip, so certain games that favor a quad core (like GTA4/Episodes) still run a bit sluggish, but I still manage to run that at medium, 30-40FPS with some dips when I am running from the cops... It still looks much better than the PS3 version I have.

[RCBH928]

I am really confused between picking up a ps4 or a PC given that both will be used mainly for gaming and video viewing . A PC seems pricier at this point, plus I am not sure how long they last (ps4 6 years+ estimate) . In the late 90's a PC would almost die after 4 years .

Plus the advantage of a PS4 is that its already built , smaller size , quieter (guessing) and just as powerful.

but I am always willing to hear more from any one with an opinion, its all about the price .

[tintinmayo]

The thing about using the ps4 as a comparison is that we know very little about the console at this point in time.

If we're going to use the first batch of PS3s as a basis, it's actually as noisy, ran as hot, and consumed as much power as a decent gaming PC (The Wii was the one that beat the PC on power consumption, price, and noise during that gen, but of course it can't compete with graphics).

We can only assume that the PS4 is going to be more powerful and may be noiser (current gen consoles are very noisy compared to PCs, especially since they still use their optical drives. No modern PC games these days use the disc outside of installation), but I'm not sure. Maybe Sony's going for power and cost efficiency this time around. In which case I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

[RCBH928]

My 360 is extremely noisy , but I never heard a PS3 being noisy . Maybe because here we always have the air conditioner on so it covers up for that sound. Any noise produced by a machine that can be covered up with regular tv volume is not noisy in my own definition , but we will see how it goes. I am happy to hear that PCs are as quite as PS3s

[isiolia]

Fat PS3s tend to be just as noisy as the original 360 models. The slim versions of either are much quieter. In my experience, fat PS2 to slim is also a big drop in noise level.

With the PS4 using more off-the-shelf hardware it's possible that it'll come out of the gate sipping power and being nice and silent...but, historically speaking, there's no guarantee it will.

[Mephikun]

Go PC.

I built myself and my sister lower end desktops for $550 total. I had stuff like Hard Drives already available but those types of things are cheap these days.

My specs: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wVAJ

Sister's specs: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NxPd

As you can see I decided to be cheap and not all of the parts are great, but I was on a tight budget ($325 for mine, $225 for hers), so I don't think I made out horribly.

Mine runs Minecraft (it's my addiction... one of those games that is just odd yet amazing, been playing since early beta) on max settings at 150-300 FPS and Portal 2 at 50-70ish. I mean, it's not great, but it's decent for $300. It should run BF3 on medium settings at 20-50 fps, Skyrim on medium-high at 30-60, no noticeable lag.

With that in mind, imagine what you could do by adding, say, $150-200 to that budget (again if you have some parts laying around). You'd have a computer that could handle modern games quite nicely and future games fairly well.

Just my personal opinion.

Sorry for not writing something out the size of an article, not feeling great so I'm gonna go pass out on the couch