| Adinnieken said: Let's start with my general PC philosophy: Buy the most powerful computer you can for your needs 5 years out. The logic behind this is simply, the more powerful the PC the longer the usable life. |
This is 100% wrong. No experienced PC gamer does this. What you describe is actually the opposite of PC enthusiast gaming philosophy -- that's what noobs or people who don't understand PC gaming do.
The difference between a Core i5 3570K $225 @ 4.5ghz and a $1000 Core i7 3970X @ 4.5ghz will be nearly non-existent in 99.9% of PC gaming titles. Using your logic, you would waste $775 on nothing. HD7950 for $280 with a 5 min overclock is faster than a $500 GTX680. Using your logic, you would waste $220 extra on GTX680 for no tangible benefit because you don't want to learn valuable money saving techniques in PC building.
Furthermore, if you actually cared to learn about PC gaming, you would have known that with AMD graphics cards, people can make $$ through bitcoin mining (although this is now basically dead). But that means for the last 3 generation, a lot of PC gamers in North America got their AMD GPUs for free. Why is that? Because through bitcoin mining, AMD cards make coins that can be converted to real world currency. Many of us got $800-1,500 of AMD GPUs for free using this tactic for the last 3 years. That's just 1 example of being savvy. Again, all this information is public to anyone who is a PC gamer and can be found readily on PC gaming forums. Even without this perk, one understands the importance of price/performance when building a PC. Your scenario considers a no-compromise PC. What you end up with is spending $1,500 extra to get more marginal performance that won't really change your gaming experience ($1000 i7 6-core vs. $225 i5 and $1000 GTX690 vs. $280 HD7950 for 1920x1200).....people who game at 1920x1200 aren't stupid enough to spend $1000 on a CPU and $1000 on a GPU setup.
Also, you are comparing apples to oranges. GTX690 is $1000 but that card is used for 2560x1600 or multi-monitor gaming. You realize games like Call of Duty Black Ops 2 run at 880x720 or below? Why are you comparing a PC that can play on 3x 1920x1200 monitors to next gen consoles that are barely going to give us real 1080P?
If you read Digital Foundry's comparisons, their 400 pound PC always beats current consoles in games in both performance and image quality:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-black-ops-2-face-off
Next year, a person can just upgrade this PC with a new graphics card. Better yet, they can resell the CPU, motherboard and GPU and reinvest that savings into new parts. You keep missing 4 key parts:
1) Reselling old PC components to fund at least a part of future PC upgrades
2) Upgrading and focusing on price/performance (meaning GTX660Ti delivers 80% of the performance of a GTX680 for $250 less or getting parts that can perform as high-end products with 5 min of overclocking like HD7950 @ 1100mhz). Similar to your flawed $1000 CPU comparison as a requirement to future-proof
3) Savvy PC gamers do not future proof with expensive parts. They buy what they need and upgrade more frequently instead of wasting $ with a build you described unless they are wealthy.
4) The PC you keep describing is so much more powerful than a console, yet you assign no added value to superior graphics or performance. If you are NOT going to assign any value to superior gaming experience such a system provides, then you can easily build a PC for 1/4th the price of $3,500 and it wouldn't look any worse than a $400 next gen console.
You have also conveniently ignored that Xbox 360 and PS3 broke, especially the former. People who always had the latest console must have paid at least $299 + $200 to replace their Xboxes are RROD out of warranty and for PS3, it was $499-599 at launch & some of those failed with YLOD. OTOH, PC components have 3 year warranty and some of them like PSUs have 7 year warranty. If you get a PS4 and it fails on you in 13 months from launch, that's going to be a $400 paperweight. If you get a new CPU, motherboard and GPU, most of those have 3 year warranties. Memory has lifetime warranty.
