How To Build A Solid $500 Gaming PC For Fallout 4 And GTA V

[hunter_alien]

sc94597 said:

LurkerJ said:
"CPU and GPU are miles ahead of what's in the consoles"

That doesn't mean you will get to play every game released on the PS4 for said PC years down the line. Optimization is key. We know by know that a lot publishers just don't put much effort into porting their games. What's the use of my superior PC in that case if it can't run said games smoothly? Who is to say hardware requirements are not gonna become more demanding next year? or the one after?

The architectures of modern consoles and PC's means just that. The difference in power exceeds the difference optimization would give. If you can optimize a game for a Jaguar-based cpu, then it is very likely the game will run, even when less optimized,  on an FX 6300. If you can optimize the game to run on a stripped HD 7870 then it will certainly run on an r9 380. We aren't in the age of complicated and specialized PPC cores in which the developers don't know what they are working on too well. They know pretty much what the consoles are made of and they know the limitations. This is why we have already reached a performance barrier, even for talented developers. Furthermore, current API's have allowed PC games to be quite optimized as well. 

Yes they do, to bad that only 1/5th of PC developers know or are willing to put some effort behind optimization. As someone who has worked as a gaming QA for an outsource company, believe me, rushing in some fixes 3 weeks before launch, is far from enough.