As we're heading into the next generation of consoles the only thing that we seem to be able to discuss right now is the specifications of each console.  For many here on this site, and in the gaming community at large, this can be much ado about nothing, but for many, many folks here at VGC, this stuff seems to be as interesting as the games themselves.

So the question in this thread is how into specs are you, what got you excited about the hardware aspects of systems, and how has this influenced your gaming tastes over the years?  Do you prefer always to go with the best specs (by your opinion) when playing a console, or do you just like to discuss and consider the components in a mathematical and philosophical way.

I'm sure much of this thread, like all of the threads of this nature, will end up going over my head, but I'm very curious in a meta way about the folks here who love to discuss the nuts and bolts behind the magic that is videogames and their respective mechanical systems.

Not a lot, but im still curious with each console's launch. At the end of a console's life I value it based on what games it had that left a mark in me, not so much how powerful it was - so the true value I find is in each individual game's design, not so much on the console specs. At this point in time, specs are easy to ignore  because most games that can (and do) explode a console's potentional/power will look good and perform good either way - and are VERY few because most developers dont fully explode the specs of whichever console is the "most powerful" anyways because games are made to be easily portable across consoles. As such, specs are not a priority for me.  They become a bit more relevant when they involve backwards compatibility tho, because - as of today at least- that is the biggest added value any console can give me personally. Much more so than graphic and processing power, speed, portability, VR or motion controls. 

I do love myself some fap worthy specs since I do like building pcs and such. When it comes to consoles and specs, what interests me is the approaches they take into picking them and what the end result of that ultimately leads to. You have a group of engineers that are well above all of our pay grades spending tons of R&D over the course of few years betting on the fact that their designs will make their systems a success for the next 5-7 years (or however long the generation lasts).

I will say that the next generation seems have some of the more interesting design choices.. From the way they took their approaches to GPU, RAM, SSD, Expandable Storage and etc, it will be interesting to see how it all translates into actual gameplay and performance. I think we are in for one hot and juicy holiday season!

And the end of the day, if FFVIIR works with Ps5 at launch through BC or whatever, it will certainly be on my fap list.

I need those specs so I can feel better for being part of the #masterrace. Can't wait to buy my new GPU for 1400€ which is gonna be 50% stronger than consoles and will last 3 years tops.

I expect specs won’t matter as much now as they did in 2013 since PS5’s aren’t as impressive.

But what about $700 GPU that bumps your PC up to 30% stronger than consoles and lasts two years before being crushed on price to power by a new series of cards? 

Dunno what kinda cards you guys buying for pc for 700 and 1400 dollars that lasts 3 years.

The consoles are fine, pc is fine. Stay safe and enjoy with friends, family.

I'm still going strong with my 1080ti, and I didn't have to shell out £700 for it. 

It'll keep me going till the 3000 series NV cards arrive, then I'll be upgrading to the upcoming Ryzen (or next yrs one) and change up the RAM, and I'll be good for the next gen coasting. 

Yep. I got Ryzen and now am good till year 2077.

Also i have ssd. Which today i found is very cool kind of hard drive. 

Okay, let's talk specs.

I was wondering at first why Mark Cerny said that 825 GB are the "most natural size" for a 12-channel interface, although 825 does not divide very well by 12.

But gigabyte and terabyte are based on the decimal system (1 terabyte = 10^12 bytes = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes) and not on the binary system like RAM (1 tebibyte = 2^40 bytes = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes).

And 825 gigabytes = 768 gibibytes (or to be exact 768 gibibytes are 824.633720832 gigabytes, rounded up to 825 GB).

768 Gibibyte divided by 12 lines = exactly 64 gibibyte per channel.