Yeah like I said your GT 230 is very very weak even at its prime days since it's only an entry level budget card not intended for gaming. Even console games got sections where FPS suddenly drops you know, but they reduce visual elements and entity count to counter that, but alas I see it still happening.

It just is at the lower end of spectrum and was mostly used on laptops. I dont really believe that GT 230 was equal to consoles to begin with slightly behind I would think. Remember that current gen consoles are also playing on low settings at 30FPS with some games even going sub 720p.

I actually got a HD5850. I have an older i7 and I typically play in 1080p or 720p depending on the game. Most of the games I end up playing are not graphically intensive, so I can go High/Medium without too much trouble.

True, the 96 CUDA cores sounded promising at the time as I was doing a lot of video editting with Pinncacle studio which uses them for hardware acceleration. Btw that desktop GT 230 version isn't that bad, it keeps up with and slightly outperforms my new laptop with a GT 740m, although that could be the game too, slower HDD might be the bottleneck. (Tested with Euro truck simulator, runs slightly better on the GT230 in 1080p)

The convenice of consoles is that the developers have already 'lowered the setting in busy sections' for you to keep a mostly consistent experience. Less immersion breaking then having to go into settings yourself.  Anyway now I'm pretty skeptical of a $160 card, that looks as good or slightly better on paper then next gen console gpus, to be able to keep up with for the next 8 years.

Yeah maybe next time you should approach disagreement with discussion of the facts in mind, rather than undermining the person.

You can't honestly sit there and say with a straight face that, as an example, this rig will deliver what a ps4 is capable of delivering for the same value. Yes you can Linux. Yes, you can curtail other costs. But does the rig A) have the same value for the majority of the population, and B) have the same kind of longevity?

As a PC afficionado yourself, you don't have to respond. I already know your answer if you're being objective about this whole thing.

People lets remain calm and peaceful. This is all a hypothetical situation.

@theprof00 What you consider a safe CPU/GPU combo to match next gen consoles? Do you consider the extra cost of online on PS4 and Xbone a major factor on the base price? How do you think similar PC architecture of next gen will affect multiplatforms games ported to PC?

I've been trying to keep this reasonable as I can, I havent even once insulted you as far as I can tell, going directly after your points. I criticized your 1400$ setup and tried to pry some more info on that, but I suppose thats where I crossed the line for you. You're the one trying to make this this a school yard brawl, going out of context on my answers and your constantly changing subjects that don't invovle the original issue.

That setup is strong enough to play multiplatform games coming on consoles all the way until they go out. NOT with maximum graphics, ofcourse. thats just not realistic, but neither is it for the consoles themselves. Optimization gives you a marginal advantage at best and it often involves straight out downgrading some aspects to improve others. If you want to join the PC graphics arms race then you will ahve to buy 500$ PC every 2 years atleast.

I respect your opinion on the matter, even though it differs a bit from mine. You might want to considering switching to a new setup, upgrading an 8 year build with just a new GPU is gonna bottleneck the system so hard that you're essentially throwing money into a fire.

You're not really supposed to constantly change the settings, you look for a spot where its smooth and keep it there, lot of games come with Benchmark you should allways run that first before you start a game if you want to fiddle with settings, since it gives you an analysis of your performance. But yeah I'm glad I got you thinking. 7870 is still a great card especially for it's price range, going above or lower you're starting to get lesser gains for more money.

If you make thread about building PCs in the future I'll likely post there, like I do in pretty much all of the ones I see. :)

You dismissed my computer as overpriced. Do not even attempt to pretend you were interested in seeing what the components were. You had no intention of knowing that. You were dismissive when I called you on it. Your whole attitude has been pc-elitist. Anyone can see that.
Back to the point,

The question was whether they would be able to play those games at the same level that the ps4/xb1 would be able to. Not "oh sure but not on a good resolution". You inherently agree with me seeing as you called my 8 year old computer build and said "i should have no trouble". You're right about that. I don't. But I can't play at a resolution or speed that would be considered "well". And I know you agree, even if you don't say so from here on in.

The consoles will be able to play games at a higher quality, faster, in 5 years than the PC in the OP. You simply cannot disagree. This is fact.

PS: Of course I know that I can't just upgrade the GPU. I've upgraded nearly everything in the PC.
From the RAM (Corsair 1GBx4 to Corsair 2GBx4)
The Mobo Abit-KT9 Pro to Gigabyte something or other
CPU from Core2Duo to i-3
GPU twice don't remember the models, all were over 200$ after rebates
PSU from Antec 400W to Corsair 650W TX
And Hard drives from 500GB to over 4TB in RAID configs.

At initial purchase, I believe the prices were
Thermaltake case: 80
3 HDDs (1 100GB 2 250s): 190
CPU 170
Mobo 110
Cooling fans: 10
CPU and RAM heatsinks: 50
GPU: 260
Logitech MX800 or something: 60
Cabling and cable mgmt: 10
RAM: 120

Hmm guess I was including the monitor in there as well.

Everything I bought was top of the line, and I chug when playing the new Civ, or new FPS games when things get crazy. Even tower defense games slow it down. I can play most games fine and on max, but nothing within the last 2 years or so, and that's with staying upgraded.

Bolded part - I war referring to OPs setup not yours

I asked you whetever it was ready built or you built it yourself, you didnt really answer me, but just told me to keep my schoolyard quibs out of it...but yes I propably should have worded it differently, so sorry. =(

First issue I would have pointed out was that ready built ones usually come with an achilles heel. It's usually weak CPU or GPU, If you had told me the parts you used I could have talked about that, well atleast now you told me about some of them.

i3 is not top of the line, it's budget line dual core, I have no idea why u paid so much for it, games are allready using 4 cores effectively, its just not going to cut it anymore. Dont find it a suprise you have problems with CiV since it has more and more data to track the longer you play, especially if you play with huge world setup with tons of AI opponents. your i3 is likely also bottlenecking your GPU in CPU intensive games like CiV. The OPs setup is about right in this aspect, I would not recommend upgrading that setup ever though unless he upgrades CPU/GPU/mobo all together, just slapping an expensive +200$ GPU in it is propably not recommendable with that 750k.

Also hows your system processes? Maybe you have way too many processes running on the background? My computer is just as fast as it was the day when I bought it simply because I don't have any unnecessary software hogging resources, just antivirus and firewall. I've actually even disabled some windows 7 processes that I don't need, just to optimize my CPUs strength for the games I'm playing. Since you have only 2 cores this might affect you strongly.

I'm sceptical on the console performance right now, I'm expecting OPs comp to play comfortably until next gen ends with similar level graphics as the consoles at similar performance with this setup, it's not gonna max every game, but neither will the consoles. I feel you're propably bit exaggerating their performance, we're still strong in hype with some devs stating sub 1080p/60FPS performance in games. So I'd rather wait some Digitalfoundry articles first.