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Forums - PC Discussion - A PS4 equivalent rig for $500.00?

Licence on 20 December 2013

I cannot answer your question for right now, but I do suspect that if you wait a few months you should be able to. The PS4, as with the other next gen systems, is really just a state-of-the-art GPU with good-enough support components. I suspect that in 6 months time, you should be able to look at comparative GPU for $200 which, added with 2 year old components, would get you most of the way.

Whether this guarantees you a similar experience is difficult to say. In the prevgen, some shops produced excellent PC versions, while others had very bad ports.

I game on PC with a 460GTX, I guess my entire rig including the monitor is less than $400, probably far less, and I have yet to find a game that is not playable with decent graphics on 900p. Sure its not always maxed out, but I suspect most people would struggle to see the difference.



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deskpro2k3 on 20 December 2013
prayformojo said:

I've been a console gamer since the early 80's when I was just a little kid, so I don't know ANYTHING about PC gaming. I have a Steam account, with a few indie titles and free games, but that's all I can play because it's running on a store bought laptop that's a few years old.

I am really interested in going PC this generation, but only have about $500.00 to spend on a rig. I wanna know if it's possible to build something that can game at a stable 1080p/60fps...and that can run AAA titles at least CLOSE to PS4 quality. 

Does anybody think it can be done?


With +500 dollars, you can. I imagine you may not like the performance, and you wont get AAA PS4 exclusive titles, or console exclusives.



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GPU: MSI 4090 SUPRIM X 24G
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Gaming Console: PLAYSTATION 5
ithis on 20 December 2013
Pemalite said:

You don't even need a Core i5.

Jaguar is around 10-20% faster than Brazos per core, with 8 cores it would be equivalent to roughly a Dual-Core Hyper-threaded Haswell Core i3.
The reason why PC's have historically required faster CPU's than the console equivalent is because of draw cells, which are soon to be essentially a thing of the past.

Also something to keep in mind is that even AMD's fastest CPU's pale in comparison to even some of Intel's slowest, even with twice the cores in AMD's favour.
Besides the Playstation 4 and Xbox One don't allow for all 8 anemic cores to be used for gaming anyway.

Jaguar is a 2 issue, low clocked, low IPC, small caches (No, L3) with pretty poor Floating Point and Integer units.
It's a budget processor which is designed to be "good enough" not class leading, Microsoft and Sony spent all their transister budgets on the GPU and other subsystems, not the CPU.
If Microsoft and Sony wanted decent CPU performance, they would have to pay for it which is not ideal in a cost sensitive device, which means higher cost consoles for all the consumers who would have then complained untill the cows came home.


Really? ... You're stainding buy the bolded??

Elsewhere: Remember that PC games are still not optimised for many cores (the logic being that not everyone has an 8 core CPU yet).

All new gen console games are being optimised for 7 (there you go), cores right now. Still, not the fastest CPU and there's no problem with that(yet).

Unified Memory Architecture the PS4 has, not any gaming PC yet. One is clearly superior to the other (not the PC one).

I hopen Mantle will be awesome, but it will not eliminate the advantage that consoles have over PCs (no matter the OS) in matters of optimisation. Fixed hardware and the option to learn to do whatever the fuck you want with it for the win.

Remember this (and if in doubt, look at the evolution of games on the PS3 from a graphical point of view all the way untill this year): 

Amazing looking games are coming to the PS4 in the future.

Amazing looking games are coming to the PC in the future, BUT one will have to upgrade the PC for them.



Pemalite on 20 December 2013
ithis said:


Really? ... You're stainding buy the bolded??


Pretty much.
I have an AMD FX 8120 in another PC, it's about as fast as an Intel Quaddy, would pale against Haswell.
You need about a 1ghz clock speed advantage for an FX to roughly match Intel on a per-core basis.
The FX's IPC is actually lower than the Core 2 (Which in turn was also faster than the Phenom 2 which was also faster than the FX, clock for clock and core for core.)
Granted the Phenom 2 if you pushed up the NB clock to around 3ghz you could achieve anywhere from 10-15% improvement in IPC which put it roughly on par and in some cases pushed past the Core 2 based CPU's.

In Single threaded applications and games (Yes, modern games are still released as single core only like Sins of a Solar Empire) even an Intel i3 Dual-Core is faster than AMD's 8 Core.
Even with games like StarCraft 2 a heavily clocked Haswell Intel Dual-Core is faster.

Don't just take my word for it though. - Add another 30% performance advantage in Intels favor as that is about the difference between Sandy and Haswell.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=363
You can pick up the i5 2400 stupidly cheap these days...



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

Kane1389 on 20 December 2013
supernihilist said:

my PC being a i7-2600K 4.3GHz ; GTX 650 Ti OC 2Gb and 8Gb RAM at 1666 costed me around 500 and its miles beyond next gen consoles

150$ for each CPU, GPU then some decent RAM and the rest should be around 500. you should be able to play CoD better than PS4 does :P


LOL, what a dumb lie. That CPU costs at very least 300$ alone



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ViktorBKK on 20 December 2013
Kane1389 said:
supernihilist said:

my PC being a i7-2600K 4.3GHz ; GTX 650 Ti OC 2Gb and 8Gb RAM at 1666 costed me around 500 and its miles beyond next gen consoles

150$ for each CPU, GPU then some decent RAM and the rest should be around 500. you should be able to play CoD better than PS4 does :P


LOL, what a dumb lie. That CPU costs at very least 300$ alone


And what an imbalanced system too. Top of the line CPU and budget GPU. The 650 ti (regular, not boost version) is also a fair bit slower than the PS4 gpu. It wouldn't even play COD better lol.



supernihilist on 20 December 2013

i said im upgrading to 660 OC 3GB which is 220$
not really that expensive, and on par with PS4 s gpu or even better



Figgycal on 20 December 2013

Why are people always starting from scratch. Serious question. You already have a PC-- just put better parts in.



theprof00 on 20 December 2013
walsufnir said:
theprof00 said:
walsufnir said:
theprof00 said:
walsufnir said

 Yes but the costs sum up with what I wrote in my post. The comparison is rather invalid.

Again, people should wait for future APU releases from AMD and will have a better PS4.

I think the point was that as a consumer, you're only spending 400$. It's not 'how close can we get to the price equivalent of ps4', it's 'how close can you get to the pricetag'.

This would be for the purpose of showing what's a better value.


Yes, sure. It's the same discussion as with every new gen. But "value" is of course still opinion. Thing is, as long as PS4 keeps its price, the more pc-components become cheaper. But generally the decision whether buying console or PC should not be decided on specs but on games in the first place. Why should you spend $1000 if you can't play Uncharted x or Halo x?

Yeah but then you're throwing in quite a bunch of incalculable variables which would only lead to arguments in the end. Specs are just a more scientific approach.


The whole topic itself is incalculable because you don't know the exact costs of PS4 and especially you can't build a system with GDDR5-Ram. And you also can't compare the performance of a pc system with a PS4 directly.

 

This is a completely useless discussion. Can't believe I fell for it again.



NotStan on 20 December 2013

I brought mine for £500 about 2 years ago now, or 1.5, exactly same model that Andrespetmonkey has I think :D. Am not sure, but I think provided we switch the gpu, which was even considered average at the time, we can get something on par or even stronger than ps4. Both have i7 2600k, 8g of ram. Problem is the console is optimized and most of the games will likely be optimized for consoles, with exception of few notable pc developers - dice etc.

Consoles are 10x easier to maintain and end up costing less, but the power will be comparably less with new developments for pc over the next 3-5 years. Personally I prefer consoles as am not really fussed about going past 30fps or running games on ultra high detail so I can admire the scenery of a rock while shooting some guys in da face.



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