http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/ps4-pro-vs-gaming-pc

OPINION Did Sony just upset the PC gaming crowd with the launch of its PS4 Pro? PC gaming fan Michael Passingham explores the first-ever '4K' gaming console.

Amidst a sea of well-targeted negativity surrounding Sony’s omission of an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive, a seriously impressive technical achievement seems to have been lost: Sony has produced the first games console in history to output games at a resolution greater than Full HD, which steers it into territory that only custom-built gaming PCs costing in excess of £500 have been able to achieve.

In our Best Gaming PC spec guide, resident custom builder Ed Chester managed to construct this PC for around £500. Granted, it's slightly more powerful and has loads more storage, but if you're playing on a TV a few feet away, you can spend a lot less on a PS4 Pro and get (possibly) a very similar experience.

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The £500 gaming PC:

CPU: Intel Pentium G4400 – £54 at Overclockers.co.uk | $60 at Amazon.com

Motherboard: ASRock H170A-X1 – £73 at Scan.co.uk | $73.99 at Amazon.com

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB 2400MHz, 2 x 4GB – £36 at Ebuyer.com | $44 at Amazon.com

Graphics card: AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB – £209 at Ebuyer.com | $249 at Newegg.com

SSD: 120GB Kingston SSDNow V300 – £39 at Amazon.co.uk | $43 at Amazon.com

HDD: WD Blue 1TB – £39 at Amazon.co.uk | $49 at Amazon.com

Power Supply: Corsair VS450 – £33 at Amazon.co.uk | $58 at Amazon.com

Case: BitFenix Nova – £26 at Overclockers UK | $40 at Amazon.com

Cooler: Included with CPU

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As a die-hard fan of PC gaming, I have to admit I'm impressed with what Sony has done. It has produced the most powerful console available today for a much lower price than many would have imagined.

There are several ingredients to this success. First is AMD’s Polaris architecture. The fruits of this labour can be seen in the company’s Radeon RX 480 graphics card that retails for under £200 in its 4GB guise. It’s a card that’s capable of smooth Full HD (1080p) gaming at Ultra settings on PC and good 1440p performance at Ultra, too.

The addition of Polaris-based hardware to the PS4 Pro has given the console mid-range gaming PC levels of performance in terms of raw, brute-force power. In fact, the chip inside is exactly the same as the one in the RX 480 (albeit at a slightly slower clock speed), which is a great sign.

This in itself is impressive, but it’s actually some software wizardry from both Sony and AMD that has allowed the graphics chip to perform far beyond its specifications would suggest. Indeed, without this new technology, there’s no way the PS4 Pro would be able to get even close to the visual fidelity that’s been claimed.

What have they done? For 4K upscaling, the prevailing theory is that the PS4 Pro renders double the number of pixels to Full HD (around 2,688 x 1,512 according to Digital Foundry) and then uses advanced upscaling technology to delicately massage it up to 4K resolution.

This is done by using clever anti-aliasing algorithms that take an intelligent look at a set of pixels and decide how to upscale them. The result? Sharper-looking transitions between objects, more detailed images and none of that horrible, blurry softness you get with the most basic upscaling tech.

This means the GPU only has to render double the number of pixels to Full HD instead of six times for 4K. That makes a huge difference to performance.

It’s never going to be as good as true 4K, but the promise is that many games will be able to run at the crucial 60fps at this upscaled resolution, which is unheard of for a GPU of this calibre. If developers are actually able to make this happen, this is a huge deal.

This house of cards is held up over the assumption that the player is plugging the PS4 Pro into a TV that’s a few feet away from them. The closer you get, the more obvious this anti-aliasing will appear. If you game on a TV that’s, say, 10 feet away, it’ll be a lot harder to see the slightly softer image created through this anti-aliasing tech. If you play on a monitor that’s on your desk, mere inches away, you might be disappointed. Until someone on the Trusted team has seen it with their own eyes, this is purely speculation.

Don’t have a 4K TV? Don’t fret: the PS4 Pro could still be for you. The suggestion is that PS4 Pro owners will be able to play games at higher graphical settings if their console is hooked up to a Full HD TV. If this turns out to be a seamless experience, this could be a very tempting upgrade path for current PS4 owners who don’t yet have the cash to buy a 4K TV.

Bottom line: getting this sort of performance on a compact living room PC for £349 is impossible right now. While I am disappointed Sony hasn’t bothered to include an SSD instead of a clunky old mechanical hard disk, it’s an impressive piece of kit.

Of course, you can’t write a piece like this without acknowledging the Xbox Scorpio. We know that it’ll be around 50% more powerful than the PS4 Pro when it launches at the end of next year, which is certainly not to be sniffed at. But without a price or any further details, it’s entirely up to buyers as to whether they’ll wait a year or buy a PS4 Pro right now.

Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/ps4-pro-vs-gaming-pc#tfI7gwRYFuwpBTuc.99

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"Getting this sort of performance on a compact living room PC for £349 is impossible right now."

110% agreed. The price point for the Pro is amazing. I was assuming it will be at least $450 for $400 is just craycray.

You are disgracing the #pcmasterrace. You shouldn't be impressed. You should be mildly enthused.

If I were a die hard PC gamer, I would snicker at both machines because both are underpowered and behind my platform of choice.

On an unrelated matter, does anyone else cringe when you read "game(s) console" or "video game(s) industry"? It's one of the most illogical things anyone could ever utter. It just makes zero grammatical sense.

This reads like a paid promotion...

Well considering the PS4 Pro doesn't render 4k native and does not have a UHD Player built in. No it doesn't. Its just another underpowered console trying to be like a PC.
Consoles are trying to become more and more like a PC that now it defeats the purpose of even owning a console. My Laptop provides more power than the Pro and I can also use it for work.

"die hard pc gamer" "impressed by console hardware"

Look the PS4 Pro is fine, the PS4 is fine, the console has a load of great exclusive games, the controller is really great and Sony has done an admirable job supporting it and most games run on decent medium settings.

PC-Gamer doesn't really say much, my sister is a PC gamer since she only plays The Sims 4 and nothing else. My best friend is a PC gamer since he only plays Diablo3.

There is a big difference between "gamer" and "enthusiast" see if you really want the most recent cutting edge hardware there is no equal to PC.

Intel makes the fastest processors, NVidia makes the fastest Graphics Cards, the PS4 Pro/Neo has neither company even developing for it.

For Native 4K the PC is currently the only option in modern games.
Look I'm not trying to be aggresive or hateful and I am glad you like the PS4 Pro and I hope if you get it you enjoy it but its not a technical marvel by any stretch of the imagination.

And yes, they did an admirable job for $399,- but they did that when the PS4 released 3 years ago as well, Actually, since they didn't update the processor or the amount of ram, the PS4 that released for its time was more impressive.

Yes, I'm buying it next year I think. All those PS4 exclusives are piling up

The Last of Us, Smite(native 4k 60fps) and elders scrolls online are all confirmed native 4k on the Ps4pro. So more games with similar visuals should be expected run at native 4k as well if the developer chooses to.

http://gematsu.com/2016/09/elder-scrolls-online-ps4-pro-support-announced

https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/51q0o2/smite_is_running_at_native_4k_60fps_on_a_ps4_pro/

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2016/09/09/the-last-of-us-ps4-pro-wil-run-at-native-4k/

im more of a pc gamer for last 3 years but looking at ps4 pro and new ps4 slim im missing my old uncharteds etc, next week my missis is buying me a ps4 slim and i cant wait.

i think its best to have pc console combos tbh