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Forums - Microsoft - Should we welcome Xbox 360 to computer gaming?

txrattlesnake on 03 June 2009

These seem to be the best that Wal~Mart has for under $500.00 and under $1,000.00. How do they stack up as gaming rigs?


Dell Inspiron 530 Desktop PC w/ 17'' LCD Monitor with 2.2 GHz Intel Celeron Processor 450

$498.00

http://www.walmart.com/Dell-Inspiron-530-Desktop-PC-17-Inch-LCD/ip/10828735



HP Firebird w/ VoodooDNA 802 Desktop PC w/ Intel Core 2 Quad Processor w/ $100.00 Bonus Gift Card Bundle

$948.00

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=11019320



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Gnizmo on 03 June 2009

nightsurge said:

Then I find that very hard to believe you are getting above 20 FPS for those settings.  Download FRAPS and run it while playing.

I do not have first hand experience with your exact card, but I have experience with a wide set of other video cards and hardware very similar.  Perhaps it is just Fallout 3 is no where near as demanding as most recent games are on the GPU.  I just had an HD 4830 and it could barely handle all my games (Red Alert 3, Crysis, Far Cry 2, Fear 2, and more) on 1680x1050 and it is much better than your video card.  The rest of my system was nearly identical to yours except my CPU was a dual core Kuma overclocked to 3.6GHz.

No one is taking me up on my challenge because there is no "retail" PC that exists which can do what I say.  Anyone can go build a PC for sub $500 to do what a PS3/360 can do, but to buy one at retail like you buy a PS3/360 you will not find anything comparable for $500.

And I'm not making up facts.  I was making my claims based on similar hardware I had used and on all the benchmarks I had seen.  The one for your card and Fallout 3 showed only 29FPS at 1680x1050 with no AA/AF and dropped even lower once those were enabled.

 I am not trying to be mean or arguemntative for the sake of being a jack-ass, but it is frustrating when someone tells you that your personal experience can't happen. I will admit I changed the game to ultra high settings after I started posting here and tooled around t see if there was a frame drop. It didn't happen then, but I was doing stuff indoors. Out doors there were noticeable drops with 8XAA and 15XAF. On high (4X and 12X from memory) there were none that I noticed.

  As for fraps, well doesn't that bog your system down like a ton? At least thats how it was explained back when my old WoW guild would talk about it. That was a few years ago so systems will have evolved and mine might take it now. I will try it later and tell you what I find. I could believe it is running at or around 30, but it certainly is not dropping to 20 on the high settings (probably did on ultra for brief snippets).  If you still don't believe me after fraps you can bug Makingmusic to come by my place and verify this is the case. I am being entirely honest here. I find shio to be as obnoxious as the next guy, but I felt I had to at least try and point out some unbiased facts.

 I do have a potential explanation. Admittedly I am not entirely up to date on the cutting edge of graphics etc. I mostly build computers for personal use, with the odd one aimed as a mid range gaming PC. So please take that into account while listening to my explanations. One thing I have noticed is places like Can You Run It seem to think my video card has 1.9 gigs of ram which is quite obviously wrong. My guess is that my video card is using some of the left over ram from my main system. Othere than that I have a quad core 2.3Ghz cpu so I should be able to handle more than a few things your set-up could not.



Starcraft 2 ID: Gnizmo 229

max power on 03 June 2009
Don86 said:
max power said:
selnor said:
LOL

@OP

Can I sit down on my couch to watch my movies? Can I sit down on my couch and play my games?
Can I play Halo 3 without a 360? Can I play Forza 3 without my 360? Or even Crackdown 2 or ODST? Halo Reach? Ninja Gaiden 2? Ninja Blade? Soul Calibur 4? Lost Odyssey?

Etc etc. I choose all of the above over £50 PC gaming.

Well, you certainly can hook up a computer to a TV.  Even play with a controller, too.

And can you play Portal Prelude?  Crysis?  Starcraft 2?  Every platform has its exclusives.  And frankly, most PC gamers are less than impressed by the 3 Halo's you mentioned, because we've played, you know, GOOD first person shooters.  :-o

 

PC > Console for FPS and RTS, mostly due to the control scheme (and history).  I prefer console for most everything else, though.

Don't you think it looks wierd for a PC to be in your living room? i think it's too big,troublesome & wierd to be placed in a living room.

No.  It's a box.  You're just used to one box and not another.  If you had a PC sitting next to your TV for 20 years and a console sitting at your desk, you'd probably be saying the opposite.  And you can even buy smaller cases that might fit better into a home entertainment unit.

 

Maximum PC even recently had a feature on building a living room PC
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/pdf_archives/may_2009_build_ultimate_tv_movie_pc



max power on 03 June 2009
txrattlesnake said:
shio said:
nightsurge said:
shio said:
Ronster316 said:
Price.

Super powered PC.............. £2000 (with upgrades constantly needed)

VS

Super powered 360.......... £129

If i can get almost everything i can on a PC for a fraction of the price, i'm gonna take the cheaper option...... More value for money.

Almost no one buys £2000 PCs. Nowadays a £400 can do a much better job at running games than any console. PC prices have decreased dramatically in the last few years. Hell, you can now build a PC that plays games better cheaper than a PS3.

Many people consider now that PC gaming is cheaper than Console gaming due to the cheaper prices of games, which are often $10-$20 less than the console versions. You also don't need to play $50 every year just to play online.

Unfortunately your argument has no merit seeing how you cannot buy a PC at retail that costs $400 and plays games anywhere near the level of the 360 or PS3.

Not many people shop around for weeks to find the most disclosed deals to make such a budget custom built PC.  Sure many people build their own PCs, but many more just buy them at retail and those never have good enough video cards for $400 or less.

Not for $400, but you can find a gaming PC for $500 at retail. A friend of mine just bought a $600 gaming laptop which easily plays better than any console.

But it doesn't matter because all the extra money you put initially in your PC will later be saved from buying the much cheaper PC games, and not having to pay for playing for online.


     I could be wrong, but I highly doubt you can find a $500.00 pc at Best Buy, Radio Shack, or Wal~Mart that will blow through Crysis on its highest settings.  If you have the technical know how, you might be able to build one, but I'm pretty sure most people don't know how to do so.

It's not like any console out now could do anything close to Crysis on its highest setting, so I'm not sure how that's really a great comparison.  How about COD4?  Build a machine that can max out COD4 at 600p widescreen resolution for $500?  Piece of cake...

(Could probably do it for significantly less than that)



haxxiy on 03 June 2009

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=65891

Here's your less-than-$500 PC running games better than any console. Actually you could exchange it's video card for a Radeon HD 4890 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127427&nm_mc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r&cm_mmc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r-_-Video+Cards-_-MSI-_-14127427 )and still be below $500



 

 

 

 

 

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Scoobes on 03 June 2009
txrattlesnake said:
These seem to be the best that Wal~Mart has for under $500.00 and under $1,000.00. How do they stack up as gaming rigs?


Dell Inspiron 530 Desktop PC w/ 17'' LCD Monitor with 2.2 GHz Intel Celeron Processor 450

$498.00

http://www.walmart.com/Dell-Inspiron-530-Desktop-PC-17-Inch-LCD/ip/10828735



HP Firebird w/ VoodooDNA 802 Desktop PC w/ Intel Core 2 Quad Processor w/ $100.00 Bonus Gift Card Bundle

$948.00

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=11019320

They're both overpiced but the HP could play all games out now on max settings (Crysis included). That Dell is a complete and utter rip-off, and would probably blow up if you put the Crysis disc to within 6 feet of it :D. I think most of the PC gamers on this site could build you a PC for that price that could easily play games. At least they come with monitors though.

Most retail systems are overpriced. It's not difficult to build a system for a lot cheaper. Here's a gaming PC for under $600 and you could probably reduce that to even less if you bought a slightly lower performance AMD GPU:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/core-2-overclock,review-31589.html




Get your Portable ID!

nightsurge on 03 June 2009

But the average person who buys a console, doesn't build PCs. That's the whole point.

You won't find a comparable retail offering of a PC that can game like a 360/PS3.

@Gnizmo
It could be your quad core that is helping, but still the test system from the benchmarks I saw were even higher than your specs. I'm not saying it's impossible, it just seems unlikely given what I have seen so far. You could very well be getting FPS in the 20's and not notice it too much. Fraps as far as I've ever used hasn't been much of a resource whore. Regardless of the outcome I'll believe you. Oh, was your card 512mb or 256mb? Because the benchmark I saw used a 256mb card, so if yours is 512mb, that could explain a lot



FKNetwork on 03 June 2009
nightsurge said:
shio said:
txrattlesnake said:


     I could be wrong, but I highly doubt you can find a $500.00 pc at Best Buy, Radio Shack, or Wal~Mart that will blow through Crysis on its highest settings.  If you have the technical know how, you might be able to build one, but I'm pretty sure most people don't know how to do so.

Most people also play their consoles on SD TVs, so yeah, you definitely don't need a powerful PC to match most consoles.

  HDTV adoption is growing every day!  Over 1/3 of US households now have one.

 

Same as the UK, one in three now own a HDTV, they no longer sell non-hd tv's in shops at all,

And also, the UK's biggest PC superstore (PC World) is closing many of its stores, a hint of whats to come?



Gnizmo on 03 June 2009
nightsurge said:
But the average person who buys a console, doesn't build PCs. That's the whole point.

You won't find a comparable retail offering of a PC that can game like a 360/PS3.

@Gnizmo
It could be your quad core that is helping, but still the test system from the benchmarks I saw were even higher than your specs. I'm not saying it's impossible, it just seems unlikely given what I have seen so far. You could very well be getting FPS in the 20's and not notice it too much. Fraps as far as I've ever used hasn't been much of a resource whore. Regardless of the outcome I'll believe you. Oh, was your card 512mb or 256mb? Because the benchmark I saw used a 256mb card, so if yours is 512mb, that could explain a lot

Its a 512 256 bit card. It is the high end of the 3800 series as I recall which probably skews the results. As for FRAPS, well it more or less confirms my story. Indoors on high I get 55-60 FPS. Outside its closer to 50-60 and dips as low as 40 ifI start chucking a lot of grenades and land mines. This is with 4X AA and 8X AF (remembered wrong earlier). Ultra I might test later, but outside I was definitely getting drops to at least 20 if not below.

 Edit: It is the 3870 not the 3850. My mistake.



Starcraft 2 ID: Gnizmo 229

Don86 on 04 June 2009
max power said:
Don86 said:
max power said:
selnor said:
LOL

@OP

Can I sit down on my couch to watch my movies? Can I sit down on my couch and play my games?
Can I play Halo 3 without a 360? Can I play Forza 3 without my 360? Or even Crackdown 2 or ODST? Halo Reach? Ninja Gaiden 2? Ninja Blade? Soul Calibur 4? Lost Odyssey?

Etc etc. I choose all of the above over £50 PC gaming.

Well, you certainly can hook up a computer to a TV.  Even play with a controller, too.

And can you play Portal Prelude?  Crysis?  Starcraft 2?  Every platform has its exclusives.  And frankly, most PC gamers are less than impressed by the 3 Halo's you mentioned, because we've played, you know, GOOD first person shooters.  :-o

 

PC > Console for FPS and RTS, mostly due to the control scheme (and history).  I prefer console for most everything else, though.

Don't you think it looks wierd for a PC to be in your living room? i think it's too big,troublesome & wierd to be placed in a living room.

No.  It's a box.  You're just used to one box and not another.  If you had a PC sitting next to your TV for 20 years and a console sitting at your desk, you'd probably be saying the opposite.  And you can even buy smaller cases that might fit better into a home entertainment unit.

 

Maximum PC even recently had a feature on building a living room PC
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/pdf_archives/may_2009_build_ultimate_tv_movie_pc

it's still not a conventional PC.I am sure most people wont go through the trouble to find and build it as another reason is that there is not much party friendly/local multiplayer games like consoles and u will be the entire TV for yourself. Great if you live alone, but what about those with family members? and if i'm not wrong for this kind of casing, the PSU selection available will quite limited in power capping the option to upgrade it..