That's right: the fight of the century! Not a fourth round of Ali-Frasier from beyond the grave, we're talking PC vs. Console! New GPUs and new consoles just dropped late last year, and now its starting to get to the point where you might be able to snag one of them soon. 6/6. PC: You can upgrade components in the futureMy RTX 2080 Super is powerful, it beats out the PS5 and goes toe-to-toe with the Xbox Series X. However, once developers start adding more visual effects such as more detailed ray tracing or hair models, you'll need more power to fully enjoy them. Unfortunately, these effects will have to be dialed back to run on old console hardware: Final Fantasy XV runs on the OG PS4 and Xbox One, but it also only runs at around 60-70 FPS at 1440p (or 4K with DLSS) with all the settings maxed out on my 2080 Super. This is how I know there must have been some cuts to make that game run on the Xbox One. Let's say my 2080 Super starts getting long in the tooth, I can swap it out for a newer card. You can't do that on a console 5/6. Console: GPUs alone cost more than a new console$400 buys you a PS5 digital edition. What GPU does that buy you? An RTX 3060 Ti if you can find one. Once you manage to get one of these, you still have to build a system around it. CPU, PSU, case, drives, motherboard, and now we're talking at least a full grand! Sure, the 3060 Ti is more powerful than the PS5, but not 2.5 times as powerful (probably not even 1.5 times). Save some money and buy a console. The Xbox Series S is even cheaper at $300. 4/6. PC: You get a PC, not just a gaming machineYou heard it your first: you do things other than gaming on your PC. WOW! Documents load quickly, quick boots, you can have lots of browser tabs running, bloatware doesn't affect you as much. These all come from generous amounts of RAM, SSDs, and powerful CPUs. Just because it's a gaming PC doesn't mean it isn't a fast work PC. Now you can comfortably abuse Chromium's tab feature (we know you do). 3/6. Console: Optimized gamesConsoles don't have Skype or Chrome running in the background. They don't have Windows Update chewing up bandwidth, disk, and RAM. Spec-wise, my PC should crush the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, thanks to the 2080 Super's Tensor Cores and superior RT Cores. However, I am not too sure this will be true for the Xbox, due its more streamlined software-hardware stack compared to Windows 10 gaming PCs. 2/6. PC: If you do any computationally-intensive programming, build immediatelyThis is the biggest surprise boon I got from my PC. It let me do AI work, heavy-duty numerical methods, and quickly build software from the source. I never could have done this stuff efficiently on the aging titan that was my Optiplex 960. For a machine built in 2008, 8GB of RAM and four cores is insane. For 2019, however, it was a little on the low end for what I wanted to do. Now I can tear through models that I wouldn't have dared run on my dinosaur. Not that they'd run without some finagling, Tensorflow requires the AVX instruction set. I admit, my example is quite extreme, AVX has been around since 2010. However, that doesn't mean the models would have run well, I multiplied my raw GPU power by approximately 35 times, and my CPU is about eight times as powerful in the best-case scenario. Single-core speeds are about 2-3 times better, which makes a massive difference when experimenting with software, as during experimentation you usually don't take the time to multi-thread. 1/6. Console: The Couch FactorYou can play video games on your couch. You can watch movies on your couch. Games, movies, on the couch. Games. Movies. Couch. Firing up a game as you sink into the cushions, hands wrapped around the controller, a device designed with a single purpose: comfortably interfacing with games. You put your feet up, and have a great time. Who would want to watch a movie on their computer? Ugh, so plebian. Real men of culture use the big screen for their motion-pictures. My Xbox 360 is still going strong in this employ (no red ring of death!) and does bang-up job playing Avatar: The Last Airbender through a 1080i projector (I know. I live in 2005).
There you have it, 3 reasons for and three against buying a console and putting off building a PC. As you can see, it depends on who you are. For programmers, a PC makes a lot of sense. For casual gamers, however, a console can't be beat in terms of convenience and the price/performance ratio.
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DanielI'm a software engineer, volunteer IT support, amateur blogger, casual gamer, and tech enthusiast. I also love cars and the great outdoors. Archives
May 2021
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