Imo tech sites create the impression that hardware is far earlier outdated than it really is. For example because it's benchmark bar looks tiny compared to a 1080TI SLI pair or that it's just no longer listed, but the reviews gloat about the improvements new hardware brings.
The potato masher is roughly a computer from 2010 still trucking (with a fairly inexpensive new GPU).
That is true, and some of those disingenuous bar graphs really piss me off. Some sites go the Polygon route and start the bar at some arbitrary point greater than 0 to make the lines skewed. On top of that, even my GPU(780Ti paired with a 6800k oc) is starting to go missing from some comparisons when it still runs the majority of games great at 1440p. I see a plethora of older hardware when they try to push games at 4k on cards that obviously shouldn't even be attempting it in the first place, as if they're advertising for Nvidia.
Sorry for the slight rage derail.
I would say quite a few just because games are generally built with consoles in mind, and if you want to be able to build current gen games, but want a PC...you'd definitely build your pc around equivalent PC performance.
Fair enough. I have never personally even thought about consoles when I upgrade or price a build for my friends. I guess there are some out there though.
People that want to play the latest games on PC for the lowest price? The actual graphical quality added above the console baseline is usually not proportional to the additional resources invested, because the game assets and effects are not primarily designed for higher resolutions. The mileage varies a lot between titles, of course.
The the added value above console level might be worse than a simple benchmark points per dollar calculation would suggest.
Chasing graphical fidelity above consoles is a losing race against currency anyway because of the reasons that you stated. Performance is the biggest boon IMO. Just trying to match console will have you upgrading sooner than if you spent an extra $30-50 on a step up, especially on cpu/card as games are becoming increasingly performance hungry, especially the ridiculous VRAM requirements for some games that run fine with only slight downgrades on consoles.
You addressed my edit in your edit lol.
Im not trying to bring controversy, but comparing a build to a console isn't as valuable as comparing a build to benchmarks or other PCs to hit a target performance level IMO. I guess it's something that crosses the extremely budget conscious buyer's mind though.
