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[bootski]

Why can't people with PCs compare graphics chips and people with consoles compare consoles? Why this sudden shift?

i think this generation, for the first time ever open to true comparison. they're running x86 architecture, video cards that have off the shelf type performance and can be challenged on a 1:1 scale by DIY'ers.

for the test itself, i don't think it's going to be competitive within the first year or so of that console being out unless you also count in the cost of savings on software. after that first year (maybe less) though, the pc will quickly outpace the console counterpart.

 

[MRORANGE]

Right now?

For £100 you can get something that's equivalent to Xbox One GPU.

For £130 you can get something that's equivalent to PS4 GPU.

 

[nib95]

Right now?

For £100 you can get something that's equivalent to Xbox One GPU.

For £130 you can get something that's equivalent to PS4 GPU.

But that doesn't mean either GPU will perform as well in a real world scenario as the next gen console versions of the said games.

 

[Qassim]

I didn't say it was an attack on consoles, I said it was a flawed article. I have a gaming PC, I have no problems with gaming on PC, But that line essentially invalidates the rest of the article.

Not really. The premise of the article isn't "here's a GPU that could see you through the next generation of consoles" - it's just "how cheap can we match the performance of current next-gen games".

 

[alexandros]

But that doesn't mean either GPU will perform as well in a real world scenario as the next gen console versions of the said games.

Actually, it does.

 

[SapientWolf]

Honestly just wait a year you'll be able to smoke next gen consoles at a more than reasonable price.

I think Europeans just get screwed on PC hardware prices in general. You can get a full up OC'd 270x in the states for around $200, and that's with bit mining inflation.

I don't think we're going to see hardware like that become obsolete this gen, and it's because devs will have to create multiplatform games and engines with the XBO in mind. If devs got a 2x speedup out of future optimizations it would only put the XBO on par with the 270x. And that's assuming that none of the optimizations would benefit the 270x as well, despite the similar architecture.

 

[StevieP]

But that doesn't mean either GPU will perform as well in a real world scenario as the next gen console versions of the said games.

It could potentially perform worse or better. It depends on the development processes, time, money, etc on every version. Let's be real - anyone building a PC with a 270, for example, is not going to power their PC with a couple jaguar CPUs

 

[kamorra]

Actually, it does.

Actually, you don't know that.

 

[grandwizard]

Wait for next gen games, not cross gen ports. Once Division and Witcher 3 hits, people who thought they are set for this gen with current hardware are in for a rude awakening. #truthfact
I'm still on my 660 but I not so naive about the future.

It really shouldn't matter much whether the games are ports or only on next-gen, the point is directly comparing power between the two to see where PC hardware stands. And since multiplatform games in the future won't be taking advantage of specific features on either console side (like an exclusive would), it will be similar in the future.

I also don't think current hardware is going to carry through the gen, but this article and comparison is good at showing it won't take long for affordable mid range cards to have a great advantage in power, one that would match or overcome performance benefits that come from coding on a closed system.

I'm on a 660 also, and I know for sure it won't stand up to next-gen software.

 

[delta25]

Building a computer around console specs is just a stupid idea. I'm not really sure why people continue to draw up these dumb comparisons, building an open-box platform based on a close-box environment is just all kinds of dumb if you ask me.

 

[alexandros]

Actually, you don't know that.

Did you read the article?

 

[kamorra]

Did you read the article?

This gen started two months ago.

 

[KAL2006]

Right now?

For £100 you can get something that's equivalent to Xbox One GPU.

For £130 you can get something that's equivalent to PS4 GPU.

For £200 you can probably get something that will beat the PS4 comfortably throughout the generation. Add a 4670k CPU which you can get for £170. And a Mobo upgrade for £70. So a PC upgrade for £440 would destroy the PS4. Of course if you don't want have a old PC to upgrade, to start from scratch it would cost £550-£600 for a PC to beat a PS4 throughout the whole generation. Personally I think it is worth it to get into PC gaming, the savings from Steam sales is insane, you have to experience it to understand, 2 months ago before I got into PC gaming recently, when GAF kepp mentioning Steam sales I didnt think it was a big deal, but then this christman Sale converted me into a PC gamer.

 

[alexandros]

This gen started two months ago.

Ok, then when you do have proof of the opposite you make sure to let me know and I'll gladly concede your point. Until then I will go by the facts we do have at hand.

 

[TheCloser]

That's just as flawed a comparison because PC hardware manufacturers aren't willing to subsidize you because you're not paying an asinine second Internet-usage fee. Don't conflate your gaming preferences with facts either, btw, as while you and I may like certain exclusives the amount on PC greatly eclipses any other platform

There are 3 things wrong with this post:

1) Don't assume to know about my gaming preferences.

2) Console manufacturers are not subsidizing costs at all. The BOM of both next gen consoles is less than their retail price. They are both charging for online so the cost of owning these devices over their lifetime will be far greater than cost of bringing the device to the market.

3) if you had read my post and tried to understand it instead of typing without thinking, you would see that I was simply countering a troll post with a troll response of my own. It's not an attack on PC gaming so yea.

Finally, no matter how much your gpu costs, it's never being utilized to its potential. You can have a titan or a 780ti or whatever. Unless the game was developed to take advantage of the strengths of your gpu, it won't be used to its potential.

 

[Foxyone]

Won't the two strong parts of a PC (GPU + CPU) probably hold up fairly well to PS4's gimped CPU in the future? Even with GPGPU, isn't that something that PCs will start doing as well?

 

[Delusibeta]

I think an engine programmer who is actually in the industry would have a better understanding on this subject. You really have no idea how insecure you come across with these posts.

AFAIK she was talking about the Xbone in that tweet.

 

[alexandros]

Won't the two strong parts of a PC (GPU + CPU) probably hold up fairly well to PS4's gimped CPU in the future? Even with GPGPU, isn't that something that PCs will start doing as well?

Yes.

 

[Skeff]

Not really. The premise of the article isn't "here's a GPU that could see you through the next generation of consoles" - it's just "how cheap can we match the performance of current next-gen games".

the title is: "Can a £100 PC graphics card match next-gen console?"

No word of "current next-gen games" in the title question, which is what the reader expects to be answered in the article.

The article is also flawed in using two games with a 30fps framerate cap on console, they don't really say much other than add fodder to the total.

Not to mention the tests are running on an i7 3770k clocked at 4.3Ghz.

The other 2 games are CoD, where the PS4 out performs the 260X and BF4 where the PS4 performance is between the i7 and the AMD CPU.

The article is about as good as the PS4 and XB1 are about the same article Digital foundry ran using off the shelf PC parts.

 

[ScepticMatt]

the question isn't if, but when. Though usually the best performance per dollar is around the $150 Mark, or maybe 200 if you calculate deprication.

 

[Apophis2036]

Is there anything on PC outside of Crysis 3 that looks as good as Killzone Shadow Fall, Ryse and Infamous Second Son ? And these are year one exclusive games. I'm genuinely interested.

 

[KAL2006]

Steambox is unappealing now, but by 2016, I reckon we can get a Steambox with superior graphics than a PS4 for £350. Maybe perhaps we will get Mantle by then as well. Of course for us Gaffers we all know just building a decent rig is superior, and by 2016 we would be able to build something great. I personally would upgrade my GPU (7870) and thats it.

 

[kartu]

Ok, then when you do have proof of the opposite you make sure to let me know and I'll gladly concede your point. Until then I will go by the facts we do have at hand.

Insane graphics in The Last of Us is enough of a proof.
That coding to the metal magic does exist.

 

[kamorra]

Ok, then when you do have proof of the opposite you make sure to let me know and I'll gladly concede your point. Until then I will go by the facts we do have at hand.

Haha, ok. Let's see how these midrange cards will hold up in one or two years.

 

[alexandros]

Insane graphics in The Last of Us is enough of a proof.
That coding to the metal magic does exist.

As with real-life magic, it's just an illusion. A collection of tricks, cut corners and sacrifices in order to hide a machine's deficiencies and amplify its advantages.

 

[Foxyone]

Is there anything on PC outside of Crysis 3 that looks as good as Killzone Shadow Fall, Ryse and Infamous Second Son ? And these are year one exclusive games. I'm genuinely interested.

Nothing has been made for those kinds of specs yet, no thanks to PS360. PS4 / X1 will have a head start when it comes to good-looking games because games are finally being made for better hardware. Even though PC could probably crush the consoles in terms of graphics, there's nothing yet to prove it; the power is lying dormant.

 

[Alienous]

As with real-life magic, it's just an illusion. A collection of tricks, cut corners and sacrifices in order to hide a machine's deficiencies and amplify its advantages.

Naturally. But games are founded on illusion.

At least until things are created and rendered on a molecular level.

 

[Foxyone]

As with real-life magic, it's just an illusion. A collection of tricks, cut corners and sacrifices in order to hide a machine's deficiencies and amplify its advantages.

It's amazing what can be done when all the important assets are in a space the size of my dorm room.

 

[Skeff]

As an added detail 260X running Tomb Raider 1080p FXAA, two OC editions of the 260X:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfB3cD4zmTw

One average 32fps, the other 35 fps.

Like I said, launch game optimizations are pitiful for the next gen consoles.

 

[phosphor112]

As expected, the "console optimizations" and "coding to the metal" myths are disproved yet again by hard facts. Let that sink in for a moment: a brand new console with a "supercharged PC architecture" is matched at launch by a £100 lower-midrange graphics card. Heh.

Funny man.
An i7-3770k @ 4.3GHz, 16GB of DDR3 RAM and a R7 260X is giving the same performance as a PS4. When playing BF4 at 900p.

Bragging rights indeed.

 

[Evolution_1ne]

No

 

[AJLma]

Why can't people with PCs compare graphics chips and people with consoles compare consoles? Why this sudden shift?

This is the first time that consoles and performance PC's have been so close in price and performance. An XB1 or PS4 with a couple of controllers, a few games, and PSN or XBL is a $500-$800 investment out of the gate. For roughly a $700 investment, you can build a 3+ Teraflop, quad-core PC.

Add another $200 to that budget and you can have an enormously powerful 8-core/8-thread machine with a 4+ Teraflop GPU that will obliterate whatever console ports will be coming out likely within the entire generation.

The PS4 is a great priceerformance value when compared to PC, and will easily hold its own for the next 2-3 years, but the same can't be said about the XB1. PC included, these are all gaming systems within roughly the same price range, it makes perfect sense to compare them.

 

[not_so_special]

As expected, the "console optimizations" and "coding to the metal" myths are disproved yet again by hard facts. Let that sink in for a moment: a brand new console with a "supercharged PC architecture" is matched at launch by a £100 lower-midrange graphics card. Heh.

this must be a joke

 

[StevieP]

There are 3 things wrong with this post:

1) Don't assume to know about my gaming preferences.

2) Console manufacturers are not subsidizing costs at all. The BOM of both next gen consoles is less than their retail price. They are both charging for online so the cost of owning these devices over their lifetime will be far greater than cost of bringing the device to the market.

3) if you had read my post and tried to understand it instead of typing without thinking, you would see that I was simply countering a troll post with a troll response of my own. It's not an attack on PC gaming so yea.

Finally, no matter how much your gpu costs, it's never being utilized to its potential. You can have a titan or a 780ti or whatever. Unless the game was developed to take advantage of the strengths of your gpu, it won't be used to its potential.

Don't look at BOM estimates on the net. Losses are losses. And they are losses. Not insignificant ones in some cases.

And you can always utilize hardware to make a game look better. For example, look at the difference between bf4 on its tri-GPU reveal trailer and on ps4.

 

[Foxyone]

Funny man.
An i7-3770k @ 4.3GHz, 16GB of DDR3 RAM and a R7 260X is giving the same performance as a PS4. When playing BF4 at 900p.

Bragging rights indeed.

Can't expect us to put laptop CPUs inside our gaming machines. While a PS4 can have a strong GPU, that's all; a PC can have a strong GPU and CPU.

 

[mothball]

this must be a joke

Nope. Just one of the many reasons I don't associate with PC gamers on GAF, even if I almost never play on a console.

 

[grandwizard]

This is the first time that consoles and performance PC's have been so close in price and performance. An XB1 or PS4 with a couple of controllers, a few games, and PSN or XBL is a $500-$800 investment out of the gate. For roughly a $700 investment, you can build a 3+ Teraflop, quad-core PC.

Add another $200 to that budget and you can have an enormously powerful 8-core/8-thread machine with a 4+ Teraflop GPU that will obliterate whatever console ports will be coming out likely within the entire generation.

The PS4 is a great priceerformance value when compared to PC, and will easily hold its own for the next 2-3 years, but the same can't be said about the XB1. PC included, these are all gaming systems within roughly the same price range, it makes perfect sense to compare them.

Well said. It is good knowledge for planning as well, with these comparisons you can get a better idea of what your money will get with PC builds regarding console ports in the near future. I wish people would stop looking at it as an attack on consoles, the fixed hardware in a console box is always going to be the same. That fight is done. These comparisons are relevant to the rate at which the PC will advance in relation to them, it doesn't take anything away from the Xbone or PS4.

 

[Glorified G]

this must be a joke

It isn't. Connie Yu has no idea what she's talking about. At all.

Nope. Just one of the many reasons I don't associate with PC gamers on GAF, even if I almost never play on a console.

Don't brand a majority of a community with a few obnoxious members. PC Gaf for the most part is pretty good, especially during steam sales.

 

[Jams775]

Is there anything on PC outside of Crysis 3 that looks as good as Killzone Shadow Fall, Ryse and Infamous Second Son ? And these are year one exclusive games. I'm genuinely interested.

I can only think of 2. Star Citizen and Arma 3. But Arma 3 may not look as amazing, but it makes up for it in size and scope of the world. I guess I could say like Planetside 2, but that's going to be a PS4 game too. There are games out there, but not many. Like everyone is saying, we have to wait for consoles to get better because most developers still don't want to make games PC first.

 

[Spaghetti]

Pretty much look at what PS4 Tomb Raider is doing giving PC something to think about

poor comparison, there's nothing going on with the definitive version of tomb raider that couldn't be done on pc, it's just that the ps4/xbo ports had some effort put into them to utilise the new hardware rather than just slapping the pc version on high settings onto a disk and calling it a day

 

[phosphor112]

Can't expect us to put laptop CPUs inside our gaming machines. While a PS4 can have a strong GPU, that's all; a PC can have a strong GPU and CPU.

I think you missed the point.

A "laptop CPU" and a GPU that is weaker than the GPU demonstrated for the BF4 demo is producing the same results as a 320 dollar CPU and 150 dollar GPU. Those two alone exceed the cost of a PS4.

 

[AJLma]

Is there anything on PC outside of Crysis 3 that looks as good as Killzone Shadow Fall, Ryse and Infamous Second Son ? And these are year one exclusive games. I'm genuinely interested.

Metro: Last Light looks better than all of those games including Crysis 3 IMO at 1440p.

I'd say the only advantage any of them have is more advanced character modeling.

 

[Foxyone]

I think you missed the point.

A "laptop CPU" and a GPU that is weaker than the GPU demonstrated for the BF4 demo is producing the same results as a 320 dollar CPU and 150 dollar GPU. Those two alone exceed the cost of a PS4.

It's a good result for the PS4, although BF4 supposedly uses 95% of the CPU already, so even this launch game is stressing it, whereas even an i7 will have much longer legs in the future.


I found someone's BF4 benchmark with a i3 4130 mimic (2 cores / 2 threads of an i7 4770) + 7770 OC (although it's slightly weaker than 260x), if that's a little more fair in terms of the CPU power.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR2JbM7-5uI&feature=youtu.be

Running at 1080p (Turned off Motion Blur and Blur when aiming with Weapon)
►LOW Settings: FPS AVG = 73 Gameplay captured on LOW only
►MEDIUM Settings: FPS AVG = 64
►HIGH Settings: FPS AVG = 40
►ULTRA Settings: FPS AVG = 28

 

[Danneee]

Perhaps... but we all know that, let's say a 2017 Battlefield 6, will run much better on the PS4 or XBO, compared to a GPU that matches the PS4 or XBO GPU.

Why? Optimization... more acces to the hardware... just one configuration for developers (instead of thousands of different hardware configurations).

This, always this.

It's a good result for the PS4, although BF4 supposedly uses 95% of the CPU already, so even this launch game is stressing it, whereas even an i7 will have much longer legs in the future.

Just because something uses a lot of something else doesn't mean it uses it well. I'm sure you could program a Tetris clone for the ps4 that used 95% of the CPU.

 

[Zeth]

130 will do it. Give it 6 months and $99 will be more than enough.

 

[BradleyLove]

130 will do it. Give it 6 months and $99 will be more than enough.

What about the rest of the PC?

When it's all said and done, you can't buy a PC for £350 that out-performs a PS4.

 

[NBtoaster]

the title is: "Can a £100 PC graphics card match next-gen console?"

No word of "current next-gen games" in the title question, which is what the reader expects to be answered in the article.

The article is also flawed in using two games with a 30fps framerate cap on console, they don't really say much other than add fodder to the total.

The article is concerned with practical performance. Games being capped on console is not relevant. It's obviously about current next-gen games, no need to say it.

 

[GhostTrick]

A better comparison would've been something on par with PS4 GPU. HD7790 is basically on par with Xbox One GPU in terms of shader count and ROP.
So, I think a GPU such as HD7850 or HD7870 would have produced better results/test.

 

[Qassim]

What about the rest of the PC?

When it's all said and done, you can't buy a PC for £350 that out-performs a PS4.

I don't think anyone is arguing that. For some reason people seem to try and interpret this article as some sort of attack on consoles - to me it just looks like "What's the least amount of money you can spend on a graphics card to get console like performance using the currently released games out there as a test" - this is what the article did. If you want to pick at a headline, then you don't understand the point of a headline. It isn't "summarise this article".

People seem to be dreaming up an agenda for the article even despite the article clarifying that they're not claiming this will outlast a console, they're not saying this invalidates consoles as a cheaper entry into gaming - but people keep trying to suggest it is.

When you point out that the article is clarifying this - you get "well that's just them telling you the article is wrong!" well no, that's just them making sure people understand the point of the article. Which if your mind is so set on there being an agenda behind it, this clearly doesn't do much to change that as shown in this thread.

 

[KKRT00]

As an added detail 260X running Tomb Raider 1080p FXAA, two OC editions of the 260X:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfB3cD4zmTw

One average 32fps, the other 35 fps.

Like I said, launch game optimizations are pitiful for the next gen consoles.

Have You missed this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnw1fxws4n4&feature=player_detailpage#t=113

Sure lack of tressFX, but Definite Edition has different implementation.

-------------

Funny man.
An i7-3770k @ 4.3GHz, 16GB of DDR3 RAM and a R7 260X is giving the same performance as a PS4. When playing BF4 at 900p.

Bragging rights indeed.

You have not read article carefully it seems:

"To investigate, we plant the 260X into another PC built from AMD parts, this time containing a hex-core FX-6300 CPU (£85 as of writing), plus a more typical allocation of 8GB DDR3 system RAM.

And there are differences, if not vast in scale. While Need for Speed Rivals and Assassin's Creed 4 stay firmly locked to the 30fps line, as before, Battlefield 4 is a trickier customer. The Frostbite 3 engine is known for deferring tasks across multiple cores, and in this case we see physics and alpha effects dragging the frame-rate down to 52fps during a big explosion on the Baku stage - giving a 13 per cent lead to the Intel chip at 60fps. This is running the game on high settings at 900p, but fortunately, regular play on the AMD chip unfolds at much the same 60fps rate. We should also point out that the tests were run on Windows 7, where an upgrade to the latter Microsoft operating system should improve results still further."


============

Also its funny how people here talk that launch optimizations are irrelevant, when there are threads with 60 pages about how optimized are PS4 and Xbone builds ...