Gaming Platform Showdown - PC vs Console Early 2015 Refresh
Gaming Platform Showdown - PC vs Console Early 2015 Refresh
2015-03-13
so in November of 2013 we released this
video it did a great job of covering the
differences in image quality between
consoles and PCs at the time but it's
2015 and the landscape has changed a
fair bit traditionally consoles will
increase in image quality over time as
developers get more comfortable with the
platform by learning what it can and
actually cannot do but at the same time
the cost of PC parts relative to their
performance is always going down so back
then the ps4 looked like a really
compelling gaming box with the Xbox one
being larger slower and pointing a
camera at you at all times but some of
those things have changed so has the
answer changed stay tuned to find out
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there will be five contenders the still
bulky but cheaper and no longer camera
burden to Xbox one the PlayStation 4
which evidently Sony thought was just
fine the way it was our new and improved
entry-level PC configured by STR m8 and
priced at around 400 USD and our new and
improved high-end machine priced that a
lot like 1500 or something like that and
last but not least is the thrift machine
4000 which is the combination of the
best parts of our used machines from the
scrapyard Wars series which you should
definitely watch if you haven't already
seriously it'll click this now pause
this video so you don't have to audio
tracks running go watch that one and
then come back to this one I'll wait and
the forum thread linked below this video
you'll be able to see download links for
all the raw footage taken from these
machines so you can actually see what it
actually looked like instead of seeing
it after YouTube has kind of messed with
it starting with the low-end PC it's
pros are largely based around it being
cheap whether or not you get Windows or
not you're probably gonna be some around
four hundred five hundred dollars and
then it's going to be more functional at
that cost than a console you'll be able
to game of course but you'll also be
able to stream in both directions video
editing photo editing web browsing word
editing basic office documentation all
that kind of stuff huge amounts of
functionality and if you want more from
it you can upgrade it in the future of
course this is - additional cost but if
you need more ram if you need a better
graphics card if you want more storage
for your 350 freaking steam games you
can accommodate that you can also pick
the settings for all of those games
which is actually really nice with a
console you're locked into whatever they
think is good you're not gonna be able
to change your resolution or your frame
rate or your quality settings in the
mass majority of cases whereas on a
computer you'd be able to change
everything in a mass majority of cases
which is actually quite fantastic and
you can decide if you want more
formants in terms of FPS or if you want
more nice-looking images in terms of
resolution or quality settings also
accessories are potentially a lot
cheaper but this is where the we bridge
the gap to cons because accessories for
a PC can also be quite a bit more
expensive although for the low-end PC
this is still mostly a pro it's now
moving to cons it's a PC but it's not
that great of a PC you're probably not
going to want to do a ton of likes
around gaming or anything like that on
here but that's not a huge deal there
are issues with things like longevity if
it's a low-end PC and there's some
low-end components in here like super
sketchy power supplies and other things
that may kind of fail down the road
there's also no console exclusives and
while this is a pro that you have PC
exclusives as well I don't know it's
it's also a con that you don't get to
play the console ones of course with the
used PC the pros are that it's insanely
cheap with the cheap PC we saw a very
low 400 $500 price point with used PC
you're gonna be able to easily get a
computer for 400 or less at a very high
level performance very comparable with
the low-end PC or even better in some
cases you can get a lot of these parts
if you're thrifty enough and willing to
wait possibly for free even old recycled
computers your your mom's old computer
or your friend's old computer or does
anyone who is able to drop down some
parts you can take anything from it
that's valuable maybe some extra RAM or
or just the power supply or a hard drive
or something if you Zambia parts and
computers you can save a lot of money
there and you might even be able to find
a free operating system in that process
if you find a hard drive that just
happens to come with one which is kind
of awesome because then there's
additional savings there as well and if
some people are gonna point out that the
parts might fail well if your hard drive
fails stuff like Steam Cloud is gonna be
able to preserve your save games which
is actually quite fantastic a lot of
these kind of like origin and steam and
you play and stuff
cloud save options so you don't even
really have to worry about that failing
and if you're kind of just Zomba fiying
a few computers you might have a few
extra hard drives laying around so your
get up and go time might not even be
that long that being said it's used
hardware and things might fail I know I
just said that might be okay except
maybe I'll swap things in and out but
there's the very high chance that you
won't have a spare part for whatever
just failed and if it's a hard drive I
did just say that you might have cloud
save data but you probably won't have a
backup of other things you might be able
to have multiple hard drive with but
it's very likely when you lose a hard
drive as if it's not in a proper raid or
if you don't have a proper scheduled
backup or both you're very likely gonna
be losing data which is not cool the OS
might even be pirated you don't
necessarily know unless you're getting
it from a very repeatable source and
that's another sketchy thing stuff like
the power supply in the low-end PC was a
little sketchy but you might have all
sketchy parts than you used to be see
it's just a risk the pros of high-end
pcs is that they're crazy freaking
blazing fast you'll be able to get great
image quality in any game that you play
great anti-aliasing detailing levels
great high-end video editing or high-end
content creation of any kind
realistically surround gaming with three
monitors for like sick setups with
racing or flying games or even high
demand VR where you might need 90 FPS to
go along with your 90 Hertz headset and
in very high quality as well so it's
very immersive that's really hard to do
and you might be able to do that with a
high-end PC you can also do stuff like
streaming to things like Nvidia shields
or possibly steam link down the line
although you might or might not need a
high-end PC for that we'll have to see
the cons of this at the same time though
is that while its performance is badass
it's cost is really not great it's going
to be super crazy expensive and while
you have the nice form factor of the
PlayStation 4 and the knife plays nice
form factor of the Xbox one
they're both relatively small and I'm
very high-end PC while not necessarily
it's probably going to
very large a lot of people that are
building high NPCs are building with
full towers or mid towers which are
relatively really big compared to a
Playstation 4 next up is Xbox 1 or X
bone for the people like saying it that
way it has a better camera solution than
the other console it's it's a Kinect is
actually fairly powerful although some
people might have found it annoying but
we'll talk about that later
voice control is cool voice control is a
modern way of interacting with devices
and the Xbox one has it for a ton of
different reasons and cloud servers for
a better gaming experience it's not a
thing yet either way it's a it's a
benefit for now it's also a flexible
entertainment device you can watch TV in
sports and stuff through it maybe a
little bit weird maybe not something
you're looking for but it is a benefit
of the device cons however are where the
hell is the performance increased for
the Microsoft cloud servers I just
brought this up as a pro but if we don't
really see it as much as it was kind of
toted around when they were talking
about it also voice control another
thing I just brought up as a pro doesn't
really work that well well the amount of
times that people have been trolled by
someone shouting Xbox off is insane I
wonder how many Xbox is I just turned
off it's just it's a little janky right
now voice control isn't really where it
needs to be in in general especially not
for a solution like this crazy weird
resolutions are not great something like
792p for watchdogs is just really weird
and it's gonna make it look not super
awesome in the end and in terms of
performance it's just worse than a ps4
if you're comparing directly cost of the
console it's not as powerful as a ps4
and with all consoles all modern
consoles other than I guess we you it
requires a monthly payment for online
freaking access the PlayStation 4 more
games are going to run at 1080p than the
Xbox one it doesn't have a giant power
brick like the Xbox one does which is
actually kind of nice just a drag cable
from the wall it also has very low
standby power the while running
performance power might not be super
great but your console is gonna be
sitting in standby more often than not
while you at work or school or whatever
so it's standby
power is actually quite important it
also performs better in general I know I
brought up the 1080p thing but general
performance is better than an Xbox one
and this is fairly opinionated but it's
very attractive housing it looks really
good the Xbox one is kind of clunky and
yeah it might look like certain home
theater things but the PlayStation 4
looks modern the angles look really
sharp it just looks really good overall
I'm not gonna get into controller
comparisons here because that's
extremely preference but anyways moving
on to cons the PlayStation 4 also lacks
additional functionality again compared
to the Xbox one it isn't able to do as
many kind of random small things that
the Xbox one can do it doesn't have the
nice kind of TV mode if that's something
you're looking for the camera isn't as
highly functioning it doesn't have the
same voice control kind of stuff it's
missing a lot of those things and you're
also required just like the Xbox one to
pay monthly for online access very
annoying honestly the visual fidelity on
all platforms was quite good and it was
actually a little hard to tell between a
high-end PC and an Xbox one you could
tell but you had to look pretty closely
what do you guys think be sure to check
out that footage in the video
description down below on the forum
where you can download the more high
bitrate files instead of the YouTube
compression crap which is probably what
you saw throughout this video developers
seem to be kind of harnessing these new
consoles much better but again it's a
lot easier to build a very low-end a
very affordable machine which can beat
out the consoles now which is kind of
nice for PC guys as well now another
thing shadow of mordor and Far Cry 4 may
not have been the best games to like
really push the high end PC so we'll
kind of have to see if there's other
games out there and what games would you
guys actually suggest again let me know
down in the in the comments below or
preferably over on the forum speaking of
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today alright guys so like I said
earlier the quality comparison was a lot
closer this time than it was last time
do you think that was my fault in
selection of games or do you think
that's kind of a way that the gaming
industry is going is it this giant
conspiracy that they're nerfing the PC
versions what do you guys think let me
know in the comments down below or on
the forums personally I was actually
pretty impressed with how the consoles
did although I would still personally
prefer the solution of a PC because
there's more options and things you can
do but what do you think again comes
down below on the forum while you're on
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anyways thanks for watching I'll see you
guys next time
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