The Glade 4.0

You can play those all fine at mid level graphics. To actually play the games as they were meant to be played, you need a much more powerful and expensive machine. Consoles are the same across the board, so you get the highest level of performance for a much lower price.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

But if consoles are the point of comparison, all the PC needs to manage to equal them is (typically) 1280x720 (720p) with 2x AA. So, yes, midlevel settings are "how the game was meant to be played" if you're contending that PC games and consoles offer comparable quality.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

More like $120-140, but still, that's a slightly older card. The big advantage PCs have going for them is they are generally superior in graphics to a console...IF you've got something reasonably new and fast. Dragon Age on a PS3 running at 1080p looks way better than Dragon Age running on a single 4850 where you have to choose between graphics quality and framerates. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather play it on a PC...but I better be running it at 1080p with every single graphical quality slider MAXXED, or **** it, I'll play on the PS3.



In general, I agree...although the home theater sound you're getting out of the receiver you already had before you bought your PS3 is superior.



Mid-range dual-core processors aren't even fine for casual computer use. My god my Core Duo laptop is getting slow for current use, and I barely game on it.



...I had filled up in 2004. Seriously?



If you're playing at anything less than 1080p (1920x1080) you're probably going to see better graphical quality on the PS3, at which point you've defeated the advantage of PC gaming. If I could afford it, i'd be going with a 2560x1600 monitor on my next computer.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Just a couple points:

1. The xbox uses essentially a Radeon 18xx series GPU, the PS3 uses a GForce 78XX GPU, if the 4850 is long in the tooth, the consoles are dead and buried -- granted I understand that you can get more out of the console GPUs because everything both hardware and software is optimized for pure gaming performance.

2. I can't speak to your experience with your core2 duo laptop, but as I noted above, mine is working fine for the games I noted. FYI it has a Radeon 4650...the 4850 would be a noticeable step up. Also, I can't make the screen any bigger so I'm stuck at 1600x900.

3. There is no reason today to only have a 250 GB hard drive, but I used up until last year at that size. Granted, I didn't have anything on it but Windows, Office and games.

4. I do have a better gaming box (Phenom II 940, Radeon 4870 (soon to be replaced with a 5870 I think), extreme gamer pro sound, etc.) that I can use when I want to turn up the bells and whistles...it's just that it's out in the garage where it is mighty nippy these days. Hence I've been keeping snuggy warm with my above noted laptop.

Which is rendered at 720p and upscaled to your TV?

Hi, you're wrong.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Such vitriol here.

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Holy shitsnacks!

**** elitists, man.

I kid, I kid.

Inorite.

The only true elitists here are the ones with the Black X360s.

Everyone else is just a poser.

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Holy shitsnacks!

My system with an 8800 GTS plays DA:O and Bioshock 2 on max settings without any choppiness or other problems. I don't have a frames per second count, because I couldn't care less about that

Dudes and Dudettes, you're still arguing about the worth of the single (okay, some can play movies too) purpose consoles against the versatile PCs? Wasn't this argument settled decades ago?

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I think the rift ultimately comes down to:

Does the enjoyment I derive from the more singular purpose of a console (although not so singular now that they have incorporated multi-media components) overshadow my enjoyment from the more versatile PC?

That answer ultimately determines what camp you fall into.

Personally, I enjoy them both for what they each bring to the table. My PC is my workhorse (I hardly game on it now that I have quit MMOs, and because Diablo 3 isn't out till 2066), and my console is my game machine. I value them each pretty equally.

2666 actually . . .

I don't own a console at this point, last one I bought was a PS2 and my daughter has that, because well, I bought it for her.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Well, the system I threw together a couple pages ago, really would handily outperform the consoles in gaming.

This really only applies if you can only afford one or the other. Then the PC wins hands down just because it's useful for things other than games.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

(1) The PS3 is completely capable of full 1080p. If an occasional game doesn't take advantage of it, that's not the PS3's fault.
(2) 720p upscaled to 1080p > anything less than 1080p. You're undervaluing the upscaling process, which is really wonderful. Hell, a DVD upscalled to 1080p > a blueray running at 720p.

I'm a PC gamer. I own all of two games on PS3, both for my kids. I've rented a few, Dragon Age being one of them. It was gorgeous. I've seen Dragon Age on nice PC, decked out, and it's better.

A $600 computer is not a "nice pc," and can't hold a candle to PS3 gaming.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Who cares, Gran Turismo 5 will never be on PC. I have to own both.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Yes, the console hardware is far inferior to what's in a PC. Hell, the original XBox had 64 megabytes of memory TOTAL, when computers were at a gigabyte of system memory and 128 megs of video memory.

And for almost a year it made PC games look fugly.

You cannot use the hardware comparisons to compare the actual output.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Completely false. My 720p content looks noticeably better than any 480p content upscaled to 720p or even 1080p.

Yes, upscaled DVD's look much better than they do at 480p. But they are nowhere near as good looking as native 720/1080 content.

Also, I've only got a Radeon 4830, but I ran Dragon Age: Origins at 1920 X 1080 (Graphics detail - High, 2X AA, and Max Texture detail) with no problems at all. Same thing for Mass Effect 2. So a 4850, with a good quad-core CPU should be fine for a little while longer, at least.

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

I have no problems building a $600 PC that will run games at a higher resolution and faster framerate than a PS3 or 360 can.

Somehow, I don't think so.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6986 ... /Practice/

This system is about equal to the one you were linking earlier (apart from the video card, which was close). And it's pathetic...you're seeing framerates in the thirties even with the eye-candy disabled and running at 1280x1024.

Setting that to 1920x1200 with all the details set to maximum (which is the point it will finally look better than the PS3) is not going to be even playable.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Of course, keeping in mind that the PS3 version outputs at 1280x720, and rarely even gets up to 30fps in Dragon Age?

Being able to run it on PC at 1280x1024 alone, and keep above 30fps is a BIG jump over what the PS3 does (I've seen moments where the PS3 version of Dragon age drops to sub 15fps). The 360 version has a bit better framerate than the PS3, but at an even bigger hit to texture quality than the PS3 version already suffers.

(1) No, it's internally rendering at 720p, it's outputting in full, glorious 1080p (which is like having an insanely good FSAA function turned on, essentially).
(2) There were a couple places, apparently (less than a half dozen in the game, for only a few seconds), where the PS3 framerates dropped below 20. This was so rare and so short it was hardly noticeable. The modal framerate for the game (and it maintains it through the majority of play) is 60fps, running at 1920x1080.




No, that's not being able to keep it above 30fps. That's the average (mean) framerate. You're comparing your system's median against the PS3's minimum.

Also, note that the 360's native textures are equal to the medium texture quality on PC. (I am assuming the PS3 is somewhat higher than that?) You aren't running with high texture quality on the $600 box.

Don't for a second try to pretend anything but an actual gaming PC can even begin to compare with the console for appearance and fluidity. Yes, a PC can surpass a console, but not for $600.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Which explains the incredible jaggies I see.

BTW, most PS3 and 360 games BY FAR output at 720p, and leave it to your display to convert to 1080p.

Some games don't even render at 720p. Halo 3 rendered at like 640p before upconverting to 720p, Call of Duty 4 on both systems rendered at 600p and upconverted to 720p. Ghostbusters on the PS3 went down to like 570something. There are some that suggest that with the vast majority of games outputting at 720p, it's often better to have a 720p display, because some 1080p displays do a lousy job at converting from 720p to 1080p.

Hell, the PS3 has like poor to zero capability to scale vertically, which is why some games render at half the horizontal resolution, and upscale horizontally only.

Just because your display shows that it's running at 1080p doesn't mean that's the signal it's getting.



This is just blatantly wrong. The number of reports on the framerate in the PS3 was so numerous, people were hoping it would get patched.

Very, very few games on the PS3 (or 360) even attempt 60fps. Call of Duty is one of the rare exceptions, and they achieve 60fps by rendering at 600p. Uncharted won virtually every graphical and technical award for 2009, and it only runs at 30fps.

As for Dragon Age, with maybe 2 characters on the screen, it might almost get 30 fps on the PS3. Dips below 20 happened anytime there was a serious battle or spellcasting on the screen, and really insane moments pushed it to below 15.