Gamers.

[chesters-mild]

Sinclair ZX 81
Acorn Electron - great for Elite!
Atari 64
PS 1, 2, 3
Now PS4
Cheers

 

[Chippy_Tea]

The chasing the tail thing by the way was what I meant about the mid cycle release with the Pro and X, consoles used to be able to boast that once you bought one it was IT for quite a while before something better came out, now you buy one and 18 months later the same company releases a slightly better one.... You can't even just open up your old one and put the new bits in it, oh no, it's an entire new console... lol

The PS4 has been out several years and the update version has not been out long so even if owning the latest kit was a priority i wouldn't think I had been ripped off having bought the original PS4, I would only get the new version if mine broke as I am more than happy with it.

 

[chesters-mild]

The PS4 has been out several years and the update version has not been out long so even if owning the latest kit was a priority i wouldn't think I had been ripped off having bought the original PS4, I would only get the new version if mine broke as I am more than happy with it.

Agreed!

 

[Bevvied]

I had a wooden atari too, missile command, space invaders, adventure, etc etc.
Nothing after that until last year missus bought me a ps4 and a few games and asked family to buy me a game for chrimbo.
I'm clueless with it, I may as well be sat in front of a NASA control station on launch day.

 

[AdeDunn]

Yeah you don't need to chase it and upgrade every year.. some do I upgrade every 4 years or so and its fine

I got i5 6600k and 1060 Overclocked edition a few years ago and it will be fine for many years to come.

@AdeDunn you'res looks similar to mine, in that you appear to have a watercooled bloc and exhaust fan?

Yeah, custom loop water cooling with a 240mm copper radiator and EKWB water block. Cost more than air cooling for sure, or an all in one water cooler, but it cools far better than either. Plus unlike an all in one I can actually refill the coolant, rather than having to bin the whole thing after 5 or so years... Discovered that one with my wife's PC the other day, her temps suddenly jumped to 60 degrees C idle, 105 degrees C under load (yeah, not stable when it hit that obviously). Cleaned all her fans and radiator, re-applied the TIM, nope coolant had gone in the Corsair AIO.... She's on air now as it was the cheapest way to get the temps back down quickly. Meant I had to switch out the front panel on her PC too though, as she has a Prodigy case, and the standard front panels are naff for air movement. So it's gone from:-



To:-



With strict instructions to stop piling things up on top of the top vent... She has a really bad habit of using the top of her PC as a storage area... I can see things gathering there already again...... What is it with women and their inability to understand that you shouldn't cover the vents up on computer equipment (misogyny alert? lol)? I hated building that thing, and hate working on it, as it's an m-itx build with very limited space in there. I don't exactly have small and dainty hands.... It's even worst now there's a huge block of copper and aluminium in there.... lol

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Stick a game in it and play, ignore everything else as imho its pointless crap unless you are under 25.

Get a second hand copy of Fallout 4 or one of the Far Cry games (shouldn't cost a lot as it's been out ages) and see what you think I use to only play shooters but my taste in games has changed a lot over the years.

 

[AdeDunn]

The PS4 has been out several years and the update version has not been out long so even if owning the latest kit was a priority i wouldn't think I had been ripped off having bought the original PS4, I would only get the new version if mine broke as I am more than happy with it.

Surely the same applies with a PC gaming rig though? Only more so, as you don't even have to replace the entire system like you do with a console? One thing I will say though, the price of graphics cards has gotten VERY silly! I remember when the top end card was the GeForce 3 (no Ti etc, just 3) and I paid £300. I bit later, they brought out the Geforce 4 TI4600 and I bought one, paying £400. I thought they were expensive, but back then I could afford that kind of money... When I got my 970, it was about the best I could afford, the 980 and 980Ti were just that bit too expensive for me... Then they brought out the 1070, 1080 and 1080Ti and they wanted HOW MUCH? They're now bringing out the 2080Ti, and the thing just passed the £1000 mark.... That's the price that used to be reserved for the Titan range of "Stupidly expensive GPUs, just there for the silly people with more money than sense".... Small improvements in power, HUGE increases in price, it really is like watching Apple releases.... It's the reason I'm still using my 970... On the bright side, crypto currency mining has taken a crash finally.... I don't feel ripped of with my PS4 either, I bought what I bought. I was trying to make a comparison to make a point though. One made by a lot of console reviewers when they brought the pro and plus out at that, as consoles used to be on something like a 10 year cycle. Personally I think that's seriously slow.... But then I'm a PC gamer, 10 years is an eternity... lol

Oh and Fallout 4 is one of my favourite games. PC version though naturally, with a few mods installed. :p If however you're a huge fan of Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout NV, you'll hate Fallout 3 and 4 as a rule. Farcry I've played a bit of 3, a fair bit of Primal, played a bit of blood dragon, and own 4 but not played it yet, I've held of buying 5 though. I used to get most of my shooter kicks for Planetside 2, that game is INTENSE! Full on PVP warfare, with a learning curve best described as punishing....

I think one big draw with PC gaming is probably Steam and Humble Bundle sales. There's no other way to get such a huge library of games at such a low price. Not even the Sony sale comes close, and the monthly games you get with Gold or PSN+ were rarely that good (had both at various times), and you lose access to them if you stop your sub... Oh yeah, and what the heck is with the having to pay for a sub to play online? I pay my ISP to play online, and in some cases a sub to something like an MMO... With PS4 or Xbone (Nintendo now too...) you have to pay them too for multiplayer, it's just daft.

Meanwhile, on the same machine I game on, I also build my recipes, make posts on here, word process, design labels for my bottles, order stuff, skype people, watch Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos, edit photographs, build websites, listen to music..... Pointless crap like that. Even our kids prefer their PCs for gaming, to the consoles. Give them a choice between Infinity on the PS4 or on the PC they'll go for the PC Steam version for example, without all the toy switching.... The XBone actually sits in our teenagers bedroom, unused, waiting for me to move it into the living room where it might get used occasionally. She won't use it herself, and won't let her sisters into her room to use it either, so it sits there gathering dust....

I'm 43 by the way, and I've been gaming since I was 11 (when I got my first Spectrum +. Dan Dare was probably my first game on it... lol). I'll probably be gaming still when my kids throw my senile ass into a nursing home....

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Surely the same applies with a PC gaming rig though? Only more so, as you don't even have to replace the entire system like you do with a console?

The PS4 was released in November 2013 so its nearly 5 years old i do not remember how much i paid but it was less than a high end graphics card and if i was still building gaming PC's and built one 5 years ago i would be on my second graphics card by now as no one who is serious about their kit would be still using a 5 year old graphics card, CPU and RAM etc, so doubling/tripling the money spent.

The problem with building PC's for gaming is you can only push each component so far i remember having built my all singing and dancing rig and having played it for a while i decided to upgrade the ram and G/Card i then discovered the PSU was not up to the job so i ended up buying a much better one then later as more powerful CPU's came out i found the motherboard wouldn't take them so that had to be switched, its a brilliant hobby if you have the money and i still prefer PC gaming to consoles but budget and the type of gaming i do now mean i will be sticking to consoles.

 

[AdeDunn]

The PS4 was released in November 2013 so its nearly 5 years old i do not remember how much i paid but it was less than a high end graphics card and if i was still building gaming PC's and built one 5 years ago i would be on my second graphics card by now as no one who is serious about their kit would be still using a 5 year old graphics card, CPU and RAM etc, so doubling/tripling the money spent.

The problem with building PC's for gaming is you can only push each component so far i remember having built my all singing and dancing rig and having played it for a while i decided to upgrade the ram and G/Card i then discovered the PSU was not up to the job so i ended up buying a much better one then later as more powerful CPU's came out i found the motherboard wouldn't take them so that had to be switched, its a brilliant hobby if you have the money and i still prefer PC gaming to consoles but budget and the type of gaming i do now mean i will be sticking to consoles.

PS4 uses a version of the AMD A10 APU, as does the XBox One. It doesn't have a discrete GPU. A Ryzen 3 2200G CPU is actually more powerful than an A10, both the CPU and the RX Vega graphics onboard, and costs £89.99. So sorry, the cheaper than a graphics card argument doesn't actually hold water these days if you stop comparing apples and oranges for a moment. If you really must though, the current GPU recommended for 1080p gaming, at over 60fps (consoles rarely exceed 30fps by the way) is the Nvidi 1050 Ti, which sells for around £150. A PS4 costs £250 for a 500gb one.

It is however true that no I can't build a gaming PC for £250, I wouldn't even try. I built a gaming PC for my daughter's fiance, and he insisted I did it as cheaply as possibly. He's now constantly having to upgrade parts here and there as his brother bought him a HTC Vive... An AMD FX CPU, and an Nvidia 960 GTX GPU, and he wants to run AAA title VR games? lol

 

[Chippy_Tea]

A10, both the CPU and the RX Vega graphics onboard, and costs £89.99. So sorry, the cheaper than a graphics card argument doesn't actually hold water these days if you stop comparing apples and oranges for a moment.

You appear to be twisting my posts to suit your argument, you wouldn't put a £90 graphics card in a gaming PC therefore a PS4 costs less than the graphics card you would use in a gaming PC!

.

 

[Alex.mc]

First console was Pong! Lol!
That aside, I played some stuff on a ZX81 using a tape deck for loading. Had various Sega Megadrives and the Dreamcast. then never touched a console again and moved to PC gaming. I always enjoyed games that were based around first person shooters, and a controller will never replace a mouse and keyboard for that(in my view).
played through all the Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein iterations. most of the COD and Battlefield stuff, TF2, L4D, but sunk thousands of hours into Rust. I've recently started on Scum, which is ludicrously detailed in terms of variable factors for your character and play.

I have my beer fridge very close to my gaming PC!

 

[simon12]

My opinion on PC vs console is its down to personal preference 1 is defecated for gaming all easy plug in and play and suted to sitting a bit away from a TV with a control pad the other is general purpose more suited to setting up close and you can use whatever control style you like. My old PC from 2010 cost about £600 and had 2 graphics card upgrades and a SSD totalling another £400ish until the latest graphics card dies and I replaced the whole thing just under a year ago so it cost 2.5 times a console close to release and 5 times one a bit later, but over the 7 years I saved about £250 on AAA games compared to console price and another £250 on humble bundle games only counting the ones I played a decent amount. In its earlier days I mainly played games that never released on consoles (mainly star craft 2) so for me a PC is the only option. Other PC advantages are it multipurposeness and for shooters consoles generally have auto aim which takes out much of the game. But on the downside if you didn't want to self build and upgrade the costs are much higher and you have to mess about with settings to optimise it while consoles you can just play.

 

[Covrich]

The graphics card price surge you can thank Cryptocurrency mining farms for that.

It will ultimately hit consoles aswell in one form or another. They will either see a price hike or they will sacrifice gaming performance..

My kids have a PS4 which I play on too but at heart and majority I am a PC gamer.. it just feels more natural to me.. I will say this though, despite the fact games run far betetr on PC they are never really optimised for the full potential.. SO If you spend ridiculous amounts of money I think by the time you get the full potential out of it it will be half the cost..

When PS4 was released the hardware in it then was never top end, if it was it would have been twice the cost so there is always a little optimization towards the lower end of the spectrum thus creating some redundancy at the cutting edge of the gaming spectrum..

Consoles are easy for many people but they really try the hard sell on the "cutting edge tech" all this 4k vr ready and new tech is mostly older tech and where possible they have to sacrifice things to get it to work adequately. interlacing ect. kids pop it on stick disc in and away they go..

Then of course there is the threat of cloud gaming but I am not convinced by this yet.


Depends on the games you like to play aswell, personally i am a whore for RPGs and with K&M and the mods and higher end graphics it just suits me more.. If like my kids play fifa 18 and Mario Kart 8 consoles much more suited.

 

[bigbud78]

My 7 year old i5-2500k is still firing with 100+ fps in most games, BF5/Fallout 76/division 2 all coming up. Wouldn't mind upgrading my 970 but at 1080p not much point. Can not play anything with less than 60 frames or anything with less than 100 FOV unless its 3rd person, have an xbox just for gears

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Can non play anything with less than 60 frames

The FPS argument has been going on for years and I would be surprised if anyone could see the difference between 50 and 70 I know one thing for sure my eyes are ****** and i would be surprised if I could now tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps

 

[Covrich]

I think 60 FPS is considered the magic number above that I think its hard to tell the added smoothness but having the performance headroom.

30fps is noticable to me but I dont get too hung up..

I tend to push textures up to Ultra where possible as long as the FPS is 40-50 odd still I am happy.

 

[bigbud78]

The FPS argument has been going on for years and I would be surprised if anyone could see the difference between 50 and 70 I know one thing for sure my eyes are ****** and i would be surprised if I could now tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps

Ive got a 144 hz panel and a good 60hz panel, yeah I can tell but thats playing fast paced games with a mouse. You most likely couldnt tell with a controller

 

[bigbud78]

I think 60 FPS is considered the magic number above that I think its hard to tell the added smoothness but having the performance headroom.

30fps is noticable to me but I dont get too hung up..

I tend to push textures up to Ultra where possible as long as the FPS is 40-50 odd still I am happy.

If im playing single player stuff then like you I play on my 60 monitor and get the best picture possible, if its anything mp then I tend to turn down everything to low bar view distance and mesh quality for best fps and seeing the oppo. My 144 panel doesnt have the best colour reproduction and is getting old now

 

[Chippy_Tea]

ve got a 144 hz panel and a good 60hz panel, yeah I can tell but thats playing fast paced games with a mouse.

I think you may have hit the nail on the head as a bit of searching throws this up -

A 60Hz monitor will always show 60 FPS

I guess back when i was PC gaming 60hz panels were all we could get/afford so we were never going to see anything higher, i still wonder if you would notice a difference between 60 and 80 FPS.

.

 

[Nicks90]

I have a decent gaming rig and also a micro pc I used to take to hotels when I worked 2 nights a week away.
It's only got laptop innards and 8gb ram and a laptop graphics card.

On COD4 my gaming rig can hit 80+ FPS on high settings, the little rig about 40 on medium when connected to a hotel tv. Much difference?
Yes side by side you would definitely see it. But in reality it was still just as playable!
It's an awesome little bugger and is now used exclusively for processing astronomy images and controlling my astro camera and mount.
But you CAN get a decent gaming box for £300 if you shop about a bit