TLOU and modern PC gaming...

[DaveTheSlayerFan]

I really like this game. So much so that I'm reading through other posts to offer some of my limited experience where I can so others can enjoy it too. It got me thinking... who really has the disposable income to keep up with modern PC gaming? Upgrade this and that? Total system builds? I know it's always been that way but the costs are just crazy. I see post after post of people considering moving to a console and you know what? I can't blame them one bit. I hear consoles are sold at a loss just to get customers into their ecosystem. Think Nvidia or AMD are willing to do that? I don't. I couldn't build a computer today for what a PS5 costs. My 1080ti cost me $779.99 and it has 11GB of GDDR5X VRAM. I still have the invoice from Amazon. It's considered to be such a good card and value that Nvidia couldn't sell 20 series cards. The 4080ti isn't out yet but the 4080 costs $1,200.00 for the FE. Think the ti will be less? Not on your life. I know top tier cards are not required for gaming but it sure seems like mid-tier 30 series cards aren't aging well. The Steam survey says most of us are on an 8GB card. That's going to either be mass upgrades like when 4 core CPU's were no longer ideal or there's going to be a mass exodus to console. Can you afford to stick around?

[WeirdScienceX]

It all depends on the person, I'm not mainly a gamer but I've got a decent rig, I'm still not planning to upgrade my 3090 until the next generation where I'll build a new rig.

If it was just for gaming, I would just grab a console, the price/performance is great.

I would miss all the fun I could have on a PC though if I was on console, my most played games of the past year have all been heavily modded and improved over what the developers release because they are held back because the market is mainly consoles.

[C1REX]

Originally posted by DaveTheSlayerFan:

Can you afford to stick around?

It’s not cheap but it’s not end of the world.

Direct Storage should eliminate one huge bottleneck soon.
Another new solution will give CPU access to VRAM. Another bottleneck removed.
Console doesn’t get faster while PC do get more powerful. Sooner or later even mid range PC will outperform consoles. I guess that in two years a 5070 will eat ps5 for breakfast.

Grass is always greener on the other side.
I had all generations of consoles and ps5 is the first one I may skip.
Buy and try being a console gamer.

[DaveTheSlayerFan]

Originally posted by WeirdScienceX:

It all depends on the person, I'm not mainly a gamer but I've got a decent rig, I'm still not planning to upgrade my 3090 until the next generation where I'll build a new rig.

If it was just for gaming, I would just grab a console, the price/performance is great.

I would miss all the fun I could have on a PC though if I was on console, my most played games of the past year have all been heavily modded and improved over what the developers release because they are held back because the market is mainly consoles.

I had fun on console. I had a PS4 and played a lot of Destiny. Had a clan, the whole bit, end game, PVP. I eventually got sick of paying for Playstation plus, full price games and D-DOS attacks taking down their network. Ironic really considering my original post.

[kgkong]

When you first get into computer gaming it can seem expensive. It can also get really expensive if you play on a system for a fair amount of time (ie 10 years). The reason is you gotta do a full system build, or maybe your first PC you bought is good but you didn't know enough at the time and you found out you can play more games with better stability so you rebuy and get something better.

Computer parts go "obsolete" pretty quickly but that doesn't mean they're useless. Just when technology really makes a big jump, which happens every 5 or 6 years (or within the range of when new console generations come out), games get more demanding so your current hardware has to play games on lower settings, gradually lowering them down as time goes on.

Ideally when you get a computer, you want something where you can upgrade CPU, RAM and GPU at independent times. This makes the expense burden on PC upgrading cheaper at purchase. You usually also want to over spec a PSU so you don't only buy a new one every time you upgrade CPU or GPU.

But computer pricing is getting more expensive now for a few reasons. Natural inflation, as some of the cost to produce the chips for the hardware has gone up cause the manufacturing process is more complex. Some of it's gone up cause of part sourcing is a bit harder. AMD, Intel and nVidia can't sell their highest end hardware in China which makes up on average 50% of a market demographic. All these will inflate the cost of hardware in various ways. Motherboards are 50-100 bucks more expensive for lower end. CPUs are about 50-100 bucks more expensive for mid-range long lasting gaming CPUs. Sometimes a bit more (ie X3D models from AMD). GPUs are a lot more expensive because this is the product segments that can't reach the Chinese market and nVidia is really making up the profit margin deficit by overcharging everywhere else.

And we just entered a new memory platform, DDR5. This stuff is new and will be expensive as a result and once more stable DDR5 kits come out, then the overall price will drop down again for motherboards and memory. To make the most out of the new CPUs and so you aren't buying two full PC builds, you're best of right now buying 13th gen Intel and 7000 series Ryzen and going DDR5. Down the road you upgrade your memory and GPU. This is the most cost effective route since you save more money on part upgrades.

Buying economically now means getting a DDR4 system, and a Ryzen 5000 series CPU or Intel 11th/12th gen CPU. Definitely a fair bit cheaper to build into or upgrade parts in this series. But you need to make sure you get the latest series model motherboard for your CPU to avoid issues with memory. The money you save here can go towards a PSU and/or GPU later. But to upgrade beyond that you have to do a full system. Which will hopefully be cheaper.

But you will always be in a perpetual state of catch up. Even going high end. Just high end means you can take longer to save up to upgrade. Going low end you upgrade more frequently. Spend more often. Kill the disposable income more quickly. Middle tier is a bit of both worlds. But if you don't stay on top of meaningful upgrades with middle tier PC as a focus, you end up with a low end rig before you know it.

I upgraded from a DDR3 system I used for 10+ years in February 2022. I went to a then lower high end system. I'm still on it now. But I'd say this is now a higher end middle tier system. By the year end, it'll be a low end middle tier. By February 2024, it'll be a high end low tier system.

Hardware evolves pretty quickly around the technological jumps. By the end of 2024, to middle of 2025, hardware will slow down again in big improvements and prices will mellow out a fair bit more. Intel will have more of the market share, this will spawn more competitive pricing in GPUs, and will also lead to more big technological jumps again resulting in the PS6 and next XBox consoles in late 2025 at the earliest but more likely Q3/Q4 2026.

[DaveTheSlayerFan]

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

When you first get into computer gaming it can seem expensive. It can also get really expensive if you play on a system for a fair amount of time (ie 10 years). The reason is you gotta do a full system build, or maybe your first PC you bought is good but you didn't know enough at the time and you found out you can play more games with better stability so you rebuy and get something better.

Computer parts go "obsolete" pretty quickly but that doesn't mean they're useless. Just when technology really makes a big jump, which happens every 5 or 6 years (or within the range of when new console generations come out), games get more demanding so your current hardware has to play games on lower settings, gradually lowering them down as time goes on.

Ideally when you get a computer, you want something where you can upgrade CPU, RAM and GPU at independent times. This makes the expense burden on PC upgrading cheaper at purchase. You usually also want to over spec a PSU so you only buy a new one every time you upgrade CPU or GPU.

But computer pricing is getting more expensive now for a few reasons. Natural inflation, as some of the cost to produce the chips for the hardware has gone up cause the manufacturing process is more complex. Some of it's gone up cause of part sourcing is a bit harder. AMD, Intel and nVidia can't sell their highest end hardware in China which makes up on average 50% of a market demographic. All these will inflate the cost of hardware in various ways. Motherboards are 50-100 bucks more expensive for lower end. CPUs are about 50-100 bucks more expensive for mid-range long lasting gaming CPUs. Sometimes a bit more (ie X3D models from AMD). GPUs are a lot more expensive because this is the product segments that can't reach the Chinese market and nVidia is really making up the profit margin deficit by overcharging everywhere else.

And we just entered a new memory platform, DDR5. This stuff is new and will be expensive as a result and once more stable DDR5 kits come out, then the overall price will drop down again for motherboards and memory. To make the most out of the new CPUs and so you aren't buying two full PC builds, you're best of right now buying 13th gen Intel and 7000 series Ryzen and going DDR5. Down the road you upgrade your memory and GPU. This is the most cost effective route since you save more money on part upgrades.

Buying economically now means getting a DDR4 system, and a Ryzen 5000 series CPU or Intel 11th/12th gen CPU. Definitely a fair bit cheaper to build into or upgrade parts in this series. But you need to make sure you get the latest series model motherboard for your CPU to avoid issues with memory. The money you save here can go towards a PSU and/or GPU later. But to upgrade beyond that you have to do a full system. Which will hopefully be cheaper.

But you will always be in a perpetual state of catch up. Even going high end. Just high end means you can take longer to save up to upgrade. Going low end you upgrade more frequently. Spend more often. Kill the disposable income more quickly. Middle tier is a bit of both worlds. But if you don't stay on top of meaningful upgrades with middle tier PC as a focus, you end up with a low end rig before you know it.

I upgraded from a DDR3 system I used for 10+ years in February 2022. I went to a then lower high end system. I'm still on it now. But I'd say this is now a higher end middle tier system. By the year end, it'll be a low end middle tier. By February 2024, it'll be a high end low tier system.

Hardware evolves pretty quickly around the technological jumps. By the end of 2024, to middle of 2025, hardware will slow down again in big improvements and prices will mellow out a fair bit more. Intel will have more of the market share, this will spawn more competitive pricing in GPUs, and will also lead to more big technological jumps again resulting in the PS6 and next XBox consoles in late 2025 at the earliest but more likely Q3/Q4 2026.

Really an articulate and well thought out post. Thank you.

My take away from a lot of this, especially with regards to the higher prices and upgrade paths, is competition is healthy and is good for the consumer. The CPU space is not completely off the rails in the same way as the GPU space is. It was when Intel was pushing out 4 core 8 thread chips with moderate bumps to performance until AMD showed back up and forced them to compete in terms of price and performance. I'm routing for Arc but I have no plans to subsidize a mega corporation like Intel while they catch up to Nvidia and AMD. PS5 and Xbox have been punching back and fourth since the PS2/Xbox era and aside from exclusive titles it's been mostly good for the consumer.

I'm in a mid high tier build myself. I moved to AM4 at the end of it's life. I understand that I will need to keep my GPU refreshed it I plan to play new games at 1440p. I'm from the US... I'll plan to vote with my wallet. It's the only thing that moves the needles. Thanks again for your post.

[GoldInfinit7]

Originally posted by DaveTheSlayerFan:

I really like this game. So much so that I'm reading through other posts to offer some of my limited experience where I can so others can enjoy it too. It got me thinking... who really has the disposable income to keep up with modern PC gaming? Upgrade this and that? Total system builds? I know it's always been that way but the costs are just crazy. I see post after post of people considering moving to a console and you know what? I can't blame them one bit. I hear consoles are sold at a loss just to get customers into their ecosystem. Think Nvidia or AMD are willing to do that? I don't. I couldn't build a computer today for what a PS5 costs. My 1080ti cost me $779.99 and it has 11GB of GDDR5X VRAM. I still have the invoice from Amazon. It's considered to be such a good card and value that Nvidia couldn't sell 20 series cards. The 4080ti isn't out yet but the 4080 costs $1,200.00 for the FE. Think the ti will be less? Not on your life. I know top tier cards are not required for gaming but it sure seems like mid-tier 30 series cards aren't aging well. The Steam survey says most of us are on an 8GB card. That's going to either be mass upgrades like when 4 core CPU's were no longer ideal or there's going to be a mass exodus to console. Can you afford to stick around?

Prices are still just bad right now for PC hardware due to crypto-mining and the pandemic (things are still recovering). If you were talking 2018, then that would've been the best year to build a PC. If you bought an RTX 2070 for $499. Then you would have a PS5 equivalent PC two years before the PS5 even came out.

And then, since, PC upgrades are a lot more frequent than console, you just need to have the willpower not to upgrade every 1-2 years. If you can hold onto that RTX 2070 until 2028 when PS6 will release then you would have PS5 equivalent PC for 10 years.

Also, this game PC port is a horrible example as it is the worst optimized game I have ever seen in my entire life. To use it as a basis in an argument of why console is better is very faulty reasoning.

[kgkong]

Originally posted by GoldInfinit7:

Originally posted by DaveTheSlayerFan:

I really like this game. So much so that I'm reading through other posts to offer some of my limited experience where I can so others can enjoy it too. It got me thinking... who really has the disposable income to keep up with modern PC gaming? Upgrade this and that? Total system builds? I know it's always been that way but the costs are just crazy. I see post after post of people considering moving to a console and you know what? I can't blame them one bit. I hear consoles are sold at a loss just to get customers into their ecosystem. Think Nvidia or AMD are willing to do that? I don't. I couldn't build a computer today for what a PS5 costs. My 1080ti cost me $779.99 and it has 11GB of GDDR5X VRAM. I still have the invoice from Amazon. It's considered to be such a good card and value that Nvidia couldn't sell 20 series cards. The 4080ti isn't out yet but the 4080 costs $1,200.00 for the FE. Think the ti will be less? Not on your life. I know top tier cards are not required for gaming but it sure seems like mid-tier 30 series cards aren't aging well. The Steam survey says most of us are on an 8GB card. That's going to either be mass upgrades like when 4 core CPU's were no longer ideal or there's going to be a mass exodus to console. Can you afford to stick around?

Prices are still just bad right now for PC hardware due to crypto-mining and the pandemic (things are still recovering). If you were talking 2018, then that would've been the best year to build a PC. If you bought an RTX 2070 for $499. Then you would have a PS5 equivalent PC two years before the PS5 even came out.

And then, since, PC upgrades are a lot more frequent than console, you just need to have the willpower not to upgrade every 1-2 years. If you can hold onto that RTX 2070 until 2028 when PS6 will release then you would have PS5 equivalent PC for 10 years.

Also, this game PC port is a horrible example as it is the worst optimized game I have ever seen in my entire life. To use it as a basis in an argument of why console is better is very faulty reasoning.

The 2070 isn't actually equal to the PS5. It's close, it has the raw GPU compute power, but the memory is slower and such.
A 3060 12GB is a lot closer to the PS5 as I believe the console uses a variation on an early design of the 6600/6700 architect with 16GB of shared memory (12.5 dedicated to video if I'm not mistaken).

[Sholomar]

Working class individuals in their mid 20's and older who grew up with N64, PS2, SNES, etc. are the ones that can afford PC gaming. Console is best for those who would build systems based around the 85% most popular video cards on the steam hardware survey. People should not have built systems around these cards unless they just wanted to play minecraft and that's it.

Right now some of the best values are 6700XT, 6800XT, 6900XT, and 6950XT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w0OAIPKMig

You can build a gaming PC for around $1200, but a good gaming pc plus a good gaming monitor will be more double that.

[GoldInfinit7]

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

The 2070 isn't actually equal to the PS5. It's close, it has the raw GPU compute power, but the memory is slower and such.
A 3060 12GB is a lot closer to the PS5 as I believe the console uses a variation on an early design of the 6600/6700 architect with 16GB of shared memory (12.5 dedicated to video if I'm not mistaken).

I looked it up and found the following:

PS5 uses GDDR6 with 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth

RTX 2070 uses GDDR6 with 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth

PS5 has 16 GB instead of 8 GB for RTX 2070. However, PS5's 16 GB is shared by the entire system.

The reference RTX 2070 is not a 100% exact PS5 equivalent but the overclocked partner cards are definitely equivalent if not faster. Nevertheless, it's not that far off and you're getting similar experience to the PS5 even if you have the reference card.

[kgkong]

Originally posted by GoldInfinit7:

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

The 2070 isn't actually equal to the PS5. It's close, it has the raw GPU compute power, but the memory is slower and such.
A 3060 12GB is a lot closer to the PS5 as I believe the console uses a variation on an early design of the 6600/6700 architect with 16GB of shared memory (12.5 dedicated to video if I'm not mistaken).

I looked it up and found the following:

PS5 uses GDDR6 with 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth

RTX 2070 uses GDDR6 with 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth

PS5 has 16 GB instead of 8 GB for RTX 2070. However, PS5's 16 GB is shared by the entire system.

The reference RTX 2070 is not a 100% exact PS5 equivalent but the overclocked partner cards are definitely equivalent if not faster. Nevertheless, it's not that far off and you're getting similar experience to the PS5 even if you have the reference card.

It's more than just that it has the same memory bandwidth and bus bit rate, it's that the GPU has less hardware latency due to the unique design consoles get with their form factor hardware and direct SSD to vRAM. This reduces a huge overhead in performance and in actual compute time since the CPU is not involved in this process at all.

[DaveTheSlayerFan]

Originally posted by Sholomar:

Working class individuals in their mid 20's and older who grew up with N64, PS2, SNES, etc. are the ones that can afford PC gaming. Console is best for those who would build systems based around the 85% most popular video cards on the steam hardware survey. People should not have built systems around these cards unless they just wanted to play minecraft and that's it.

Right now some of the best values are 6700XT, 6800XT, 6900XT, and 6950XT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w0OAIPKMig

You can build a gaming PC for around $1200, but a good gaming pc plus a good gaming monitor will be more double that.

Nvidia has the better products in my opinion. Better adoption in their commercial sector, better upscaling tech (DLSS), better ray tracing tech and better driver support.

AMD does have some serious horsepower with the 7900XTX and they have plenty of VRAM. I will seriously consider AMD if they keep this up at the time of my next upgrade.

[GoldInfinit7]

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

It's more than just that it has the same memory bandwidth and bus bit rate, it's that the GPU has less hardware latency due to the unique design consoles get with their form factor hardware and direct SSD to vRAM. This reduces a huge overhead in performance and in actual compute time since the CPU is not involved in this process at all.

I believe what you're describing is called "DirectStorage" on PC. All that requires is that developers utilize it in their games.

[kgkong]

Originally posted by GoldInfinit7:

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

It's more than just that it has the same memory bandwidth and bus bit rate, it's that the GPU has less hardware latency due to the unique design consoles get with their form factor hardware and direct SSD to vRAM. This reduces a huge overhead in performance and in actual compute time since the CPU is not involved in this process at all.

I believe what you're describing is called "DirectStorage" on PC. All that requires is that developers utilize it in their games.

But hardware needs to be designed around it otherwise it's not efficient on the GPU, and if there's still a good user base of gamers with HDD, pff good luck implementing it without choppy performance, or SSD's via SATA connection.

[alvin]

Originally posted by DaveTheSlayerFan:

I really like this game. So much so that I'm reading through other posts to offer some of my limited experience where I can so others can enjoy it too. It got me thinking... who really has the disposable income to keep up with modern PC gaming? Upgrade this and that? Total system builds? I know it's always been that way but the costs are just crazy. I see post after post of people considering moving to a console and you know what? I can't blame them one bit. I hear consoles are sold at a loss just to get customers into their ecosystem. Think Nvidia or AMD are willing to do that? I don't. I couldn't build a computer today for what a PS5 costs. My 1080ti cost me $779.99 and it has 11GB of GDDR5X VRAM. I still have the invoice from Amazon. It's considered to be such a good card and value that Nvidia couldn't sell 20 series cards. The 4080ti isn't out yet but the 4080 costs $1,200.00 for the FE. Think the ti will be less? Not on your life. I know top tier cards are not required for gaming but it sure seems like mid-tier 30 series cards aren't aging well. The Steam survey says most of us are on an 8GB card. That's going to either be mass upgrades like when 4 core CPU's were no longer ideal or there's going to be a mass exodus to console. Can you afford to stick around?

It's starting to get boring really, money isn't a problem because I usually buy the latest stuff which holds up for 5 years, then I save for another 5 years. Gaming PC's are generally cheap in the long run, especially for the entertainment you get from it, but don't tell Nvidia that. But sure it's still a lot of money. But the problem I have with it is that games today, and have been for a while, aren't made for PC, so not only do you get bad ports, but the overall experience is better on console. The rig I have now is almost 5 years old, and with a new console generation coming I don't think I can bother buying anything new, and maybe never will. A PC isn't really a gaming machine because no games are made for them, it's just an expensive machine that requires latest tech to be able to run bad ports.

[Flanker1Six]

Been gaming since '86 (Commodore 64 hooked up to my 27" CRT TV with 480P or some Godawful rez!)

Been hot rodding cars and bikes longer than that.

Speed has ALWAYS cost money.

Though I think computer component cost escalation has sped up considerably in the last 5 years or so. One thing that none of you touched on is the massive consolidation that's taken place in the industry in the last 30 or so years. Back in the early 90s there were at least 4 or 5 CPU manufacturers (though even then Intel was the 500lb gorilla), there was plenty of choice in sound cards (a what?!) and likely a dozen manufacturers making 3D accelerator cards (remember those?).

The less competition there is in a given field the easier it is for the survivors to get away with "Daddy needs a new Lamborghini (my old one is 10 months old!)" pricing.

And, yea; the "Crypto Mining Craze" of 3 years ago sure as heck didn't help GPU pricing and 2nd party gouging any either.