Desktop Computers

Jysin

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
6,278
4,034
Joeboo's advice in his last few posts has been exactly spot on. I have been building rigs for myself and friends for ~15 years now and agree 100% with what he has said. Build a system now and enjoy it for a couple of years. Upgrade the video card at that point and continue on. The CPU market hasnt really made any significant pushes aside from lowered power use in the last few years. Make sure your new motherboard has USB 3.0 and to a lesser extent PCIe 3.0 and you should be golden.

Overall, technology has been FAR ahead of the software (games) for quite some time. You don't exactly have a lot to worry about.

Also, like he said, the next-gen consoles are already years behind in PC tech.
First, there's the matter of the CPU cores. Without getting into technicalities, AMD's Jaguar architecture is the impending successor to the "Bobcat" architecture found in the company's current low-power APUs, and it is not especially beefy. While the idea of an octa-core console sounds dreamy on the surface, the illusion is shattered when you realize that on the PC side of things, Jaguar APUs will be modest processors targeted at tablets, high-end netbooks (ha!), and entry-level laptops.

In other words, the PlayStation 4's CPU performance isn't likely to rock your socks compared to a PC sporting an AMD Piledriver- or Bulldozer-based processor. It might not even trump a lowly Intel Core i3 processor, especially if Eurogamer's early PlayStation 4 leaks continue to prove accurate and those eight cores are clocked at 1.6GHz.

Then there's the GPU. The specs don't line up with any of AMD's Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards, and we can't be sure just how custom the semi-custom GPU actually is. Nonetheless, 1.84 teraflops of performance puts the GPU just ahead of the Radeon HD 7850 and well under the Radeon 7870. That also holds true if you assume the PlayStation 4 GPU's 18 compute units sport a build similar to the GCN architecture used to build AMD's Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards.

The Radeon HD 7850 is nothing to sneeze at. Indeed, if you're looking for a midrange video card, it's a stellar option. But it's still just a midrange card, not a graphical trail blazer-and yet it will form the backbone of the PlayStation 4's gaming chops for years to come.

Overall, if you compare its hardware to what's available in today's PC landscape, the PlayStation 4 is basically powered by a low-end CPU and a midrange GPU. It even packs a mechanical hard drive in an age when many PC gamers have moved on to lightning-quick solid-state drives.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/20291...-compete-.html
 

W4RH34D_sl

shitlord
661
3
Yeah the specs on these consoles are not on par with current gen pc's, but they don't need to be. This is just exposing how much efficiency waste is in these new machines. When you get a bunch of people to code for one specific machine rather than an almost infinite amount of configurations, you'll get great results.
 

jeydax

Death and Taxes
1,390
852
I'll just echo what others have said. There's no real reason to wait unless there is a very imminent drastic change coming to the market. And that isn't happening right now. Buy now, play, be happy, yolo, etc.
 

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
25,424
37,545
See, Sithro? You should of bought your shit. Now you will pay more or have to wait a year. lol.
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
Doubly shitty because RAM prices were still higher now than they were a year ago at this time, now it's going to take forever before they come back down to reasonable levels.

Hell, I bought 32GB(4x8GB) or 1866 RAM in November 2012 for $140. We won't see those prices again for a LONG time
 

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
25,424
37,545
Gratz on finally growing a pair!

Naw, in all seriousness that will be a good rig for you bro, just dont forget about the SSD, yeah its THAT good.
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
Solid build, should get 1.5-2yrs out of the video card before you feel like you might want to upgrade it, rest of the stuff will be good for 5+ years.
 

nate_sl

shitlord
204
1
Anyone link a nice prebuilt rig In the $1k-1.5k price range? I don't feel like fussing about putting one together myself.
 

gogusrl

Molten Core Raider
1,359
102
No i5 option ? There's no point in getting the i7 if you're buying it for games. That money is much better spent on a faster videocard or bigger ssd.
 

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
25,424
37,545
No i5 option ? There's no point in getting the i7 if you're buying it for games. That money is much better spent on a faster videocard or bigger ssd.
Thats the problem with pre-builts. Try to find a decent gamer one with an i5 option.
 

Jysin

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
6,278
4,034
Doubly shitty because RAM prices were still higher now than they were a year ago at this time, now it's going to take forever before they come back down to reasonable levels.

Hell, I bought 32GB(4x8GB) or 1866 RAM in November 2012 for $140. We won't see those prices again for a LONG time
Lets not forget about the artificially inflated prices LONG after the crisis subsides (ala Hard Drives from 2 years ago). HD prices were dirt cheap a couple years back. I remember getting five 2TB mid-range Western Digital drives for my NAS for around $80 a piece. A couple weeks later, they had the flooding that crippled the manufacturing and prices spiked 3x the cost! Here we are years later and long after the facilities were brought back online and you still cant find 2TB drives that cheap (with very few exceptions).

Despite only being 15% of the RAM market, I guarantee you the prices will be hyper inflated for a long time to come.
 

nate_sl

shitlord
204
1
Yeah, I bought a gaming laptop with an i7 and I will not make that mistake again. The whole computer is bottle necked by the shitty processor.

Browsing the premise options, it looks like if you want a rig that doesn't cut corners somewhere you're looking at more like $2k than 1. Maybe I should just build.
 

W4RH34D_sl

shitlord
661
3
Yeah, I bought a gaming laptop with an i7 and I will not make that mistake again. The whole computer is bottle necked by the shitty processor.

Browsing the premise options, it looks like if you want a rig that doesn't cut corners somewhere you're looking at more like $2k than 1. Maybe I should just build.
Bro swears by the asus rog series.