Be Excellent To Each Other

You care about PC vs console comparisons? Why?

This is what every single Digital Foundry article to date should have concluded:

"A £550 gaming PC has greater image fidelity than a £275 games console. You can't build a gaming PC for £275. In any event, approximately zero people make the decision between gaming PC and console based on raw performance, because many other factors such as perceived ease-of-use and what platform your friends favour dominate."

If there were any new news that move beyond this conclusion I could see the point in discussing it. But there isn't, and there isn't likely to be either.

Because I have both, and I think the "jump" between the current-gen consoles and the last gen is far less than the previous one, and because PCs are (slowly) starting to claw their way into the living room.

Unfortunately every time anyone dares talk about it people like Kov start jumping up and down, like we were sat around his dining table slagging off his mum.

While this is mostly true I doubt it's entirely and always the case. My current setup has my PS4 and PC hooked up to the TV and surround sound in the living room so if there was a game I was interested in that was available on both platforms and would look better on my PC then I'd absolutely buy it for that. Admittedly this is less of a thing for me right now because the spec of my PC is well behind the curve but at some point I'll upgrade it and then I'll really be interested in what is the best way to play a particular game.

No, I don't think it's when "anyone" mentions it. It's just when people who have been unspeakably tedious about the whole thing in the past start up then there's a tendency to think "oh for fucks sake, he's off again"

Nice. What a lovely place this is.

It would be lovely if every post anyone makes could be taken in isolation and discussed on its own merits, but unfortunately you make a rod for your own back.

This affects everyone here!

You only have any last-gen consoles though.

I think you are wrong. I think the baseline resolution going from sub-720p to almost universally 1080p is a big "jump."

Are they? Where? I saw a lot of noise about Steamboxes eighteen months ago, but they're still nowhere to be found. When (...if?) they do arrive, I have serious concerns about the viability of SteamOS, and also the suitability of Windows for the living room. Meanwhile a few manufacturers are shipping some SFF gaming PCs, but then again, there always were a few of those around. And the actually console-sized ones often sacrifice the modularity and upgradability of normal PCs, because fitting normal GPUs and air cooling in tiny cases is hard.

You also haven't addressed my actual point, which is: this stuff isn't changing. There's nothing new to discuss. Any conversation about it is inherently a retread of old ground.

Because it gets clicks?

I've become way more interested in the techy side of PC gaming since I've had a PC (even if it's on a very rudimentary level).

Moreover, since this comment was in a thread about PC HARDWARE I don't think there's any reason to be a dick when someone talks about PC HARDWARE in a PC HARDWARE thread.

It's mainly as people are tired of it. Some people got so tired of it they decided to stop coming here so it's perhaps a bit of a touchy subject.

They still work, you know.


That's nice. We should be allowed to discuss it, or something.


My house, your house*, Babma's house?


That's not the case at all, unless the old ground you're referring to is Bamba including the word "PC" in his post (in a thread called "PC gaming hardware", let's remind ourselves), causing certain people to jump up and down about how he should shut up.

* or was that your old house?

Or perhaps high fives should be handed out.

I thought we had these PC threads to

a) isolate that issue;
b) talk about PC stuff when people wanted to cause PC stuff is pretty interesting;
c) recognise that PC gaming is massive these days.

You'll be high-fiving yourself in not too long.

I seem to recall that mainstream PC gaming is reducing, but indie stuff and things like Early Access are getting more and more popular.

I do constantly impress myself.

Sorry chaps, i should not have said anything

You're doing Beex wrong. Never back down, never apologise!

Now you're being silenced by bullies!

Well, NervousPete and Hearthly's posts in this thread the past few days have inspired me to sort out my shitty memory sticks which have been crashing out my gaming pc for a while, and told me about the GTX960, which I didn't know very much about and meant i've now upgraded.

So, i'm glad the conversation happened.

You're the bullies, d'uh.

The bully is in the eye of the beholder.

Poor beholder

You can't beat a bit of Bully!

What's the resolution and frame rate of that? It's important.

its available for

CGA
Tandy
EGA
and VGA

And I'm sure it does have frames , maybe as much as 3 or 4 ?

I had that on the Amiga. It was dead hard for someone as young as I.

Relevant to our discussion the other day:

Steam Controller, SteamVR, Steam Machines: Valve’s hardware push in photos | Ars Technica



Link also has some hands-on commentary on the Steam Controller. Having read a half-dozen of those, opinions are very mixed. Even the most positive say it'll take a lot of adjusting to compared to either a traditional pad or mouse and keyboard.

Also, I read somewhere that Steam Machines will have to run SteamOS to be certified as such. I'm still very dubious about game support in SteamOS.

That controller looks horrible. I just don't rate touch controls at all for most games. No matter what they feel imprecise, because your only point of feedback except for what's happening on screen are the squidgy bits of meat on the end of your digits.

You do realise they use haptic feedback? You're not just sliding your thumbs across a slab of glass like a tablet or phone. In theory they should provide resistance like thumbsticks (or whatever else kind of controls you need for certain games).

I certainly won't pooh-pooh it until I've tried it.

Well I think it looks more than shit enough for me to feel pretty happy to be pooh-poohing it with only a very tiny risk of being wrong.

It says it feels like a trackpad, I know what trackpads feel like and I wouldn't want to be trying to aim a gun or steer a car with one.

James Bond could only just drive a 7 series with a touch screen so I'd be knackered.

Make Half-Life 3 SteamOS-only - killer app!

I'm not convinced about the Steam controller and never have been, and reading that by all accounts neither are the guys who've had a hands on with it either. (From what I can see there I'd rather just use a 360 pad.)

On top of that the prices of the machines look high to me (assuming a $1 - £1 conversion on the pricing which is what usually happens), I see the case that Mrs Hearthly's new PC is in is used for more than one of the Steam machines, but looking at the specs you pay more for less power in a Steam machine that you do in a PC. (Admittedly Mrs Hearthly's new PC came without an OS but I thought the whole idea of Steam OS was that you save the cost of a Windows licence.)

For example looking at the Scan 3XS Steam machine there it shows a base price of $999, which gets you an i3, a 750Ti, 8GB RAM and a 120GB SSD, in the same case as Mrs Hearthly's PC, which was an i5, GTX960, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for under £800.

At the very least I'd expect the Steam machines to offer a reasonable cost-saving over a new PC.

Given the uncertainty surrounding Steam OS and what will and won't run on it, definitely a no sale at the moment.

That's missing the point somewhat surely? If they could just give you a standard 360 style controller and have it work with all games then that's what they would've done; but any PC games that rely on a mouse to control can't always be mapped to that kind of device and this thing has to be able to support all existing PC games or it's dead in the water.

Anyway, I'm happy to reserve judgement until I get a shot of it. If someone had told me ten years ago I'd be happily, even preferentially, FPSing around using two analogue sticks I'd have told them to fuck off, but here we are.

Which is definitely doesn't, because SteamOS.

Do you play online against mouse & keyboard folk?

A PC will always give you more power but at far more cost, at GTX 980 is around £500 and that's before you add the same again and maybe more to build a PC around it.

I still prefer to game on a PC even though I have an next gen console and a number of previous gen!

First reason is lifestyle I have a TV in the living room and a young son, so if he is in the living room he will go nuts if I game on the console, he either wants to join in or watch Fireman Sam! When he is in bed my wife would like to watch TV so I don't have that much opportunity. The Xbox One is really used for Skype and Blu Ray playback for now.

Next is the flexibility and value you get from a lot of PC based games, take Skyrim for example, whilst there is DLC on consoles as well there is almost endless extra stuff for PC from various communities so the game on a PC can always be refreshed and changed.

Finally is emulation its very restrictive to play on consoles unless you mod them, even then its no where near as easy as it is on the PC in terms of experience or emulator development and choice.

I don't mean at that level, that's a different problem they need to solve, I'm talking purely about the controller here.



No, I don't give a shit about online stuff so as long as I could play non-competitive games while sat on my couch I'm happy; but I realise that's not true of everyone and it's a fair point you make.

I don't think this is aimed at people who play a lot of competitive online FPSes anyway. It's more likely those would prefer keyboard/mouse and sitting at a desk to play.

However, if living room PCs are really going to take off then you need something more than a standard joypad, but most people would not be happy with mouse/keyboard on their laps. I'm interested to try this with an RTS for example.

How does an rts fare on a joy pad? Like Bamba, I never thought I would FpS on a pad 10 years back

Not very well, in all honesty. They're either dumbed down too far (Halo Wars, Civ Rev) or you have to contort your hands into ungodly positions.

An upside down cross?

Surely the biggest gripe about the pad will be that it's batteries only. What is it? 2005? Jebus.

Pretty sure all wireless pads have batteries, otherwise they wouldn't work.

Mr Chris's has magnets and he wears iron rings when playing.

He knows what I mean. It's AA batteries not a rechargeable battery.

AA batteries are preferable.

I thought Beex was all about being technically correct, sorry.