5 ms·

I have, thanks. Of course, a $1K PC will outperform any of these consoles given enough time :) GPU is important for sure, but I think storage performance is as

by bhj 6y ago

I have, thanks. Of course, a $1K PC will outperform any of these consoles given enough time :) GPU is important for sure, but I think storage performance is as important, since load times and stuttering take me out of the game in a way slightly worse graphics wouldn't (purely my opinion). From what I can tell, equivalent I/O for the price is still a ways off on the PC side. One also has to be careful to factor in time spent purchasing and building; I do not value my time at $0. Trying to look at this all objectively... appreciate the input so far!

CydeWeys 6y ago
> Of course, a $1K PC will outperform any of these consoles given enough time The RTX 3060 is right around the corner (like a couple of months). The PS5 isn't quite available yet either. So this is a valid comparison for systems you could have in hand by end of this year, but couldn't yet have in hand right now. > but I think storage performance is as important, since load times and stuttering take me out of the game in a way slightly worse graphics wouldn't (purely my opinion). From what I can tell, equivalent I/O for the price is still a ways off on the PC side. I think you're over-estimating the impact of storage speed on the gaming use case here. You can easily fit a 1 TB 3 Gbps NVMe SSD into a $1k PC budget, and you aren't going to notice the delta between that and the 5.5 claimed Gbps on the PS5 for gaming. Neither of these SSDs is gonna be a bottleneck for any kind of stuttering in games. An underpowered CPU/GPU/slow memory would be much more likely culprits once you've got the NVMe SSD part nailed down. > One also has to be careful to factor in time spent purchasing and building; I do not value my time at $0. Well then you should only be buying pre-builts if you don't derive enjoyment from assembling computers and thus need to pay yourself a wage to do so. Personally I love the whole process of researching and assembling computers; it's a hobby (an infrequently practiced one though, by the nature of it).
- bhj 6y ago
  > Neither of these SSDs is gonna be a bottleneck for any kind of stuttering in games. This is probably true for most current games, but is very much up for debate for future games[0]. If the storage speed really made no difference I doubt Sony would have bothered with the additional cost. > Well then you should only be buying pre-builts if you don't derive enjoyment from assembling computers and thus need to pay yourself a wage to do so. It's not mutually exclusive; I both enjoy building PCs and have limited time, thus the time has value that should be factored into the equation. The goal is to game, not build a PC. [0]: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ps5-ssd-is-so-fast-developers-need-to-redesign-their-games https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ps5-ssd-is-so-fast-developers...
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Or it might not be so relevant to future games either: https://gamingbolt.com/why-ps5s-ssd-speed-might-not-have-as-much-impact-as-you-think https://gamingbolt.com/why-ps5s-ssd-speed-might-not-have-as-... I think Sony may have chosen these specs partially so they could get away with having less RAM. Also, some of this speed isn't that the SSD components are necessarily that much faster, but rather that they're soldered directly onto the main board and located closely to the components that will use them. Modular, detachable storage located farther from the CPU is just gonna be slower, period. So I'm not so optimistic that this alone will prove to be a significant differentiator. And it could easily be the case that by the time it does, PC components have pulled ahead again. It takes several years before developers have gotten really good at using a given console to its full potential.
    - bhj 6y ago
      I think the speed advantage is more due to the I/O controller that Sony's made a big deal of, where data can get to RAM or GPU without having to interrupt the CPU. Those interrupts can cause a domino effect with Windows doing god-knows what else in the background, leading to a stutter. You're right though, PCs will get brute-force faster, while devs will squeeze more out of consoles. I just find it hard to make the case for building something right now given the apparent bang-for-the-buck of these consoles. That said, I do kinda need a new Plex server... :)
    - wtallis 6y ago
      > Also, some of this speed isn't that the SSD components are necessarily that much faster, but rather that they're soldered directly onto the main board and located closely to the components that will use them. Modular, detachable storage located farther from the CPU is just gonna be slower, period. Completely wrong. They're using PCIe 4.0 for the onboard SSD, and PCIe 4.0 for the aftermarket SSD slot. There's no performance penalty for going with removable storage here. We're not talking about a high-speed DRAM interface where shorter traces without the insertion loss of a connector really does help reach higher clock speeds (other things being equal).
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  > You can easily fit a 1 TB 3 Gbps NVMe SSD into a $1k PC budget, and you aren't going to notice the delta between that and the 5.5 claimed Gbps Bearing in mind here, that it’s memory+storage architecture has a theoretical top of 22 Gb/ps, and they demonstrated recently, when assets are compressed using the “Octo” (naming?) lib, they were getting throughput of 12-18 Gb/ps. That’s written by the storage controller directly into memory the GPU can access (without the CPU being involved) so the normal latency to load data into a GPU is effectively gone. That speed is significantly above what drives can do on a normal consumer computer (to the best of my knowledge)
  - Gracana 6y ago
    I stumbled a bit over those "gigabits per picosecond" units.
    - FridgeSeal 6y ago
      Hahahaha let me fix that Edit: nevermind, it’s too late, my poorly formatted units are staying.
read_if_gay_ 6y ago
If you are going to factor in your time spent researching and building then you should also factor in a PC’s superior versatility and upgradeability, catalog, cheaper games in general and no fees for online services. (That alone ends up being many hundreds of dollars over the lifetime of a console, if you need it.) In the long run a PC is usually going to cost you less than a console even if it costs much more up front.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  There's a reason I don't play any online multiplayer games on consoles. I can't stomach paying that much just to use the Internet when multiplayer is free on PC.

by bhj 6y ago

CydeWeys 6y ago

> Of course, a $1K PC will outperform any of these consoles given enough time The RTX 3060 is right around the corner (like a couple of months). The PS5 isn't quite available yet either. So this is a valid comparison for systems you could have in hand by end of this year, but couldn't yet have in hand right now. > but I think storage performance is as important, since load times and stuttering take me out of the game in a way slightly worse graphics wouldn't (purely my opinion). From what I can tell, equivalent I/O for the price is still a ways off on the PC side. I think you're over-estimating the impact of storage speed on the gaming use case here. You can easily fit a 1 TB 3 Gbps NVMe SSD into a $1k PC budget, and you aren't going to notice the delta between that and the 5.5 claimed Gbps on the PS5 for gaming. Neither of these SSDs is gonna be a bottleneck for any kind of stuttering in games. An underpowered CPU/GPU/slow memory would be much more likely culprits once you've got the NVMe SSD part nailed down. > One also has to be careful to factor in time spent purchasing and building; I do not value my time at $0. Well then you should only be buying pre-builts if you don't derive enjoyment from assembling computers and thus need to pay yourself a wage to do so. Personally I love the whole process of researching and assembling computers; it's a hobby (an infrequently practiced one though, by the nature of it).

bhj 6y ago
> Neither of these SSDs is gonna be a bottleneck for any kind of stuttering in games. This is probably true for most current games, but is very much up for debate for future games[0]. If the storage speed really made no difference I doubt Sony would have bothered with the additional cost. > Well then you should only be buying pre-builts if you don't derive enjoyment from assembling computers and thus need to pay yourself a wage to do so. It's not mutually exclusive; I both enjoy building PCs and have limited time, thus the time has value that should be factored into the equation. The goal is to game, not build a PC. [0]: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ps5-ssd-is-so-fast-developers-need-to-redesign-their-games https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ps5-ssd-is-so-fast-developers...
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Or it might not be so relevant to future games either: https://gamingbolt.com/why-ps5s-ssd-speed-might-not-have-as-much-impact-as-you-think https://gamingbolt.com/why-ps5s-ssd-speed-might-not-have-as-... I think Sony may have chosen these specs partially so they could get away with having less RAM. Also, some of this speed isn't that the SSD components are necessarily that much faster, but rather that they're soldered directly onto the main board and located closely to the components that will use them. Modular, detachable storage located farther from the CPU is just gonna be slower, period. So I'm not so optimistic that this alone will prove to be a significant differentiator. And it could easily be the case that by the time it does, PC components have pulled ahead again. It takes several years before developers have gotten really good at using a given console to its full potential.
  - bhj 6y ago
    I think the speed advantage is more due to the I/O controller that Sony's made a big deal of, where data can get to RAM or GPU without having to interrupt the CPU. Those interrupts can cause a domino effect with Windows doing god-knows what else in the background, leading to a stutter. You're right though, PCs will get brute-force faster, while devs will squeeze more out of consoles. I just find it hard to make the case for building something right now given the apparent bang-for-the-buck of these consoles. That said, I do kinda need a new Plex server... :)
  - wtallis 6y ago
    > Also, some of this speed isn't that the SSD components are necessarily that much faster, but rather that they're soldered directly onto the main board and located closely to the components that will use them. Modular, detachable storage located farther from the CPU is just gonna be slower, period. Completely wrong. They're using PCIe 4.0 for the onboard SSD, and PCIe 4.0 for the aftermarket SSD slot. There's no performance penalty for going with removable storage here. We're not talking about a high-speed DRAM interface where shorter traces without the insertion loss of a connector really does help reach higher clock speeds (other things being equal).
FridgeSeal 6y ago
> You can easily fit a 1 TB 3 Gbps NVMe SSD into a $1k PC budget, and you aren't going to notice the delta between that and the 5.5 claimed Gbps Bearing in mind here, that it’s memory+storage architecture has a theoretical top of 22 Gb/ps, and they demonstrated recently, when assets are compressed using the “Octo” (naming?) lib, they were getting throughput of 12-18 Gb/ps. That’s written by the storage controller directly into memory the GPU can access (without the CPU being involved) so the normal latency to load data into a GPU is effectively gone. That speed is significantly above what drives can do on a normal consumer computer (to the best of my knowledge)
- Gracana 6y ago
  I stumbled a bit over those "gigabits per picosecond" units.
  - FridgeSeal 6y ago
    Hahahaha let me fix that Edit: nevermind, it’s too late, my poorly formatted units are staying.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago

If you are going to factor in your time spent researching and building then you should also factor in a PC’s superior versatility and upgradeability, catalog, cheaper games in general and no fees for online services. (That alone ends up being many hundreds of dollars over the lifetime of a console, if you need it.) In the long run a PC is usually going to cost you less than a console even if it costs much more up front.

CydeWeys 6y ago
There's a reason I don't play any online multiplayer games on consoles. I can't stomach paying that much just to use the Internet when multiplayer is free on PC.