So, in November of 2013, we released this video. It did a great job of
covering the differences in image quality between consoles and PCs at the
time, but it's 2015 and the landscape
has changed a fair bit. Traditionally, consoles will increase in image quality
over time as developers get more comfortable with the platform by
learning what it can and actually cannot do. But at the same time, the cost of PC
parts relative to their performance is always going down. So, back then, the
PS4 looked like a really compelling gaming box with the Xbox One being
larger, slower, and pointing a camera at you at all times. But some of those
things have changed. So, has the answer changed? Stay tuned to find out. And
stay subscribe to Linus Tech Tips if you're a fan of 5gallon buckets.
Corsair's H80i GT and H100i GTX
all-in-one liquid coolers improve both the appearance and cooling of your PC.
Click now to learn more. This time around, there will be five contenders.
The still bulky but cheaper and no longer camera burdened to Xbox One. The
PlayStation 4, which evidently Sony thought was just fine the way it was.
Our new and improved entry-level PC configured by STR MAPE and priced at
around 400 USD. and our new and improved
high-end machine priced at a lot, like
1,500 or something like that. And last but not least is the Thrift Machine
4000, which is the combination of the best parts of our used machines from the
Scrapyard Warrior series, which you should definitely watch if you haven't
already. Seriously, middleclick this
now, pause this video so you don't have two audio tracks running. Go watch that
one and then come back to this one. I'll wait. In the forum thread linked below
this video, you'll be able to see download links for all the raw footage
taken from these machines. So, you can actually see what it actually looked
like instead of seeing it after YouTube has kind of messed with it. Starting
with the low-end PC, its pros are largely based around it being cheap. Uh
whether or not you get Windows or not, you're probably going to be somewhere around $400 $500. And then it's going to
be more functional at that cost than a console. You'll be able to game, of
course, but you'll also be able to stream in both directions. Uh, video
editing, photo editing, web browsing, word editing, basic office
documentation, all that kind of stuff. Huge amounts of functionality. And if
you want more from it, you can upgrade it in the future. Of course, this is to
additional cost, but if you need more RAM, if you need a better graphics card,
if you want more storage for your 350 freaking Steam games, you can
accommodate that. You can also pick the settings for all of those games, which
is actually really nice. With a console, you're locked into whatever they think
is good. You're not going to be able to change your resolution or your frame rate or your quality settings in the
mass majority of cases. Whereas on a computer, you'd be able to change
everything in a mass majority of cases, which is actually quite fantastic. And
you can decide if you want more performance in terms of FPS or if you
want more uh nice looking images in
terms of resolution or quality settings.
Also, accessories are potentially a lot cheaper, but this is where we bridge the
gap to cons because accessories for a PC
can also be quite a bit more expensive. Although for the low-end PC, this is
still mostly a pro. It's now moving to
cons. It's a PC, but it's not that great
of a PC. You're probably not going to want to do a ton of like surround gaming
or anything like that on here, but that's not a huge deal. There are issues
with things like longevity. It's a low-end PC, and there's some
low-end components in here, like super sketchy power supplies and other things
that may kind of fail down the road. There's also no console exclusives. And
while this is a pro that you have PC exclusives as well, um I don't know,
it's it's also a con that you don't get to play the console ones. Of course,
with the used PC, the pros are that it's insanely cheap. With the cheap PC, we
saw a very low $400 to $500 price point.
With used PC, you're going to be able to easily get a computer for 400 or less at
a very high level of performance. very comparable with the low-end PC or even
better in some cases. You can get a lot of these parts if you're thrifty enough
and willing to wait possibly for free even uh old recycled computers, your
your mom's old computer or your friend's old computer or just anyone who's able
to drop down some parts. You can take anything from it that's valuable. Maybe
some extra RAM or or just the power supply or a hard drive or something. If
you zombie apart some computers, you can save a lot of money there. Um, and you
might even be able to find a free operating system in that process if you
find a hard drive that just happens to come with one, which is kind of awesome
because then there's additional savings there as well. And if some people are
going to point out that the parts might fail, well, if your hard drive fails,
stuff like SteamCloud is going to be able to preserve your save games, which
is actually quite fantastic. A lot of these uh kind of like Origin and Steam
and Play and stuff will have cloud save options. So, you don't even really have
to worry about that failing. And if you're kind of just zombifying a few
computers, you might have a few extra hard drives laying around. So, your get
up and go time might not even be that long. That being said, it's used
hardware and things might fail. I know I just said that might be okay cuz you
might be able to swap things in and out, but there's the very high chance that
you won't have a spare part for whatever just failed. And if it's a hard drive, I
did just say that you might have cloud save data, but you probably won't have a
backup of other things. You might be able to have multiple hard drives, but
it's very likely when you lose a hard drive is if it's not in a proper RAID or
if you don't have a proper scheduled backup or both, you're very likely going
to be losing data, which is not cool. The OS might even be pirated. You don't
necessarily know unless you're getting it from a very repeatable source, and
that's another sketchy thing. Stuff like
the power supply in the low-end PC was a little sketchy, but you might have all
sketchy parts in your used PC. It's just a risk. The pros of high-end PCs is that
they're crazy freaking blazing fast. You'll be able to get great image
quality in any game that you play. Um, great anti-aliasing detailing levels,
great uh high-end video editing or high-end content creation of any kind
realistically. uh surround gaming with three monitors for like sick setups with
racing or flying games or even high demand VR where you might need uh 90 FPS
to go along with your 90 Hz headset and in very high quality as well so it's
very immersive. That's really hard to do and you might be able to do that with a
high-end PC. You can also do stuff like streaming to things like NVIDIA Shields
or possibly Steam Link down the line. Although you might or might not need a
high-end PC for that. We'll have to see. The cons of this at the same time though
is that while its performance is badass,
its cost is really not great. It's going
to be super crazy expensive. And while you have the nice form factor of the
PlayStation 4 and the not quite as nice form factor of the Xbox One, they're
both relatively small. And a very high-end PC, well, not necessarily, it's
probably going to be very large. A lot of people that are building high-end PCs
are building them in full towers or midtowers which are relatively really
big compared to a PlayStation 4. Next up is Xbox One or Xbone for the people like
saying it that way. It has a better camera solution than the other console.
It's it's connect is actually fairly powerful although some people might
found it annoying, but we'll talk about that later. Voice control is cool. Voice
control is a modern way of interacting with devices and the Xbox One has it for
a ton of different reasons. and cloud servers for a better gaming experience.
Uh, is that a thing yet? Either way, it's a it's a benefit for now. It's also
a flexible entertainment device. You can watch TV and sports and stuff through
it. Maybe a little bit weird, maybe not something you're looking for, but it is a benefit of the device. Cons, however,
are where the hell is the performance increase from the Microsoft cloud
servers? I just brought this up as a pro, but we don't really see it as much
as it was kind of toted around when they were talking about it. Also, voice
control. Another thing I just brought up as a pro doesn't really work that well.
The amount of times that people have been trolled by someone shouting Xbox
off is insane. I wonder how many Xboxes I just turned off. Uh, it just it's a
little janky right now. Voice control isn't really where it needs to be in in
general, especially not for a solution like this. Crazy weird resolutions are
not great. Something like 792p for Watchd Dogs is just really weird and is
going to make it look not super awesome in the end. And in terms of performance,
it's just worse than a PS4. If you're comparing directly console to console,
it's not as powerful as a PS4. And with
all consoles, all modern consoles other than I guess Wii U, it requires a
monthly payment for online freaking access. the PlayStation 4. More games
are going to run at 1080p than the Xbox One. It doesn't have a giant power brick
like the Xbox One does, which is actually kind of nice. Just a direct
cable from the wall. It also has very low standby power. The while running
performance power might not be super great, but your console is going to be
sitting in standby more often than not while you're at work or school or
whatever. So, it's standby power is actually quite important. It also
performs better in general. I know I brought up the 1080p thing, but general
performance is better than an Xbox One,
and this is fairly opinionated, but it's
very attractive housing. It looks really good. The Xbox One is kind of clunky,
and yeah, it might look like certain home theater things, but the PlayStation
4 looks modern. The angles look really sharp. It just looks really good
overall. I'm not going to get into controller comparisons here because
that's extremely preference. Um, but anyways, moving on to cons. The
PlayStation 4 also lacks additional functionality again compared to the Xbox
One. It isn't able to do as many kind of random small things that the Xbox One
can do. It doesn't have the nice kind of TV mode if that's something you're
looking for. The camera isn't as highly functioning. It doesn't have the same
voice control kind of stuff. It's missing a lot of those things. And
you're also required, just like the Xbox One, to pay monthly for online access.
Very annoying. Honestly, the visual fidelity on all platforms was quite
good, and it was actually a little hard to tell between a high-end PC and an
Xbox One. You could tell, but you had to look pretty closely. What do you guys
think? Be sure to check out that footage in the video description down below on
the forum, where you can download the more high bit rate files instead of the
YouTube compression crap, which is probably what you saw throughout this
video. developers seem to be kind of harnessing these new consoles much
better, but again, it's a lot easier to
build a very low-end, very affordable machine which can beat out the consoles
now, which is kind of nice for PC guys as well. Now, another thing, Shadow of
Mordor and Far Cry 4 may not have been the best games to like really push the
high-end PC. So, we'll kind of have to see if there's other games out there.
And what games would you guys actually suggest? again, let me know down in the
in the comments below or preferably over on the forum. Speaking of good things,
XSplit. XSplit powers countless live streams and recordings throughout the
world. With the recent release of Xplit V2, you can experience powerful new
production tools that have been built to meet today's standards of content
creators. Whether you're a professional streamer, like we technically are, I
guess, or you just want to try streaming for your first time, or if you're
someone who just wants to broadcast gameplay to show friends a few new tips
and tricks, XSplit will allow you to create professional quality live
broadcasts and video recordings with their simple and intuitive interface. We
use XSplit every week to broadcast and record our live podcast, The WAN Show.
Exploit allows you to easily manage guests through Skype or other various
things. And you can hook directly into games via GameSource, which ensures high
fidelity highfidelity capture with a minimum performance loss and even lets
you easily stream and record your gaming moments with Gamecaster, which has an
easy to use in-game overlay to manage all of your streaming and recording
settings. So, head over to explit.com/Linus
to check out what they have to offer and claim your free XSplit license. Their
free license gives you everything you need to start streaming and recording in
HD. So, pick up yours today. All right, guys. So, like I said earlier, the
quality comparison was a lot closer this time than it was last time. Do you think
that was my fault in selection of games, or do you think that's kind of a a way
that the gaming industry is going? Is it this giant conspiracy that they're
nerfing the PC versions? What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments
down below or on the forums. Personally, I was actually pretty impressed with how
the consoles did. Although, I would still personally prefer the solution of
a PC because there's more options and things you can do. But what do you
think? Again, comments down below on the forum. While you're on YouTube,
subscribe, like, dislike, favorite, share, all those kind of things. While
you're on the forum or just in your web browser in general, change your Amazon
links by going to our support us link on the forum and checking out how to do
that. That'll help us a lot whenever you buy things like PCs or games or consoles
or controllers or whatever you want, anything. It'll help us give us little
kickbacks over time. Also, check out the link in the video description for a cool
shirt. We've got a whole bunch of different ones running on right now. And I know a few of you were complaining
about stock. We've just refreshed stock on a quite few of those shirts. So,
yeah. Anyways, thanks for watching. I'll see you guys next time.