Next Gen Console vs PC in AC4 & BF4 - Image Quality Showdown - Xbox One vs PS4 vs Xbox 360 vs PC
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,437 words · ~12 min read
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Corsair's Raptor line of quality gaming peripherals has the features you need to
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win at a price you'll like click now to learn
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more welcome to a first for us this is our comprehensive image quality
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comparison between five I don't have any handsfree but five different Platforms
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in both Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag
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and Battlefield 4 so we are going to be testing Xbox 360 to represent a last gen
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console PlayStation 4 Xbox one as well
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as an entry-level gaming PC so priced at around $550 worth of Parts including a
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Windows operating system and a high-end PC representing around a probably about
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a $1,500 to $1600 expenditure I want to
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take a moment to walk you guys through our setup and how we're going to be
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doing this so come on in first of all
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down here we have our high-end PC running on a test bench it features a
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GTX 780 and we've actually downclocked and jury rigged our 3960x to get
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equivalent to 4770k Performance we've
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got 32 gigs of RAM in there and SSD and it is just generally pretty beastly then
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following up over here I've got an Xbox 360 I have a PlayStation 4 I'll try not
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to to to wreck that I have an Xbox one
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hiding over here in the corner and you can see the connect is actually living
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on our entry level machine so this one
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features an AMD um A8 5600k quad core
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it's got only 4 gigs of RAM a Radeon
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7770 graphics card and then a generic
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power supply and a very entry-level case because we wanted to really reach a
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price point that's more in line with the consoles than what the typical
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perception of a gaming PC is which is that it's much much more expensive so
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next up let's show you guys the setup that we use that will allow you guys to
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download the full quality files at 30 megabit per second so you can actually
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compare for yourselves so each one of
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these platforms runs off of HDMI to an
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hdcp compliant splitter right here so we've actually we have to swap them as
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we go what this does is it strips out the hdcp protection that's on the
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PlayStation 4 which allows us to capture it with the same degree of quality as
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all the other ones so that then comes on over here all right so it's a able to
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Output to our monitor there where we're actually playing the games and then to
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an a media live gamer portable which is actually on the floor down there and you
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can see slick is actually recording Battlefield 4 gameplay right now so then
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what we're doing is we are archiving all of the footage all the test runs here
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and we are going to make those available for you guys to
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download while you guys are enjoying some gameplay footage I'm going to walk
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through what I feel are the pros and cons of each of the platforms so we'll start with Xbox 360 they're cheap
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they're about 150s on eBay and they come with a great controller still the
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favorite of both me and Slick the problem with it is that while the games
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run it's a miracle that they do it all because this is an 8-year-old platform I
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mean they're full of jaggies and they look awful but I mean okay they're
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running so if you're on a budget or you've already got the console and
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visuals aren't important to you I guess it's a great option the only problem
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that I have with it is that it doesn't feel like a good value I'm still
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investing $60 a game into something that
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I'll get to play in a way the developer never really intended it to be enjoyed
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and that's not even going to be backwards compatible with my or that my
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next console my new platform that I'm going to need anyway for upcoming games
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isn't even going to be able to run I would have to Reby the game if I really
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wanted to have the experience that the developer meant for me to have so that's
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that's the only issue I have here it just feels like money that I continue to
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invest in this platform is a bit of a waste next up we've got our low NPC the
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pros for this is that it's 450 bucks without an OS or 550 bucks with an OS
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that is smack in the price range of the next gen consoles not only that but the
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functionality goes beyond gaming you can stream you can edit you can upgrade it
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in the future if you do have additional funds available to you and it gives you
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a lot of flexibility so you can adjust your graphical settings to for desired
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performance so if you decide that detail settings are more important okay turn
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down your res if you decide that resolution's more important you have
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that ability to make decisions for yourself you can also get cheap
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peripherals I mean when you compare the price of a PC webcam to something like
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the PlayStation I it looks like a joke especially given that that PC webcam for
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the sake of doing something like streaming on Twitch TV has exactly the
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same functionality in terms of cons well there's no exclusive titles for it
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that's uh that's for sure it doesn't include a controller unless you count the $20 that we budgeted for a keyboard
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and mouse and this particular one doesn't have very high-end components so
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I'm not sure if it'll last 8 years of heavy use the way that people would
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expect from something like a gaming console it's also a PC but it doesn't
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really have the horses for surround monitor gaming or some of the exciting
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PC stuff that's coming like Oculus so I have to list that as a con for it as
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well now in conclusion image quality was comparable to the next gen consoles with
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a comparable price and this is the first time this has happened in a long time
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we're used to new consoles launching with amazing hardware for the price and
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the manufacturer is taking big losses on selling them but in 2013 you can
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basically just build your own console killer PC for about the same price I
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mean this is a great option if you don't care about the slightly better image
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quality that you might get on the consoles or the exclusive titles next up
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is our high-end PC and the pros of this are pretty easy it's very very fast with
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great image quality the best available there's fantastic anti-aliasing
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technology and better detail levels available with the horsepower to really
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take advantage of them there's great functionality outside of gaming you can
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do high-end video editing or other content creation and they're amazingly
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upgradeable and flexible throw triple monitors at it racing seats with
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surround monitors flexible game streaming is available to devices like
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steam box in the future sure other PCS or even Android devices like NVIDIA
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Shield the sky is pretty much the limit here in terms of flexibility on the
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negative side it's expensive as all balls I mean high-end Hardware just
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playing costs a lot of money and also just tends to have more issues than
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mainstream stuff that is the the drawback of living on the bleeding edge
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I mean a lot of the time it gets patched but you do have to live with it in the
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meantime I guess the summary here is that none of that really matters because
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you get to join the Glorious PC gaming Master race initia into which includes
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procedures that make your penis larger if you're a man your breasts larger if
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you're a woman and your beak stronger if you're a bird uh no but seriously it is
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the best gaming experience so it's a great option if that's what you're after
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it's just really expensive compared to everything else here next up we've got
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the Xbox One the pros here are pretty uh complicated I mean there's the
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additional functionality with the IR Blaster and cable box integration as
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well as Microsoft Services there's the wife and kids appeal with silly connect
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dancing games and I mean really to me connect being included really is a
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selling point if you expect something like this to end up under the tree and
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when you factor in the fact that Sony wants $60 for their inferior camera it
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starts to look like not a bad value the fact that potentially Microsoft can
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leverage their Cloud servers to deliver better gaming experiences in the future
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is a really cool thing that I'm excited about and finally voice control is a
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definite plus for this console in terms of the downsides the first one I've got
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here is voice control you'll notice this was listed twice because while it's
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really cool and it works we haven't really even gamed on the thing yet we've
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only benchmarked it and it's already annoyed us a couple times by accidentally picking up our voices and
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interrupting our gameplay I'm also not impressed with the controller the
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joysticks feel a little loose and the rumble motor is loud and pathetically
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weak and I mean there's also no support for things like live streaming on Twitch
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this is the kind of thing that even Sony managed to figure out and obviously if
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you're on a PC is extremely easy to do so there's a few things that Microsoft's
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got to fix but at least a couple of those can be done in software in summary
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unfortunately for gaming it's just playing technologically inferior to the
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PS4 it's already running at 720p in new games albeit with similar detail
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settings to the PlayStation 4 so from a distance the image quality might look
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quite similar but we could really see the PlayStation 4 pull ahead in
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Assassin's Creed 4 where it's running at 1080p the flexibility of the Xbox one as
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an entertainment device could be a great value in the long run however so it's
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going to be up to you whether or not this one's a great option and I think
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it'll depend on whether you're going to use those features or not which leads us
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to the PlayStation 4 the pros well first up more games run at 1080P or at least
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higher resolutions with satisfyingly beautiful Graphics it's small and
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relatively sexy compared to Xbox One in our estimation with just plain better
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gaming Hardware inside and no gigantic power brick outside it's got higher
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power consumption while gaming and idling but in standby it's actually much
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better so we've got to give the nod to Sony here because let's face it a lot of
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the time game consoles are sitting in standby now I'm not a huge dual shock
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fan but it's defitely better than the Xbox One controller for me so I'm going
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to points toy here in terms of cons well
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it just doesn't really do much else yet so there's no IR Blaster no included
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connect and I mean there's Sony just being Sony like the hdcp protection on
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this console almost prevented us from making this video for you in a timely
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fashion and they do weird stuff like build in Twitch TV streaming then limit
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the quality and prevent you from archiving it so people can only watch
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you live I mean it's it's better in terms of
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Hardware but sometimes again Sony does weird stuff like in Battlefield 4 their
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betterness was less noticeable because upsampling from 900p adds visual
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anomalies that make it look kind of soft and weird so we we couldn't decide
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really whether it was better to have 720p with jaggies or 900 900p with
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visual softness and weirdness so I mean the summary I guess here is that the PS4
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looks like a great device it's still not for me personally cuz I really can't
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live without a keyboard and mouse but it's great bang for the buck game
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hardware and from what we've seen here Sony's done a good job of delivering the
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hardware that Gamers and developers want and hitting a very appealing price point
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with it so overall conclusions now I
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think many of you might have expected me to go rah R raw PC is the greatest in
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this entire video but that's really not what we're trying to achieve we want you
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to make up your own mind we're more than happy to give you our thoughts and if
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you made it this far that's awesome but before you spend your money take a step
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further and check the links in the video description we've uploaded sample
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footage from each console to YouTube and provided links so you can download the
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sample footage and watch it for yourself locally at your leisure I encourage you
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to spend some time doing that if you like to buy any of the stuff and we've
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helped you make your decision please also follow the pricing and availability
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link that is also in the video description and buy from our Affiliates
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it helps us out a lot guys we also always want to hear from you so let us
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know based on well I don't know this evaluation or anything else that you've
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read or watched what platform do you feel has really won the Roundup here
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post it in the comments below and as always like the video if you liked it
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