Gaming Platform Showdown - PC vs Console Early 2015 Refresh
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,808 words · ~14 min read
0:00
So, in November of 2013, we released this video. It did a great job of
0:04
covering the differences in image quality between consoles and PCs at the
0:08
time, but it's 2015 and the landscape
0:11
has changed a fair bit. Traditionally, consoles will increase in image quality
0:15
over time as developers get more comfortable with the platform by
0:19
learning what it can and actually cannot do. But at the same time, the cost of PC
0:24
parts relative to their performance is always going down. So, back then, the
0:29
PS4 looked like a really compelling gaming box with the Xbox One being
0:34
larger, slower, and pointing a camera at you at all times. But some of those
0:40
things have changed. So, has the answer changed? Stay tuned to find out. And
0:44
stay subscribe to Linus Tech Tips if you're a fan of 5gallon buckets.
0:57
Corsair's H80i GT and H100i GTX
1:01
all-in-one liquid coolers improve both the appearance and cooling of your PC.
1:05
Click now to learn more. This time around, there will be five contenders.
1:09
The still bulky but cheaper and no longer camera burdened to Xbox One. The
1:13
PlayStation 4, which evidently Sony thought was just fine the way it was.
1:18
Our new and improved entry-level PC configured by STR MAPE and priced at
1:22
around 400 USD. and our new and improved
1:26
high-end machine priced at a lot, like
1:29
1,500 or something like that. And last but not least is the Thrift Machine
1:33
4000, which is the combination of the best parts of our used machines from the
1:38
Scrapyard Warrior series, which you should definitely watch if you haven't
1:41
already. Seriously, middleclick this
1:44
now, pause this video so you don't have two audio tracks running. Go watch that
1:49
one and then come back to this one. I'll wait. In the forum thread linked below
1:53
this video, you'll be able to see download links for all the raw footage
1:57
taken from these machines. So, you can actually see what it actually looked
2:01
like instead of seeing it after YouTube has kind of messed with it. Starting
2:06
with the low-end PC, its pros are largely based around it being cheap. Uh
2:11
whether or not you get Windows or not, you're probably going to be somewhere around $400 $500. And then it's going to
2:17
be more functional at that cost than a console. You'll be able to game, of
2:21
course, but you'll also be able to stream in both directions. Uh, video
2:25
editing, photo editing, web browsing, word editing, basic office
2:30
documentation, all that kind of stuff. Huge amounts of functionality. And if
2:34
you want more from it, you can upgrade it in the future. Of course, this is to
2:38
additional cost, but if you need more RAM, if you need a better graphics card,
2:41
if you want more storage for your 350 freaking Steam games, you can
2:44
accommodate that. You can also pick the settings for all of those games, which
2:49
is actually really nice. With a console, you're locked into whatever they think
2:53
is good. You're not going to be able to change your resolution or your frame rate or your quality settings in the
2:59
mass majority of cases. Whereas on a computer, you'd be able to change
3:03
everything in a mass majority of cases, which is actually quite fantastic. And
3:07
you can decide if you want more performance in terms of FPS or if you
3:11
want more uh nice looking images in
3:14
terms of resolution or quality settings.
3:17
Also, accessories are potentially a lot cheaper, but this is where we bridge the
3:22
gap to cons because accessories for a PC
3:25
can also be quite a bit more expensive. Although for the low-end PC, this is
3:30
still mostly a pro. It's now moving to
3:33
cons. It's a PC, but it's not that great
3:36
of a PC. You're probably not going to want to do a ton of like surround gaming
3:41
or anything like that on here, but that's not a huge deal. There are issues
3:46
with things like longevity. It's a low-end PC, and there's some
3:51
low-end components in here, like super sketchy power supplies and other things
3:56
that may kind of fail down the road. There's also no console exclusives. And
4:01
while this is a pro that you have PC exclusives as well, um I don't know,
4:08
it's it's also a con that you don't get to play the console ones. Of course,
4:11
with the used PC, the pros are that it's insanely cheap. With the cheap PC, we
4:16
saw a very low $400 to $500 price point.
4:19
With used PC, you're going to be able to easily get a computer for 400 or less at
4:25
a very high level of performance. very comparable with the low-end PC or even
4:30
better in some cases. You can get a lot of these parts if you're thrifty enough
4:34
and willing to wait possibly for free even uh old recycled computers, your
4:39
your mom's old computer or your friend's old computer or just anyone who's able
4:43
to drop down some parts. You can take anything from it that's valuable. Maybe
4:46
some extra RAM or or just the power supply or a hard drive or something. If
4:50
you zombie apart some computers, you can save a lot of money there. Um, and you
4:55
might even be able to find a free operating system in that process if you
4:59
find a hard drive that just happens to come with one, which is kind of awesome
5:03
because then there's additional savings there as well. And if some people are
5:08
going to point out that the parts might fail, well, if your hard drive fails,
5:11
stuff like SteamCloud is going to be able to preserve your save games, which
5:15
is actually quite fantastic. A lot of these uh kind of like Origin and Steam
5:20
and Play and stuff will have cloud save options. So, you don't even really have
5:24
to worry about that failing. And if you're kind of just zombifying a few
5:28
computers, you might have a few extra hard drives laying around. So, your get
5:31
up and go time might not even be that long. That being said, it's used
5:35
hardware and things might fail. I know I just said that might be okay cuz you
5:38
might be able to swap things in and out, but there's the very high chance that
5:42
you won't have a spare part for whatever just failed. And if it's a hard drive, I
5:48
did just say that you might have cloud save data, but you probably won't have a
5:52
backup of other things. You might be able to have multiple hard drives, but
5:55
it's very likely when you lose a hard drive is if it's not in a proper RAID or
5:59
if you don't have a proper scheduled backup or both, you're very likely going
6:03
to be losing data, which is not cool. The OS might even be pirated. You don't
6:09
necessarily know unless you're getting it from a very repeatable source, and
6:12
that's another sketchy thing. Stuff like
6:15
the power supply in the low-end PC was a little sketchy, but you might have all
6:20
sketchy parts in your used PC. It's just a risk. The pros of high-end PCs is that
6:26
they're crazy freaking blazing fast. You'll be able to get great image
6:31
quality in any game that you play. Um, great anti-aliasing detailing levels,
6:36
great uh high-end video editing or high-end content creation of any kind
6:40
realistically. uh surround gaming with three monitors for like sick setups with
6:45
racing or flying games or even high demand VR where you might need uh 90 FPS
6:51
to go along with your 90 Hz headset and in very high quality as well so it's
6:56
very immersive. That's really hard to do and you might be able to do that with a
6:59
high-end PC. You can also do stuff like streaming to things like NVIDIA Shields
7:04
or possibly Steam Link down the line. Although you might or might not need a
7:08
high-end PC for that. We'll have to see. The cons of this at the same time though
7:12
is that while its performance is badass,
7:15
its cost is really not great. It's going
7:19
to be super crazy expensive. And while you have the nice form factor of the
7:24
PlayStation 4 and the not quite as nice form factor of the Xbox One, they're
7:28
both relatively small. And a very high-end PC, well, not necessarily, it's
7:34
probably going to be very large. A lot of people that are building high-end PCs
7:38
are building them in full towers or midtowers which are relatively really
7:42
big compared to a PlayStation 4. Next up is Xbox One or Xbone for the people like
7:47
saying it that way. It has a better camera solution than the other console.
7:51
It's it's connect is actually fairly powerful although some people might
7:55
found it annoying, but we'll talk about that later. Voice control is cool. Voice
7:59
control is a modern way of interacting with devices and the Xbox One has it for
8:04
a ton of different reasons. and cloud servers for a better gaming experience.
8:09
Uh, is that a thing yet? Either way, it's a it's a benefit for now. It's also
8:14
a flexible entertainment device. You can watch TV and sports and stuff through
8:19
it. Maybe a little bit weird, maybe not something you're looking for, but it is a benefit of the device. Cons, however,
8:25
are where the hell is the performance increase from the Microsoft cloud
8:29
servers? I just brought this up as a pro, but we don't really see it as much
8:33
as it was kind of toted around when they were talking about it. Also, voice
8:37
control. Another thing I just brought up as a pro doesn't really work that well.
8:42
The amount of times that people have been trolled by someone shouting Xbox
8:45
off is insane. I wonder how many Xboxes I just turned off. Uh, it just it's a
8:51
little janky right now. Voice control isn't really where it needs to be in in
8:55
general, especially not for a solution like this. Crazy weird resolutions are
8:59
not great. Something like 792p for Watchd Dogs is just really weird and is
9:04
going to make it look not super awesome in the end. And in terms of performance,
9:09
it's just worse than a PS4. If you're comparing directly console to console,
9:13
it's not as powerful as a PS4. And with
9:17
all consoles, all modern consoles other than I guess Wii U, it requires a
9:22
monthly payment for online freaking access. the PlayStation 4. More games
9:27
are going to run at 1080p than the Xbox One. It doesn't have a giant power brick
9:32
like the Xbox One does, which is actually kind of nice. Just a direct
9:35
cable from the wall. It also has very low standby power. The while running
9:41
performance power might not be super great, but your console is going to be
9:44
sitting in standby more often than not while you're at work or school or
9:48
whatever. So, it's standby power is actually quite important. It also
9:52
performs better in general. I know I brought up the 1080p thing, but general
9:55
performance is better than an Xbox One,
9:58
and this is fairly opinionated, but it's
10:02
very attractive housing. It looks really good. The Xbox One is kind of clunky,
10:06
and yeah, it might look like certain home theater things, but the PlayStation
10:10
4 looks modern. The angles look really sharp. It just looks really good
10:14
overall. I'm not going to get into controller comparisons here because
10:18
that's extremely preference. Um, but anyways, moving on to cons. The
10:22
PlayStation 4 also lacks additional functionality again compared to the Xbox
10:27
One. It isn't able to do as many kind of random small things that the Xbox One
10:32
can do. It doesn't have the nice kind of TV mode if that's something you're
10:35
looking for. The camera isn't as highly functioning. It doesn't have the same
10:39
voice control kind of stuff. It's missing a lot of those things. And
10:43
you're also required, just like the Xbox One, to pay monthly for online access.
10:49
Very annoying. Honestly, the visual fidelity on all platforms was quite
10:54
good, and it was actually a little hard to tell between a high-end PC and an
10:58
Xbox One. You could tell, but you had to look pretty closely. What do you guys
11:02
think? Be sure to check out that footage in the video description down below on
11:05
the forum, where you can download the more high bit rate files instead of the
11:10
YouTube compression crap, which is probably what you saw throughout this
11:13
video. developers seem to be kind of harnessing these new consoles much
11:17
better, but again, it's a lot easier to
11:20
build a very low-end, very affordable machine which can beat out the consoles
11:24
now, which is kind of nice for PC guys as well. Now, another thing, Shadow of
11:29
Mordor and Far Cry 4 may not have been the best games to like really push the
11:34
high-end PC. So, we'll kind of have to see if there's other games out there.
11:38
And what games would you guys actually suggest? again, let me know down in the
11:42
in the comments below or preferably over on the forum. Speaking of good things,
11:46
XSplit. XSplit powers countless live streams and recordings throughout the
11:51
world. With the recent release of Xplit V2, you can experience powerful new
11:55
production tools that have been built to meet today's standards of content
11:59
creators. Whether you're a professional streamer, like we technically are, I
12:03
guess, or you just want to try streaming for your first time, or if you're
12:06
someone who just wants to broadcast gameplay to show friends a few new tips
12:10
and tricks, XSplit will allow you to create professional quality live
12:14
broadcasts and video recordings with their simple and intuitive interface. We
12:18
use XSplit every week to broadcast and record our live podcast, The WAN Show.
12:24
Exploit allows you to easily manage guests through Skype or other various
12:28
things. And you can hook directly into games via GameSource, which ensures high
12:32
fidelity highfidelity capture with a minimum performance loss and even lets
12:36
you easily stream and record your gaming moments with Gamecaster, which has an
12:40
easy to use in-game overlay to manage all of your streaming and recording
12:45
settings. So, head over to explit.com/Linus
12:48
to check out what they have to offer and claim your free XSplit license. Their
12:52
free license gives you everything you need to start streaming and recording in
12:55
HD. So, pick up yours today. All right, guys. So, like I said earlier, the
13:00
quality comparison was a lot closer this time than it was last time. Do you think
13:04
that was my fault in selection of games, or do you think that's kind of a a way
13:08
that the gaming industry is going? Is it this giant conspiracy that they're
13:11
nerfing the PC versions? What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments
13:14
down below or on the forums. Personally, I was actually pretty impressed with how
13:17
the consoles did. Although, I would still personally prefer the solution of
13:22
a PC because there's more options and things you can do. But what do you
13:25
think? Again, comments down below on the forum. While you're on YouTube,
13:29
subscribe, like, dislike, favorite, share, all those kind of things. While
13:32
you're on the forum or just in your web browser in general, change your Amazon
13:36
links by going to our support us link on the forum and checking out how to do
13:40
that. That'll help us a lot whenever you buy things like PCs or games or consoles
13:45
or controllers or whatever you want, anything. It'll help us give us little
13:49
kickbacks over time. Also, check out the link in the video description for a cool
13:53
shirt. We've got a whole bunch of different ones running on right now. And I know a few of you were complaining
13:57
about stock. We've just refreshed stock on a quite few of those shirts. So,
14:01
yeah. Anyways, thanks for watching. I'll see you guys next time.