You’re correct, on paper. In practice, it doesn’t matter how powerful the GPU is or how much ram over 4gb it has if the game isn’t designed to take advantage of it. The xbox is puny compared to the PC - but the xbox is target hardware.
Consider the recommended specs for these recent releases:
XCOM
Memory:4 GB RAM
Graphics:NVIDIA GeForce 9000 series / ATI Radeon HD 3000 series or greater
DirectX®:9.0
Borderlands 2
Memory: 2 GB
Video Memory: 512MB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 / ATI Radeon HD 5850
Sound: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
Call of Duty Black Ops 2
Memory: 2 GB for 32-bit OS or 4 GB for 64-bit OS
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 MB
DirectX®: 9.0c
Sound: DirectX 11.0c compatible Farcry 3
Memory:4 GB RAM
Graphics:512MB Video RAM (1GB Video RAM), DirectX9c (DirectX11) Shader Model 3.0 (Shader Model 5.0)
DirectX®:11 Assassin’s Creed 3
Memory: 4 GB
Graphics: 1024 MB DirectX® 10-compliant with Shader Model 5.0 or higher (see supported list)*
DirectX®: 10
Hitman Absolution
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 or ATI Radeon HD 5770
DirectX®: 11
Again - those are the recommended specs, not even the bottom of the barrel minimum specs. My $700 machine exceeds all of that. Hell, some of those games don’t even support anything better than dx9!
Would your suggestion make those games look better? Sure. Will it look a thousand dollars better? I doubt it. The software just isn’t being built to take maximum advantage of all that power.
My machine will play all of those games I listed at high graphics options without hiccups or slowdowns. Everything else is just gravy.
You are simply wrong. Xbox 360 renders games at sub-720p solutions. PC monitors can push 5 times as many pixels. Even without high end monitors, more than twice is common.
Almost all games, all except the laziest ports, support higher graphical settings than what the console versions would allow. And you can apply post processing effects like FSAA to make the game look even better without any extra graphical coding from the devs. On a game like skyrim, what the consoles sees is equivelant to the PC running the game at all low settings. And they run it at 20-30 fps. So yeah, by all means, if your goal is to run the games at low resolution at low settings at low frame rate, try to match the prowess of an xbox 360’s GPU.
So yes, of course your system would stomp an xbox 360, but that’s setting the target pathetically low. The guy wants a good gaming machine, and he’s willing to pay. All of you who are suggesting he cripple it with a bottom of the barrel videocard are doing nothing but steering him the wrong way. A 620 or something like that is going to compromise on settings, resolution, and/or frame rate, possibly all 3.
Better check again. A GT 620 is such a low end card it doesn’t appear on this list at all, but the slightly better GT 630 does and you can see that the tier it is on is many below what you just listed as recommended on several of those games. That doesn’t make it unplayable, but being able to play and being at recommended settings are two different things. I am not sure if you are just fooled by the RAM on the graphics card or what - the # of GB of RAM the card has is meaningless.
The GT 620 was essentially a rebranded GT 530. A card which is only somewhat better than the Intel HD 4000 GPU (the one integrated in some CPUs).
It will certainly make them look $400-odd better which is what it would cost to upgrade the video card and PSU to the ones recommended. That’s not counting the processor, etc.
“Recommended” settings doesn’t mean “All high level graphics”. It usually means “Medium settings” with Minimum being low settings. To get high settings, you go above the “recommended” specs.
I turned in my power gaming PC card a few years ago, so I don’t have a whole a lot to add. But I do have one suggestion.
When I went to buy my box from Cyber Powercough years ago, I ran my configuration through all of their sale entry portals. That is, I would click through “Special 1,” “Special 2,” et al, wipe the slate and enter my parameters. I ran the same build through five or six portals. I ended up with the rig priced ~$2500 no matter the portal, give or take $50–save one.
One “sale portal” had some combination of discounts and rebates that I ended up with my build for $1400. Exactly the same build that priced at ~$2500 through every other link on the site.
I have no idea if this will benefit you in the end, but I would suggest that you create your build multiple times on each site, using every link you can find. Sometimes, there are strange algorithms behind the scenes that you can’t see.
Current special on iBuyPower’s home page:
Intel Core i7-3820 Processor
16GB DDR3-1600 G.SKILL RipjawsX Memory
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB
ASUS P9X79 LE Motherboard
180GB Intel SSD + 2TB 7200rpm HDD
24X DVDRW
Windows 8
Chimera Inferno 4SE Gaming Case
$1559 Regular price
$200 Instant Off
$1359 Final Price
Well, I looked into the ASUS VG23AH, but between complains of no driver support among other things, I’m a bit iffy about it. So I’ve been looking around Newegg and found this moniter. The reviews seem to generally be good, though it doesn’t have a thing for DVI and DisplayPort, not that I know what those are used for. Are they important?
They’re both ways of sending digital signals. DVI is essentially HDMI without sound included.
Assuming your video card has an HDMI output, you’ll just connect the monitor that way and it won’t matter. It’d only make a different with older video cards that lack HDMI and use DVI instead.
That isn’t nearly as good of a monitor as the ASUS one - ignore all the marketing crap and look at the actual specs, that is a “TN” panel, which is ultimately cheaper/not as good as an “IPS” panel. TN panel monitors are fine, I am using one myself right now, but should cost like $75-100 less than that monitor. HDMI is one way to hook up your monitor to your computer. The others being VGA (or D-SUB), which is an older method you don’t want to use, DVI, which is the same signal as HDMI but with no sound and a different cable, and Displayport, which uses yet a different cable (and has a “mini” version that requires yet a different cable). Generally the easiest & standard way to hook up a single monitor is with DVI or HDMI - most video cards have at least one of each.
