Gaming PC or pre owned xbox 360

topcat007

anyone seen the mantle 280x vs 770 benchmarks or any mantle benchmarks on 280x can not find anything yet

PenguinJim

The 770 is £20 more?

It was easier last November when the 770 was the exact same price but included Assassin's Creed 4, Batman: Arkham Origins and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Now there's just that one £10 game included.

But at a £20 difference, the 770 is still the one I'd go for. You can use Shadowplay for proper gameplay capture like the new consoles, too.

If you can't afford to stretch that far, you'll do alright with the 280X. It's a great price/performance card.

TherealMandM

topcat007 wrote: »

anyone seen the mantle 280x vs 770 benchmarks or any mantle benchmarks on 280x can not find anything yet

will be because there isnt a lot of current games that support mantle the main ones are battlefield 4 and thief.
http://wccftech.com/mantle-api-directx-thief-benchmarks-direct3d-creamed/
this is one I have found for thief but it will vary depending on cpu etc, any extra is good imo
but there will be a lot more support on up coming games

PenguinJim

Mantle's biggest benefit is for AMD CPUs as they tend to be much slower than the Intel ones at the moment. You can still see a 5% performance increase using Mantle even on higher-end Intel CPUs like the one you're considering, though.

I wouldn't take a 5% boost to my frames-per-second if it meant graphical glitches and crashing, as Mantle currently does. It took AMD years to fix the micro-stuttering, so I'm not optimistic that this will get fixed in 2014. Still, it produces a very nice marketing graph which is bound to impress your friends.

topcat007

After all this i am tempted by the idea of a cheap 32" tv , PS3 preowned as there is less problems no red ring etc ..massive back catalog of games which are cheap, bog standard laptop and it would be under £500.

Finding it hard to justify £750 + monitor

ah i dunno maybe i should stop being a cheap skate !

Also dont want to be at a PC screen after being at one all day at work

topcat007

this is a quote i have stuck in my mind (from another forum) "People on this forum often say that consoles are obsolete since the moment they are announced, but tell me how many dudes you know that can play decently FarCry3, Crysis 3 or Skyrim with a PC built on 2005 (and never upgraded) with a budget of $299 or $599?"

Nilrem

They can say that, but Farcry etc run on the console usually at a much lower res than they can do on the PC (720p I think is the max on the console, from memory the 360 just upscales past that), and over the life of a console you're typically paying a fair chunk extra for the games, and in the case of MS for the use of Live if you want to play any games online.
Not forgetting that if a part dies on the PC it will often be covered under a 2-3-5 year warranty and replaced easily, whilst on a console you're much more reliant on either third party fixes (at a fee), or the manufacturer/retailers good will (my last PC outlived I think 3x 360's my nephews had, despite having far more use, and is now in the living room with a £25 videocard acting as a media player).

So the upfront cost of a PC is often higher than a console, but it pays back quite quickly as often a PC game will be <£30ish new, whilst the console version is £40+, and PC games tend to drop in price much faster and to much lower levels.

PenguinJim

topcat007 wrote: »

After all this i am tempted by the idea of a cheap 32" tv , PS3 preowned as there is less problems no red ring etc ..massive back catalog of games which are cheap, bog standard laptop and it would be under £500.

Finding it hard to justify £750 + monitor

ah i dunno maybe i should stop being a cheap skate !

Also dont want to be at a PC screen after being at one all day at work

You don't have a monitor already? But you're not just going to use your PC with your TV? That certainly complicates things!

Remember that PCs can simply connect to TVs via HDMI, and it's not the hassle it was 10-15 years ago. With Steam's Big Picture mode, you could essentially have your PC act as a Steam-powered gaming console next to your TV. You could have it start when Windows starts, and use your (for example) 360 controller for everything. In a few years you could grab a nice 28" 4K monitor for £250 (they're £500 today) and keep on truckin'!

You really have to ask yourself what you're going to use your new gaming device for. They're not called the PC Master Race for nothing - with extremely few exceptions, every multiplatform game looks and runs best on a PC, without question. Do graphics and frame-rate matter to you? Games on PC also benefit from multiple control schemes: prefer keyboard and mouse? Joystick? 360 controller? PS3 controller? Wiimote? PC gives you the best controller options, including a few esoteric devices. Want the cheapest games? The hardware outlay should be covered by what you pay for games over a few years. Free online play? Sorted. Prefer the prettiest graphics to a high frame rate? Prefer the highest frame rate to the prettiest graphics? You're not limited by what the developer has chosen for you.

But the other key benefit is the non-gaming side. A PC is also the best platform for all of that other computery stuff, like web browsing, downloading, Office, graphical design, video editing, maintaining your budget, transcoding your files, setting up a media server... the list goes on and on. Is any of that useful for you?

Then again, there have been some absolute bargains on PS3s recently. I'm sure I saw a 12GB PS3 console for £100 around Christmas. It would be highly recommended to throw your own hard drive in there, but you can choose from pretty much any 2.5" drive (unlike the 360, where you're limited to Microsoft's overpriced 360 HDDs). Online play is still free on the PS3 (unlike the 360, PS4 or Xbox One), and there are some brilliant games in the back catalogue than can be picked up for £5-10 - not PC cheap, but cheap nonetheless. True, most of the multiplatform games look and/or run better on 360, but you'd be hard-pushed to tell the difference most of the time. If you subscribe to Playstation Plus, you get to rent some fairly good games for free for as long as you maintain the subscription (about £35-40 a year).

There have been some absolutely stunning console games that have never made it to PC. You'd do well to grab The Last of Us, Demon's Souls, and Red Dead Redemption (RDR is fine on PS3, the graphical difference between the PS3 version and the 360 version is minimal). I'd also *strongly* recommend picking up a Dual Shock 4 (the PS4 controller), as it's far, far superior to the DS3, and works with almost all PS3 games. Keep the DS3 for local multiplayer and the occasional incompatibility.

The PS3 is also a great Blu-Ray player and decent media server - in fact, it's much better than the PS4 in this respect (it can do crazy things like... play MP3s!).

So, a (let's say) £110 12GB PS3 with a £50 HDD, a £40 DS4 and £75 for two years of PS+ and £25 for two or three games to get your started. £300! Not bad! :beer:

Unless, of course, you like Halo... (No, I'm not writing a paragraph on the best things about the 360 now! I have work to do!)

Actually, topcat007, a bit more about your gaming needs and history might help. Are you coming from a PS2 or Wii? Will you be gaming more or less than a dozen hours a week? Local or online multiplayer preferred? What do your friends have? I picked up a 360 to play online with my Australian cousins, for example.

fridgeracer

little advice for the OP: you can still game on a PC like you do with a console in the living room. you just need a 15 meter HDMI cable and a wireless keyboard, mouse (just to control the pc and go in and out of steam / whatever gaming platform you use) and a wireless xbox 360 controller for windows.

now you have a desktop gaming pc traditionally on a desk, and a console in the living room whenever you feel like you wanna go to the couch and play something like skyrim or borderlands, just need that wireless controller and HDMI cable.