PC Gaming Going the way of the Dodo?

[rb]

please show me full speed working emulators for the following systems then
1. PS2
2. Gamecube
3. Sega Dreamcast
4. Sega Saturn
5. Xbox
6. Xbox 360

[shivadee]

besides all that the PC can emulate the majority of the console games neway...

yea boy yuh talking a pile dey. But PC can hold its own well. Networking is NOT easier. With consoles everything is auto. LAN is NO problems ATALL. And online the server sets you up one time. You find anyone anywhere EASY. the PC may have been first. But playing online with PC recently....man i does juss get vex.

[TriniXaeno]

some beautiful points made!!

* Console does not come with it's own screen.

Love this one.

Most people like to quote the cheaper price of a console system against the PC platform without taking into account the screen. Especially a HDTV. That is gonna cost some serious dollars.

We all know a typical CRT is superior to a regular TV. An HDTV approaches the quality of the CRT but at what COST!

Time to play cash pot / lotto.

* Ultra Gamers are platform agnostic

Wonderful reminder their laruto. Our best gamers don't care about the platform. It is all about the game.

* Ubiquity of a gaming platform.

This will never happen because of economic/political/business reasons. The technology to do it has been around for ages. Yet we still have several flavours of PCs, Consoles and handhelds. Many with games that remain exclusive.

* Ease of Use
PC still has a ways to go to meet the console in the "ease of use" department.

Playing Halo 2 multiplayer on the XBOX is childsplay. Doing the same on the PC via LAN or internet is definitely much more involved. Having to deal with necessary evils like firewalls and IP addresses.

* Piracy.
In the past, both were easily compromised. Today, I'm not so sure.
You will find that any new PC title using full strength Starforce is near impossible to circumvent.

Has anyone saw burned versions of XBOX 360 titles making the rounds? Or Mods for that matter?

If we are talking about old school (xbox/ps2/pre-starforce) Then I'd say the consoles are easier to deal with, piracy wise. A PC game is much more involved to "crack" whereas once a console is modded, it is a simple matter of getting a copy of any game. No patching or any such work necessary.

[Kaizen]

i come off gatt for a 2 days and i now realize this argument still up .bah

[shivadee]

what i have heard is that they are getting Laptop HDD to plug into the XBOX 360 and run the games of that. No difference in quality

[TrinireturnofGamez]

 a good pc will put you out at least $800 USD , for that price you'd get  a good mid ranged rig eg. Athlon 64 3500, 1 gig ram , Geforce 6800GS or 6800GT . 
    A next gen console will be as fast as a currant gen high end PC ie. Athlon 64 4800+ , Geforce 7800 GTX , but PCs will begin to own their base from late 2006 when  Quad core CPUs  and  48 / 64 pipeline monster graphics cards supporting direct x 10 are released.  By 2007 a mid range /low end PC will be as fast or faster than the consoles..
     
   PC's may eventually lack innovation too , a man who plays WoW 4 hours a day may not have the time, hardware , or will to go take up the latest FPS from a store , plenty people still happy running a 600mhz / geforce 2 machine and playing Half Life 1  or quake III online , the sheer addictiveness of online games may actually  start hurting the industry overall as  Uber games like WoW eat up smaller but occasionally more innovate MMO's entirely  and leave people unwilling to try newer games.. 
 

[Beomagi]

only replying to a dead thread because of the comment "you cant make a gaming rig for blah blah amount"

Yes YOU CAN.

You dont need the latest video card. Keep in mind that the simple x800 vanilla has the same memory throughput as an xbox 360. Compared to any previous console, it's WAY ahead. What the xbox's (and the 1900) graphics card has on it, is shaders.

The PC is about customizing. There's no silly rule saying everything HAS to run the same way. You'd be shocked to see how well a gimpy pc card - like that x800 or 6800 -  can run at the low intended resolution the xbox 360 - and especially the old xbox. Anyone saying "but i can't run my game maxed out" roll a d20. You lose that many IQ points.

gaming pc for cheap
cpu - Semprom64 2800+ - $75.50
Mobo - Asrock 6100 based - $61.00
Memory - 1GB DDR400 - $73.00
HDisk - 7200RPM 80GB - $48.50
Optical - lITEON dvd-RW - $37.00
Case&PSU - Rosewill 400W ATX - $25.00
----------------------------------------------------
$320.00

Part decisions Each part here, has strengths over the next gen of consoles. burning capability, stronger single threaded performance, enough space for a porn collection, and the ability to run whatever you desire in that 1GB of memory. If you have a pc that's anybit as close or more powerful than this, then your gaming rig is made in the next part. Why sempron? Because it can match the single threaded performance of most 939's with minor overclocking. The most common ones - the 3000 through 3500+ can be surpassed with a good overclock.

BTW: no psu woes. Both myself and Shiva can attest to Rosewill's capability.

This, is a FULL computer. I've played Doom 3 and ut2004 with that onboard video. It's not that great, but it would handle 640x480 (HL2 on  high!!!). Of course, i'm well below that $600 mark arn't I? I'm also assuming that none of you here has an up to date pc, or you're visiting your neighbour to post.

now video card price point options :
$103($423) - MSI x800 - match everything but the shader power of the latest and greatest and barely available
$149($469) - x800 GTO fireblade - more vmem for higher quality exture settings, higher memory bandwidth
$164($484) - 6800GS - about the speed of the 6800gt (and better overclocking!) or for $189 get one of the fastest pre overclocked
$275($595) - 7800GT oc'd the is the next step up from 6800gt/ultra/x800xt/x850xtpe speeds that the 6800GS can provide.
$508($828) - x1900xt - double the bandwidth of the xbox360, the video memory is equal to the TOTAL memory on the xbox360, and the core speed is also clocked higher.

Between the 7800gt and x1900xt, there's the 7800gtx - imo, it's priced too close to the x1900xt for me to be recommended.

so there you go - at $320 to the prices. You can get the 7800GT on there, get the speed of the sempron up to 2.0-2.2GHz if you like, and for $600 you'd have a VERY capable gaming system capable of handling higher resolutions that consoles are providing, doing more for you as well. If you need windows, xp-Home or 2000 would do in a pinch - and you'll see advertised versions for cheap. Heck you can find OEM versions for about $65. Even then, dropping to the 6800GS still nets you an awesome gaming and computing experience.

As far as people thinking about complaingin that the chip isn't fast enough, it is.
1. It would easily overclock by 50% if that makes you happy. Some lucky prick on a Biostar Tforce ran his flat out at 3.0GHz.
2. At high resolution (which should be what you're running at if you get a high end card) the sempron2800+ would still not bottleneck the x1900xt.

[W1nTry]

Damn good post there Beo... but I have 1 thing to point out. That CPU would bottleneck a 1900XT cause even a FX-60 bottlenecks.... if you don't believe me, just check out the highest res benchies and see how they are topping out on current tech. (we talking 20xx X 1600 or whatever they've reached now.) They also see with OCing hte CPU they still get more performance. So as it stands, a 7800GTX 512 (say in SLI) and a X1900XTX would indeed bottleneck. It just depends on what level you're running the card. As it stands alot last gen cards match up on 1024x768... you start to see the difference at 1280x1024 and well with things like HDR and TAA you have some really big hickups. However on the note of comparing the feature set and expected res, you're absolutely right, a cheap rig can hold its own. The problem is, do you buy a Xbox 360 to play on a 13" TV? or do you buy a 7800GTX to pair it with a sempron? My answer to this is ONLY as an interim solution. If you're buying a gaming rig you WILL spend money to get good stuff, similarly if you buying the latest greatest console, you're willing to spend on it as well.

[Beomagi]

here's Doom III at 1280x1024. That's moderate resolution today for gaming. My 6800 handles that on an athlon-xp in most games.

Yes Faster CPU's get more fps, but that curve is awefully flat.

The problem with most game results is reviewers test them at silly low resolutions - 800x600 is only suitable for lowly cards today.

Here's more results
battlefield 2, fear, serious sam 2, cod2 - the sempron at 2.6 proves indistinguisable to the athlonfx57.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_3.html

Now the graphics card was a great one - the 7800GT - though it's not high up there. Then again, the resolutions used were low compared to what the x1900xt can handle. 1280x1024 has 67% more pixels than 1024x768, 1600x1200 has 46.5% more than 1280x1024 and 2048x1536 has another 64% over 1600x1200. 2.4 times as many as 1280x1024. If you're on a good 19" CRT, you can make use of 1600 to 2048 quite nicely for cheap.


The idea that you MUST have a powerful cpu to pair with a powerful graphics card is more psychological than ever. People have forgotten that AMD used to be in the drivers seat with $100 cpus. You DONT need dual core for games, and if you have any enthusiast blood, a hair of curiousity, perhaps a pinch of knowledge - either your own, or the address of a friend with more, you can get high end single core cpu performance out if that 2800+.

Dont change the rules - it was making a solid gaming pc for cheap. Not making a solid gaming pc, which has an expensive cpu.

[shivadee]

Beo you can make a gaming rig for that amount. But home much to make a gaming rig looking better than 360 graphics? But PC gamers need not worry. PC gaming insnt going anywhere. It isnt as big budget as Console games, but its doing well in its own right.

[Beomagi]

Beo you can make a gaming rig for that amount. But home much to make a gaming rig looking better than 360 graphics? But PC gamers need not worry. PC gaming insnt going anywhere. It isnt as big budget as Console games, but its doing well in its own right.

Now that really depends on the game. Though I didn't post that to say it would look better, i wanted to show a gaming pc can be made for $cheap - however I'll tackle it...

The 360's big advantage is shaders, and the number of threads the cpu can handle.
CPU - The single core performance for the cell isn't great for gaming - it's excellent for multimedia. Gaming threads today arn't balanced well - they arn't splitting say, ai into multiple threads, it is a thread. Movement of animated verticies another, etc. etc. Certain threads take up MUCH more processing than the others, and that SPU in the cell would have to play catch up. e.g. shadows - one of the cpu killers in modern games. Combine now with the above posting link showing how flat the curve gets for Doom3 at a measly 1280x1024. We can remove the cpu from this equation.
GPU - Any card with high speed memory and a fat 256bit memory bus can look better in that it can run at higher resolution. Because the xbox360 has to share system, game, and texture memory on the same 512MB, any 512MB card, and even 256MB cards would handle higher quality textures. ATI cut some of the legs off the xbox gpu when they cut the memory pipe in half, and clocked the core at 500MHz. Take a look at some x1900xt vs x1900AIW benchmarks. The x1900AIW has 1000MHz memory, and the same 500MHz core as the x360, but it has a 256bit bus, so it's actually running at a higher memory throughput than the xbox360. It gets trounced by the higher clocked x1900xt easily, and even the 7800gtx. This card's core is equal to the 360's, just higher memory thoroughput and of course lacking that 10MB sdram that's suppossed to do AA.


Was I impressed when i saw Kameo? sorta. LOT of effects. but the resolution wasn't crisp, it lacked AA - kinda stuff pc users are used to. My first experience with high res? Running never winter nights in a 1700+ and ti4200 @ 1280x1024 with Quincunx.

History does repeat itself. When the original xbox aired, the video solution was more powerful than the GF3 as it had a second shader unit. The gf4 took back the power very shortly afterwards. It's only because realism has improved in this generation overall are gamers believing that the xbox is so incredibly powerful. It's the same 16 pipe 48 shader unit in the 1900AIW. In another generation, the gtx and 1900xt that are faster, would be at mainstream prices, JUST as in the past, and the pc hardware would show it's advancment or static hardware, again.

[Beomagi]

btw - that taken from the superman batman comic?

[shivadee]

well the Supergirl comic. The ones from last year with the resurect the real supergirl....this one. I kinda edited it a bit. Not the full thing Martian Manhunter said .....




by the by. Isnt the 360 tripple core? I saw in a Microsoft tech demo that the 360 has an extra PCI slot in it as well.....but i cant be certain. I DO know its a triple core 3.2GHz processor......that kinda REAL powerful dont you think?

and people have already seen in the regular XBOX, a "GeForce 2 64MB" graphics card on its best day with angels in the heavens and deamons from hell on its side can do what the XBOX's GeForce can do......which people with PC's ALWAYS comparing to the PC GeForce 2.

Same with this gfx card.

But with my current PC i just build. Im playing Quake 4 on MAX OUT settings.....Anti Aliasing right up to MAX and it looking SWEEEEEEET. Better than the 360 version

What i can say is that the Console right now is equivalent to the PC RIGHT NOW. But PC can change in a few months......

DOA 4 graphics.....i doh care what ANYONE say, it really OUTSTANDING....well i saw the DOA4 on a HDTV. On a CRT its still really nice but no where NEAR as sharp and bright.

[Beomagi]

You're right, it is triple core - my mistake with the ps3 core which is 7 SPU's (one disabled to improve yields). The xbox 3.2GHz is even slower than intel's netburst in certain tasks because of the simplicity of each SPU. It's a triple core, dual spu per core, for 6 spus.

Xbox went triple core for the sole purpose of making development easier which is a good thing. It would be difficult to exploit the same advantages of the cell processor in this way, but the development shuold go faster. It's REAL powerful, but it's more powerful in media apps than gaming. We saw what happenned when a bad latency high speed processor was used in games. The spu's have even worse latency than a pentium 4. Multimedia can have instructions streamed in order at which point the cell shown it's power - such as handling 48 video streams.

The fx57 is STILL the leader in games - and if you check the link to the toms hardware chart, it's lead at high resolutions is contested, because of the flat curve - the cpu removes it self more and more from the game's limits as resolutions and graphical tweaks increase.


I can see the cell cpu's utilized by streaming video in games. You enter a theatre while playing duke nukem forever - show actual clips for upcoming movies. Right now, the only single chip that can handle the amount of parallelism the cell can in multimedia, is the 840EE and 955XE which can handle 4 threads each, 2 of which should be exclusive of each other.

Actually it would be unfair to the xbox in that comparison. The geforce2, GF4 MX series, radeons vanilla, 7000, 7500 all did not support shaders. The GF3, GF4ti series, and 8500 started it.

I'm green thinking of your rig I want one no i want 3.

The pc's range is so vast, you cannot make that statement. The pc isn't equal to the xbox360. What can be said is the Mainstream (say the GS) video card has advantages but also disadvantages compared to an xbox 360. A single high end video card would take the lead.

[TriniXaeno]

BEOMAGI!!

Your last 4 posts in this thread were nothing but pure poetry.

Deserving of 1000 Chakura points iymc

If you were a girl, I'd propose marriage.

There is nothing more I could contribute to such expertly thought out and well researched statements.

In total agreement with all points made. Especially the part about the lowly processor in your cheap gaming PC not being a bottleneck for todays games at respectable resolutions.

People truly underestimate what can be done with today's hardware and for a lot less $$ than you'd think.

Kudos.

In an ironic way, that is the real problem here. The lack of knowledge. There is no single entity pushing that sort of info around. No TV ads that state all those points  you so eloquently brought across on this forum. Whereas the console movement offers similar power and entertainment all with the simplicity of buying a toaster in Courts or PriceSmart.

Fantastic effort. We should have a hall of fame for this kinda stuff.

[W1nTry]

Well BEO keep in mind that the POWER arch is different enough from X86 to not be compared to X86 on a 1 to 1 basis. I just want to know what tasks exactly is the POWER tech slower than Netburst in (thats just for my knowledge). Also POWER vs. Cell. I would lean towards POWEVER being easier to develop for as its an architecture in use for quite some time now by apple and IBM platforms. The cell processor is quite new and development on that platform has already shown signs of problems as Sony continues to delay the arrival of their next gen consoles.

Another interesting fact that I'd like to point out, is currently MS is only using 1 CPU on the Xbox 360. I beleive this is in anticipation of the PS3 (or an overheating issue, or both). When it's closer to launch, they can then start to properly utilize the other 2 cores for better overall performance and an increase in the quality of the games we see. The titles already launched are quite impressive looking far less for when programmers really start to develop robust code for proper parallelism. To date parallelism is something lost on most developers save those of databases and clusters type apps. Also keep in mind that PCs would not have taken this route had they not hit the proverbial wall in terms of clock speeds and thermal dissipation, fact is without demand there would be no product and had not intel hit a thermal wall with their processors, it would have been a hard sell for AMD to launch multi-core if it had not been deemed necessary or had not intel themselves leaned towards it. To date there are still VERY few apps that are multithreaded and multicore processors which generally come at a premium are currently only useful for multitasking at least on the desktop level, we're not talking multimedia apps, encoding, etc, rem we're comparing the usefullness to the console and thus other PC related tasks I am omitting for the while. The FX-57 is proof of this as you stated it IS the fastest processor for gaming.

What consoles really have in their favour is the fact that you are limited (if limited can be considered a benefit) to a certain generation of hardware for however long (5-8 yrs) and you can optimize your code to better harnest the power of the system. When you look at a PC, all game developers tend to use the latest greatest or NEXT best tech to come to develop their new systems. Look at Doom3, it started with the 9700Pro as the "Carmack approved" reference development video card and now its an Nvidia thing (sure lots of marketing $$ had something to do with that), but consoles don't suffer with that. Not only was Doom3 too demanding for the 9700 (which WAS the tech) its still imho too demanding for even a X8xx series when AA and AN is used. Sure on Nvidia hardware you don't have that problem and of course driver optimizations abound. The fact is, on a console you don't have that problem, the game will either work well and sell or stutture and fail (see supoerman on the N64 and aquaman) or not at all. Look at how the PS2 has had its share of improvements to graphics and gameplay with each revision of GT or NFS. You DON'T get that kind of improvement on a PC. The games get more demanding (minimum requirements) and the game looks worse as you are forced to tune the settings DOWN to play it on your existing tech.

I am a PC man to be true, but I cannot discount the fact that consoles are just easier to deal with and are cheaper in the long run i.e.  IF you are a totally legit gamer (as most prolly aren't) and you buy ALL your games original. Take the following into account:
Console:
Cost of console (1 time)
cost of games (1 time per game)
Cost of additional peripherals (subject to your whims)
Cost of screen to play on (in most households a winning fact is that u ALREADY OWN A TV)
Carrying around ur console is easier (no monitor to toat, unless u have a gaming laptop which are RIDICULOUSLY expensive and woule be BLOWN out of the water by a desktop of comparable price).
Recurring cost of updating hardware to play new games 0$
Recurring cost of onlin play (1 fee for Xbox live for all games per annum).
Available titles (usually more than a PC)

PC:
Cost of PC (1 time)
Cost of games (1 time unless u have recurring for online play for EACH title)
Cost of peripherals: keyboard and mouse are a MUST (other subject to whims)
Cost of Screen: Chances are you'll buy one and that depends on ur wants and $$
Carrying aroudn ur desktop: can you spell $$ for visit to cyropractor and massage therapist, I eh know bout u, but my 19" CRT and case combined weigh in over 50lbs I am positive
Recurring cost of updating hardware: This could be more than the original cost of the PC in teh FIRST place.
Recurring cost of online play: subject to the online game u playing and if they require a fee. WOW, NFS, etc. Some u pay for, some you don't. Point is it's prolly in total more than Live
Available titles: usually less than the console in a given year, but by no means meager.

[TriniXaeno]

excellent post too w1ntry but I have to question that last bit about the upgrades costing more than the original machine.

For example.

Three years ago I bought An Athlon XP 2000+ rig (512mb ram, Geforce4 MX 440, etc..) for $6000.00 (3dmark 2001 Score of 5000)

Today I am going to upgrade it to a Athlon 64 3000+, 1gig of RAM and 6600 PCI-Express

Total spend, $3000.00 (3dmark 2001 score of 15,000)

That is half the price of the original machine and I am getting three times the gaming power.

[W1nTry]

Well Baego, let see if I can illustrate....
Ok say you had the following back in the day:
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz (Northwood) > 200USD
Asus Iw/ ntel815p/e chipset (I can't be sure of the chipset anymore) > 100USD
1GB of DDR3200 (512x2) > 200USD
Geforce 4 Ti4600 or FX5950 (my timeline kinda blurry now) >250USD
Say about 4-5 years ago when these were considered damn good specs.
Using the lowest figures there thats a total of 750USD give or take

Now for a system thats considered tops, we go with:
AMD FX-55 > 800USD
2GB PC4200 LL> 250USD
2x 7800GTX512 > 1500USD
Abit Fatal1ty or DFI SLI mobo > 150USD
For a WHOPPINg 2700USD thats roughly 4x the cost, even with inflation... thats RIDICULOUS. And i've used conservative figures. Now I know you'll argue it alot more hardware (well not really, just 1 more vid card) my point is the prices of hardware now is ridiculous compared so a TOP-to-TOP upgrade is usually up to 2x the cost of the older rig.

Take another eg my old Rig which would be 2-3 yrs old now:
2600+ Barton ~ 100USD when I bought it
1GB Kingston  HyperX PC2700 ~ 220USD
A7V880 ~ 80USD
9800Pro ~ 280USD
Total: 680USD + Shipping

Current Rig:
A64 3500+(winchester): 1200TT (got it at a STEAL price from Virus, it was 267USD at the time)
1GB Corsair XMS 2-2-2-5 1T: 1000TT (ANOTHER STEAL from Virus, its STILL CURRENTLY 200USD but was >200USD at the time)
X800XT AIW: 389USD
Epox nforce 3 ultra mobo: 100USD
Total: 956USD
And these rigs were built 1 yr apart. I would say safely I get from 15-80% increase in performance and they're both rigs that are mid level. So you mean to tell me that in 1 yr with not 100% increase in performance I am paying more than 1x the former? In the least it should be bout the same wouldn't u say?

[Beomagi]

No i can't and never can consider the limitation to the same hardware a benefit.
The xbox had 2 slow shaders. We're up to 96 fast shader units in the top pcs. 733MHz pIII vs dual core 2.6GHz fx60 with a huge list of improvements; 64MB DDR200 vs GB's of DDR400->DDR2667 PLUS the video memory. Then there's sound, and drive improvements etc. Between these 2 levels isn't a bunch of empty space either. It's years of advances each year farther beyond what the xbox was capable of.


As far as claiming that pc code gets unoptimized (at least compared to consoles...), drivers are optimized on a per card basis, and engines such as Doom3, Source, crytek all boast many revisions that tweak them for the cpu. The xbox versions of unreal2003, doom3, and morrowind are the same engines, very cut down. It is the power instruction set, not exactly the power architecture. The power architecture for example has a traditional pipeline + cache setup, plus strong core that does the "thinking" (shhhh!! it's thinking!!!). The Cell based chip has working spu's that can do a lot of simplistic operations quick - but they dont have their own cache, and have to be directed to a small shared cache. It's bad for latency. period. Still - as far as the engine and cpu performance, remove it. At the paltry resolution it supports, it can make a difference, but pc gamers wont play at that res. I barely play at 1024x768 anymore

As far as playability on older hardware, a Geforce 4 can still handle a lot of games - it cannot play Fear well of course, but at least it can run fear quake 4, or half life.
One of the longest lasting video cards was the 9500. The early 9500 could have been bios flashed to a 9700, the equivalent of 6600's in today's gaming. you dont HAVE to buy a card each generation. I went from GF2, to ti4200 to 6800GT.


Doom 3 was very playable on a 9600 - which was one of the common cards.
The FX series CAN be incredibly powerful if coded for. It featured a core that technically WAS more powerful than the 9x series of similar spec, but should really have been paired with an itanic because it featured a VLIW core. Unless instructions were ordered in a particular way, performance was horrible. Carmack did a great job getting it to run doom3 well on it - making full use of the 2 texture per pipeline functionality it offered, which helped attribute to it's speed. Now this isn't a good argument to put to consoles because of the nature of very long instruction word processors. Actually nvidia made several mistakes, including not following dx9 spec and forcing either 16 or 32bit precision, when dx9 called for 24 - so obviously on quality modes, it was slower, and on faster modes, well, 16 bit is noticably lower quality.

Every card before it, and every card since has been standard. With the VLIW mistake - even transmeta went belly up. Another factor was ATi's lack of good OpenGL drivers. If those software companies dont want to use DirectX in favour of open GL, do you think they'd switch to a platform with less of a choice? ATi has improved in OpenGL to the point where ati's solutions compete VERY well to nvidia's ($:$) in doom3 and quake4 - when was the last time you saw THAT in a console? Sofware does make either system - but the hardware limitations hit faster than you think, even on the pc where the abstraction makes it easy, yet driver tweaks make it fast.

I would say safely I get from 15-80% increase in performance and they're both rigs that are mid level. So you mean to tell me that in 1 yr with not 100% increase in performance I am paying more than 1x the former? In the least it should be bout the same wouldn't u say?

I'd say
1. you dont shop like i do
2. you didn't shop for gaming performance, you shopped for overall performance - as evident by the expensive memory, and a full new system, even though all you needed there was the videocard

Dont bother trying to compare a top end rig with any console. It's a different league altogether.

Your illustration is very flawed.
Are you joking by looking at price increases in top end rigs? $750 for a top rig back then???!? First, you're comparing the a $200 intell 2.8 chip, which by the time it was $200, was far from top end mind you to an fx55. By the time intel had the c series, they had the 3.06 with HT, and a full line up to the 3.2GHz - and the top wasn't $200. Then you specify overclockers ram for the fx55, but not for the 2.8C? the 2.8C can overclock a much higher percentage regularly compared to the fx55, which because of it's unlocked multiplier does not even need much higher than 433Mhz, if you rely on multiplier first, then bus to bring to a maximum. When the Ti series was in it's prime, the Ti4200 was $250 - i know, i bought the cheapest one (an MSI) for $240. The Ti 4600 was $400+, the 5900 also debut over $400 (at least, the highly oc'd versions edged past $500). Finally, now that there's competition, you can increase the chip to FX57 in your illustration as it's $810 on pricewatch. change the mobo to a crossfire mobo and drop in 2 x1900xt's for as fast as 7800gtx512 speeds, but $500 less.
The figures are just off on the older rig, and could use some tweaking on the upper one. The times are off. Back in jan 2002 I purchased the 1700+ for $121 - it's all on my newegg invoices. this was the time of the geforce 4 - and they were pricey. I waited several moneths for inflated priced to drop before buying my ti4200.

Back in 2000 - Max pc made their Rig of the year - it cost them $12,000. With the pc you can spend as much as you want. That does not make it optimized for gaming (if that's the main concern)

let's see - 1 year to see 100% increase in performance from my old rig

I have a 6800GT/3400+ i got a year ago(Jan) - because the bang for buck ratio of the 3400+ was a lot better than the 939 3500+. My rig cost me $1k

for $1000, purely gaming wise i'd
1. get an epox sli and reuse my chip.
2. 2 above stock 7800GTXs
-------------
$998
and probably a lot more than doubles my graphics power. Yes I'd use the same original base, because it's easily enough to handle today's and much of tomorrow's games. In fact, i can probably get near double performance with a single x1900xt - and that would make my motherboard choice cheaper as well. for a much lower price - say $600 total. Look at Baego's upgrade. His money went to get gaming performance and he got it. finally, reread the priing post on the last page. Your post leads one to believe pricing is still high if you want to play games today, it isn't. you dont need SLI, you dont need the most expensive card, you dont need a very expensive CPU.

Finally, I'm never going to say a console is a bad thing - quite the contrary. I just dont agree with a lot of the arguments against the pc. The main arguments for the console is it's ease of use AND price - but with pc prices getting lower and lower - just think! $600 today for a 7800GT wielding pc! - and console prices getting higher, the pc is looking better with time!

my last few posts were agains these arguments
1. price
imo, price is not a card to play. Anyone here with a decent enough pc - and that's most of you - can run a cheap $100US x800 video card to play any game you desire today. If you dont have a pc, then a decent enough one that would handle any game need only cost $500 or so. A console IS cheaper, but not nearly the order of magnitude most people make it out to be. It is NOT cheaper when it is a video card generation or two into it's life, and the consumer already has a pc with enough cpu power and memory.
2. power
the power of graphics is in the graphics card. CPU&Software to a point, but the increased resolution a pc can display, the rapid development of graphics etc, leaves behind the console shortly after it debuts, even when they tweak the bejeasus out of it. Tweaks on the personal pc can make a seemingly weak system into a much more powerful contender. 9500 to 9700, 8/4 6800le to 16/6 6800 (pipe/vertex unlocking), 2800+ from 1.6 to 2.4Ghz, flashing the x800gto˛ to an x850xt pe etc etc.

[TriniXaeno]

Exactly.

My examples were based on price/performance parts that gave solid gaming performance.

Not an overpriced overpowered UltraMegaMonsterPC.

We aren't all going to run FEAR at 2000x1600 res with 8xAA and 16xAF lol

None of my monitors can even do that res.