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The PC is interesting again

theverge.com

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Re: The PC is interesting again

#21

Post by mrob »

dostick wrote: post #12
delegate wrote: post #7

Yep. Yesterday was the first time in many years when I decided to check out how much a good gaming PC would cost me today. The price for a i7 6700K 4.1GHz, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and nVidia GTX 1070: €1515 EUR (case and CPU cooler included). Add a €360 27" Monitor and the total goes to € 1875. Let's round that up to €2000. A similarly powered iMac (i7, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and an inferior Radeon R9 M395X) costs exactly:…

Well that iMac has 5K display. Try to find that for your PC and see how much it costs together.

For a gaming PC, 5K isn't so useful, because it's so difficult to render 5K at an acceptable framerate and graphics detail.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#22

Post by matt4077 »

delegate wrote: post #7

Yep. Yesterday was the first time in many years when I decided to check out how much a good gaming PC would cost me today. The price for a i7 6700K 4.1GHz, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and nVidia GTX 1070: €1515 EUR (case and CPU cooler included). Add a €360 27" Monitor and the total goes to € 1875. Let's round that up to €2000. A similarly powered iMac (i7, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and an inferior Radeon R9 M395X) costs exactly:…

I just tried to find a screen that's comparable to the iMac (resolution 5210 x 2880 and wide gamut colour space), and those I did find actually were around $2000 (i. e. http://amzn.to/2iPC5SZ).

I also believe the price difference is magnified by the options you chose – Apple does indeed charge too much for additions like RAM. The base model, with the same 5k screen, only costs $2000.

All that's neither here nor there – if I'm spending 10h+/day with something, I'm not going to look too hard at the price. Just the difference in noise is worth a significant premium, not to mention macOS.

Edited: macOS :)

Re: The PC is interesting again

#23

Post by adamors »

mrob wrote: post #21
dostick wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that iMac has 5K display. Try to find that for your PC and see how much it costs together.

For a gaming PC, 5K isn't so useful, because it's so difficult to render 5K at an acceptable framerate and graphics detail.

It's just pointless to compare. A Mac isn't useful for gaming anyways, since only a handful of games are available and drivers aren't optimised anyway.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#24

Post by bluedino »

Are we in a time machine?

Lenovo released the Yoga, the first convertible that you could put in tent mode or tablet mode, and Microsoft released the Surface, back in 2012. Intel announced the Ultrabook in 2011.

Today you have the same things. They've been revised and improved in the areas of screen, battery life, graphics performance, switching from HDD to SSD, but it's all been incremental.

>> 2-IN-1S SUCCEEDED BECAUSE THEY MARRIED THE BEST OF MOBILE WITH THE POWER OF THE PC

Has the author ever used a 2 in 1? They can be marginally useful when sharing a document with someone but they bad tablets and they are mediocre laptops.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#25

Post by ebbv »

delegate wrote: post #7

Yep. Yesterday was the first time in many years when I decided to check out how much a good gaming PC would cost me today. The price for a i7 6700K 4.1GHz, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and nVidia GTX 1070: €1515 EUR (case and CPU cooler included). Add a €360 27" Monitor and the total goes to € 1875. Let's round that up to €2000. A similarly powered iMac (i7, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and an inferior Radeon R9 M395X) costs exactly:…

Really? This tired old argument again? Nobody buys an iMac as a gaming machine.

I have an iMac and a gaming PC. You don't need to spend even $2k for a capable gaming PC.

Also you don't have to spend $4k for a 5K iMac. Mine was about $2k.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#26

Post by snvzz »

delegate wrote: post #7

Yep. Yesterday was the first time in many years when I decided to check out how much a good gaming PC would cost me today. The price for a i7 6700K 4.1GHz, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and nVidia GTX 1070: €1515 EUR (case and CPU cooler included). Add a €360 27" Monitor and the total goes to € 1875. Let's round that up to €2000. A similarly powered iMac (i7, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and an inferior Radeon R9 M395X) costs exactly:…

> The price for a i7 6700K 4.1GHz, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and nVidia GTX 1070: €1515 EUR (case and CPU cooler included).

That's not a gaming pc. That looks more like a gaming-capable Workstation. Absolutely overkill CPU (games are seldom cpu bound), and too much RAM (games don't care).

I suggest a glance at Logical Increments [0], which is definitely biased towards gaming, to see what you can do at a given price point. Note that just because of the gsync fiasco and the cloud-connected drivers nonsense, I'd gravitate towards an AMD GPU if I had to buy now.

[0] http://www.logicalincrements.com/

Re: The PC is interesting again

#27

Post by J0-nas »

freehunter wrote: post #9
delegate wrote: post #7

Yep. Yesterday was the first time in many years when I decided to check out how much a good gaming PC would cost me today. The price for a i7 6700K 4.1GHz, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and nVidia GTX 1070: €1515 EUR (case and CPU cooler included). Add a €360 27" Monitor and the total goes to € 1875. Let's round that up to €2000. A similarly powered iMac (i7, 32GB RAM, 500GB SSD and an inferior Radeon R9 M395X) costs exactly:…

Ridiculous argument. Macs have never been the value proposition, especially when they get fully loaded. Any literally any point in the history of the Mac, you could say "but you can get a comparable PC cheaper!" and it would be true. Macs have always been expensive, everyone has always complained that they're expensive, and they will continue to be expensive. This isn't new.

Your argument is also ridiculous.

The biggest difference between a PC and an iMac is the form factor. An windows all-in-one pc with the mentioned specs is probably about as expensive as the iMac (if there even exists one).

It would have been better to compare it to an Mac Pro, which probably would be even more expensive...

As for the general price of apple products, Surface book, lenovo, dell xps (outside of USA) are just as expensive as Macbooks. But sure, you can always get a windows laptop with worse specs or quality.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#28

Post by freehunter »

0x0 wrote: post #13
freehunter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous argument. Macs have never been the value proposition, especially when they get fully loaded. Any literally any point in the history of the Mac, you could say "but you can get a comparable PC cheaper!" and it would be true. Macs have always been expensive, everyone has always complained that they're expensive, and they will continue to be expensive. This isn't new.

Nah. In 2013, macs were slightly more expensive than a comparable PC spec-wise, but still a fairly good deal. In 2016, the prices appear to have almost doubled and is totally unreasonable, while the specs are... malnourished. They even took away the escape key and the magsafe port. :(

According to their Amazon product page, the XPS 13 has a 2.5Ghz i5 and 8GB of RAM. It has a 256GB SSD and a 3000x1800 screen. It's selling for $1,350, original price $1,799.

The 13" MacBook with touchbar has a 2.9Ghz i5 with 8GB of RAM. It has a 256GB SSD and a 2560x1600 screen. It's selling for $1,699, original price $1,799.

I know people love to complain about the new MacBook and believe me, I have some complaints about it too, but it's hard to argue with the numbers. If the MacBook is overpriced, Dell is getting away with the same thing, while somehow being highly recommended in every thread on HN.

MacBook: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01LTHXAEU/ref=dp_ob_neva_mob...

Dell: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-XPS9360-3591SLV-Laptop-Generatio...

Re: The PC is interesting again

#29

Post by vvanders »

bluedino wrote: post #24

Are we in a time machine? Lenovo released the Yoga, the first convertible that you could put in tent mode or tablet mode, and Microsoft released the Surface, back in 2012 . Intel announced the Ultrabook in 2011 . Today you have the same things. They've been revised and improved in the areas of screen, battery life, graphics performance, switching from HDD to SSD, but it's all been incremental. >> 2-IN-1S SUCCEEDED BE…

Yup, I would argue that the surface book is actually more interesting(I'll admit that I'm based since I snagged one recently). The combination of tablet and PC is fantastic and really well executed. I had a similar reaction to most of the CES news.

I wonder if it's more of a reflection on Apple's lackluster products lately.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#30

Post by alexkavon »

bluedino wrote: post #24

Are we in a time machine? Lenovo released the Yoga, the first convertible that you could put in tent mode or tablet mode, and Microsoft released the Surface, back in 2012 . Intel announced the Ultrabook in 2011 . Today you have the same things. They've been revised and improved in the areas of screen, battery life, graphics performance, switching from HDD to SSD, but it's all been incremental. >> 2-IN-1S SUCCEEDED BE…

The author most likely never uses/used a 2-in-1. The Verge is known for its heavy Apple bias going so far at one point to indicate that most of the staff writes on a MacBook (single port nonsense version). They also usually make a similar claim to "The PC is interesting again" around CES and usually have a "The PC is boring and tired" article in the early fall before the usual fall hardware events. This is because The Verge promotes a lifestyle level knowledge of technology rather than in depth overview about the industry and its products/services.
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