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The PC is interesting again

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Re: The PC is interesting again

#91
post #26
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.…

The "games don't use CPU" line is only really true for multiplatform games that must also run on the low performance PS4/XBox One AMD Jaguar CPUs.

If we look at PC exclusives [1] then we can see that these are extremely CPU-hungry games. This hunger only goes up if we want to achieve a framerate higher than 60, say going for 144.

I personally have an i7 @ 3.8 GHz with GTX 1060 and none of these games can hold a stable 1080p @ 144 Hz.

[1] For example Dota 2, H1Z1, DayZ, Civilization 6, Guild Wars 2

Re: The PC is interesting again

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I noticed the same thing with phones. I've read a lot of comments that the iPhone was much more expensive than Android phones. But whenever I ask for Android recommendations, the very same people would recommend phones like the S7 that are just as expensive as iPhones.

The difference between the Android & iPhone market is the existence of a low end in the Android market. Flagship Android phones cost just as much as iPhones do. But if you're willing to not get the flagship, you can often get budget models for 30-50% of the cost. The Moto G, for example, is a perfectly good phone, as are various budget LG phones. You don't have that option in the Apple ecosystem.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#93
post #26
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.…

Fallout 4, Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft and many more popular games are heavily CPU bound. Also, considering this is hacker news I think we can assume the gp doesn't need "just" a gaming PC

Re: The PC is interesting again

#94
post #13

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. :(

> They even took away the escape key

Wait, really?

Re: The PC is interesting again

#95
post #12
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.

Yet, most people end up down scaling to 1440p due to the sub-par AMD graphics it comes with

Re: The PC is interesting again

#97

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…

I’ve had my Surface Book for over seven months now, and it’s superb . I use it as a laptop the majority of the time, but a laptop with touch and a pen. And then I use it as a tablet some of the time, but a tablet with a pen as well, and a large tablet at that (which is normally desirable for me, though not always). Not everything is perfect about the device, and it’s expensive, but I consider it to be a good investme…

> I even switched away from Linux because of the excellence that is the Surface Book.

That happened to me when Windows 7 got released.

I was using only laptops and as a gamer, UI/UX fan, former demoscener, game programmer, came to realise I would be having more fun, using Windows again full time as desktop.

Now GNU/Linux lives on a VM and on a travel netbook.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#98
post #42
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

If I may, Logical Increments is nice, but sometimes leads astray. I develop a hardware recommender, and this is in my eyes a good gaming PC for 1440p: https://www.pc-kombo.de/share/OqqYoLX . i5-6600K with 16GB DDR4-3000 on a Z170 board, good psu and good cooler. When playing on a lower resolution like the usual 1080p, AMD with a RX 480 would be a good choice, otherwise there is no alternative to the GTX 1070. Intel j…

Agree with the config you recommend except the storage.

Both HDD and SSD are IMO too small.

For HDD, the 1TB is inefficient: €51 for 1TB, €98 for 3TB — that is more than 50% difference in cost/TB (both for WD blue desktop series as listed on computeruniverse.net).

For the SSD, the 256 GB is just too small. Sure that’s enough to boot Windows, but not enough to fit more than a couple of modern games, they easily take 50GB/each. I’d rather recommend 480GB these days.

Re: The PC is interesting again

#99
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem you love things that aren't exclusive to Apple, crisp fonts and development friendly ecosystem. I make my living writing code and I never game these days so I feel you! I say fuck apple because they know they have a huge market and they can exploit it, for money and not for the sake of the user. There are other ethical reasons to dislike the company but those are my own so idc much what others think the…

You really really don't have to buy from Apple if you don't want to. I'm considering a surfacebook for my next laptop, and the Surface Studio would be a really cool (but expensive) way of replacing my iMac. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on computers, if they work for you great! If not, there is plenty of competition. They do seem to still have a monopoly on decent track pads, perhaps we should get the FTC and DOJ inv…

> FTC and DOJ

Yes, I would do anything for a better trackpad!

Re: The PC is interesting again

#100
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may, Logical Increments is nice, but sometimes leads astray. I develop a hardware recommender, and this is in my eyes a good gaming PC for 1440p: https://www.pc-kombo.de/share/OqqYoLX . i5-6600K with 16GB DDR4-3000 on a Z170 board, good psu and good cooler. When playing on a lower resolution like the usual 1080p, AMD with a RX 480 would be a good choice, otherwise there is no alternative to the GTX 1070. Intel j…

Agree with the config you recommend except the storage. Both HDD and SSD are IMO too small. For HDD, the 1TB is inefficient: €51 for 1TB, €98 for 3TB — that is more than 50% difference in cost/TB (both for WD blue desktop series as listed on computeruniverse.net). For the SSD, the 256 GB is just too small. Sure that’s enough to boot Windows, but not enough to fit more than a couple of modern games, they easily take 5…

You are right. The 1TB HDD is inefficient as price-per-gigabyte is a lot higher than 2 or 3 TB. On the other hand, almost always when I recommend bigger drives I get the feedback that 1TB is more than enough… Depends on the usage.

Regarding the SSD, for Windows a 120GB or even a 60GB SSD would be enough (but those are also slower). 250GB is already a lot of additional space for games – again, it depends on the usage. A couple of games is what is the usual way of thinking for what a SSD should be used, and for that 250GB is just right. But if one wants multiple modern AAA games on it at the same time 480GB sure is more useful.

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