I'd imagine it's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison when you're dealing with

a) a machine that is typically sold at a loss and made up for with licensing/subscriptions

and b) a general purpose computer made of off-the-shelf parts versus a more specialized computer made from high volumes of specific components that provide a single standard to optimize all software.

All true but not necessarily relevant. Hardware is hardware, and I'm trying to compare bang-for-the-buck for equivalent hardware. PS5 and PCs share instruction set, memory interface, GPU type, storage interface (although the PS5 has some unique I/O handling to reduce CPU involvement in moving data around), etc.

Sounds like the answer is "no".

(and if not, please provide an example build instead of simply downvoting. I'd love to build a dedicated gaming PC, but it has to be worth it)

I didn't downvote (I rarely do for anything that isn't shit-talking) but if your only goal is to play video games at a reasonably high level of quality, then yes, I think a games console is always going to be less expensive.

I mainly stopped buying consoles because I already need a fairly powerful computer for a lot of other productive and entertainment uses, so for me, the price difference between the computer I "need" and the computer that also plays games really well is mostly the price difference between a decent GPU and a nicer GPU.

If you already have all the computer you need for other tasks and it's cheaper to buy an Xbox or Playstation than it is to make the computer more capable of playing games, then it makes more sense to buy a game console.

I guess the facile, if unsatisfying, answer is: yes, you could assemble a similarly specced, similarly priced computer, so long as you're doing it at the same volume (i.e. buying millions of copies of each component like Sony is). Your price might be a little bit higher because Sony might be taking a loss on the upfront price with the expectation of future licensing gains, but Sony definitely isn't taking a huge loss to do so.

> yes, you could assemble a similarly specced, similarly priced computer, so long as you're doing it at the same volume

I'm willing to pay twice as much for a single PC with similar gaming performance, but I'm not sure it can be done (no concrete suggestions, just downvotes...) I've been building PCs since before plug 'n play existed, and would love to be proven wrong.

Have you seen /r/buildapc? There's lots of good suggested builds on there, and US$1k is a very common budget.

I suspect it will be possible with something like the RTX 3060 (whenever that comes out). That'll be about the right price for a GPU in a $1k PC build and it should outperform the PS5.

I have, thanks. Of course, a $1K PC will outperform any of these consoles given enough time :)

GPU is important for sure, but I think storage performance is as important, since load times and stuttering take me out of the game in a way slightly worse graphics wouldn't (purely my opinion). From what I can tell, equivalent I/O for the price is still a ways off on the PC side. One also has to be careful to factor in time spent purchasing and building; I do not value my time at $0.

Trying to look at this all objectively... appreciate the input so far!

> Of course, a $1K PC will outperform any of these consoles given enough time

The RTX 3060 is right around the corner (like a couple of months). The PS5 isn't quite available yet either. So this is a valid comparison for systems you could have in hand by end of this year, but couldn't yet have in hand right now.

> but I think storage performance is as important, since load times and stuttering take me out of the game in a way slightly worse graphics wouldn't (purely my opinion). From what I can tell, equivalent I/O for the price is still a ways off on the PC side.

I think you're over-estimating the impact of storage speed on the gaming use case here. You can easily fit a 1 TB 3 Gbps NVMe SSD into a $1k PC budget, and you aren't going to notice the delta between that and the 5.5 claimed Gbps on the PS5 for gaming. Neither of these SSDs is gonna be a bottleneck for any kind of stuttering in games. An underpowered CPU/GPU/slow memory would be much more likely culprits once you've got the NVMe SSD part nailed down.

> One also has to be careful to factor in time spent purchasing and building; I do not value my time at $0.

Well then you should only be buying pre-builts if you don't derive enjoyment from assembling computers and thus need to pay yourself a wage to do so. Personally I love the whole process of researching and assembling computers; it's a hobby (an infrequently practiced one though, by the nature of it).

> You can easily fit a 1 TB 3 Gbps NVMe SSD into a $1k PC budget, and you aren't going to notice the delta between that and the 5.5 claimed Gbps

Bearing in mind here, that it’s memory+storage architecture has a theoretical top of 22 Gb/ps, and they demonstrated recently, when assets are compressed using the “Octo” (naming?) lib, they were getting throughput of 12-18 Gb/ps. That’s written by the storage controller directly into memory the GPU can access (without the CPU being involved) so the normal latency to load data into a GPU is effectively gone.

That speed is significantly above what drives can do on a normal consumer computer (to the best of my knowledge)

I stumbled a bit over those "gigabits per picosecond" units.

Hahahaha let me fix that

Edit: nevermind, it’s too late, my poorly formatted units are staying.

> Neither of these SSDs is gonna be a bottleneck for any kind of stuttering in games.

This is probably true for most current games, but is very much up for debate for future games[0]. If the storage speed really made no difference I doubt Sony would have bothered with the additional cost.

> Well then you should only be buying pre-builts if you don't derive enjoyment from assembling computers and thus need to pay yourself a wage to do so.

It's not mutually exclusive; I both enjoy building PCs and have limited time, thus the time has value that should be factored into the equation. The goal is to game, not build a PC.

[0]: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ps5-ssd-is-so-fast-developers...

Or it might not be so relevant to future games either: https://gamingbolt.com/why-ps5s-ssd-speed-might-not-have-as-...

I think Sony may have chosen these specs partially so they could get away with having less RAM. Also, some of this speed isn't that the SSD components are necessarily that much faster, but rather that they're soldered directly onto the main board and located closely to the components that will use them. Modular, detachable storage located farther from the CPU is just gonna be slower, period.

So I'm not so optimistic that this alone will prove to be a significant differentiator. And it could easily be the case that by the time it does, PC components have pulled ahead again. It takes several years before developers have gotten really good at using a given console to its full potential.

I think the speed advantage is more due to the I/O controller that Sony's made a big deal of, where data can get to RAM or GPU without having to interrupt the CPU. Those interrupts can cause a domino effect with Windows doing god-knows what else in the background, leading to a stutter.

You're right though, PCs will get brute-force faster, while devs will squeeze more out of consoles. I just find it hard to make the case for building something right now given the apparent bang-for-the-buck of these consoles. That said, I do kinda need a new Plex server... :)

> Also, some of this speed isn't that the SSD components are necessarily that much faster, but rather that they're soldered directly onto the main board and located closely to the components that will use them. Modular, detachable storage located farther from the CPU is just gonna be slower, period.

Completely wrong. They're using PCIe 4.0 for the onboard SSD, and PCIe 4.0 for the aftermarket SSD slot. There's no performance penalty for going with removable storage here. We're not talking about a high-speed DRAM interface where shorter traces without the insertion loss of a connector really does help reach higher clock speeds (other things being equal).

If you are going to factor in your time spent researching and building then you should also factor in a PC’s superior versatility and upgradeability, catalog, cheaper games in general and no fees for online services. (That alone ends up being many hundreds of dollars over the lifetime of a console, if you need it.)

In the long run a PC is usually going to cost you less than a console even if it costs much more up front.

There's a reason I don't play any online multiplayer games on consoles. I can't stomach paying that much just to use the Internet when multiplayer is free on PC.