"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.

But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."

  • Toneswirly@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    2060 super for 300, and then another 200 for a decent processor puts you ahead of a ps5 and for a comparable price. Games are cheaper on PC too, as well as a broader selection. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zYGmJn here is a mid tier build for 850, you could cut the procesor down, install linux for free, and im sure youve got a computer monitor laying around somwhere… the only thing stopping you is inertia.

    • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      2060 super for 300, and then another 200 for a decent processor puts you ahead of a ps5 and for a comparable price.

      you’re going to have to really scrunge up for deals in order to get psu, storage, memory, motherboard, and a case for your remaining budget of $0.

      https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zYGmJn here is a mid tier build for 850

      This is $150 more expensive and the gpu is half as performant as the reported PS5 pro equivalent.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        16 hours ago

        Ok so, for starters, your ‘reported equivalent’ source is wrong.

        https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-playstation-5-pro-weve-removed-it-from-its-box-and-theres-new-information-to-share

        The custom AMD Zen2 APU (combined CPU + GPU, as is done in laptops) of a PS5Pro is 16.7 TFLOPs, not 33.

        So your PS5 Pro is actually roughly equivalent to that posted build… by your ‘methodology’, which is utterly unclear to me, what your actual methodolgy for doing a performance comparison is.

        The PS5 Pro uses 2 GB of DDR5 RAM, and 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM.

        This is… wildly outside of the realm of being directly comparable to a normal desktop PC, which … bare minimum these days, has 16 GB DDR4/5 RAM, and the GDDR6 RAM would be part of the detachable GPU board itself, and would be … between 8GB … and all the way up to 32 if you get an Nvidia 5090, but consensus seems to be that 16 GB GDDR6/7 is probably what you want as a minimum, unless you want to be very reliant on AI upscaling/framegen, and the input lag and whatnot that comes with using that on an underpowered GPU.

        Short version: The PS5Pro would be a wildly lopsided, nonsensical architecture to try to one to one replicate in a desktop PC… 2 GB system RAM will run lightweight linux os’s, but not a chance in hell you could run Windows 10 or 11 on that.

        Fuck, even getting 7 to work with 2GB RAM would be quite a challenge… if not impossible, I think 7 required 4GB RAM minimum?

        The closest AMD chip to the PS5 Pro that I see, in terms of TFLOP output… is the Radeon 7600 Mobile.

        ((… This is probably why Cyberpunk 2077 did not (and will never) get a ‘performance patch’ for the PS5Pro: CP77 can only pull both high (by console standards) framerates at high resolutions… and raytracing/path tracing… on Nvidia mobile class hardware, which the PS5Pro doesn’t use.))

        But, lets use the PS5Pro’s ability to run CP77 at 2K60fps on … what PC players recognize as a mix of medium and high settings… as our benchmark for a comparable standard PC build. Lets be nice and just say its the high preset.

        (a bunch of web searching and performance comparisons later…)

        Well… actually, the problem is that basically, nobody makes or sells desktop GPUs that are so underpowered anymore, you’d have to go to the used market or find some old unpurchased stock someone has had lying around for years.

        The RX 6600 in the partpicker list is fairly close in terms of GPU performance.

        Maybe pair it with an AMD 5600X processor if you… can find one? Or a 4800S, which supposedly actually were just rejects/run off from the PS5 and Xbox X and S chips, rofl?

        Yeah, legitimately, the problem with trying to make a PC … in 2025, to the performance specs of a PS5 Pro… is that basically the bare minimum models for current and last gen, standard PC architecture… yeah they just don’t even make hardware that weak anymore.

        EDIT:

        oh final addendum: if your tv has an hdmi port, kablamo, thats your monitor, you dont strictly need a new one.

        And there are also many ways to get a wireless or wired console style controller to work in a couch pc setup.

        • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Short version: The PS5Pro would be a wildly lopsided, nonsensical architecture to try to one to one replicate in a desktop PC… 2 GB system RAM will run lightweight linux os’s, but not a chance in hell you could run Windows 10 or 11 on that.

          Fuck, even getting 7 to work with 2GB RAM would be quite a challenge… if not impossible, I think 7 required 4GB RAM minimum?

          It’s shared memory, so you would need to guarantee access to 16gb on both ends.

          The RX 6600 in the partpicker list is fairly close in terms of GPU performance.

          I don’t know how you could arrive at such a conclusion, considering that the base PS5 has been measured to be comparable to the 6700.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            13 hours ago

            It’s shared memory, so you would need to guarantee access to 16gb on both ends.

            So… standard Desktop CPUs can only talk to DDR.

            ‘CPUs’ can only utilize GDDR when they are actually a part of an APU.

            Standard desktop GPUs can only talk to GDDR, which is part of their whole seperate board.

            GPU and CPU can talk to each other, via the mainboard.

            Standard desktop PC architecture does not have a way for the CPU to directly utilize the GDDR RAM on the standalone GPU.

            In many laptops and phones, a different architecture is used, which uses LPDDR RAM, and all the LPDDR RAM is used by the APU, the APU being a CPU+GPU combo in a single chip.

            Some laptops use DDR RAM, but… in those laptops, the DDR RAM is only used by the CPU, and those laptops have a seperate GPU chip, which has its own built in GDDR RAM… the CPU and GPU cannot and do not share these distinct kinds of RAM.

            (Laptop DDR RAM is also usually a different pin count and form factor than desktop PC DDR RAM, you usually can’t swap RAM sticks between them.)

            The PS5Pro appears to have yet another unique architecture:

            Functionally, the 2GB of DDR RAM can only be accessed by the CPU parts of the APU, which act as a kind of reserve, a minimum baseline of CPU-only RAM set aside for certain CPU specific tasks.

            The PS5Pro’s 16 GB of GDDR RAM is sharable and usable by both the CPU and GPU components of the APU.

            So… saying that you want to have a standard desktop PC build… that shares all of its GDDR and DDR RAM… this is impossible, and nonsensical.

            Standard desktop PC motherboards, compatible GPUs and CPUs… they do not allow for shareable RAM, instead going with a design paradigm of the GPU has its own onboard GDDR RAM that only it can use, and DDR RAM that only the CPU can use.

            You would basically have to tear a high end/more modern laptop board with an APU soldered into it… and then install that into a ‘desktop pc’ case… to have a ‘desktop pc’ that shares memory between its CPU and GPU components… which both would be encapsulated in a single APU chip.

            Roughly this concept being done is generally called a MiniPC, and is a fairly niche thing, and is not the kind of thing an average prosumer can assemble themselves like a normal desktop PC.

            All you can really do is swap out the RAM (if it isnt soldered) and the SSD… maybe I guess transplant it and the power supply into another case?

            I don’t know how you could arrive at such a conclusion, considering that the base PS5 has been measured to be comparable to the 6700.

            I can arrive at that conclusion because I can compare actual bench mark scores from a nearest TFLOP equivalent, more publically documented, architecturally similar AMD APU… the 7600M. I specifically mentioned this in my post.

            This guy in the article here … well he notes that the 6700 is a bit more powerful than the PS5Pro’s GPU component.

            The 6600 is one step down in terms of mainline desktop PC hardware, and arguably the PS5Pro’s performance is… a bit better than a 6600, a bit worse than a 6700, but at that level, all of the other differences in the PS5Pro’s architecture give basically a margin of error when trying to precisely dial in whether a 6700 or 6600 is a closer match.

            You can’t do apples to apples spec sheet comparisons… because, as I have now exhaustively explained:

            Standard desktop PCs do not share RAM between the GPU and CPU. They also do not share memory imterface busses and bandwidth lanes… in standard PCs, these are distinct and seperate, because they use different architectures.

            I got my results by starting with the (correct*) TFLOPs output from a PS5Pro, finding a nearest equivalent APU with PassMark benchmark scores, reported by hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of users, then compared those PassMark APU scores to PassMark conventional GPU scores, and ended up with ‘fairly close’ to an RX 6600.

            • The early, erroneous reporting of the TFLOPs score as roughly 33, when it was actually closer to 16 or 17… that stemmed from reporting a 16 digit FLOP score/test, when the more standard convention is to list the 32 digit FLOP score/test.

            You, on the other hand, just linked to a Tom’s Hardware review of currently in production desktop PC GPUs… which did not make any mention of the PS5Pro… and them you also acted as if a 6600 was half as powerful as a PS5Pro’s GPU component… which is wildly off.

            A 6700 is nowhere near 2x as powerful as a 6600.

            2x as poweful as an AMD RX 6600… would be roughly an AMD RX 7900 XTX, the literal top end card of AMDs previous GPU generation… that is currently selling for something like $1250 +/- $200, depending on which retailer you look at, and their current stock levels, and which variant of which partner mfg you’re going for.

            • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              7 hours ago

              Just to add to this, the reason you only see shared memory setups on PCs with integrated graphics is because it lowers performance compared to dedicated memory, which is less of a problem if your GPU is only being used in 2D mode such as when doing office work (mainly because that uses little memory), but more of a problem when used in 3D mode (such as in most modern games) which is as the PS5 is meant to be used most of the time.

              So the PS5 having shared memory is not a good thing and actually makes it inferior compared to a PC made with a GPU and CPU of similar processing power using the dominant gaming PC architecture (separate memory).

              • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                4 hours ago

                Basically this is true, yes, without going into an exhaustive level of detail as to very, very specific subtypes and specs of different RAM and mobo layouts.

                Shared memory setups generally are less powerful, but, they also usually end up being overall cheaper, as well as having a lower power draw… and being cooler, temperature wise.

                Which are all legitimate reasons those kinds of setups are used in smaller form factor ‘computing devices’, because heat managment, airflow requirements… basically rule out using a traditional architecture.

                Though, recently, MiniPCs are starting to take off… and I am actually considering doing a build based on the Minisforum BD795i SE… which could be quite a powerful workstation/gaming rig.

                Aside about interesting non standard 'desktop' potential build

                This is a Mobo with a high end integrated AMD mobile CPU (7945hx)… that all together, costs about $430.

                And the CPU in this thing… has a PassMark score… of about the same as an AMD 9900X… which itself, the CPU alone, MSRPs for about $400.

                So that is kind of bonkers, get a high end Mobo and CPU… for the price of a high end CPU.

                Oh, I forgot to mention: This BD795iSE board?

                Yeah it just has a standard PCI 16 slot. So… you can plug in any 2 slot width standard desktop GPU into it… and all of this either literally is, or basically is the ITX form factor.

                So, you could make a whole build out of this that would be ITX form factor, and also absurdly powerful, or a budget version with a dinky GPU.

                I was talking in another thread a few days ago, snd somekne said PC architecture may be headed toward… basically you have the entire PC, and the GPU, and thats the new paradigm, instead of the old school view of: you have a mobo, and you pick it based on its capability to support future cpus in the same socket type, future ram upgrades, etc…

                And this intrigued me, I looked into it, and yeah, this concept does have cost per performance merit at this point.

                So this uses a split between the GPU having its GDDR RAM and the… CPU using DDDR SODIMM (laptop form factor) RAM.

                But its also designed such that you can actually fit huge standard PC style cooling fans… into quite a compact form factor.

                From what I can vaguely tell as a non Chinese speaker… it seems like there are many more people over in China who have been making high end, custom, desktop gaming rigs out of this laptop/mobile style architecture for a decent while now, and only recently has this concept even really entered into the English speaking world/market, that you can actually build your own rig this way.

    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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      14 hours ago

      $850 is way more expensive than a PS5 though lol. Linux also means you can’t play the games that top the most played charts on the PS5 every single month of every single year.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 hours ago

        https://www.metacritic.com/pictures/best-playstation-games-of-2024/

        Works on Linux:

        Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown

        Silent Hill 2 (Remake)

        Marvel vs Capcom: Arcade Classics

        Shin Megamei Tensei (V)engeance

        Persona 3 Reload

        HiFi Rush

        Animal Well

        Castlevania Dominus Collection

        Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

        Tekken 8

        The Last of Us Part II (Remaster)

        Balatro

        Dave the Diver

        Slay the Princess: Pristine Cut

        Metaphor Re Fantazio

        Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (and base game)

        Does not work on Linux:

        Unicorn Overlord (Console Exclusive, No PC Port Allowed by Publisher Vanillaware)

        Destiny 2 (Kernel Level Anti Cheat)

        FF VII Rebirth (PS Exclusive)

        Astro Bot (PS Exclusive)

        Damn, yeah, still consoles gotta hold on via exclusives, I guess?

        And then there’s the mismanaged shitshow that is Destiny 2…

        …who can’t figure out how to do AntiCheat without installing a rootkit on your PC, despite functional, working AntiCheats having worked on linux games for at least half a decade at this point, if not longer…

        …nor can they figure out how to write a storyline that rises above ‘everyone is always lore dumping instead of talking, and also they talk to you like a you’re a 10 year while doing so.’

        Last I heard, a whole bunch of hardcore D2 youtubers and streamers were basically all quitting out of frustration and feeling let down or betrayed by Bungie.

        Maybe we should advocate for some freedom of platform porting/publishing for all games, eh FreedomAdvocate?