Having a baby girl, and a Wife thats in school full time don't allow me for many big purchases for myself, I want something better than my 360 and its a toss between these two, the biggest dfference for me is price, debating rather to spend the 450 on the new xbox or probably well over 1500 for the p.c, i never played games on p.c, is that much of a price difference worth investing in a gaming p.c?
PC all the way. Pen. if you got the time, read this article it'll enlighten you on your decision.
In the long run I definitely recommend the PC.
Also you can use a PC for more that just gaming (a huge open door, I know) and the price difference between a normal computer and one decend for gaming hardy exceed the cost for a Xbox or PS3.
And for the money. Everything in live is a choice and has it's priorities, by far the most people can't have it all. In my humble opinion your wife, your little girl and all they need come first (Btw, they are the result of your choices ain't they? ).
(When I sound like your mum, that maybe because I'm one myself. )
You might want to consider a laptop as an alternative. Most of the latest ones come with really good graphics chips (eg NVIDIA GT 750M) and some are even upgradeable. Of course the laptop/tablet/hybrid tekkies are still making them, bigger, better, and cheaper, but that at least gives you some mileage in developing a good all rounder which is versatile enough to address all your family needs from education through shopping, professional business applications such as RDBMSs and so forth. Additionally you don't have the aggravation of finding storage room for a desktop tower. most HD tv's have an interface slot so they can double as a monitor. Even a half decent widescreen monitor won't set you back too much. Overall, in terms of price there ain't a great deal of difference between compatible pc's and laptops/hybrids
Personally as a retired business systems consultant I'm viewing the pc as now having a limited life span. Business and more noticeably domestic users are looking to to smartphones, tablets, and laptops for gaming
I built my own systems for years and rather splash out to upgrade my custom built pc again (now over 5 years old) I shall be migrating to one of the newer options which offer the same facilities I am so keen to retain
Keep in mind with the laptops also that it isn't just whether the graphics chip is good enough - laptops don't have the heat dispersing mechanisms that desktop machines do. Running a resource-intensive video game makes laptops overheat, even with good graphics chips. Speaking from personal experience.
A good point that serious and persistent gamers (I've over 2,500 hours on Skyrim alone) need to think about. My processor an AMD 9950 Quad core 2.6Ghz quite happily trundles along running Skyrim and I get near zero CTDs (only had one or two ever). However the GPU fan on my NVIDIA GTX 550Ti screams it's protests regularly but again it doesn't fall over. The cooling units do their job but the heat dispersal as you point out is noticeable. Of course with such a dated system fps is a bit of a joke sometimes and I get the occasional pause while the system tries to catch up with my "need for speed" button punching but I'm happy enough - for now
Please remember that Penance said he was looking to address the needs of his whole family if poss hence my suggestion. A lot of people are switching to gaming on tablets and laptops in a general way as the kit gets much better at coping with gamers' demands
Sure, but if the heat sink solder melts or the fan warps and he can't use the laptop, then it doesn't really serve the needs of his family, now, does it? I didn't know about any of these things ahead of time and basically melted out the laptop I was using for my PhD work. If he chooses to buy a laptop, then he'll want to ask about the heat dispersal features, that's all I'm saying.
A good custom-built gaming rig is cheap if you know what you're doing. You can very easily pick up a nice Nvidia video card for peanuts on a tight budget, since they're stuff is better than Radeon; I reccomend the GTX 275 - I've got it and so has Vazgen, it's over 7 years old and still runs Skyrim on Ultra graphics, it's the best value for money, even considering it's before the 6 series.
If you don't know what you're doing, hold off on buying a custom built one, or getting someone to build one for you. If they don't fully understand what kind of stuff you're using it for, games, etc. you can easily be tricked into spending more purely on the basis of how much RAM it's got, or generally the Operating System... not the processor or the graphics card.
Mine cost about 700 quid to build, and runs games from around 2011-2013 on very high settings, so it was cheap and good.
I'll list my specs...
Windows 7
Chip Type: Nvidia GTX 275
Approx Total Memory: 1649Mb
Generic PnP monitor - Display Mode: 1440 x 900 (32bit) (75hertz)
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
2Gb RAM
Over 7 years old.
That all cost about $700....
Agreed a big important point. Laptops were not designed originally to take the loads that modern graphic/processor gobbling games throw at them. Care is the watchword and it's horses for courses . PCs were developed to accommodate resource demanding games as well as the standard support for business applications. Consoles do the same thing but with less graphics quality, less versatility and thus less cost
I always remember one of my first business consultancies in the early nineties. The business needed a mix of standard business applications and some 3D design capabilities from it's IT kit. The guy in charge of buying the stuff always tested the kit with the latest Microsoft golf game (or equivalent to see how well the pc performed. He left after becoming a golf pro and going on tour
Sorry If I gave the impression that I was trying to discredit your comments - I wasn't