As a side-note, the X-Box series S was the cheapest and most effective way for me to buy a 4K-UHD blu-ray player.
I did try to do some CUDA based AI rendering stuff on my 2080S but 8GB didn't seem to be enough.
Its weird to comprehend the 'stretching' of technology advance over time as I age, especially on the value side. There hasn't ever been the same 'feel' for me from the first leap of moving from software rendered Quake to a 3D-card - despite the various advances since, although I remember bump-mapping as another massive leap.
It's totally unfair in some ways. As an example the control you have over lighting a scene (either in a game or something you're rendering) is way beyond what multi-million dollar studios were using in my younger years.
What happens to society/reality when technology capable of producing video content indistinguishable from reality is affordable to many? Its already happening. Its going to become more commonplace.
The problem of 'truth' becomes massive - is the thing presented to you something that actually happened or was it fabricated?
24GB is enough for some serious AI work. 48GB would be better, of course. But high end GPUs are still used for other things than gaming, from ML/AI stuff to creative work like video editing, animation renders and more.
I completely agree. In the past I dropped a ton of money on gaming rig hardware that aged like milk. With a console you get the advantage of exclusives, majority of PC game releases, and a longer upgrade cycle versus a gaming rig. If you own a PS5, you got the PS VR2 coming out soon at a decent price point. If you own an Xbox, add in the amazing value of the Xbox Games Pass and I just don't see the need to be subsidising Hardware Manufacturers' bottom lines anymore.
I have a desktop PC that I sometimes use for gaming, everything from demanding simulators (like Flight Simulator and X-Plane) to grand strategy games and other more mainstream games. Last GPU I bought was a 2080ti that still is my GPU, and I bought that something like 3 years ago. I can still game mainstream games on very high settings without issues. So not sure why your setup aged like milk but mine didn't...
On my home machine, I'm running SLI'd GTX480's. They still do 99.9% of the gaming I want to do. I have only found ray tracing (which I don't like anyway) and for some reason water reflections to cause problems. But I can still run most games on high or better settings.
I don't know why OP's setup would age like milk. As long as you keep them clean, games haven't really advanced that much in the last few years, in terms of graphics requirements.
Also, if anyone has advice on building a new machine, I'm listening. I've been out of the game so long that I don't even know where to start, and have children that want towers built.
Yeah, it's kinda bizarre - I've been running GTX970 for 5 years and it still runs things acceptably today (although I've replaced it with 3080 at launch).
It really didn't last any less time than PS4 or any other console.
Consoles are subsidized and benefit from quantity. PC gaming has always been more expensive and benefitted from more cutting-edge technology. I love that consoles make gaming more accessible to more people, especially now with online multiplayer, which was once reserved for PC gamers. Even phones can do VR now, but PC is still the highest resolution, best texture quality, most detail, etc. Driving games in particular, with a Fanatec wheel, IEMs, Index or Vive Pro 2, and TOTL GPU + CPU are pretty damn spectacular, but the fact that you can get something 50-70% as good for ~1/5th the cost with a console is impressive.
ps5 hardware is sold at a profit (they hit profitability within 6-9 months of launch) and while microsoft claimed to a court that their hardware was subsidized as a justification for refusing to open the platform to alternate stores (so, somewhat self-interested of course), if you believe the production costs are fundamentally similar to PS5 then this is most likely "hollywood accounting".
It's real easy to have the xbox division license their branding from a parent company and if we set that at $100 a console then oops, there went all the profit.
It's not the PS3 days anymore where sony is losing 30% of the value of the console on the initial sale (and actually that wasn't the case for the other vendors even back in the PS3 days). Consoles are sold at a slight profit these days.
That said, having a "big APU" where everything shares a single bank of RAM and a single cooler/etc is a massive cost advantage. There is a lot of redundant cooling and memory in an ATX/PCIe spec PC and it all adds up. A console is one product with one assembly/testing line and one cooling/fan system and one set of memory. Clearly there is a market for "console-style PCs" which apply similar cost-optimizations, with a similar model to Steam Deck. Just so far there's nobody who's been willing to do the up-front cost and yet will choose not to lock down the resulting platform - Valve is somewhat unique on that front.
A Series X will not render very many AAA games at 4k/120fps (if any at all). And it definitely won't do at Ultra level settings.
PC gaming at the high end has always been about spending a lot of money to get the best graphics possible. Consoles always have much better bang for the buck early in a new console generation.
The 4K 144hz you get on the Xbox Series X is almost certainly lower graphics settings than you could run at 4K 144hz on the RTX 4080. I don't think the difference is enough to justify the price difference but comparing resolution and framerates isn't apples to apples.
And you'll still be playing the same game. If you want to spend almost a thousand dollars so your game renders more eyelashes that's your choice. My point is that NVidia's pricing is making PC gaming inaccessible to people who don't have wads of disposable cash to spend on diminishing returns. I would strongly recommend anybody who's looking into getting into current gen gaming to steer clear of playing on PC as the pricing of PC components is completely out of control and console pricing is looking increasingly more reasonable.
How is it making PC gaming inaccessible? You don't need top of the line hardware to play even the most recent PC games. You need top of the line hardware for "more eyelashes", but that's very much a choice (that you get with PCs but not with consoles).
4K 120hz is merely the limit of the HDMI standard used on the Series X. It is not a hard requirement needed to publish on the platform. This would be akin to claiming that the PS3 was a 1080p 60Hz console, when the vast majority of the library managed closer to 720p 30hz.
While developers are free to make 4K 120hz their target, few games attempt it, and the ones that do, often make significant graphical compromises or are graphically undemanding to begin with.
I did try to do some CUDA based AI rendering stuff on my 2080S but 8GB didn't seem to be enough.
Its weird to comprehend the 'stretching' of technology advance over time as I age, especially on the value side. There hasn't ever been the same 'feel' for me from the first leap of moving from software rendered Quake to a 3D-card - despite the various advances since, although I remember bump-mapping as another massive leap.
It's totally unfair in some ways. As an example the control you have over lighting a scene (either in a game or something you're rendering) is way beyond what multi-million dollar studios were using in my younger years.
What happens to society/reality when technology capable of producing video content indistinguishable from reality is affordable to many? Its already happening. Its going to become more commonplace.
The problem of 'truth' becomes massive - is the thing presented to you something that actually happened or was it fabricated?