[wmf]

I suspect the $400 PS4 contains roughly $400 worth of hardware, so it's not surprising that it would be similar to a mid-range PC. This generation isn't as "generous" as the $600 PS3 that cost $800 to make.

[criley2]

Honestly, you'd spend $600-$650 to build a comparable computer. And that's not counting the fact that the PS4's software, both OS and games, are built for a single target. And that's assuming you'll get cheap peripherals and cheap case and stuff. And probably doesn't include the cost of a Windows license either.

Specifically video cards don't start passing the PS4 until the $200 range, at least when comparing via synthetic benchmarks.

I'm also unaware of how to get memory like GDDR5 for PC RAM.

[supergauntlet]

Yeah, this is not true at all. You can get video cards that are better than the PS4's (by enough to counter any initial optimization, if not end-of-life optimization) for $150. Specifically, 7870 GHz editions.

[nitrogen]

The only thing you can't get in a PC is the high-bandwidth shared memory. You can probably make up for it by having tons of RAM on your PC's video card, but I still think the shared memory architecture will be the most interesting part of the current generation of consoles.

[lucian1900]

That, and the usual low-level hardware access that consoles have always had. That counts for a lot, especially later in the console's life.

[Arelius]

> You can probably make up for it by having tons of RAM on your PC's video card.

You can't "make up" for having shared memory unless the developer is just using it to pretend that they have a machine with like 6 GB of vram.

Of particular relevance is the fact that the PS4 has cache coherent shared memory. Which is a separate ball game entirely.

[nitrogen]

By "make up" for it I mean you might get the same performance by moving more of your processing to the GPU and avoiding the CPU altogether. Obviously you can't do the same kind of close interaction between CPU and GPU like you could with shared, cache-coherent memory.

I can't wait until there's a PC that has that kind of memory architecture, though, if we ever get one.

[Arelius]

AMD has been working on it with their APUs... That's why it's in the PS4 now.

[criley2]

Haha sorry buddy, the 7870 editions that beat the PS4 are $200. You're right that they are better than the PS4 GPU, but wrong on the price. The 7850's get down to $150, but they're also benchmarking lower than the PS4 in synthetic benchmarks.

Also, a $50 price difference doesn't invalidate my answer of $600-$650 --- in fact you'll notice that it lands exactly in my stated error range of $50.

EDIT: My bad, I found a super off-brand cheap bad-warranty version of the 7870 for $170.

But speaking from experience, don't buy a shit card from a shit company with a shit warranty.