Challenge: PC equivalent of Xbox One / PS4 (Cost & Performancce)

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

Some not entirely scientific benchmark comparisons across a variety of reviews, largely focussing on anandtech's bench. I think I had to cross derive between reviews looking at the A4-5000 and the A8-4555M, which are similarly clocked quad-thread APUs (the Trinity ULV has the advantage of boost for single threaded loads, of course). In well-threaded loads the performance was eerily similar ;)

I'm not sure if Mantle is Windows only or if a linux flavour will be released eventually, but it's probably only going to directly relevant to AAA titles anyway, so I guess for a SteamOS/Linux box it makes sense to look at nvidia. Which makes it a real shame that their lower end cards just aren't price competitive with the AMD cards on Windows: we know we'll be losing absolute performance just because AMD haven't got their Linux drivers in order... *sigh*

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In a perfectly threaded world I can see the two architectures may balance out. Threading kind of relies on imbalance and pipeline stalls to work. Edit to add: Of course the big difference is that PD can manage over 4GHz, I get the impression that Jaguar just doesn't have a deep enough pipe to manage that.

If Mantle is any good, then it should be rolled up into an OpenGL enhancement. If that doesn't happen, then it is just an interesting hack that won't live long anyway.

Sadly to get the nearest actual hardware equivalent (which I think would be 8 core CPU + 7790) is £200 just for the CPU and GPU. I can probably fit the rest of the build in budget, but not with a copy of Windows for Mantle shenanigans.

Of course, if an FX-6300 (or even an FX-4300) will unlock to an 8 core, then it might be possible ... You'd not need an expensive motherboard (SB710 supports core unlocking) as we'll downclock the 8-core to 2GHz to match the console CPU (reducing the stress on the VRMs; we could possibly even undervolt a little too); and lets remember this is a console equivalent so we don't care about upgrading! 2 RAM slots are fine, we can stick an 8GB kit in there and call it job done. We'll keep a reasonable budget for the case - it needs to look nice under the telly - but we can slap any old 500GB HDD in there and call it a day. Might not hit £349, but could probably do it in £429, and provide excellent performance in all AAA console ports thanks to optimised threading and Mantle.

The real question is: why would you want to? You want a console experience, buy a console. You want a PC experience, build a decent PC. If your budget is only £349, work out which experience is more important to you.

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

If Mantle is any good, then it should be rolled up into an OpenGL enhancement. If that doesn't happen, then it is just an interesting hack that won't live long anyway.

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It can't be rolled into OpenGL - it's lower level than DirectX and OpenGL.

The only point is for fun. The consoles are sold at a loss to encourage sales, and the hardware is ordered en-masse and therefore bought at huge discounts compared to the highstreet equvalents... Unless a PC manufacturer sets a standard and uses the SAME parts for 10 years, we will never be able to get the same level of cost to value ration that consoles enjoy.

Still, we have 4 component lists which come very close and this in itself is a good achievement. Personaly, my own attempt at sourcing components ended at £445 so will keep looking to trim the price down somehow!

I wouldn't worry about spending a little more, new releases are cheaper and steam sales + humble bundles will soon plug the gap + free online on PC of course.