The Shrine

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814131478

-$20 after EMCXMXP229 promo code
another -$30 after rebate.

Damn good card for $200.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

I have a hard time justifying new PC hardware costs, as that is 2/3 the cost of current console hardware and 1/2 - 2/5 the cost of next gen hardware.

It is totally an incredible price, but I could be getting a whole new fancy box for (what seems to me like) just a bit more.

Yeah, PC gaming is for people who used their PC as their dedicated gaming console really(Or just like to invest money into their PCs like me ). You do get better performance/graphics as a result, Far Cry/Tomb Raider/Devil May Cry running @ 60 FPS vs 30FPS console counterparts. If you don't care about graphics/performance consoles are easily the better investment, and it's not like they look terrible, they look great obviously, PCs can just push the small stuff a bit further.

At this point I typically buy multi-platform games on PC and console exclusives on consoles.

Fuck all of that. Indie games need no fancy graphics and $500 video cards.

Yeah the main drawback to PC gaming is that you have to align yourself with elitist assholes like me. Not the price tag.

You can get a decent machine for just a little more than a console and the fact that you can do basically anything you fucking want on the thing without voiding your warranty is worth the price of admission.

I think this is the first generation of consoles where the PC Market's primary components are actually fairly affordable vs the console counterparts.

You can get a AMD FX 8320 for $145 and a Nvidia GTX 760, $249. Which is roughly the price of a PS4, both are more powerful then the PS4's CPU/GPU. Granted, this ignores motherboards/ram/case, etc, but if you were just updating bits and bolts.

Back in 2006 when the 360 launched I think duo cores were all the rage, and the graphic cards were behind the consoles at the time for the same price point.

I think that has to do with the fact that the technology is growing, but it's not so wildly different as to force you to buy an entirely new PC. I mean, PCIe has been around for 10 years now.

That and we're running into that classic "polygons and diminishing returns" problem. And that games have to be multi-threaded to take advantage of cores.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... 0HD%207950

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... ageSize=20

To give you guys an idea of how good a deal this was(when I posted it) those same cards in that series are going for $350+ now.

And the ones in the R9 series which replaced it the 280(X) is $400+