Console or PC?

[courierseven]

If you were a console player I would suggest you to stick with it and just buy next gen console, either one. But, since you are not, I think you are just better off with a custom build PC.
If you can't build it yourself, there are always friends to help you with it,I hope, or you can just learn how to do it yourself, it's not hard at all.
The main reason for going PC is cheaper games. You would be surprised how much you can save on Steam deals alone.
Also, you have one machine for everything in PC. If you enjoy playing relaxed in sofa or a couch, you can do that as easy as you can with console.

And, about buying a premade PC, it's not always more expensive. Depends on what deal you run in to. In my experience, there are many computer shops that charge very little if anything to assemble it for you if you buy all parts from them. At least in my country.
Final advice? Wait a bit more if the main reason is The Witcher 3 and see what happens when they announce system req for it.

 

[tomato1992]

I prefer PC since it offers MODs.

 

[bigboss9191]

pc noobz...

 

[soldiergeralt]

consoles are stupid. its invention perfectly coincided with the dumbing down phase of american culture in the 70s and 80s. if you want to know why slavs make good games, it's because pc were the only thing available to them so they made games designed for pc. meanwhile in america, we got crap like mario and bomberman. what a joke.

 

[nukeheal]

Yes PC is the best but if you are not planning on spending 2000$ for high end spec parts to last 3-4 years, just buy PS4. No point spending 1000$ and play on medium settings. They will give you 2 years warrenty for 30-50$ with PS4 and you can resell your physical games on eBay, swap in local games store for new one.. borrow it to your friend or eat it for breakfast. You own the game.

Steam games might be cheap after a year or two of release but they dont hold any value! they dont exist you dont own them. Most AAA games are coming out to all the platforms, well except first party games and GTA and Tekken If you think about it for games alone.. you can't beat consoles.

 

[Username.]

Oh, look. It's the $2000 PC myth rearing its ugly head again.

If you leave in a somewhat civilized country(unlike the one I live in) $1000 will get you more than enough to last this entire console generation, specially if you take into account how underpowered consoles are compared to the high-end PCs of today.

 

[Arowyn68]

I had my computer built by cyberpower 2 yrs ago for just under $1200 and I run all my games on max no problems. The Witcher 2 included. I also have an Xbox 360 but will not be getting the Xbox One as I've decided that I prefer my PC

 

[nukeheal]

Oh, look. It's the $2000 PC myth rearing its ugly head again.

If you leave in a somewhat civilized country(unlike the one I live in) $1000 will get you more than enough to last this entire console generation, specially if you take into account how underpowered consoles are compared to the high-end PCs of today.

Consoles generations? you mean 5-7 years? for 1000$ PC. yea good luck. PC is awesome no question but its expensive to maintain. Look at the price of GTX 780 it's 500$! just for graphic card!

I have my own house and I dont want bulky PC in the corner it's really antisocial for everyone and If you are a parent or planning on being one, dont buy gaming PC. It will ruin kids life. Make friends, bring them home and play some street fighter until morning.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I'd say go with PC, rather than console. See below.

Downsides of consoles like Xbox and PlayStation:
- Severely DRMed and tightly controlled systems. No flexibility and cross platform options (most games there are "exclusives").
- You can't use them for general purpose computing (at least without breaking the DRM). I.e. they are not useful for any creative purpose, only for consumption.
- It dumbs down the user, not being educative and it doesn't encourage any creativity and tinkering - it forbids it even (bad for kids, unlike others said above).

Upsides of PC:
- You have a choice of the operating system to use.
- You can avoid DRM if you wish.
- It's a general computing open platform where you can do what you want (including gaming as one of the activities).
- It's great for creative activity (good for kids unlike others said above).
- If you want you can turn it into console style experience (using a gamepad).
- Unlike others said above, you can use a PC to play with friends. Just attach two controllers (or whatever).

 

[Username.]

Consoles generations? you mean 5-7 years? for 1000$ PC. yea good luck. PC is awesome no question but its expensive to maintain. Look at the price of GTX 780 it's 500$! just for graphic card!

I have my own house and I dont want bulky PC in the corner it's really antisocial for everyone and If you are a parent or planning on being one, dont buy gaming PC. It will ruin kids life. Make friends, bring them home and play some street fighter until morning.

You don't need a GTX 780 to handily outperform those consoles, and by the end of the year we'll have cards that are as fast, if not faster, than the 780 for less than $500.

As for your second point: Who gives a fuck? This thread is about getting the best possible experience on The Witcher 3 and that will be on PC, as long as the OP is willing to invest.

 

[vivaxardas2015]

If you have free time and money in order to do a proper research concerning what PC to buy or build, and is OK with gaming on PC in general, go and buy/uprgade PC.

If you are short on free time, like most working adults with families are, and you want just to drop a disk into drive and play, with no hassle concerning driver upgreads, settings tweaking and such, go for a console. Now I am a 80% console gamer (20% for PC exclusives, TW1 included), and I am not going back.

Which one is better, ps4 or X1, is up to you. Al long as MS is packing kinect I am not going to use, I will not shell out extra $100. So right now I am going for ps4. In the future, who knows? May be MS sees a light at last, and allows us to decide what piece of hardware we need and ready to pay for.

 

[EliHarel]

Gilrond - what's DRM?

Edit: I know that it stands for Digital Rights Management, but I'm confused as to how it matters for games and the PC-Console dilemma.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

eliharel: Digitial Restrictions Management (aka Digital Rights Management, but the former definition is more appropriate). I.e. various methods and tools which vendors and publishers deploy to restrict what users can do with computers and programs which they use. In a broader sense, it's an unethical preemptive policing approach, which assumes all users to be potential criminals, and imposes restrictions on all users to prevent potential illegal activity which in practice restricts all kind of other activity (i.e. legal one).

For thorough discussion on this subject (including how it relates to gaming, PCs, consoles and etc.) see this thread: http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/16563-What-does-DRM-achieve-and-does-piracy-equal-lost-sales

In short, PC can be kept DRM free if you want (including for gaming). Consoles like Xbox / PS? Not really. That's how it directly relates to the above. It's not the fault of the consoles though, or controller style gaming. They have no logical correlation with DRM whatsoever. It's just the de-facto sick situation that exists today.

 

[Clearly_Balkan]

Never, ever play any Witcher game on console.

You just don't do something like that; just like you don't play TES: Skyrim on console too !

It's disgusting monstrosity & blasphemy to play Witcher game on console.

Besides why would you satisfy yourself with low/medium settings in 720p on X1 ?

PC, Witcher 3 on ultra settings, 1440p resolution - that's the way to go !

 

[EliHarel]

Gah, I'm almost embarrassed to say how many of these terms are alien to me. Is there some dummy's guide to computer hardware I can learn from? I'm talking the ABC of the field.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Here is a pretty decent beginner's guide which focuses on PC hardware: http://www.pchardwarehelp.com
Start with sections on the top right - CPU, RAM, Hard Drive etc.

 

[jerf.674]

As said above it'd be cheaper for you to build a PC yourself, but if you don't want the hassle, you can go to some website like http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_B85_Configurator
and choose a configuration of a pre-built PC. If you want to buy a PC now, you can choose something like Intel Core i5-4440 for CPU, NVIDIA GTX 770 for GPU and a 750W power supply. This will amount to about $1000 with performance several times higher than that of PS4 or Xbox One. This rig will certainly be enough to run The Witcher 2 quite well on Ultra with Ubersampling disabled, and we can also be reasonably sure that this kind of rig will be enough to run The Witcher 3 at least on High.

If you ultimately decide to buy a pre-built rig this way, be sure to post the full specs here before finilizing the purchase, we will offer you detailed advice.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Looks like Nvidia GTX 770 is a jump up from GTX 680 in power requirements (35 W increase):

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-680/specifications
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-770/specifications

I got GTX 680 a while ago but just started using it in a new machine. I quite like that it it's not very power hungry (I use it with 650 W PSU).

I hope in the future Nvidia will make better GPUs with comparable power requirements.

 

[GuyNwah]

The difference in TDP is 35W, not 80W. Both cards have been gimped to run at stated power and stay under thermal limits. The 770 is just a little less gimped.

If you have adequate power and cooling, and you bump the fan profile suitably, you can run these cards well over TDP, and then the difference is much less.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Yes, I mistyped that (fixed already).

My new PSU though becomes quite noisy when I run TW2 (in Wine). I'll probably get a noise meter to figure out if it fits the noise specs. Because it appears way too noisy to me (under lower load it's very quiet).