Quote:
Originally Posted by mooby
Sure, if you have thousands of dollars to blow on a decent gaming pc, but not everyone wants to invest that much time or money into something that will always be outdated in a couple years. I have a low-end gaming pc but I like using my PS3/eventually PS4 because I don't want to overload my computer with software.
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Outdated is subjective though. If you're talking about being maxing everything including resource intensive effects like MSAA Anti-Aliasing and will settle for no less than a constant 60 FPS at those settings, than yes, you might have to upgrade every couple of years. However even then you'd probably be upgrading to max out maybe 1 or 2 games like say a Crysis 3 or Metro Last Light. Now if you're going for 4k, or God forbid 5k, gaming then yeah, in the near future that is going to be a constant struggle to get the latest and greatest parts, because at this point every bit counts at 4k. Then again if you're aiming for 4k at this point you probably have a LOT of money.
A decent graphics card, especially near the start of a new console generation, will be be able to easily outperform consoles for years to come. The PS4's GPU is equivalent to an AMD 7850, released in March 2012, which is a mid range card barely above that of an entry level card (in fact I think it technically is an entry level card). In short if you have that card or better you can expect to at least to play the more demanding games like Watch Dogs and Assassins Creed 4 at no less than the same performance as their console counterparts.
In fact the last year or two has been the 'riskiest' time to buy a new GPU because no one knew what the new PS4 and XB1 specs were going to be, which obviously sets the baseline for next generation, but most people that bought desktop GPU's ended up with something more than capable of playing next gen games.
Usually though the desire, or 'need', to upgrade is a product of wanting the latest shiny toy. Something of which I'm definitely guilty of.
As far as putting together a capable system, rarely will someone find themselves needing to upgrade unless they start out with really cheap and severely outdated parts (like say if today you got a 2 core CPU with a GPU from 2008).