Would you rather spend hundreds of dollars on a Gaming Video Card for Desktop PC or a Game Console i

[froggyboy604]

I like the bigger variety of games on PC which sometimes don't make it to console, and that there is a good selection of games are "Free to Play" or free online play without the need for subscriptions like Xbox Live gold which cost 60 dollars a year, and you are tied to one account/service for online play.

Gaming video cards also drop in price pretty quickly, or there are cheaper brands of video cards which make Nvidia or ATI cards, so a $200 gaming video card for desktop can play many older PC games at high quality settings, and newer PC games at low to medium settings which is good enough for me since I care about gameplay more than graphics as long as the graphics don't slow down where it becomes unplayable.

If I only can afford either a desktop + $200 video card, or game console, and I don't own either, I pick a desktop computer with a gaming video card.

Plus, a lot of programs these days like web browsers, video convertors, and editors use a video card to make programs run faster at displaying video, converting and encoding video by using the GPU chip on the video card.

 

[Lleyn]

I would pick a console to be honest. A lot of good PC games can run with in-built video cards, so if I had to choose I would get a console for more options.

 

[froggyboy604]

I guest if you buy a computer with an AMD APU, or even a Intel HD 4000 it can play many older, and free games. Sometimes you can even play newer games at lower video quality settings, and screen resolution.

But, with a video card, you can re-use it on your next computer if it also uses PCI-Express.

Plus, you don't have to worry about the console company closing down or discontinuing its consoles like the Sega Dreamcast because there would always be companies making PC games since there are many operating systems like Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Mac, so if one OS gets discontinued there would still be new games being release for the other OS.

 

[Lleyn]

The only problem is that most of the good PC games aren't gamepad compatible. I'm personally fine with WASD and the mouse when playing FPS games, but for RPG's I would rather be able to use a gamepad since they are more practical. Key-mapping keyboard buttons to a gamepad doesn't help much either, especially when the game requires accurate camera rotations.