future proof ?970m 3gb or ps4?

my 7970m died recently and i cant buy one of those new hot and stylish 970m 3gb unless i sell my ps4 because im a student , but what im wondering with all those insane requirements for the recent and upcoming games whether should stick with my ps4 and a mid range laptop or sell it and get a 970m laptop?

 

Personaly I hate consoles, get a PC just to have a PC

 

I say grab a 6GB 970M and you're golden

 

Depends if theirs anything coming on the PS4 that you want, for me their has to be at least 6-10 games that I really want on a console for me to buy it, right now PS4 doesn't have that for me. For you this might be different. Just make sure you have enough money left to buy food!

 

pfff who need food when u can feed your soul with these new sick games at ultra settings !

 

what laptop is it going in?

 

im considering MSI GT70 Dominator-2293 as it is the cheapest 970m laptop from a brand , thank you msi for not being filthy greedy like asus and gigabyte

 

You should also look at the Sager NP8278-S with the 970M.. Its like $1400...

 

Decision between a console and a gaming notebook is never a one or the other decision. Depends on how you like to play your games and what platform exclusives you like.

I need both to be honest, ps4 has some good exclusives

 

PS4 is always going to be more future proof. Why? Because consoles are meant to last 5+ years. I got my PS3 in 2008 and they are still making games for it in 2014.

970M is going to be dusted in a year.

I'm both a console and a PC gamer and I see the merits of both but I can honestly say that every console I've owned (outside of the Dreamcast due to Sega failing) has outlived any video card in terms of how long it was relevant. Barring a company failure or a Nintendo Wii/WiiU, you're looking at many years of development for a modern console while you will undoubtedly have to upgrade a PC many times over the same period if you want to play with all the details.

The sacrifice with the consoles, of course, is that the games don't get any real advancement in the graphical arena until the next generation while PCs are more up to date.

Its really all about what is important to you.

 

When the PS3 and Xbox 360 launched they were faster than most desktops.

When the Xbox One and PS4 launched they couldn't even handle most games at 1080p 30fps, way below the level of a mid-range PC. They already started behind, and the only way these things are going to handle 4k displays will be through offloading it to some cloud render farm like Sony's Gaikai and charging a monthly fee to render your games.

Laptop with 980m can already handle 3k pretty well and some games at 4k. At this point, installed base for new gen consoles is still very low, around 10m for PS4 and 5m for Xbox. Even the biggest hits for Xbox One and PS4 only sell a couple million copies, this is like the level of a small indie game release on Steam.

Meanwhile Steam already has 100 million active subscribers buying games. If you want to launch a blockbuster "next gen" game, your only possible hope is either PC sales, or making it compatible with older generation consoles. This is why all those Xbox and PS4 "exclusives" have been coming to PC, they are losing money on these exclusives like Ryse and hoping to recoup what they can of the production cost.

In a few years, by the time new gen consoles have large enough base for COD and Skyrim level of selling 20m+ copies (if they ever get there), even our phones are going to be faster than these things, let alone laptops and desktops.

 

That still doesn't change the fact that they will still be relevant and able to play new games for many years to come.

Nobody is debating that they are woefully underpowered but they'll still have blockbuster AAA releases for years without any need for additional hardware.

Meanwhile, as PC gaming continues to evolve, the hardware requirements will keep going up... And thanks to the lazy ports, hardware requirements are already skyrocketing.

Again, the PS4 will be more future proof than the 970M but not from a power perspective, just a lifespan of the console perspective.

 

My bet is that the current generation of consoles will be replaced in less than 2 years. Maybe even in 2015. They have to be, they are that bad.

 

Not going to happen. People bought them. People like them.

PC gamers hate them.

Console gamers who don't know any better love them.

 

I don't remember if it was AMD or Sony, but somebody already dropped hints about this earlier in the year.

 

I know that the industry has generally alluded to the consoles having a short life cycle this gen. Quite alot of people are sore about these toys still not being able to muster up the promised 60fps on a aging 1080p standard. You only need to have a gander at sites like N4g.com to see how many articles there are on every game not living up to the promise, and also a whole lot of bitter fangirls :laugh:

 

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I haven't noticed many games becoming any more demanding on PC compared to a year or two ago. The only thing that seems to have changed is a couple of games making use of higher VRAM to avoid stuttering with high res texture streaming or downsampling from higher res.

Higher VRAM might become more relevant in the future, but at this time it's only important for a couple of games. Last gen, the consoles started out more powerful than PCs and after a couple years PCs passed them by. This generation of consoles started out already significantly weaker while laptops and desktops are becoming faster every quarter. At the same time 4k displays are becoming more popular and these consoles will never be able to handle it.

PC hardware requirements only seem to be going up if you want to run your game at higher resolution and higher frame rates. If you are happy with 900p / 30 fps console experience, there is no need to upgrade your PC. I can do that just fine on my 5 year old laptop with what was a mediocre graphics card at the time I bought it (5830m). I haven't tried Ryse, which was Xbox One exclusive launch title, but I'm guessing I can probably run it.

I think the PS4 is only future proof if you will use Gaikai service, in which case, you could be doing the same thing on a tablet or a budget laptop with integrated graphics.

 

I think the new consoles will die off by 2017. Consoles usually last 5 years, but I think anyone expecting those weak pieces of meowcow to last 6-8 like the last generation did is smoking kryptonian weed or something. Only stuff that can get superman high lets one think that current-gen is strong enough.

 

And they will spell an end for consoles.

People moved to consoles because they didn't want to hassle with constant upgrades and such. If consoles are going to be refreshed constantly then they're just going to go PC. I don't have room for another console. If another one comes out soon, I'm not buying another one.

Its getting a bit ridiculous. You have to have each previous generation to continue to play your games unlike the PC. I have a PS2, PS3, PS4, and Wii U and the PS2 and Wii U are the only ones with backwards compatibility. Forget that.

 

This MSI GT70 with the 970m should make you able to play release games 3 years after at least on medium settings 1080p with a decent fps rate, which is exactly what PS4 provides right now. I'm saying this because my friends has an Alienware m14 that he bought more than 3 years ago, and he handles Shadow of Mordor at 1080p, medium settings at 30 fps. I already played on his pc to confirm that he wasn't lying.

I'd go with a laptop, since there aren't enough exclusives on the PS4 for me that would justify the product. What I want on a PS4, I can play on a PC as well.

 

They are getting more demanding. A lot more demanding. This is due mostly to unoptimizations however, rather than actual AI/Graphics/world-size/etc improvements. This is entirely normal as time goes along, as much as people may hate it. Someone makes a game in 2010. It runs fine. Someone makes basically the same game in the same engine in 2014. It runs like mess on the older hardware that could run it in 2010, but it hasn't had any improvements worth justifying its more demanding nature. Thing is, it runs ok on at-the-time current hardware, which is all most people care about.

For example, go look at BSNES, ZSNES and NO$SNS emulators. NO$SNS is written by some guy who's broke using like windows 98 on an exceedingly old PC. He gets it to emulate SNES near-perfectly on like 200MHz CPUs. BSNES wants something like an i7, and it's meant to perfectly emulate a SNES. ZSNES needs far less, but it can lag on older dual core systems when things get hectic. It's all about the environment one codes in.

I don't actually have too much of a problem with that kind of natural demanding increase for new engines etc, if they are more complex underneath and can be utilized to greater effect later on. But same engine, same type of game, couple years gap and it needs better hardware? Get that out of here. It's like when they ported Metal Slug 3 to steam and it had lagging issues.

IT HAD LAGGING ISSUES. ON MY i7 4800MQ AT 3.5GHz WITH TWO GTX 780M GPUS AND 16GB OF SYSTEM RAM WHILE BEING INSTALLED ON A SSD. Know what my friend and I did? Launched GGPO and played the neogeo version. Worked faster, smoother and with less bugs. Sometimes there's just no excuse.

 

Kaillera Mame is great for that. Play any local multiplayer Mame game as if it was made for online coop. I love it. The UI is dodgy but the performance far exceeds official releases. Besides how else can I play Vandetta online with buddies as if we were dropping coins in the arcades.

 

No they weren't. Only the 360 was somewhat competitive at release as it had a decent GPU with unified shaders and very high bandwidth eDRAM. The PS3 came out a year too late and was basically last gen's Xbone in terms of obsolete hardware at launch. During that '06/'07 timeframe, it had to compete against the likes of Core 2 Duo/Quad and 8800 GTX on PC. Of course Cell and RSX (neutered 7800 GTX 256MB) got annihilated.

 

This is pretty much why I never really got into consoles apart from the NES (actually it was a Famicom) I had as a kid. That and I valued portability more so I had a rather large Game Boy collection and bought pretty much every Game Boy (including the Game Boy Light) up until the GBA SP.

 

Perhaps I'm out of the loop, as I've only purchased a few new AAA titles this year, and they still run on my decrepit ancient laptop at 1080p. Which 2014 games have you found to be a lot more demanding than games from 2013 and 2012?

 

Basically any of the games that have come from consoles. Take your pick...

 

CoD Ghosts (though 2013, I count it as having current-gen console-itis). Titanfall is a source-engine game which is FAR too demanding for that engine; my single 780M could not max that at 1080p 60fps. Watch dogs can't even get above like 100fps using two titan blacks... on LOW. Shadows of Mordor versus Lord of the Rings War In The North for optimization, Dead Rising 3, Final Fantasy XIII that just came out, Assassin's Creed 4, upcoming Evil Within (4GB vRAM needed to even turn on 1080p textures apparently), every single game ubisoft will produce in the next 3 years... Yeah I think that's about it so far. There aren't exactly overflowing AAA titles to pick from, but this covers quite a bit, no?

 

Haven't had a chance to try those games yet. Didn't realize Titanfall uses source engine, that's surprising. Definitely look forward to playing Evil Within on my new P35x v3 if I end up buying this model. I think the jury is still out on how demanding it will be, setting aside the VRAM requirement. It has this letterboxing effect, so the actual pixels rendered would be much less than 1920x1080, no?

Among recent games I've tried, Wolfenstein New Order seemed pretty optimized, slightly more demanding than RAGE but still quite playable on my craptop. Borderlands 2, Saints Row IV, Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry Blood Dragon all ran OK for me, seemed about the same as other AAA titles from the past few years.

Elder Scrolls Online runs at 1080p in the PVE areas, but in the huge siege battles in PVP it is a slideshow even at 720p, much more demanding than any other game I've tried - this was the one that made me feel my laptop needs to be finally put out to pasture.

 

Sorry but the consoles of this generation aren't future proof at all. They just released and many games already have fps limits and resolution caps lower then 1080p.
A new example if it isn't told in here already:

Ubisoft says during an interview about Assassin's creed Unity that 30 fps is more cinematic, and that you don't wan't 60 fps, that it is bad. Also when asked about the resolution they said that those are just numbers ಠ_ಠ So apparently the game is locked on 30fps and runs on 900p for both the ps4 and xbox one.

PC is master race for a reason.

 

Despite their issues, these consoles will be around for awhile unless Microsoft and Sony take a huge financial risk and gamble on another new console generation early.

Maybe if they hadn't gone with AMD, we wouldn't have this situation..........

 

No other choice for what they wanted, which was a semi-custom SoC that AMD is in a unique position to offer with its experience in both x86 and discrete graphics. AMD is perfectly capable of supplying competent console hardware if $ony and especially M$ were willing to spend more or sell units below cost. An APU consisting of a Steamroller quad-core running at a good clock speed plus a full Pitcairn GPU would've been a better option.

 

Wolfenstein is optimized enough; just the needing 3GB vRAM to turn on ultra is an annoyance, since (like shadows of mordor) ultra barely does anything. Also, Borderlands 2 was not a current-gen console release. Can't count it. Saint's Row IV as well, only last-gen and PC (though it WAS NOT optimized for higher detail settings, just like SR3 was). Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon, etc? They all were not current-gen releases. I was specifically pointing out how most current-gen releases are problematic as heck. If it runs ok it has vRAM requirements through its nose, and if it doesn't have said vRAM requirements, then it doesn't run well. I did mention Final Fantasy XIII... but that's my mistake. It's last-gen, and also the reason peoples' FPS are dropping is because they game uses too little power and their video cards are downclocking rofl. had to tell someone here on this forum to run it at 4k res just so it'd stay above 50% usage and not downclock his SINGLE 680 to 2D clocks and introduce lots of stutter

 

970M is way better!!!Last example is SOM which on ps4 runs on high with some options comparable to pc medium settings.You will always be one step forward with 970M...And the difference will be even bigger in open world games cause they depend more on cpu and i cant wait too see the difference pc vs ps4 and xbox on gta 5 and witcher 3.SOM on high or ultra looks almost the same

 

PS4 and, yes, even Xbox One can easily handle 1080p/60fps. It's a deliberate move developers are making to scale back resolution & framerate in favour of asset quality/detail settings. The consoles could easily manage what would be the equivalent of Low settings on PC at 1080p/60fps. That doesn't mean it'd be impressive, but it is completely possible.

 

Haha it's lose-lose for them regardless. Either way, they'll get ripped for compromising on resolution/frame rate or graphics settings. Just the nature of the beast when it comes to dealing with such underpowered console hardware. Compromises, sometimes serious ones (looking at 900p/792p 30 FPS Watch Dogs and AC: Unity), are inevitable.

And I'm not so sure about it being easy to push 1080p60 at reduced settings on the consoles given their lackluster CPU's. Digital Foundry found that the low mid-range R7 260X (7790) card was essentially a match for the XB1 and even the PS4, going as far as to beat the latter in some cases despite being a significantly weaker GPU. No doubt the stronger CPU's in the PC test system (FX-6300 and i7-3770K) helped.

We see this CPU bottleneck manifested yet again in the just-released Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition, a game which targets just 1080p30 on both consoles yet has trouble maintaining even that at times, especially on the XB1. My laptop, which supposedly has a weaker GPU than the PS4, gets 90 FPS in the built-in benchmark at 1080p max with Normal AA and almost 60 FPS with High AA (2x SSAA) in the original title. Open world games are typically CPU-bound. Witcher 3 will be a real test for the consoles.

 

From what I understand the gpu in the PS4 is essentially a stock 7970m and theoretically should perform favorably because it doesn't have to deal with Direct X. A 970m will obviously be a lot more powerful than both but you pay a premium for it. Depends wt you're after at the end of the day

 

Incorrect. It's a 7970M with only 18/20 stream processor clusters enabled and a 50MHz downclock to 800MHz. The result is 85% the performance of a stock 7970M, as far as raw computing power goes. This can also be read as the 7970M being 18% faster than a PS4's GPU. Then take into consideration the SEVERELY underclocked CPU that most mainstream gaming laptops donning a 7970M would not have, and you can eke out even more performance from a 7970M, despite the uhh "unified hardware coding benfits" that the PS4 would have.

 

Ah right didn't realise that, I'm a bit out of the loop as last I heard was everyone saying the PS4 essentially has a "7970m" in it. I wouldn't like to say how much difference unified coding makes I don't have any raw numbers unfortunately. I do know that the xbox 360 and ps3 punched well above their weight considering their anemic hardware specs.

 

If the PS4 has the performance equivalent of a 7850 in it, how is it that a 7790 matches it and my 650M SLI vastly outperforms it? Either there's some really bad coding going on, or there's a bottleneck elsewhere in the system such as the CPU.

 

i should have honed my question better ! what i meant is like two years from now would a 970m run games at the same quality as its ps4 counterpart !!!!

 

Yes, because even today the PS4 can't run multiplats as well as my Y500, let alone a 970M-equipped system! You'll be all set for this entire console generation if all you desire is an equivalent experience to the peasant boxes!

 

PS4 will be used more in it's life, also... exclusives

 

I would get a ps4 then save up for a laptop, no reason to deprive yourself

 

What about the greater number of PC exclusives?

 

I understand some laptops will ship with 3GB 970m while others ship with 6GB version. If future-proofing is important, I'd go for the bigger one.

 

dont forget that metal gear solid ground zeroes and phantom pain come to pc with 4K support so i smell good optimization cause it run 60fps on both consoles i read also that new takken could appear on steam..I wish they make gran turismo,uncharted,last of us and infamous for pc but its never gonna happen.Rockstar should make a red dead redemption remastered for pc!!!I want it more than gta 5

 

Gave up waiting for that one years ago.

 

I mean quality exclusives, not like indie games

 

The ps4 is already an outdated piece of crap.

You'll be playing 720p/30fps games on it at low settings for the next 6 years.

 

Dude, there are entire genres that are PC exclusive...

Anyway, what does indie or AAA have to do with the quality of a game? No correlation there. And there are indie titles on all platforms, including consoles.