xbox 360 or this PC I'm planning?

[gorcorps]

Alright guys, I want to either upgrade my PC or get an xbox 360. Here's the parts I'm currently looking at:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ ($75)
X1950 pro PCI-E ($135)
2gig dual channel DDR2 ram ($75)
cheapy: MSI K9VGM-V motherboard ($45)

Total: ~$330

I would use it for school, and of course am pretty excited about the new games like Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Crysis, etc... so I'm hoping I should be good for at least those. I have a 17" monitor and don't really plan on getting a bigger one very soon, so I won't be gaming above 1280x1024. For comparison, right now I'm running:

A64 3000+
x850pro AGP
1gig PC3200 ram

Or I could get an xbox360. However I don't have a very good TV at all. I may even just hook it up to my 17" monitor for the higher def. My budget can't go much higher than the price of a 360, so $350 or a bit over is all I can do.

 

[Slugbait]

At this point it would probably be down to your fingers: do you prefer a controller or mouse/keyboard?

And really, how much school work will you get accomplished with a 360?

 

[Piuc2020]

I would go with the computer, when you have extra cash further down the line, you can always upgrade even further.

But yes, it really comes down to the exclusives on each console (for example, Crysis is a PC exclusive but Halo 3 is a 360 exclusive).

Personally I'd pick the PC because you can use a 360 controller to play racing games and 3rd person games or whatever, you don't get KB+M for the 360 which is a bummer for shooters.

 

[gorcorps]

I prefer the KB+mouse but mainly because I haven't played many console shooters, so I'm not used to it. I was really leaning towards the 360 because the last few games I was excited for on the PC had been non-optimized and ran like garbage. Now that I've seen how Bioshock runs, I have hope in PC gaming again. But of course, I truly hate reinstalling windows

 

[bob4432]

here is my setup and i will give you some feedback, hopefully it will help -

pc - x2 4200, 2GB pc3200, x1800xt, 2x 15K u320 scsi (1x36GB, 1x300GB) - gaming is good ~ 1280x1024 with some exceptions - rb6:vegas and graw2 on pc suck compared to 360 - games are just not refined for pc and run very bad, even a friend w/ a similiar machine and a 7900gtx had issues w/ graw2 @ 1280x720

360 - excellent for games, just have to get use to controller again - possibliity of overheating issue that the 360 is now infamous for. you now get the 1yr warranty + a 3yr warranty for gpu issues, but it still means sending in your 360 if it has issues, and people speculate that the 360 has a 30% failure rate, so w/ this it is very ymmv

in all honesty, strictly for gaming, i think the 360 is the more value sense way to go, but then again you can't do homework on it, but i guess you could use your old machine for. i feel that even though w/ a controller the fps on the 360 is a bit hard to get use to, it is still doing very well

for me i picked up the 360 because i didn't want to buy a 8800gtx and want to play frontlines: fuel of war when it comes out. in the mean time i am having a blast w/ forza 2, dirt, rb6:vegas and graw2 - all excellent games and help you get use to the controller again

 

[spwango]

It's pretty hard to beat xbox in terms of bang for the buck if gaming is all your interested in. The keyboard and mouse thing is kind of rough at first, but going forward, more and more devs are going to design focused on controllers, because that is where most of the money is. I haven't seen a ton of reviews that say Bioshock is significantly superior on the PC. It's pretty dang hard to beat gaming on 42" HD Plasma/LCD. With a middling PC, you could end up quite disappointed with the end performance results of what you want to play--with an xbox 360, it's predefined. If your current machine is good enough for surfing and homework, I'd go xbox.

 

[gorcorps]

That's pretty much 2 both ways... can't make this easy for me eh?

I guess my next question would be, how does the 360 look on a standard 32" or so TV?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: gorcorps
That's pretty much 2 both ways... can't make this easy for me eh?

I guess my next question would be, how does the 360 look on a standard 32" or so TV?

i honestly don't know, i only have hd tvs, so 1 is connected in @ 720p (component) and the other is connected in @ 1360x768 (vga)

after i d/l cod4 i will connect it via regular composite and see how it looks on my 40" lcd

 

[gorcorps]

You don't have to, I just have an old TV and wondered if anybody else had one and knew what it was like?

 

[DarkManX4lf]

The xbox360 looks fine on a old tv. Personally I have both a decent gaming computer and a xbox360. Its really up to you if you think your current computer will hold you off then go with the Xbox360.

EDIT:

Now that I see what you have already I think your current setup will do fine for any sort of school work you need to do. Since you have a A64 3000 you can try to overclock it and get bit more performance out of it. Plus after you overclock you can go the cheap route and just get a x1950pro videocard upgrade only and you should be ok on pc games.

 

[gorcorps]

Coolness, thanks for the opinions everybody. I'll probably just go for a 360 right now, and wait and see if there's more of a reason to upgrade my PC in the future. By the time I can upgrade again, DX10 cards will probably be plentiful and affordable, so this may work out fine.