[quote="Regulus"]
Right now, I have a gaming PC in the range of $1000 to $1200. I didn't spend all that money at once, though. I've been upgrading my PC every year or so, ever since I first built it in 2010. My most recent upgrade was a Radeon HD 7950 for $350. It's one of the best cards on the market right now, and is far more powerful than anything under the hood of the PS4 or Xbox One.
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And if you ever listened to me, because I know for a fact that I told you this, but in the long run, if you buy a "high end" graphics card, you are too wasting money.
If you are really concerned about cash, you can get a very kick*** gaming PC without having to spend more than $200 (hint: you better not) on any single component. At the end of the day, if you buy a powerful graphics card, it becomes outdated (hint: software, i.e. DirectX/OpenGL capabilities) long before it runs out of raw horsepower. If you are willing to spare a few frames per second, or perhaps some of the high end settings in the newest games, you can get a very good rig on the cheap.
Heck, most PC games on low settings look better than their console counterparts. And just to prove that I'm not simply talking, I am able to max-out Metro 2033 on my $175 GTX 650 TI: The card that has the best power-price ratio of the current generation, and the card that I frankly think everyone should get as their best card. Anything above this card I consider a waste, because as I said: you'll be replacing it anyways, but before it will become too weak. Might as well get a card that will be a full upgrade and not just a "I needed the new DirectX". I'm pretty sure the old GTX 9800 cards are powerful enough to max out Battlefield 3, and you can get them for cheap... but you won't want to, because they are DX9 cards, and won't even install BF3.
If you want to be future-smart, you want to "sync" the lifetime of your card both capability and raw power-wise, so that you won't end up having to replace one over the other.
If you truly insist on that you absolutely NEED the best card, then wait half a year, at which the price will almost half in price, but the card will still be very powerful. Still overpriced, but if you want to show off your rig that can max out Crysis 3, then I can't really stop you. Much like I advised a guy not to buy some fancy blue LEDs for his rig (which do nothing but waste power), but he got them anyways.
In fact, if you really want to compare consoles to PC? DON'T. You can get a much better gaming PC...
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For the same price as a console.