I am toying with the idea of getting a PS3 but then had the thought that I could just buy a decent graphics card for my pc and use that. How do the two compare for graphics, gameplay etc.

By the way, I have a AMD Athlon XP 2600 2.06GHZ pc with 1gb of RAM.

I think I know the answer, but thought I would ask 😀

ps3

Well a brand new PC is way better than a PS3 in terms of graphics etc. I'm afraid however that even with a top end graphics card your machine would struggle to get the best out of it. I also suspect that you only have an AGP port so you'd also be limited to older or lower end cards anyway.

Buy a PS3, shove a bit more Ram in your PC and defrag the Hard disk for slightly better windows performance.

PS3. I have a gaming pc and it cost a fortune. The graphics are far better than the consoles but the games are lacking. Because of piracy issues some games are released months after they hit the consoles. Call of duty does not support the 360 controler and a lot of other games are keyboard based.

I suspected that the answer would be the PS3

Anyone know of any good deals around at the moment? The best I have found so far is the 250gb version + Assassins Creed for £269.99 from play.com

As for best deal I looked and I got ps3 250gig with uncharted 2 and modern warfare 2 £299.00 that was from gamestation this was a week ago may have changed since then

Is it better to go for the 250gb version?

PS3 – had one since they were released.

Been trying to use the PC for gaming (it is a bit hardcore) and the bloody thing keeps crashing. Had enough, decided that if I want something not on PS3 then it will probably be on XBox so I may buy one of them too.

Its a easy job to swap the HD for a bigger one, I swapped our 80gb for a 250gb and the Sony firmware gives you the option to backup and reistall if you want to.

I only need the bigger HD, because the Mrs uses the Sony "Play TV" adapter to record her TV on.

Go on treat yourself 😉

PS3 for casual gamage.
Got a tricked-out overclocked dual GPU quadcore highres-monster for all my ARMA2 and BF2:Project Reality needs.
Pfft. I enjoy that sort of thing, for some reason, but it is a bit too much hassle.

mikey74 I have a spare PC that has the same processor and 2 gig RAM and a really good card I got for peanuts from stw that I overclocked. Still a good medica PC and fine with 720 graphics but waiting for it to blow up and buy a new m/board with USB 3.

Don't waste your money on a really good graphics card even with onboard enhancement for blueray or graphics etc.

It's your CPU thats holding you back and upgrading that with the best CPu for a socket A might get Hi def-1080 to work -but not cost affective if your board dies etc.

I ended up spending £200 building my Dad a PC with quad core and onboard Hi-def graphics.

If you want games-PS3. If you want a bit of everything-new pc.

I played Assasins Creed on my dual core £100 no probs but you should be riding more… 😉

I was thinking that to get my pc in a suitable state to play the latest games I'd probably end up paying more than the cost of a PS3, so may as well go for the PS3.

If it's good enough for the DOD

AMD Athlon XP 2600 2.06GHZ pc with 1gb of RAM

Go for a PS3, that AMD is quite slow computer, and it may do games, but will struggle in a year, unless you upgrade this, upgrade that.

PS3 makes gaming easy as it's ready to roll, PCs have huge gaming potential but will cost more than a PS3 to get a good one. I switch between both games like COD series play better on console for some reason they just feel better.

Call of duty does not support the 360 controler and a lot of other games are keyboard based.

Keyboard and mouse is a far nice way to play FPS games.

hmm. slight hijack. i've been promising myself a new gaming pc for about 7 years.
i'm pleased to say i spend far too much time riding my bike to justify the £1000+ i'd probably spend. recently started thinking about ps3 or x-box, with a decent monitor. one thing that is important to me, is that on fps games i like to use a keyboard and mouse. i also have a usb force feedback steering wheel and pedals for driving games. i guess there's no real reason why i shouldn't go for this sort of setup?
any drawbacks?

I've gone through this dilemma recently. After getting back into cycling I rarely game these days but with winter etc I find myself craving the odd gaming session and really wanted to try the latest CoD. My gaming PC is 3 years old though and struggled with CoD4 so I figured a console would be ideal. Not only do you not have to worry about upgrading it all the time but you can play from your sofa (on a nice 40" TV) and you don't have to go through the hassle of booting up that PC etc.

So I bought the PS3 250GB blu-ray bundle from Game (£299 inc. latest CoD, blu-ray remote and a couple of films), figuring worst case I've just bought an expensive blu-ray player.

My first impressions are disappointing to say the least, I felt like a retard playing CoD single player, I couldn't hit anything without auto-aim on and even then I was pants. I don't mind struggling through sections on the PC when it's just your reaction times, learning where the enemy area and mouse accuracy etc. you have to worry about but on the PS3 I just felt so handicapped it just wasn't fun. Even on easy mode I started to struggle (once at the airfield). I just haven't got the patience for that and on-line I don't think auto-aim works anyway.

I then figured I'd download some demo games to see if it was just FPSs I was crap using the controller with. I downloaded stuff like UFC, N4S:Shift and PES and it turns out they're mostly about memorising 600 different button combinations and mashing them (or trying to drive accurately with a little thumb stick). The controller seems a bit small for my hands anyway but these games just weren't fun, I had hand cramps after about 10 minutes (I've sadly played PC games without issues for over 10 hours straight in the past).

Basically it was a bit of a waste of money, I know I should persevere more but I can't see the controller is ever going to be comfortable to use and way too many games seem to rely on memorising shit loads of combos rather than just accuracy, reaction times and puzzle solving.

I'm left with either just using it as a blu-ray player, selling it or only buying games that don't rely on much controller abuse (the Civilisation demo was OK although not really my type of game).

On the plus side it was easy to set up and the graphics are pretty good (not as good as a PC at a high res though).

So I'm now planning to buy a new PC instead (although that's £1500-£1750 down the toilet). As for the OP – not much point just buying a better graphics card with that system, the CPU will be bottleneck so if you can afford £1500-£1750 on a PC I'd say get one, otherwise get a PS3/XBox and be prepared for some frustration, especially with FPSs.

I was going to buy these to sort CoD out on the PS3 but not going to bother anymore as getting the PC instead – might be worth looking into though…
http://www.limexb360.co.uk/product/Fragnstein_wireless__Monster_Controller_for_PS3_Fstein01
http://www.etray.biz/buy.htm

FW, can't you just plug a usb keyboard and mouse in?

I thought that the PS3 was the way to go but it does worry me a little that I won't use it much. Good resale value?

Don't listen to FuzzyWuzzy millions of others seem to manage where he fails dramatically.

heheheh I won't. I guess I'll probably wait until after Christmas and see if there are any deals about then.

@Drac – are you as good at playing CoD on a console though? In my brief venture on-line on the PS3 I was getting absolutely mullered so unless all the other people were using mice (or you can in fact have auto aim online?) I'd agree it's perfectly possible to play FPSs well with a console controller – it's just too frustrating for me :p
Not tried a normal keyboard/mouse on the PS3 – I thought I read somewhere it doesn't work with a lot of games so didn't bother…

I've only recently got a console (xbox last week) after playing games on the PC solely for the last 15 years (ouch!).

What I found with the console is that I can plonk myself on a nice comfy sofa, put my feet up, switch it on and get playing straight away. I've also got a big TV to view the games on (better than my 19" monitor at least – and no, it's a pain to hook that up to the PC!).

I don't have faff about with any other issues (shutting down crappy software that starts up when the PC boots up, checking firewalls will let the game play).

On the xbox at least, the servers also seem quite reliable. I don't have to spend time finding servers with good pings and people in them.

Also, a load of people in the office seem to have consoles (well they all have xbox), so I can link up with them.

The downsides are that I really suck playing FPS with controllers, but this will just take some practice, I also can't use a steering wheel that I brought a while back for driving games.

Keyboard and mouse is a far nice way to play FPS games.

QFT.

@Drac – are you as good at playing CoD on a console though?

It's harder but I manage, most will beat you because they're use to it after practice it becomes much easier. Very few use a mouse for PS3 as the adapter for games is £75.