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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 5168105" data-attributes="member: 8158">Well, you can get a PS3 for $400 now, and a 360 for $350. That sum of money will get you a media-center style PC, not something any manufacture will tout as being a game rig (well, maybe the more shameless ones...). It costs $100-200 just for a decent graphics card, and that's classified as a "budget" class model card. So, using either of your distinctions, the deck is stacked against the PC in terms of performance. There is no universally-acknowledged point of demarcation that identifies where a PC has surpassed a console. Comparing hardware alone doesn't do it, because a game taxes a console in a different way than a PC with equivalent hardware. After all, the PC is performing lots of other background processes. Ultimately, the distinction is made based on individual games. Thus, you can't gauge framerates-per-second across-the-board as you would gauge KPH or gas mileage in comparing a Formula 1 with a Camaro. What reviewers tend to do when comparing one PC to another is compare a range of benchmarks based on a handful of games. To use the car analogy, they rate the performance on select stretches of popular roads. Suffice to say, not many reviewers are attempting meaningful comparisons based on benchmarks for Plants vs. Zombies or Peggle, and likewise it would be tough to find someone running benchmarks for Crysis on a $350 PC. The range where someone is testing a game like Dragon Age is going to be on a machine that closes in on $1000. The chief exception would be MMO's (notably WoW of course), which are sufficiently optimized for low-end computers that some reviewers do try to benchmark how well it will work on a cheap-o PC or even a netbook. But of course, those comparisons aren't germaine to consoles (where MMO's are for all intents and purposes unavailable).So, to try to bottom-line: you can't identify a price point where a given PC macthes a console's performance, but for a modern, cross-platform game with reasonable demands, you can bet it's more than $350.  Feel free to google and let me know if you find anything enlightening.</blockquote>

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