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Comment by theginger | Hacker News Reader

When did a PS5 become a unit of cost? For reference seems to be about 0.002 London buses

I think it's intended as a comparison of cost when building a gaming-capable computer vs. a console of somewhat equivalent power.

It used to be a general rule of thumb that you could build a computer of roughly equivalent power for the cost of a game console, or a little more — now the memory costs more than the whole console.

> I think it's intended as a comparison of cost when building a gaming-capable computer vs. a console of somewhat equivalent power.

The PS5 has 16GB of RAM. One can buy 16GB of RAM for ~$100 [1].

[1] https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9fgFf7/kingston-fury-beast-...

Thank you for mentioning this. Not knowing the specs of a PS5, I'd assumed that the comparison was made because the PS5 now sold for less than the RAM it contains, and scalpers were now hungrily buying up all available PlayStation inventory just to tear them open and feast on the RAM inside.

But since it's 16 GB, the comparison doesn't really make sense.

But that’s not apples to apples, a computer will generally need more ram to compete with a console.

The PS5 also has GDDR6 RAM, compared to the DDR5 in the link.

It still is a rule of thumb, you dont need DDR5 for a gaming computer let alone 64gb. A low end am4 cpu + 16gb of DD4 3600 and a decent gpu will beat a ps5 in performance and cost. I dont understand why the headline made this strange comparison.

The thing is, on a ps5 you just open the game and it runs fine.

On a PC you may have the bright idea to open a browser along with the game for walkthroughs/hints. Or Discord to chat with your friends while gaming.

Due to javascript bloat, your working set size goes from 16 to 48-64 Gb in a jiffy.

That's still not a fair comparison, because on a console you don't have the option to do any of that.

It is a pretty fair comparison.

You do have the option to open up Discord voice chats on PS5. Amazing what Discord could do when forced to actually write something efficient.

Youtube also exists as an app, and maybe you can trick the heavily gimped built in browser to go there as well, although last I checked it wasn't trivial.

TIL! That's neat, I wonder how much RAM that client uses compared to the desktop one.

Personally I haven’t caught the discord electron app (it’s not a desktop client) using more than 4G of ram at one time :)

Maybe 6 once. Try not to leave it for weeks displaying the memes/cat photos channels…

It kind of is, because if you use a PC like a console 16 Gb is enough. If you use a PC like a PC it's not.

I can run the spotify electron app, discord and watch youtube on my 2nd monitor perfectly fine with 16gb of DDR3 ram. When I open my game I get better fps than the ps5.

It doesn't help that GPUs have also generally gone up over the past decade because there's more market for them besides gaming, along with how they benefit from being hugely parallel and the larger you can make them the better, and fabrication costs are shooting up. I think there was a GamersNexus video at the launch of one of the previous GPU generations that noted that there was a move from "more for your money" each generation towards "more for more", i.e. keeping the value roughly static and increasing the amount they charged for a more capable product.

To be fair, if this keeps up, expect the price of a PS5 to skyrocket too.

Hopefully Sony has long-term contracts for their components. I presume they have an idea of how many PS5s they're going to be making still.

All that but they can still jack up the price cus why not.

Because, unless this changed, consoles are loss-leaders. At least back in the ps2/gamecube/OG Xbox, the systems were sold at a loss and the money was recouped on controllers and games.

Can’t use a ps2 controller to play a ps2 game on a ps2 without the ps2 console.

If this is still true or not, I don’t know. I do know that the ps5 with an optical drive cost $100 more than the digital edition. I also know that the drive does not cost $100 and sincerely doubt the labor makes up the difference.

So maybe I talked myself out of my whole point.

Give it a month or two and it might be cheaper to get the bus.

It's a more stable unit than US dollars.

> When did a PS5 become a unit of cost? For reference seems to be about 0.002 London buses

Gaming consoles are something people buy. Any parent or gamer has an idea what they cost.

People do not buy London Buses themself

Seems like an American thing. We measure distances in football fields and volumes in olympic pools, seems we now measure money in PS5s. It tracks...

Approximately the instant when a single component (RAM) of a comparable product (Gaming PC) became more expensive than the entirety of said product.

I wonder what you'd think if bus tires exploded in price and started costing .25 London busses per tire.

Never.

That's a an analogy-- a literary technique the writer is using, to show the correspondence between the price of a specific amount of DDR5 RAM to a fully integrated system, so the reader can follow the conclusions of their article easier.

The tech equivalent to the Big Mac index? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

Had me chuckling at that London bus comment.

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