How Does My £300 Gaming PC Compare To The Xbox Series S

**PC Performance Comparison to Xbox Series S**

We recently had the opportunity to try out our PC's performance against Microsoft's new entry-level gaming machine, the Xbox Series S. As you can imagine, we were eager to see how our machine would stack up against this new console in terms of both frame rate and visual fidelity.

For the first test, we ran a 1440p game that was specifically designed for dynamic resolution on consoles, with the goal of seeing if we could hit a frame rate close to the Series S's 60 FPS. Unfortunately, even at high settings, our PC struggled to reach this target, dropping down to around 20-30 frames per second. The frame rate was just too low to be enjoyable, especially when trying to take in the visuals.

However, we wanted to see how much of a difference it would make if we dropped some quality settings and ran at lower resolutions. We tried reducing the resolution from 1440p to 1080p, but this still resulted in frame rates that were too low for comfortable gaming. It wasn't until we reduced the resolution further, down to 720p, that we started to see more playable frame rates, with some spikes above 40 frames per second.

Another test we ran was a game that was designed specifically for high-resolution PC gaming, with the goal of seeing how our machine would perform at this higher level. We set everything to "high" settings and targeted a resolution of 2048 x 1152, which is essentially 1440p but with more pixels. To our surprise, we were able to hit at least 30 frames per second in most areas, although there were some frame dips during busier sections of the game.

However, one test that really showed off our PC's capabilities was a comparison between different performance modes available on the Xbox Series S. The console has a 60 FPS mode that drops the resolution to 720p, and we decided to try this out as well. However, since our machine is not capable of dynamic resolution, sticking with 720p all the time didn't make sense, as it seemed like a waste of hardware power.

Instead, we found that setting our resolution to 900p, which is higher than 720p but lower than 1440p, allowed us to hit at least 30 frames per second in most areas while still maintaining some visual quality. This was especially noticeable during longer periods of gameplay, where frame rates would remain stable.

**Black Ops Cold War Performance Test**

For our final test, we chose Black Ops Cold War as the game to put our PC through its paces against the Xbox Series S. Like our first test, this game is also designed for dynamic resolution on consoles, with a target frame rate of 60 FPS. We started by setting everything to "low" settings and targeting a resolution of 1440p, which resulted in frame rates that were too low for comfortable gaming.

However, we soon found that reducing the resolution to 1080p (2014 x 1144) or even 1440p (2014 x 1144) allowed us to hit at least 30 frames per second while maintaining some visual quality. This was especially noticeable during busier sections of the game, where frame rates would dip but remain relatively stable.

While we did see some frame dips during cutscenes and action-packed moments, overall we found that Black Ops Cold War performed well on our PC, with playable frame rates even at lower resolutions. Of course, this is not to say that we can reach the same level of performance as the Xbox Series S, but it's clear that our machine has some serious capabilities.

**PC Build Recommendations**

Based on our tests and results, here are a few recommendations for building or upgrading your PC:

* If you want to build a new PC from scratch, we would recommend using an 8-gigabyte version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5600 XT or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT.

* Alternatively, if you already have an older GPU like the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super or AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, upgrading to a newer model could also provide significant performance gains.

* In terms of CPU, we would recommend using an Intel Core i5-11400 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, both of which are capable of handling demanding games and applications.

Overall, while our PC didn't quite reach the same level of performance as the Xbox Series S, it's clear that it has some serious capabilities and can handle a wide range of games and applications. With the right hardware and settings, we were able to hit frame rates that are well above 30 FPS in many areas, making for a smooth and enjoyable gaming experience.

**Conclusion**

It's been an exciting few days testing out our PC against Microsoft's new entry-level gaming machine, the Xbox Series S. While our machine didn't quite reach the same level of performance as the console in terms of frame rate and visual fidelity, it has some serious capabilities and can handle a wide range of games and applications.

We would recommend building or upgrading your PC with a newer GPU like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5600 XT or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT, along with a capable CPU like the Intel Core i5-11400 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X. With the right hardware and settings, you'll be able to enjoy smooth and enjoyable gaming experiences on your PC, even at higher resolutions and frame rates.

**Future Tests**

We're always excited to test out new hardware and software, so stay tuned for future tests and reviews of emerging technologies like ray tracing, 8K resolution, and more. In the meantime, we hope you've enjoyed this comparison between our PC and the Xbox Series S, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the results!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video now this is a system that's made up of mostly used parts and it cost me around 250 to 300 pounds this is a very similar price to microsoft's new xbox series s and it got me thinking can this system compete with microsoft's weaker console now i'd advise taking this video with a whole ocean of salt not just a pinch of salt because i didn't build this thing to compete directly with the series s as at the moment that seems to be pretty much impossible prices on the used market and the new market are inflated i mean it's very hard to get a component at recommended retail price currently at least here in the uk unless you are opting for lower end stuff i mean duty 1030s and rx 550s are still at a sensible price but they're going to struggle to gain in 2020. so yeah i didn't build this system to compete with the series s this is just a system that happens to be of a similar price to the new console that took me a while to put together from used and one new part so let's talk about that in this pc we have an rx 5500 xt the 4 gig version which could pose a problem already as well as an i5 4460 again this could be problematic due to the lack of hyper threading but hopefully when we crank things up to 1440p more load will be placed on the gpu and the cpu won't struggle as much but we'll find all that out in a little bit can this system which cost roughly the same as the series s actually compete with it i wouldn't be bringing you this video if i didn't think that prices will soon start to come back down to normal again i think at some point in the very near future you'll be able to find these parts like the 5500 xt on the new market again for closer to 150 pounds here in the uk or the recommended retail price in the us or the respective equivalent currency depending on where you live i think prices will drop i think they're just really high at the moment because a lot of people are still stuck indoors buying pc components the new consoles have just come out new hardware has just come out and everything seems to be all over the place especially considering christmas too prices always go up around then so yeah a mixture of all these things just has caused carnage on both the new and used markets before i get started let's quickly pause here you're probably wondering how i built this pc uh for this price and believe it or not there was a time when parts were well priced and the 5500 xt was in stock so that was the most expensive thing i bought that new i bought a couple of these this one was new um for about 150 and the rest sort of made up the price buying things on ebay this pc has less cores and less vram than the series s and honestly the console does seem to represent better value for money right now than a pc build could at an identical price a new build that is it's just the way it is in terms of used parts well they differ even more depending on where you live so again you'd be hard-pressed to build something at the same series s price point but like my machine you could build something that still has somewhat of an upgrade path this machine while it has an i5 4460 could be upgraded to an i7 later on which would seriously help it out but it would cost a little more 16 gigabytes of ram could also be added for a bit more money in its current state this system is a good place to start so let's talk about the performance this system can do 1080p 30 fps and 1080p 60fps just fine with the former allowing higher settings but as we know that the series s settings aren't that straightforward and this brings us on to the comparative gameplay it's early days for microsoft's budget machine so future games may really start to make better use of this hardware in fact i might continue comparing future releases on the series s to the performance of this pc to see how things change and develop over time for now let's talk about trying to match the console i'm talking similar visuals and frame rates we'll continue with forza horizon 4 which has received a performance patch for the new x and s consoles on the series s forza runs at 1920x1080 and targets 60 frames per second with our aging well apart from the graphics card pc i used a mixture of height and ultra to try and get a nice combination of performance and graphical quality and safe to say that the game not only looked good but ran with over 60 frames per second as well jumping into gameplay this time with everything cranked up to ultra and we still saw at least 60 fps but there were some drops which would lead me to recommend or suggest keeping most things at high and not ultra so it's not a bad start but let's move on to a more demanding release and one that runs with a dynamic 1920x1080 at 30 frames per second on the series s it's also worth noting that the series s has ray tracing here whereas this machine does not support it i myself don't really care too much about that but it's worth mentioning for the sake of comparison because we've got a lower frame rate to compete with in watchdogs legion i decided that again i was going to try and get this game looking as good as possible while also attempting to retain at least 30 frames per second on the pc the first step was to run the benchmark test which gave us our average and percentile numbers we saw at least 40 frames per second overall but i wouldn't recommend using the very high or ultra settings the 4460 will also spike to 100 usage occasionally as well because this is a game that's quite hard on processors the frame dips picked up in the benchmark are more noticeable during actual game play that's for sure but the frame rate stayed above 30 most of the time remember that the console resolution is dynamic and our pc resolution is not a dynamic resolution on the series s helps to prevent these dips but on pc the only alternative is to lower things to 900p or in this case lock the game to exactly 30 fps if you want to keep the graphical quality because we don't actually have to lower things here in order to maintain this frame rate locking the game to 1080p 30fps is the best way to play on this system i think and i found that there were still some dips to the high 20s but overall it's not too bad there might still be a 60fps patch which might improve things on the series s but not without taking a further hit to resolution and speaking of which let's move on to assassin's creed valhalla so i'm calling this a dynamic 1440p series s game but the resolution actually goes both higher and lower than 1440p in its quest to maintain a near-solid 30 fps there is also a 60fps performance mode that was recently added with a patch but using it means a base resolution of just 720p on the console this does actually go a bit higher when less is happening on screen i think that's fair enough and i'd happily welcome the inclusion of a 60fps mode in every game just so that people have a choice let's talk about 1440p on the pc first again we can't do dynamic and running at full fat 1440p renders the game nearly unplayable the frame rate is just too low to put up with though that's just my personal taste i like to see a minimum of 30 fps with third person games however we are running at high detail and dropping things to low would certainly push our average way up which is worth bearing in mind in fact all of today's games should do at least 30 fps with 1440p if you don't mind those lower presets but i wanted to try and compete not only frame rate wise with the series s but visually as well because we don't have dynamic resolution available i chose to use 80 of 1440p this time around which is 2048 by 1152 and this is where we saw a jump still with the high settings to at least 30 fps this performance sort of translates to real world gameplay though there are more frame dips in demanding areas and i noticed one cut scene in particular that dropped to around 19. all i did was talk to someone there was literally nothing else going on on screen just like in watchdogs locking the frame rate will help and the game should therefore be playable with high settings at 2048 by 1152 with 30 frames per second a lot of the time but let's talk about that performance mode the series s has a 60fps mode that drops the game to 720p though it does go higher in quieter areas digital foundry have a great video on it 720p 60fps is also achievable on this pc of course but it's not dynamic so sticking with 720p all the time seems a bit pointless as our hardware is going to waste i think 900p with the highest settings is actually a better option though this will incur drops to the mid-40s in busier areas but it will stay stable in the wilderness or out of town places the map is very big and performance changes quite a bit depending on where you are to finalize then let's talk about black ops cold war it's a dynamic 1440p once again here on the series s with a 60 fps frame rate in mind slapping everything on low with our pc will make that a more realistic target of 1440p once again but the game suffers visually it all depends to be honest on how you want to experience things that's the beauty of pc gaming if you like fancier visuals then whack the settings right up but if you prefer as many frames as possible turn everything way down again i've tried to maintain a nice level of detail that sits in combination with a smooth frame rate medium settings with high textures allows our system to hit at least 30 fps with some spikes above 40 and closer to 50 but all it takes to retain this detail and get closer to 60 fps is a drop once again to 2014 by 1144 or 2014 by 1144 it's just higher than 1080p and a bit lower than 1440p this makes the game look sharper than 1080p yet the performance isn't really affected because honestly our cpu is maxing out at either resolution there are drops to the mid-40s during particularly action-packed cutscenes and in-game moments but i'd deem this pretty playable overall again you can always drop the detail or resolution on pc this pc i feel would still make for a decent 1080p gaming machine in its current state though as i said before if you want a higher resolution then switching to 16 gigabytes of ram and an i7 would help out an 8 gigabyte version of a 5500 xt would also benefit this machine as well or a 5600 xt but then we'd be way over the price point that i intended to hit to conclude it's early days and i'll be testing performance of this machine as new games come out but one thing is for sure both the series s and well-priced pc parts are very difficult to come by at the moment i think for the money microsoft's new entry-level gaming machine is fantastic but i also think that building a pc even if it can't quite match the console performance wise is still a good idea because it can be upgraded over time to something that can so there we go i hope you've enjoyed this video i spent quite a while on it because i was trying to find the best settings on pc ones that sort of looked remotely close to the xbox series s settings things like that nothing's going to be exact here but i hope you've enjoyed this nonetheless if you did leave a like on it down below leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next onehello everyone and welcome to another video now this is a system that's made up of mostly used parts and it cost me around 250 to 300 pounds this is a very similar price to microsoft's new xbox series s and it got me thinking can this system compete with microsoft's weaker console now i'd advise taking this video with a whole ocean of salt not just a pinch of salt because i didn't build this thing to compete directly with the series s as at the moment that seems to be pretty much impossible prices on the used market and the new market are inflated i mean it's very hard to get a component at recommended retail price currently at least here in the uk unless you are opting for lower end stuff i mean duty 1030s and rx 550s are still at a sensible price but they're going to struggle to gain in 2020. so yeah i didn't build this system to compete with the series s this is just a system that happens to be of a similar price to the new console that took me a while to put together from used and one new part so let's talk about that in this pc we have an rx 5500 xt the 4 gig version which could pose a problem already as well as an i5 4460 again this could be problematic due to the lack of hyper threading but hopefully when we crank things up to 1440p more load will be placed on the gpu and the cpu won't struggle as much but we'll find all that out in a little bit can this system which cost roughly the same as the series s actually compete with it i wouldn't be bringing you this video if i didn't think that prices will soon start to come back down to normal again i think at some point in the very near future you'll be able to find these parts like the 5500 xt on the new market again for closer to 150 pounds here in the uk or the recommended retail price in the us or the respective equivalent currency depending on where you live i think prices will drop i think they're just really high at the moment because a lot of people are still stuck indoors buying pc components the new consoles have just come out new hardware has just come out and everything seems to be all over the place especially considering christmas too prices always go up around then so yeah a mixture of all these things just has caused carnage on both the new and used markets before i get started let's quickly pause here you're probably wondering how i built this pc uh for this price and believe it or not there was a time when parts were well priced and the 5500 xt was in stock so that was the most expensive thing i bought that new i bought a couple of these this one was new um for about 150 and the rest sort of made up the price buying things on ebay this pc has less cores and less vram than the series s and honestly the console does seem to represent better value for money right now than a pc build could at an identical price a new build that is it's just the way it is in terms of used parts well they differ even more depending on where you live so again you'd be hard-pressed to build something at the same series s price point but like my machine you could build something that still has somewhat of an upgrade path this machine while it has an i5 4460 could be upgraded to an i7 later on which would seriously help it out but it would cost a little more 16 gigabytes of ram could also be added for a bit more money in its current state this system is a good place to start so let's talk about the performance this system can do 1080p 30 fps and 1080p 60fps just fine with the former allowing higher settings but as we know that the series s settings aren't that straightforward and this brings us on to the comparative gameplay it's early days for microsoft's budget machine so future games may really start to make better use of this hardware in fact i might continue comparing future releases on the series s to the performance of this pc to see how things change and develop over time for now let's talk about trying to match the console i'm talking similar visuals and frame rates we'll continue with forza horizon 4 which has received a performance patch for the new x and s consoles on the series s forza runs at 1920x1080 and targets 60 frames per second with our aging well apart from the graphics card pc i used a mixture of height and ultra to try and get a nice combination of performance and graphical quality and safe to say that the game not only looked good but ran with over 60 frames per second as well jumping into gameplay this time with everything cranked up to ultra and we still saw at least 60 fps but there were some drops which would lead me to recommend or suggest keeping most things at high and not ultra so it's not a bad start but let's move on to a more demanding release and one that runs with a dynamic 1920x1080 at 30 frames per second on the series s it's also worth noting that the series s has ray tracing here whereas this machine does not support it i myself don't really care too much about that but it's worth mentioning for the sake of comparison because we've got a lower frame rate to compete with in watchdogs legion i decided that again i was going to try and get this game looking as good as possible while also attempting to retain at least 30 frames per second on the pc the first step was to run the benchmark test which gave us our average and percentile numbers we saw at least 40 frames per second overall but i wouldn't recommend using the very high or ultra settings the 4460 will also spike to 100 usage occasionally as well because this is a game that's quite hard on processors the frame dips picked up in the benchmark are more noticeable during actual game play that's for sure but the frame rate stayed above 30 most of the time remember that the console resolution is dynamic and our pc resolution is not a dynamic resolution on the series s helps to prevent these dips but on pc the only alternative is to lower things to 900p or in this case lock the game to exactly 30 fps if you want to keep the graphical quality because we don't actually have to lower things here in order to maintain this frame rate locking the game to 1080p 30fps is the best way to play on this system i think and i found that there were still some dips to the high 20s but overall it's not too bad there might still be a 60fps patch which might improve things on the series s but not without taking a further hit to resolution and speaking of which let's move on to assassin's creed valhalla so i'm calling this a dynamic 1440p series s game but the resolution actually goes both higher and lower than 1440p in its quest to maintain a near-solid 30 fps there is also a 60fps performance mode that was recently added with a patch but using it means a base resolution of just 720p on the console this does actually go a bit higher when less is happening on screen i think that's fair enough and i'd happily welcome the inclusion of a 60fps mode in every game just so that people have a choice let's talk about 1440p on the pc first again we can't do dynamic and running at full fat 1440p renders the game nearly unplayable the frame rate is just too low to put up with though that's just my personal taste i like to see a minimum of 30 fps with third person games however we are running at high detail and dropping things to low would certainly push our average way up which is worth bearing in mind in fact all of today's games should do at least 30 fps with 1440p if you don't mind those lower presets but i wanted to try and compete not only frame rate wise with the series s but visually as well because we don't have dynamic resolution available i chose to use 80 of 1440p this time around which is 2048 by 1152 and this is where we saw a jump still with the high settings to at least 30 fps this performance sort of translates to real world gameplay though there are more frame dips in demanding areas and i noticed one cut scene in particular that dropped to around 19. all i did was talk to someone there was literally nothing else going on on screen just like in watchdogs locking the frame rate will help and the game should therefore be playable with high settings at 2048 by 1152 with 30 frames per second a lot of the time but let's talk about that performance mode the series s has a 60fps mode that drops the game to 720p though it does go higher in quieter areas digital foundry have a great video on it 720p 60fps is also achievable on this pc of course but it's not dynamic so sticking with 720p all the time seems a bit pointless as our hardware is going to waste i think 900p with the highest settings is actually a better option though this will incur drops to the mid-40s in busier areas but it will stay stable in the wilderness or out of town places the map is very big and performance changes quite a bit depending on where you are to finalize then let's talk about black ops cold war it's a dynamic 1440p once again here on the series s with a 60 fps frame rate in mind slapping everything on low with our pc will make that a more realistic target of 1440p once again but the game suffers visually it all depends to be honest on how you want to experience things that's the beauty of pc gaming if you like fancier visuals then whack the settings right up but if you prefer as many frames as possible turn everything way down again i've tried to maintain a nice level of detail that sits in combination with a smooth frame rate medium settings with high textures allows our system to hit at least 30 fps with some spikes above 40 and closer to 50 but all it takes to retain this detail and get closer to 60 fps is a drop once again to 2014 by 1144 or 2014 by 1144 it's just higher than 1080p and a bit lower than 1440p this makes the game look sharper than 1080p yet the performance isn't really affected because honestly our cpu is maxing out at either resolution there are drops to the mid-40s during particularly action-packed cutscenes and in-game moments but i'd deem this pretty playable overall again you can always drop the detail or resolution on pc this pc i feel would still make for a decent 1080p gaming machine in its current state though as i said before if you want a higher resolution then switching to 16 gigabytes of ram and an i7 would help out an 8 gigabyte version of a 5500 xt would also benefit this machine as well or a 5600 xt but then we'd be way over the price point that i intended to hit to conclude it's early days and i'll be testing performance of this machine as new games come out but one thing is for sure both the series s and well-priced pc parts are very difficult to come by at the moment i think for the money microsoft's new entry-level gaming machine is fantastic but i also think that building a pc even if it can't quite match the console performance wise is still a good idea because it can be upgraded over time to something that can so there we go i hope you've enjoyed this video i spent quite a while on it because i was trying to find the best settings on pc ones that sort of looked remotely close to the xbox series s settings things like that nothing's going to be exact here but i hope you've enjoyed this nonetheless if you did leave a like on it down below leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next one\n"