No shit. When 1080s from 6 years ago still work fine, there’s clearly some stagnation. They need to cut prices if they want people to actually buy their shit.
Intel needs to come thru with Battlemage and fuck up team red and and team green
I think it helps that AAA graphics got so realistic that improvements feel more incremental relative to older games, and indie games proved that much simpler, cheaper graphics are viable and often even preferred, and devs started going for stylized art over realism more often. Probably also helps that Steam Deck is a thing now, and the Switch allows 3rd party games, so that hardware can be a target to consider too.
Anyway yeah. I’m still running a 1070, and at absolute worst I might have to reduce some graphics settings in the latest or most poorly optimized games, and we’re long past the days where moderate or even minimal graphics settings looked awful. Games are still beautiful on lower settings.
A better GPU at this point would net me better FPS in some titles, but those games make up a relatively tiny proportion of what I play, and even then I still get a perfectly playable framerate as is.
So, yeah, not paying those prices for a tiny upgrade, and not when I remember prices pre-covid and pre-crypto miners. I can afford to wait out their greed.
I keep explaining to people how the world actually kind of benefits from the Graphical Plateau; but so many insist to me “You will want more pixels. Have you seen raytracing?”
The Steam Deck mostly gives an upper bounds for how much hardware a game should demand for the next few years, and it’s probably lower than some developers wanted it to be.
The silliest thing about raytracing in particular is it was planned to be a developer convenience. So in an RTX-only future, we were all going to upgrade to much more powerful GPUs, only to run games that look about as good as what we already have.
I absolutely love raytracing… and on my 3080 it just doesn’t look good enough yet to justify turning it on for most games. Maybe they just haven’t implemented it well yet, but the reduced framerate in most games just isn’t worth it, and I’ve hated effects like screen-space reflections since more or less they came out.
I think by the time we have a 50X0 or a 60X0 that raytracing will finally be fast enough to have it look good AND perform well. But for now it’s mostly just a gimmick I turn on to appreciate, and then turn back off so I can actually play the game smoothly.
It might be that they’ll put more time and effort into getting it looking right once more people can run it at all, too. I’m not sure what percentage of PC gamers have sufficiently new/powerful GPU’s to run it, but I’d suspect it’s still small, and I’d think there’s only so much time and effort that devs will want to put into something that most people won’t see at all, when they could spend those resources for other aspects of the game (including other aspects of graphics) instead.
The one thing I would really like now is better audio. Both stuff like better 3D positional audio (e.g. Deathloop if you turn that setting on - although the setting kept turning itself off for me, which was maddening) and more varied and complex sound effects and music. It can make a huge difference, even when people don’t consciously notice.
I didn’t know that about raytracing as a developer convenience - that’s really funny.
I do think raytracing is really cool, and when it’s available I think I’d rather have it than not, all else being equal. But… it seems like the kind of thing that I’d notice and appreciate when it’s there, but I don’t notice its absence, either, and can enjoy my games overall just the same without it.
Agreed, my 1080Ti is still all I need.
Whatever happened with Intel’s discrete GPUs? I got whiplash trying to follow the news. At one point I thought the news was that they were discontinuing them altogether. But are they proceeding now?
Honestly, pretty damn well. If they keep with it, I see good things for them.
Imo, the A770 is a lower mid end hero. They’ve really improved their driver support, and I think Battlemage is going to be great.
I bought a 4070Ti for $1k and I deeply regret it. Not because I can’t afford it, but because I let my want of gaming at 120 fps overpower my ethics of enabling a company to get away with these prices. It’s definitely a regret I have.
I paid $1100 for a 3070 during the pandemic with a newegg bundle deal (trash stuff they couldn’t sell). I already had a 2070 and it was a complete waste of money.
I feel that way too. My 2080 is still good so the itch isnt as strong but when I play something on my 4k TV and the fps dips below 60 the itch returns. I truly don’t want to buy anything from nvidia or amd even for a good while so here’s hoping Intel keeps at it and doesn’t get stupid expensive as well
Personally I’m starting to buy second-hand hardware and I recommend it. Less pricey, more eco-friendly and less money in pockes of greedy corps
Almost all of my computer hardware is second-hand! My plex server was free from a guy on reddit and I built a second gaming PC for the TV for maybe $100.
I did this, but my new second hand GPU has loud and annoying coil whine.
Oh well, it could be worse.
Makes sense considering how bloody expensive they are in a time of economic shittery.
I’d love to upgrade, but when I think about it logically there’s absolutely no point. My rig works fine for what I play right now, and the value just isn’t there in a new GPU for me.
They got used to miners buying everything the second it came out and the global supply chain shitting all over everyone. So they price them super high.
They’re just ridiculously overpriced. Yes yes yes I know I know pc gaming good but you’re literally spending the cost or more of a PS5 on a graphics card, it’s just not competitive in the gaming sphere. I know I’m not looking to upgrade any time soon
Still rocking my 1070ti. I mostly play overwatch 2 and Minecraft so it works ok for me now. Also I’m broke and can’t afford the upgrade.
I had a 1070ti since 2018 and it has run everything I have purchased just fine.
I thought about checking out this ray tracing stuff the kids are into, but is there a card under $300 that anyone recommends? It also would need to be mini itx as I have a tiny living room gaming PC.
Sorry but I’m not sure you’re going to get any good ray tracing experience for less than $300.
AMD probably has the best general use GPU in that price range.
Intel probably has the best (with a big asterisk due to driver and directx issues) gaming GPU in that price range.
It’s just hard to recommend buying a GPU right now imo.
Figured, I am happy with what I got 🙂
1080 here. I’m really happy with the decision I made years back. Some games are terribly not optimized, but that won’t make me cash out for a new piece of hardware.
And anything that’s actually worth upgrading from my GPU is going to be even bigger and block the front panel pins on my new motherboard I was gifted last year. Yep.
Some AMD stuff is kind of cheap rn. You can get the 6700XT For around 340 USD. And it’s good performance wise I think. Granted you are on something where you don’t need it imo. I was on something a lot less powerful which is why I made the plunge.
For budget builds the 6600, 6600 xt and 6650 xt are some other good choices. 6600 seems like the best value (price/performance) GPU right now for ~$180 USD.
I’m not surprised; I was killing some time at Micro Center yesterday and couldn’t believe how high the prices were. Shelves were pretty much completely full. I found better deals over in the laptops for GPUs. At least with that purchase you get a whole computer.
I found better deals over in the laptops for GPUs.
Even that isn’t a good deal. Laptop GPUs are a lot weaker than their desktop counterparts, the 4070 (laptop edition) is LITERALLY a 4060 desktop edition. They’re misleading consumers into buying something worse than they’re expecting, and the prices are still outrageous for the new generation.
It’s really shitty they are doing this. When desktops are providing way better price to performance ratio, they are trying to create the illusion that you can still get comparable performance with a slight increase in price, when in reality you are sacrificing a substantial amount of performance for mobility.
If they made this part clear, I don’t think there would be any appreciable decrease in laptop sales too.
Do you think anyone opts to buy a laptop when they have no absolute need for mobility?
Yeah, they do. A laptop is plug-and-play. It has all the things are computer needs already built into it. If you just want a thinking-rock to do your emails for you, a laptop is relatively painless. Then if something happens to it, you take it to a third-party to fix it up for you.
Story time:
I’m a desktop person, but my mother was always a laptop person. She was looking to replace her laptop on life support; I suggested to use desktop because she didn’t actually need the mobility, it was cheaper for the same power potential, it could be upgraded piecemeal and for cheaper, and she could get a larger screen (for her struggling vision).
Desktops are so bulky, it takes up so much space on her desk. I also didn’t expect her needing several different peripherals that her laptop had built in (microphone, speakers, webcam, more USB slots). Yes it will be cheaper for her in the long-run even with those unexpected costs, those peripherals will work with any desktop tower, but she’s so frustrated with it she already wants to give up on it.
I’m also stuck being her go-to person when she wants to complain. How the desktop is just so horrible she’s still trying to use her laptop anyway, how she may as well get rid of the desktop because it’s caused nothing but trouble and nobody will help her etc… she used to be complaining that the laptop was so horrible she’d have to buy a new computer, too. (tbh there’s no scenario where her life isn’t eternal suffering.)
If she really does just give up on the desktop (very in the realm of possibility for her), I’m not going through this again. She can have her overpriced, low-output laptop. The bonus is that as a desktop person, I can deny any expectation of fixing it for her.
It’s even worse if you do creative work on your PC. Nvidia dominates this field completely because of the performance difference. My GPU is old and I really really need a new card for my 3d work but Nvidia is such a awful company…
I stopped buying new a long time ago, it doesn’t make sense financially or ecologically. It also doesn’t help that I live in a part of Europe where all pc parts are more expensive by default. But used or refurbished is the way to, get a generation older quadro (or whatever they are called now, A something?) and you and your wallet will be happier.
Considering that both Nvidia and AMD have been constantly pushing the prices of baseline GPUs well beyond the golden standard of the 1060, even long after the Big Crypto Spike of 2020? Yeah, barely anyone would bother spending a small fortune on a GPU
Not only that, but the used market is skyrocketing, which is just gonna push these numbers even lower.
There had to have been people in marketing that knew this would happen and were overruled by bean-counting executives. The top card of each generation outdoes the top of the previous gen, but for a couple of generations it’s been increasing in price in almost lock-step with the performance increase. Often the newer card will have worse VRAM than the previous generation’s equal-performing card because you’re looking at an older top-spec card vs a newer midrange, and the midrange cards always have less VRAM. With AAA games now starting to really want more VRAM in order to have better visuals, the older cards wind up actually being the better option long-term.
Yeah, aren’t they the highest ever, even accounting for inflation?
barely anyone would bother spending a small fortune on a GPU
well, except datacenters. can’t get enough of them and the datacenter card prices would make you cry.
Then there is also buying used, which tends to be much cheaper than buying directly from either that it makes sense that their sales are falling off.
They don’t understand average consumer looking to buy a desktop GPU is not the same as crypto miners looking to buy GPUs. Once crypto miners exited the market so did the main reason for an unusual number of units being sold leading to high prices in the first place, since to them it is a business expense.
I think Nvidia at least have theirs eyes on the ml market. Theys just dont care about even the mid range. The decision to not put a decend amount of vram on these cards serms like a deliberate move to prevent them running many ML workloads.
This doesn’t shock me. NVIDIA really saw the pricing for the resale market for GPUs and said “we can charge this too”
No, you really can’t. Also, a lot more people anecdotally aren’t super aggressive with upgrades anymore. People are getting so much use out of their electronics that there really is no need to upgrade for most people unless something breaks.
Not surprising since the last gen was impossible to find due to crypto and the current gen is overpriced.
The obvious answer to this question is that the crypto bubble burst and AMD and nvidia are charging high prices for incremental gains.
I think the other piece to this puzzle though is that you dont need a high end gpu or even middle high to play a game at settings that look ok today. I upgraded from a 5600xt to a 6800xt recently but it was hard to pull the trigger and justify the expense because I was still playing new releases at decent enough looking settings at 60fps. Old hardware is lasting for longer, and you can still do quite a bit on midrange and lower end hardware.
In addition to that even integrated gpus are at a point where you can play games at a decent clip. Its not the high end max all settings experience, but my wife is perfectly happy playing games on her laptop with a 5800u and vega 10 gpu.
I wish intel got more attention in this field. I have an a380 in my homeserver and its great for lighter tasks such as transcoding a handful of streams at a time. They’ve been putting a lot of effort into improving the drivers for gaming as well as general use.
They are priced pretty competitive too. I would just hate to run into a game I want to play that’s held back specifically because of an Intel GPU.
I’m rooting for Intel now. Both Nvidia and AMD don’t seem to care about average consumer who would be completely happy with a low to mid-tier graphics card if it was just cheap enough. I hope Intel’s Battlemage would fix many of their current bugs and problems with some games and at the same time would get a sizable performance improvement. Right now I wouldn’t be comfortable in buying a GPU that fails to launch some games randomly.
Another huge upside is Intel’s great Linux support that they have had since, I dunno, forever. Since I wish to eventually move to gaming exclusively on Linux, it’s a huge bonus as well.
Agreed on all fronts. And there’s never been a better time to make the jump to linux for gaming!
Yeah I think up until this year NVidia consumer cards only allowed 3 streams for hardware encoding no matter how many cards you had. It sounds like they’ve changed it to 5 in March this year, there is a way to supposedly unlock it though https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVENC
What I like about about Intel cards are they’ve always just worked for me out of the box, sometimes with NVidia I’ve had to do some tweaking or had issues with drivers but not as much within the lastbfew years.
Yeah it’s an artificial limit. Pretty sure you can remove it, saw something about it on github.
And yeah, on linux at least since kernel 6.1 intel arc is really plug and play.
Can’t really talk about AMD but NVIDIA are at a position to drop every other model except for the x90 without major repercussions. Hell they can even go full enterprise selling these A1000 at a ridiculous profit margin. For NVIDIA at this point the gaming GPU market is just a “good to have”. Artificial segmentation in VRAM aside the chips are just too good to service the consumer market so they might as well sell them for silly money. They don’t particularly care about selling the gaming GPUs because they aren’t losing anything not doing so
