this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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Gaming

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Agreed, my 1080Ti is still all I need.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not only that, but the used market is skyrocketing, which is just gonna push these numbers even lower.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, aren't they the highest ever, even accounting for inflation?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm still running a 1060 6gb card. I'll keep it for as long as I can, and then I'll likely upgrade to something that isn't the newest generation at the time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I'll probably use my 1070 till it dies, and after that if I'm able to fix it :)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My hopes are on Intel as viable 3rd party. Looks like AMD and Nvidia have agreed they can fleece customers for piss poor perf/price improvements.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

With absurd capability of A770, yeah, it beat out on prices so if Intel release a 32 GB VRam GPU on their next round of offering, it'll crush both AMD and Nvidia if the price is somewhere around $350 and $450.

(For those wondering, A770 offers about 1/2 as much FLOP performance as 4090 RTX and it have 16 GB of VRAM for the price of $350. That's insane.)

If Intel is trying hard, then they could opt to skip the 32 GB VRam and go straight for 64 GB VRam and crush both AMD and Nvidia as a competition, because at that point, they can eat both the consumer and business GPU market share.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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...

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not surprising since the last gen was impossible to find due to crypto and the current gen is overpriced.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The managers didn't realize that the high demand from the crypto explosion and covid 19 lockdowns is over. They didn't notice it coming probably still high on coke stroking their ....fat bellies. Large parts are seriously affected by the shitty economic situation because of a major war and the long term effects of the covid crisis. People are struggling while the food trading industry is mercilessly making record profits.

Of course people are not going to invest 50% of a monthly income on a gpu that is only marginally better and their trusty old 1060 is still good enough. The industry is completely out of touch with consumer needs and what they can afford and are willing to spend.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All the tech companies are so stupid for thinking COVID numbers were real. Like restaurants dipping to near zilch, the inverse was also temporary. No doordash, your model only worked during COVID when we couldn't go to restaurants. I'm not ordering a nice sit down meal in anymore. I'm going to go get my fastfood. Don't act all shocked that the money I spent was permanent.

Same with Amazon, GPUs, streaming services, all the things that flew high during COVID. How did you not see the dip coming?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because capitalism. Everything is set up on the literally-impossible goal of continuous, unending growth. Lots of shitty decisions get made on the assumption that you can always be continuing upward, even when you literally can’t anymore. Have one quarter where things dip a bit and it could be the end of you as the investors jump ship over it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m not sure that capitalism per se is the problem here and more so that the entire way modern, especially tech companies, are funded is just stupid.

Present a „new“ concept that nobody has done before. Rake in cash by showing investors your user numbers. Try to actually start making money by squeezing your users. Fail. Maybe because your concept wasn’t working economically from the beginning and that’s why nobody else has done it before.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Well maybe if they weren’t so power hungry and expensive people would upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i built my pc when gpu prices were sky high in 2020. i settled for a 980 at the time, and its served me really well, actually. it had been years and years since i built my own pc, and it really made me understand how meaningless having the highest tier, current gen hardware is. i thought by now i would have upgraded it for sure, but ive never had any reason to other than maybe wanting to experiment with self hosted ai. nvidia thinks the average consumer is gonna shell out some ridiculous amount of cash for their newest product when its barely better than the previous gen and you really dont need it unless youre chasing clout or tie your self worth to your 3dmark score.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Everyone has a synced upgrade cycle now because EVERYONE upgraded when we were all locked in due to COVID. Does the massive spike in 2021/22 average out to a normalized graph? Yes?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's not even only that: crypto mining went from every card the miners could find to literally zero almost overnight. The spike was, honestly, more driven by crypto than gaming during the super-high sales in 2020/21 and then immediately vanished.

Of course, nVidia ALSO alienated the heck out of a lot of potential buyers who are sitting on the sidelines because they're not paying the inflated prices caused by that spike, so the crypto guys are gone, and the gamers are waiting.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Curious to see what will happen with Intel's offerings at this point...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm optimistic for Intel's upcoming "Battlemage" ARC GPUs.

Someone needs to break up the stagnation of AMD and Nvidia, and Intel's in a good spot to do that. I just hope they keep the price low too, just like the first ARC.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

My mental calculus is: do I want to build a new gaming PC which will appreciably out preform my 1070 now for $2500, or do I want to buy the next 4 generations of steam deck for the same net price?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yeah, I mean I’m using a 2060 and still able to play most games at 4k. I’m not playing super hi spec modern games too often, but even those I seem to be able to do at 30fps or just run at 1080p.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Just, no reason to upgrade yet. My current card plays even the newest games at middling levels which is tolerable. Based on previous experience, I'll upgrade once every 5 years or so. I'm only two years into this secondhand card.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bought a 144hz 1440p monitor a couple years ago so I really need to upgrade my RX580, but I got fed up with GPU prices so just got a PS5 to tide me over.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would like to be able to push my 4k 120hz display with something like a RTX 4090. But its so damn expensive and will require me to upgrade my PSU on top of the $1600 Price of the GPU.

If the 4080 was cheaper, I would get that. But the 4080 is so expensive itself, I might aswell get the 4090 instead

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Honestly I recently purchased a new RTX 4070 TI and it's absolutely dominated everything I've chucked at it. But it was very expensive for what it was and I can completely understand why people have issues with the latest generations

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