The GPU industry is so broken right now and to make things worse, MSI thought it would be a good idea to do a lottery for a chance to win the ability to buy a GPU. I had to do a triple-take to make sure I was reading it right.
I would really love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting where MSI thought this was a good idea. A competition that lasted all of 3 days, where people who signed up and entered would be put into a prize-draw where MSI would pull names out of a hat and give them the chance to buy a GeForce RTX 4090 within 48 hours.
Wow, that's super generous isn't it? A "limited" amount of people would also get a $50 MSI store code.
I can't be alone in thinking that was just really weird, getting a chance to possibly spend money by entering a competition. What in the world…I thought doing a lottery was supposed to be the exact opposite of that. Did I fall into an alternate even worse universe recently?
Am I going insane, or is the GPU industry just a complete total mess right now? Prices are absolutely crazy, pricing out a huge amount of people with AMD and NVIDIA focusing mostly on the high-end with their latest chips, with both sides also having plenty of problems like melted power connectors and temperature issues (noted at the bottom). Then we have Intel, whose new GPUs aren't exactly turning heads.
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slaapliedje Jan 16, 2023
Here's what I want to know... what are people needing 4080/4090s for? 8k gaming? VR? My 3080 doesn't generally have any issues running anything. hell, my 2080 doesn't either...
2 Likes, Who?
I recently noticed that Sapphire RX 6600 is now 300€ here in France, so I think prices are slowly coming back to normal. If AMD ever stops this PCI-E 8x madness, I may very well buy their next mid-range offering.
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Granted, is not the same experience as playing it on a 1000 dollar discrete card, but is the same game. It IS the same game. Vanity pushes us out of our senses, to make us spend a lot of money on a system just to play a game "better than in the peasant consoles".
But consoles have historically always been a comparable "value for the money" proposition with PC. They had (and still have) super competitive entry price but then once you're they slowly and stedily siphon the flesh and the soul out of your wallet. PC had always had a steeper entry price (the hardware cost) but then it would repay itself in a few months thanks to better game prices and services. And the better performance and freedom of use would close the deal.
Now the entry prices for PC gaming are just a no no. Once you put some math on it in there is no way one can recover from that initial investment. PCs have just become the equivalent of the electric cars. A vanity luxury item just to show your status and play to be superior.
Just to be clear it's not a product issue. Both NVIDIA 4000 serie and AMD 7000 serie are awesome hardware. It's the pricing that is totally nuts. Who will buy those things? Rich people? How can they sustain a mass market with just rich guys? And if young adults continue to buy consoles since PC are unaffordables, who will buy PC games in the next years? Who will sell PC games if nobody has PC to play them?
It's not a matter of "a good iteration" followed by a "a bad iteration" followed by a "good iteration" again. We're well over the famous microsoft good/bad iterations game. One can easily check on steam that most gamers sits on the 1000 serie. It's a 7 years old serie. It's 7 years that NVIDIA and AMD don't offer a good deal. 7 years is an era in the entertainment industry. PC gamers and PC gaming are already at risk of extinction.
Well... we have the deck I guess to keep the light on. That's still PC gaming on paper. But it's not the "quintessential" implementation of PC gaming.
I usually sit on my computers for 5-10 years. I had my old laptop from 2011 to 2018 as my main PC, then built an expensive PC (about 300-400$) at the time using the new ryzen processor, which i somewhat regret to this day, since the energy saving modes are fucked up on ryzen 1. It doesn't have a single component that would've been consider 'high-spec' or whatever, maybe not even mid tier. Yet it can even run the garbage Cyberpunk game at 1080p without lags on low-medium setting.
Maybe consoles are better for people who only use their computer to play, but if thats just a component having a computer is worth it, and a decent PC is still cheaper than a quality laptop.
2 Likes, Who?
Chuckaluphagus Jan 17, 2023
While you are discussing PC vs console, the next gen already switched to mobile.I can only speak for my kids and their friends, but all of their gaming is on Switch, Xbox, Playstation, and Steam. None of the younger kids (10 and younger) we see have phones that are capable of gaming, but everyone has a console at home and/or their parents' PC.
1 Likes, Who?
I thought we were over this bullshit?
It seems not to be as extreme as last shortage during RDNA 2 release, but it's not day one availability by far either. What is causing it? Cryptocurrency rush seems to be over, so miners aren't buying all cards. May be general demand fell and they also reduced production below the demand now?
1 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jan 17, 2023
This would be my guest. And more and more thoughts about a recession, or just not enough disposable income for video cards this time around? Maybe everyone is just playing on a Steam Deck and stopped chasing those extra 10 frames per second...I thought we were over this bullshit?
It seems not to be as extreme as last shortage during RDNA 2 release, but it's not day one availability by far either. What is causing it? Cryptocurrency rush seems to be over, so miners aren't buying all cards. May be general demand fell and they also reduced production below the demand now?
0 Likes
fenglengshun Jan 17, 2023
It's kind of weird in that while the top end are going insane, the budget end here in Indonesia are actually at or below MSRP. Yeah, only a few models like 6600 and I think 3050 are at that price, but it's not hard to get them and they don't have that much markup beyond what you can expect from import and currency exchange.
So I hear all these insane news and it feels like seeing another world where top-end matters while we're just nicely vibing to last-gen budget offers here in Indonesia.
So I hear all these insane news and it feels like seeing another world where top-end matters while we're just nicely vibing to last-gen budget offers here in Indonesia.
3 Likes, Who?
Here's what I want to know... what are people needing 4080/4090s for? 8k gaming?Probably those dang Warhammer games. They are 40K!
5 Likes, Who?
While you are discussing PC vs console, the next gen already switched to mobile.I can only speak for my kids and their friends, but all of their gaming is on Switch, Xbox, Playstation, and Steam. None of the younger kids (10 and younger) we see have phones that are capable of gaming, but everyone has a console at home and/or their parents' PC.
Same here. And they make fun of mobile gamers.
1 Likes, Who?
This type of companies that make fun of people, are a plague. They just deserve to go broke...
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Games are mostly targeted at whatever the console specs are, and should scale up/down to what ever a 'mid range' PC is. Having lots of pixels on a screen burns through quality of graphics.
See stream stats for an idea of what people actually have: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
See stream stats for an idea of what people actually have: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
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This is the case with my younger relatives, too. And they'll also sometimes hijack my laptop when they visit.While you are discussing PC vs console, the next gen already switched to mobile.I can only speak for my kids and their friends, but all of their gaming is on Switch, Xbox, Playstation, and Steam. None of the younger kids (10 and younger) we see have phones that are capable of gaming, but everyone has a console at home and/or their parents' PC.
2 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jan 17, 2023
Ha, good. Have always hated mobile gaming.While you are discussing PC vs console, the next gen already switched to mobile.I can only speak for my kids and their friends, but all of their gaming is on Switch, Xbox, Playstation, and Steam. None of the younger kids (10 and younger) we see have phones that are capable of gaming, but everyone has a console at home and/or their parents' PC.
Same here. And they make fun of mobile gamers.
2 Likes, Who?
Lotto makes sense, especially when the product is scarce. My region does that for high end alcohol.
And just like high end alcohol, there really isn't a need to have a high end GPU aside from a passion or hobby. Pretty much everything on the market now will run just fine old old and midrange cards.
The people yelling doom and gloom b/c most people are using cards with similar abilities to 1xxx cards seem to have forgotten, that was always the case. Gamers use regular hardware, not high-end.
It took about 8-10 years for minimum specs to start outmatching my last PC (it lasted from 2006 to 2019). That's just normal for most of us. My 2019 build will probably run everything under the sun till 2025, no worries... Maybe a memory upgrade.
And just like high end alcohol, there really isn't a need to have a high end GPU aside from a passion or hobby. Pretty much everything on the market now will run just fine old old and midrange cards.
The people yelling doom and gloom b/c most people are using cards with similar abilities to 1xxx cards seem to have forgotten, that was always the case. Gamers use regular hardware, not high-end.
It took about 8-10 years for minimum specs to start outmatching my last PC (it lasted from 2006 to 2019). That's just normal for most of us. My 2019 build will probably run everything under the sun till 2025, no worries... Maybe a memory upgrade.
1 Likes, Who?
fenglengshun Jan 18, 2023
We always have a 'core' gamer and a 'casual' gamer divide, and the 'core' gamer will always mock the 'casual' gamers. Why would anyone think it'll be different with children today?I can only speak for my kids and their friends, but all of their gaming is on Switch, Xbox, Playstation, and Steam. None of the younger kids (10 and younger) we see have phones that are capable of gaming, but everyone has a console at home and/or their parents' PC.
Same here. And they make fun of mobile gamers.
There's always that kid who has a cool console/PC that's a cool kid for getting their friends to play together and that's a circle that'll eventually grow to feel superior about being able to play 'real' games.
Elitism will always exists in children, and if it's not having a cool Fortnite skin or Genshin character, it'll be about "playing real games on a real gaming console/PC". Things don't change as much as some people think, humans will be humans, and kids will be kids.
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matiaslavik Jan 19, 2023
This is why I think software rendering is the future of gaming.
You should all start playing some DOOM and Wolfenstein3D again, to prepare for the change that is to come
You should all start playing some DOOM and Wolfenstein3D again, to prepare for the change that is to come
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This is why I think software rendering is the future of gaming.
You should all start playing some DOOM and Wolfenstein3D again, to prepare for the change that is to come
At some time ago, I was surprised by Euclideon technology, it was running on CPU alone and had really detailed models, but they never really prepared it for gaming (you can see some experiment on their site). Now we have Unreal Engine 5, which has similar level of detail with GPU and doesn't really need that beast of a card to run it. So I think we are on the good track, when even older GPUs could be able to run the newest games in future, because it will be more on smart usage of resources in the engine than on the brute force of GPU.
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What was that shriek of horror I just heard?This is why I think software rendering is the future of gaming.
You should all start playing some DOOM and Wolfenstein3D again, to prepare for the change that is to come
At some time ago, I was surprised by Euclideon technology, it was running on CPU alone and had really detailed models, but they never really prepared it for gaming (you can see some experiment on their site). Now we have Unreal Engine 5, which has similar level of detail with GPU and doesn't really need that beast of a card to run it. So I think we are on the good track, when even older GPUs could be able to run the newest games in future, because it will be more on smart usage of resources in the engine than on the brute force of GPU.
Oh, a hardware manufacturer.
0 Likes
Granted, is not the same experience as playing it on a 1000 dollar discrete card, but is the same game. It IS the same game. Vanity pushes us out of our senses, to make us spend a lot of money on a system just to play a game "better than in the peasant consoles".Most of what you said is subjective, which means I also have the choice to enjoy eye candy. Enjoying good graphics is not different than enjoying other art in motion. They are an entertaining spectacle. Have I ever spent more than $600 on a video card? No, because you don't need to at 1080p.
(I am not defending high GPU prices. I still don't have the GPU I wanted to buy years ago because its value to me doesn't match the price tag.)
There is nothing wrong with wanting nice graphics.
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