So, I went on a relatively long rambly rant talking about the market failures on the GPU market, placing the blame squarely on nvidia, while cutting AMD some slack.
Unfortunately, Nvidia released a new product today, the 4070 Ti, and it's getting trounced in reviews so bad that everyone is ripping Nvidia a new one for offering a new product that costs the same as the old product while offering the same performance as the old product, while driving up the namesake even higher. I mean, this card is freaking $800. It's a 4070 Ti. For reference, the 1070 Ti in 2017 was around $450ish when it launched. The 3070 Ti was $600 and that was ridiculous, given I literally argue for pre 2018 pricing for GPUs.
But it's getting worse than that. People are starting to notice this trend. It isn't the first time I've seen this happen. Intel kind of did the same thing in 2011-2017 with just rereleasing similar quad core processors every year for the same price while performance barely climbed. Eventually, AMD brought about a market correction when they released Ryzen, causing intel to suddenly increase their core counts later in 2017, and turning my brand new 7700k into an i5 8400 performance wise (I was kind of salty over that one, mainly due to the timing). But....while the core argument I was making in my previous article was to "buy AMD", AMD is not necessarily innocent here either as Linus Tech Tips basically pointed out that AMD is complicit with this. They are pricing their new 7000 series products around Nvidia's pricing, and thus solidifying higher prices. They also tried this with their 6000 series. That awesome $230 deal I got? yeah, they tried to originally price the thing at $400 and it wouldn't sell. And AMD is expected just to price their own products around Nvidia, and because Nvidia is pricing their products around how the previous series performed, we're just seeing better cards for more money.
When I said buy AMD, it was on the basis that AMD's current/last gen offerings (the 6000 series) are now a relatively good deal. but even then, I bought during black friday sales when pricing was insanely low. Pricing has rebounded, and now the cheapest 6600 is cheaper than my 6650 XT was. And the 6650 XT is back to $300+. Not gonna lie, a $240 6600 isn't BAD. It's around 75% better than my old 1060 from 2017 that was $270 at the time, but honestly...black friday pricing was better. I would say that the 6600 should probably ideally start around $200 and the 6650 XT around $250ish. Instead right now the 6600 is $240-300ish, and the 6650 XT is $300-350ish. Still cheaper than Nvidia, who seems to want $270-320ish for a 3050 (worse than a 6600) and $370+ for a 3060 (similar to a 6600 or 6650 XT).
It's pathetic. I will still maintain that "60" tier cards should be under $300. Maybe the 3060 Ti around $300, but the base 3060 should be like $250 or less. This market is pathetic, and it really does seem to be that the best deals are had with buying last gen stuff cheap. Even if the 7600 XT is like 20% better than the 6650 XT I jsut bought, odds of it being under $300 are slim and its likely to be closer to $350-400 at first.
Just...this market is pathetic. And people like Linus are wondering if people are going to be priced out of PC gaming. PC gaming became attractive in the later half of the 2000s and the 2010s because the price DID come down and initally, trying to keep up with a console was a fool's errand. Your fancy $1000-3000 PC would be unable to play games 2-4 years later. Things age a lot better now, with a viable "mid range" (as in, $1000ish) PC lasting a good 4-6 years or so, but it's come at the expense of slower progress. And it's not really slower progress. The cards are there. They might as well just not exist because they're so expensive. I'm going to be honest, anything above say, $300-400 might as well not exist, and the $300-400 price range is only remotely relevant for me because thats where the MSRP is for the typical type of GPU i would normally buy. People like Linus are wondering if traditional 60 buyers like me are going to be priced out of the GPU market long term. We very well might. We MIGHT be driven to console, which can provide a decent experience for $500 and lasts 5-7 years these days. But I'm not sure. With GPU demand at a near all time low, there is going to have to be a price correction eventually and something is going to have to give. Nvidia and AMD just seem fit to take the market for all its worth, and ultimately, a correction is going to be needed. They're just playing chicken with consumers. They'll launch high, and then much like AMD during the christmas sales, will eventually have to downsell to the prices that they should've been worth all along. After all, eventually they'll have to move all of those unsold cards, right? Now, the real risk is them cutting production, and some have argued online that they could use the silicon for things that are quite frankly more profitable, like CPUs or something. But, ultimately, as long as they want to make some profit, they likely will make some GPUs. And given AMD can cram a 6650 XT type GPU into a PS5 and Sony can sell it for $500, maybe the pricing really is the problem.
Also, we are getting performance gains for the price. It's just happening painfully slowly. You CAN buy a RX 6600, which provides an experience just below a PS5, for as low as $240 now, and during christmas sales, much lower, sometimes as low as $190-210. Thats why I was so bullish on AMD in my last article. Nvidia is the market leader, and if AMD is stuck with tons of cards it can't sell and lowers prices, I say buy a cheap GPU and sit on it for another 5 years. I mean, a lot of us more "old mid range" budget buyers just wanna PLAY games. We don't need the best settings. Many of us are fine with running stuff on low to get the frame rates we need. ANd given how 1080p/60 FPS is considered the minimum, with more emphasis on 1440p and 4k, gaming is still relatively affordable. I mean, 1080p used to be a luxury. Go back and look at 8800 GT benchmarks. 1080p was the super high resolution enthusiasts gamed at and people were pulling 30 FPS on 8800 GTs and the like back in the day. Many gamers were comfortable playing at lower resolutions like 900p, 720p, 1280x1024, 1024x768, or even something like 800x600 or 640x480. Most of those are unheard of now, with most games not even running under 720p. And upscaling tech, specifically from AMD since nvidia are scumbags who make all their tech proprietary and limited to new GPUs to sell cards, is extending the life of older hardware, giving people an experience that simulates a higher resolution than it really is. So....stagnation is still not a terrible deal for gamers. Most of the emphasis on expensive GPUs is for the sake of people running 1440p and 4k setups, which require 2-4x the amount of performance. Most people running 1080p/60 FPS don't need more than say, a 3070 or 6700 XT and anything above that is wasted frames anyway as you will eventually run into CPU bottlenecks. Even with my 6650 XT, I run into a lot of CPU bottlenecks with my i7 7700k, which is relatively low end, but still, a new CPU is only going to likely give you 2x the performance at most. You dont really need a high end GPU to run games. You can get by just fine on a $300 GPU even now.
Still, prices are too high. AMD's older 6000 series which will be phased out over the course of the year are just barely worth it at their current prices, and Nvidia is just ridiculous. And next generation looks like...more performance for more money. What will the RTX 4060 cost? $500? 80 cards used to cost that much. And the 7600 XT....I'm guessing will cost around $300-400 and be...20% better than the 6650 XT (based on the 7900 XT vs 6950 XT).
So...on the one hand, hardware is stagnating in price/performance, but on the other, GPUs have more longevity than ever before. And increases are happening in the sub $300 market, just slowly. Again, I could buy an upgrade, you can get the next SKU down for a decent price (and it's only like 15% worse than what I bought), and I would honestly say the RX6600 is the everyman's GPU right now. It's the spiritual successor to the 580 and the 1060, and the only worthy upgrade for the money. Maybe a 6650 XT is worth it under $300, and the 6700 XT can be worth it if you're in the $350-400 market, but yeah.
Either way, honestly, I'm of the opinion if you wanna upgrade, you might as well do it now. Next gen looks like a total bust. So far it's all expensive cards that might as well not exist because who in their right mind would buy them (yuppies who I would tax to pay for my UBI plan, that's who), and honestly, I'm not sure if the market will improve any time soon. At this point we're looking at a total wash in price/performance or maybe like 20% better in the best case scenario. AMD's 7000 series just isn't that worth it over their cheap 6000 series cards, and the RTX 4000 series is just too expensive.
I will say if you're a sub $200 buyer, RIP. At this point, if you're paying less than $200 for a GPU, you're literally getting a 4-6 year old GPU like a 1060, 1650, or a modern equivalent like the RX 6500 XT, which is just a crappier 580 crippled by 4 PCIE lanes (TLDR, plug it into an older computer and lose 1/3 of performance). And at $150 or less you're really getting crap (1050 ti or 6400 anyone?). That's the really sad thing. All of these cards are all vastly different performance wise, but they all are the same price. To be fair, the low end market is always like that, but normally that market is sub $150. Right now, anything from the 1050 ti/rx 6400 on up to the 1660 ti/super (2x performance difference in and of themselves) are within $50 of each other. And honestly, I would highly recommend putting out a little more for a 6600 and calling it a day there.
So I guess if you are under that range, you might as well just buy a $500 prebuilt....or a console. It's sad really. You used to be able to buy a PC at a similar price point as a console that could beat or come close to tying the console in question. Now consoles are just a vastly better deal and you arent gonna even get a comparable experience unless you go for like a i5 12400/ryzen 5600x with a RX 6600 or something. You can game on less than that, but it's honestly the bare minimum experience. Still cant complain about my 6 year old hardware being capable of running games. I just wish that buying something like that wasn't what entry level gamers still have to do like 6 years later. Ya know? Not saying your build should be obsolete super fast (I hate that too), but after 6 years...you should be able to at least double the performance easily.
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