Gpu market gone to the crapper?

BigBadBeef

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I started, once again, actively tracking advances in pc hardware about a year ago, when my pc started showing signs of no longer being up to the task for my needs. I am appaled on how low things have fallen. Graphics cards are overpriced, oversized, unreliable, and cable-busting hungry.

My old gtx 980 was the second best card you could possibly buy on the market, and it was 600€ retail. The best I could hope for in the present, an equal second best on the market, if AMD's chiplet tech pulls through, is 50% more expensive... FIFTY PERCENT! And that is before retail markup. They are also notoriously unreliable, failed gpus, half the age of mine, are flooding repair shops, from having shitty ancillary cooling induced fried VRM's to straight up busted video memory chips. nvidia has also turned out to be misleading, lying, sacks of shit.

These are dark times for gpu shopping. Feels like a choice of having only different grits of sand paper to wipe your butt with, after having an already irritated hole from the caustic chilli you ate all day. Ouch!

Is there any hope left for buying high end quasi-gaming pc's that will actually survive the 7+ years and pay for themselves solely from not needing constant hardware updates through all these years?
 


This is the last graphics card I bought and that was back in the days of Windows Vista.



It's used it for Flight Simulator X and it was great.
I don't remember what it cost but it was quite a bit.

It's still working good however it's starting to show signs of the fan failing.

I'd like to build a new tower for Flight Gear which Linux offers however the graphics card I'd need is outrageously overpriced.

I just refuse to bend over and take it up the backside for the ripoff hardware manufacturers prices as some are and will do and have.

Not me man no way in hell.
 
From my perspective, prices are generally quite reasonable. Compare what you get to historic prices to achieve those same goals (which sometimes can't even realistically be done) and the current market is amazing.

Back in the 90s, my $6500 computer got a CD burner - for a grand. That was kinda on sale at the time, as it was like $1200 otherwise. It went on sale a few months later, Christmas I believe, for $500 and the prices have dropped since.

For the capability you're buying, it is *my* opinion that the prices are reasonable - for the most part. Yeah, there are stupidly priced GPUs, but you can buy a wonderfully capable card for not much money. Even if you buy top of the line, compare it to the previous generations and compare the prices accordingly.

The above is my opinion on the matter.

I should also add that I don't think the top of the line is really necessary for happy computing. You can play a game a bit faster, but we're oftentimes talking about frame resolutions that the human eye isn't even capable of detecting.
 
I should also add that I don't think the top of the line is really necessary for happy computing. You can play a game a bit faster, but we're oftentimes talking about frame resolutions that the human eye isn't even capable of detecting.
If you don't happen to own a VR, go in front of an 8k display, and go so close that your eyes are roughly 3cm from the screen. You will see pixels, even if ever so slightly.

VR is just like a new girlfriend. When butterflies in the stomach settle down and you're examining the relationship up close, you will begin to see what it really is... good and bad.

And I still see pixels even in the modern VR i've tried in exhibitions.

On the rare occasions when I was drunk, I also saw pixels on my (now ex) girlfriend!
 
From my perspective, prices are generally quite reasonable.
No prices are not reasonable $900.00 dollars or more for a graphics card is unreasonable imo.

Graphics cards have doubled in cost since Covid and Cryptocurrency Mining.
I should also add that I don't think the top of the line is really necessary for happy computing. You can play a game a bit faster, but we're oftentimes talking about frame resolutions that the human eye isn't even capable of detecting.
This may be true with some games however with Flight Simulators the realism is only as good as your graphics card.

Use a mediocre graphics card with any Flight Simulator and that's what your realism will be mediocre.

Once hardware manufacturers find any reason to raise their prices they will and they do and they have and they will never reduce them again.
 
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and the prices have dropped since.
I can remember paying over £100 for my first 56k modem and from memory around £50 for 1Kb of second hand ram
 
Look, guys, if you won't take my word for it, then take it from him:
He is an international expert analyst of hardware performance. He checks for everything, sometimes even dissecting hardware with a laser to check the build quality; Like some lunatic that spent his ad revenue to build a messed up lab where does crazy shit to graphics cards the rest of us wouldn't even dream of.

And if he says "no", you should listen!

And I would invite you to join my logic in reasoning, that if you can afford something, it doesn't mean whatever you intend to buy it from deserves the expenditure.

Right now, I wouldn't give the gnawed bones of my last meal for a brand new graphics card.
 
I can remember paying over £100 for my first 56k modem and from memory around £50 for 1Kb of second hand ram

I had a 300 baud, later a used 1200 baud, acoustic coupler (cradel MODEM, from MOdulate and DEModulate). I believe the first was on sale for $300 from RadioShack. I paid slightly less for the 1200 baud MODEM, as it was used from someone selling it on a BBS that I frequented.

That's right... We were buying stuff online (not sending the money online) long before Craigslist or Amazon!

I'm not sure if modern connections actually modulate and demodulate. In a technical sense, at according to my dim memories, it's a digital signal the entire time. So, if it's a digital signal that doesn't need to be modulated, is it really still a MODEM?
 
Don't use one now...haven't for years...I use the open source Driver...thank you Linux.
m1211.gif
 
A couple years before 2020, i noticed that GPUs were being manufactured to be a lot more powerful than they needed to be. I really wanted the nvidia gtx1060 3gb, because that was the optimized system requirement for Resident Evil 7. I loved the thought of being scared by a game...so i just kept watching it till it was being sold for less than $200 on ebay, and i bought it when it was $160, and the game played great and was scary. I think the key is just to figure out the card that does what you need, and don't buy anything fancier.
 
I really wanted the nvidia gtx1060 3gb, because that was the optimized system requirement for Resident Evil 7. I loved the thought of being scared by a game...
So then RE7 is the scariest you can think of?

How about Alien: Isolation in VR? Too scary?
which brings me back to the issue of my topic. You claim gpu's are too powerful, but truth be told, they are merely following the tech advancements of visual display, such as high fidelity VR and 8K. Granted, most people don't need that, but those that do are also quite displeased with how disproportionally expensive hardware has become.

But if you like scary, then there is a cheap indie game available, made by austrians, named vintage story. Its minecraft inspired, so hardware requirements are low. It starts off so innocent, but as the dying starts, you will quickly find the sudden shock of you being gutted by predatory animals appealing; best of all - NATIVE LINUX SUPPORT! PM me if you want to know more.
 
So then RE7 is the scariest you can think of?

How about Alien: Isolation in VR? Too scary?
which brings me back to the issue of my topic. You claim gpu's are too powerful, but truth be told, they are merely following the tech advancements of visual display, such as high fidelity VR and 8K. Granted, most people don't need that, but those that do are also quite displeased with how disproportionally expensive hardware has become.

But if you like scary, then there is a cheap indie game available, made by austrians, named vintage story. Its minecraft inspired, so hardware requirements are low. It starts off so innocent, but as the dying starts, you will quickly find the sudden shock of you being gutted by predatory animals appealing; best of all - NATIVE LINUX SUPPORT! PM me if you want to know more.
Alien isolation is also scary, but RS7 has a lot of jump scares that would get anybody. People on steam warn against playing it with a heart condition, its probably good advice. Alien isolation is a great game, but the scare effect gets predictable pretty fast, i like how challenging it is though, i had to beat alien isolation...i ended up playing it for many more hours than RS7, which is a pretty short game.

What i mean by "too advanced" is that it gets developed ahead of every other computer aspect. For example, when lots of people bought 4k TVs, they were pretty dissapointed in how it looked with lower resolution viewing, and at the time there was little available specifically for 4k. If you're into graphics, then that's fine with me, just don't get shocked by the price tag because tha's the whole reason graphics get developed so quickly.

Thanks for the game recommendation, i do like media that scares me and makes me feel uncomfortable for the most part.
 
I started, once again, actively tracking advances in pc hardware about a year ago, when my pc started showing signs of no longer being up to the task for my needs. I am appaled on how low things have fallen. Graphics cards are overpriced, oversized, unreliable, and cable-busting hungry.

My old gtx 980 was the second best card you could possibly buy on the market, and it was 600€ retail. The best I could hope for in the present, an equal second best on the market, if AMD's chiplet tech pulls through, is 50% more expensive... FIFTY PERCENT! And that is before retail markup. They are also notoriously unreliable, failed gpus, half the age of mine, are flooding repair shops, from having shitty ancillary cooling induced fried VRM's to straight up busted video memory chips. nvidia has also turned out to be misleading, lying, sacks of shit.

These are dark times for gpu shopping. Feels like a choice of having only different grits of sand paper to wipe your butt with, after having an already irritated hole from the caustic chilli you ate all day. Ouch!

Is there any hope left for buying high end quasi-gaming pc's that will actually survive the 7+ years and pay for themselves solely from not needing constant hardware updates through all these years?
Laptop prices ard pretty high at the moment as well...i was looking for 1TB storage new laptops on the lenovo website, but i think ill pass on that: the cheapest i can find is $1100, there are some that are even $3k to $5k, its hard for me to envision the type of person who'd spend $5000 on a laptop, no judgements but that seems like a staggering price for a laptop that isn't some sort of meteorological super computer or military equipment...
 
Laptop prices ard pretty high at the moment as well...i was looking for 1TB storage new laptops on the lenovo website, but i think ill pass on that: the cheapest i can find is $1100, there are some that are even $3k to $5k, its hard for me to envision the type of person who'd spend $5000 on a laptop, no judgements but that seems like a staggering price for a laptop that isn't some sort of meteorological super computer or military equipment...
But I do judge. While those that buy it say "its no concern of ours", that is actually not true.

The willingness of individuals to purchase products at unreasonable prices acts as an endorsement, a furtherance of excessively high pricing for which others, who are unable or unwilling to spend as much for said product may be affected.
 
But I do judge. While those that buy it say "its no concern of ours", that is actually not true.

The willingness of individuals to purchase products at unreasonable prices acts as an endorsement, a furtherance of excessively high pricing for which others, who are unable or unwilling to spend as much for said product may be affected.
It seems dumb to me to spend so much on laptops because i'd bet that even the military grade, high-memory high-storage laptops cost less than $1k to manufacture. I met some dude who wanted to start a military a supply contracting company because governments spend huge amounts of money on things that a normal person pays nothing for.
 
I met some dude who wanted to start a military a supply contracting company because governments spend huge amounts of money on things that a normal person pays nothing for.

LOL The company that bought my company is not quite a household name - but they're pretty close. They make the vast majority of their income supplying the government with things - including food.
 
LOL The company that bought my company is not quite a household name - but they're pretty close. They make the vast majority of their income supplying the government with things - including food.
the example he gave me is how the military buys toilet seats for $2,000 a piece, yet he never went through with his plans probably because doing it legally is probably really tricky...and most of the people who do it are probably ex-military anyway...
 
the example he gave me is how the military buys toilet seats for $2,000 a piece,

That's 99% likely to be a really an absurd quote taken horribly out of context. It's likely that they bought a handful of very fancy toilet seats (for a plane or the shuttle or something) that have to work in like zero gravity, upside down, survive 7g, etc. and then you don't even have an economy of scale, so the research budget is included in the final price because the company making them is only ever going to sell a handful of 'em.

I despise government waste (which might be leaning a bit political but we should be okay so long as we're not specific nor blaming people of certain parties) as much as the next person, but those sorta quotes are usually just taken horribly out of context and ignoring the situation.

I can personally assure you that I never pooped while sitting on a two thousand dollar toilet. They're the same seats you're gonna find in any institution/business with public bathrooms.
 

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