1. An R5 5500, a B450 motherboard and 16GBs of DDR4, is much more silicon and PCB and parts than an RX 7600 or an RTX 4060 Ti, but they cost less (much less compared to 4060 Ti). And they are 3 times marketing, 3 times boxes, 3 times almost every expenses, compared to one product, one card. But profit margins are probably also much lower. Granted AM4 is old, but it is still on the market, so I guess it still makes profit and that's why it still sells. Comparing to AM5, or LGA 1700, with DDR5, probably we will go over the RX 7600 price, but we will remain way under the 4060 Ti price.
It's more or less relative to what you compare.
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2. In my opinion, a $300 CPU is the equivalent to a $700 graphics card. So the comparison should be done with those cards. And even then I believe that the hardware on a graphics card is much less expensive compared to the hardware on a current gen motherboard, with a current gen CPU and plenty of DDR4/5 memory on it.
Using specific settings makes it easier to compare all cards, from the faster to the slowest. Getting 60 fps with an RTX 4090 at ultra settings and 60 fps with an RTX 4060 Ti at medium settings, will only create confusion, because most people will look at those 60fps, but they will have a problem spotting that "medium" in place of "ultra" in the charts. People without technical knowledge would not even know that they have to search for that little detail.
3. There is stagnation. Going back to 2016 to find a favorable scenario, it is bad already. But we see companies doing it in their slides lately all the time, going back 2-3 generations with the excuse of "we want to show to users of old hardware that now it is the time to upgrade". Why? Because there is no real performance improvements compared to previous gens. 50-100% performance improvements where normal many many years ago. Of course now we have hit some ceiling and we can't expect 50-100% performance improvements to come easily. But still, what do we get under $500? The RTX 4060 Ti offers performance close to the RTX 3070 at a price close to that of an RTX 3070. RX 7600 offers the same performance at the same price as the RX 6650 XT having about the same specs. AMD cut the XT from the name to have the excuse to compare the card with the
4. plain 6600, but 6600 costs $200, not 270.
Stagnation. The company that CAN offer higher performance at under $500, increases prices, the company that CAN'T offer higher performance at under $500, keeps offering the same performance at the same price.
