Got to say, yesterday I was cautiously optimistic. After reading about 70-80% of this thread, I am realizing the train has left the station FOREVER and I'm just living in past.
We're here talking about 700-800$ GPUs being fine, and many selling out at 1000+$ - FOR WHAT?!? Playing rehashed games, just this time remastered with "RTX"?
As someone said, I AM getting old. But is 40+ really that old? I do remember GPUs always being most expensive part of gaming, but I also remember drooling from getting a 300€ (tax included!) card that could run ANYTHING I threw at it, and it payed for itself in 2 months as I worked as game reviewer at a time. I no longer in review business, that was "just" a job that got me through college without parents/banks/debts... I make roughly 8x more easily these days.
Then I look back, and see my last card being GTX 1070Ti which I got free from business partner when it was already old and leftover in inventory. That PC is also now rotting in a closet, because I switched to just using my company laptop (with built in mobile RTX3060). Realistically last GPUs I actually bought with own money (that I can remember) were the likes of Radeon 9700, then some Nvidia I think GeForce 6800 LE with unlocked units throwing it one tier up, then Radeon X1950Pro, then HD4870/4890, then long nothing until I found I think second hand R9 2x0 or something, and later swapped that for R9 3xx something, barely remember those two cards anymore. Most of that was 2002-2009 or there about, and cards from that period had high OCs, custom (air) cooling, tweaked BIOS, unlocked features and the likes. It was hobby and fun, and relatively affordable even for a student and first low payed jobs. But that means I haven't bought a real GPU since 2014/2015?! That GTX1070Ti was a gift around 2019/2020, and my current laptop was bought around Sept/Oct 2022 as EoL model released about a year before that.
The way things are going I'll become a console gamer, maybe switch to handheld like Steam Deck and just forget about all this bullsh** forever.
Tell me ppl, is it logical that laptop with RTX3060 was 1000€ (with 25% sales tax included!!), including screen, battery, and all the PC parts, while at the same time roughly same specs in a desktop WITHOUT screen and battery cost more? It's same with this topic at hand. We're talking about companies having 50-60% margins, but let's not forget, that's 50% ASML margins selling to TSMC, then 50% TSMC margins selling to AMD, then 50% margins AMD selling to OEM, then more sane 15% margins for OEM, and then God knows how much margins when retailers and scalpers take over, and another 20-25% sales tax depending on country. If we start at 100$ that ends up at 700-800$ by the time it reaches our consumer homes. So unless you're in the stock market and one profiting from all that, everyone else is getting milked to the limit... Actually beyond limits. Ask your boss for 50% raise and see what they think about it when you try to milk them. You'll get slapped to reality. Then why on earth are people still buying god damn 1k+ GPUs... Slap yourselves out of it - please!
Sorry for rant but it was heavily needed...
Edit: Oh, and someone said we'll end up 10y from now with people unable to afford it all... It's already happened, like 3 years ago. They're just running on inertion until it hits everyone. With 8.5 billion people, in 2025 selling under 75 million COMBINED iGPU + dGPU is telling that already but note only 10% of that is dGPUs... If I haven't forgot my math thats about 0.08% of people that can (and is willing) to buy dGPU. And it's already declining.
Source:
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...te-igpus-increase-while-discrete-gpus-decline
