Yeah, very well done Review.
I'm not a gamer, although maybe now I've seen some of the games out there now, it's a good addition/substance abuse issue to add to the list....like running after sheep nekked at midnight on the Yorkshire Moors was exciting the first few times, but maybe is time for a new hobby??
I think this is the sort of thing that could be done to a lot of the high end packages: not just games, but technical software too. Like Matlab, Ansys, Abaqus, Thermocalc etc.
Feel free to correct me, but I think there's a gap between a User who has a very high end system, where money was not a major consideration, and they have no major issues running resource intensive games and/or technical software (including image processing).
And between someone with a lower end laptop who in theory meets the minimum requirements for these packages, but will not really have a happy time running them. "Like watching paint dry".....
So yeah, the Rich Nerd has no problems.
The second guy, well, he's also got no problems, at least SOLVABLE ones, because he's SCREWED.
He's trying to do a record lap on the the Nurburgring Race Track in a Trabant. Sure, it CAN and HAS been done, but it was REALLY slow.
So unless he lights his system on fire and collects on the insurance, he has no (solvable) issues. Happy man....
So my point is, the MISSING Gap, is where you are able to spend something in between, but you need to be clever how you do it. And to be convinced it WILL indeed help you.
And I think that if there were more benchmarks using systems that are in between these extremes, and maybe done with adding a bit more GPU, an then a bit more CPU, a bit more SSD etc. Based on that, you'd have a good idea of where you should spend your extra $$$ to get a faster lap time.