Just when you thought, "surely it can't get any worse..."
Well things are looking up. Vaccines seem to be taking quite a while to be effective and distributed so we'll be getting more deaths, new strains of the virus work too in reducing demand
A bit long term but hey. We do need to realize we have finite space and resources on this planet but an increasing number of people, and even a big pandemic is hardly enough to turn that growth around.
This is not going away and the automotive industry is just about to swing Thor's hammer at fabs in volume. We made everything digital but forgot we now all need a chip for literally every single thing.
Big problem with GPU market is the too much emphasis on high end of the spectrum. Look how long the RX580 has been been the value for dollar GPU that it's been. There has been nearly no innovation value for dollar at the lower mid range of the market for too long.
We're practically standing still since 2016. Let's face it. Turing didn't offer anything, the 2070S was the exact same thing as a 1080ti with less VRAM and same perf/dollar and max perf. The SKUs above it were priced out of the comfort zone altogether. SUPER moved that bar up to a 2080S, if you want to be optimistic about it that is. I'm not because SUPER was too late to market, and Ampere killed that deal shortly after.
Ampere offers more but isn't for sale at MSRP
RDNA2 offers more but isn't for sale at MSRP
Its the whole reason I'm still gaming on this 1080. Best GPU I ever bought tbh. I could still sell it today for 75%~100% of purchase value no problem lol.
Its all just a result of 'the end of rasterization'. Even the midrange can slaughter that no problem. GPU needed a new problem to solve, so we got RT. Commerce wants us to break wallets on that problem because the old problem is practically solved, diminishing returns in graphical improvements happen so we don't see the value of upgrading. Even an upgrade to 4K isn't at all impressive when you've got UW or 1440p in front of you already.
The top end of the stack barely moved up in absolute performance, so the midrange can't do it either without cannibalizing the range above it. Its a different result of the same principle that if you don't keep advancing the high end, everything comes to a standstill (AMD learned this too with Polaris & Vega).