In desktop graphics cards: selling lesser quantities for more $ per unit seems to have been the general market tactic (necessity?) for a couple of decades now.

It's been a sound business strategy in an era of declining desktop PC popularity.

Buoyed by the loyal AAA gaming cadre and the burgeoning of online content delivery.

Vid cards again subject to 25% tariff in USA
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/business/e … ons-expire.html

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-01-05, 15:30:

In desktop graphics cards: selling lesser quantities for more $ per unit seems to have been the general market tactic (necessity?) for a couple of decades now.
It's been a sound business strategy in an era of declining desktop PC popularity.
Buoyed by the loyal AAA gaming cadre and the burgeoning of online content delivery.

IMO only since 2017. And also for CPU: instead of +20-50% more performance for same or a bit less $$$ every 2-3 years we got same performance per dollar. And mobos are pure insanity, top notch x58/x79 products prices about 350-450$, now it's 800$+ for Ryzen/LGA 1151/1200.

If iam lucky i will buy a new socket AM4 motherboard this month if i can, before the price gauging starts to happen.
R7 5800x will buy in the next couple of months
Hopefully a RDNA 3.0 at the end of this year or perhaps next year.
And then iam already done for a couple of years.

Fortunately, my university work does not need the extra oomph from a newee gen ryzen chip.

Besides racing simulations, I'm not a big fan of AAA games. I think I'm gonna stick to my overclocked 7700k for an extra couple of years.

Prices are high and so is the demand at the moment so that's not going to change anytime soon. If you're thinking of upgrading your pc and you don't have much to spend, then wait it out or do what I mostly do: buy used hardware from one or two generations prior.

Unless you are some power user or always want to play AAA titles maxed out on 4k, you can still have a enjoyable PC experience with hardware from 5 to even 10 years ago. Up until 2018 I was still rocking an i5 2500k and it was fine. Then I got a really good deal on a used Ryzen 5 2600x.

I've been looking into the newer Ryzen models but they only give me about 10 to 15 percent performance increase and that's not really worth spending a lot of money on, imho. In everyday tasks I would not even notice the difference.

I'm in a pickle too. I've had this Ryzen 5 / GTX 970 combo for 2.5 years now and there doesn't seem to be anything in the sub 200€ region that would make me want to upgrade. The Ryzen cost around 180e new and the GTX was 150e used. Most I would gain is a 10-20% increase and it used to be that I could upgrade the CPU/GPU for the same amount I paid for the previous ones and get a 40-50% increase. 😒

sf78 wrote on 2021-01-11, 08:26:

Most I would gain is a 10-20% increase and it used to be that I could upgrade the CPU/GPU for the same amount I paid for the previous ones and get a 40-50% increase. 😒

True, and even if you got a 50% increase you have to consider if it's even worth it. I see all these YouTube channels where they test new high end hardware and Game Title X now runs at 250 fps! A huge increase from the previous gen where it had 175 fps. Completely forgetting that your eyes cannot see the difference. Any gain past 60 fps is just superficial.

Same for SSDs. Even the staff from Linus Tech Tips couldn't correctly guess which pc had a SATA SSD and which one a M.2 nvme even though those much faster theoretically.

It's great that technology is advancing but don't jump on the commercial bandwagon because of all those fancy theoretical gains and graphs.

Unless you have a shitload of money of course. Then go buy yourself stuff.

Hezus wrote on 2021-01-11, 07:27:

Prices are high and so is the demand at the moment so that's not going to change anytime soon.

Unless you are some power user or always want to play AAA titles maxed out on 4k, you can still have a enjoyable PC experience with hardware from 5 to even 10 years ago.

I've been looking into the newer Ryzen models but they only give me about 10 to 15 percent performance increase and that's not really worth spending a lot of money on, imho. In everyday tasks I would not even notice the difference.

Demand mostly artificial. They produce either less (CPU) for more profit or billion variations with different colors (GPU and mobo) and rise prices to compensate for unsold units.

There is at least one area in modern computer usage that makes old hardware obsolete - modern OS and browser appetites. And if you talking about hardware from the past you possibly mean at least first gen i7 or FX83xx with lots of RAM and at least GPU like GTX680/HD7970 which will give some kind of enjoyment or relatively good experience.

10-15% for browsing/office usage - hard to notice, lack of instruction sets - you unable to run software or it will render 2-4x times slower, lack of RAM and you limited to 10 tabs or slooowwww paging even with SSD. Also, creative software becomes heavier with each generation, so if you decide to run virtualization/coding/video editing/etc you will suffer and definitely notice those 10-15%.