The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-11-16, 16:19:
bloodem wrote:I.e.: nVIDIA had a 6-month product cycle back then, which is probably impossible to do now with modern GPUs
It is impossible due to very simple thing - back then Nvidia were as fast as die-shrinking of their successful chips could be physically possible. TNT2 was not a new chip. GeForce 2 was not a new chip. Heck, 9800GTX and GTX 280 hardly were new chips, just optimization of the same old 8800GTX, they squeezed everything they could from Tesla. Lithography improvement now just can't keep up, because it's not behind one or two generations behind CPU lithography, like it was back then. Nvidia can't play die-shrinking game now.
Yeah, I guess so... As I said, wishful thinking. 😀
Shagittarius wrote on 2022-11-16, 15:37:I dont blame anyone who is willing to pay the asking price. I spent most of my early life unable to afford ANY computer parts a […]
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I dont blame anyone who is willing to pay the asking price. I spent most of my early life unable to afford ANY computer parts and everything I had were hand me downs from friends. I got my first sound blaster in 94 for christmas which was a huge deal for me and ran that 386DX-25 all the way until 1996 when I got a DX4-100, which I had for years. Computer prices have come down a lot overall and since I've been a working adult with no car/home payments and I make good money, and computers is my only hobby that really costs any money, the current cost of a 4090 is plenty worth it to me.
We are also lucky to live in a time when you can play any game out with a low tier video board from the current gen, that's something that was unthinkable when I had no money to buy computers. I missed out on so many games, anything 3d (Non Hardware Accelerated) or relatively advanced up to the 1998 time frame, I would look at those games and wish but I couldn't play them.
The top tier might not be for you and it doesn't have to be because the ability to play PC games at all levels is so much better than it use to be. Be thankful companies compete for performance, we dont have to stagnate performance wise and overall this creates a more powerful bottom end.
Don't let me stop the illogical fanboy orgy though.
See, I was not referring to you or other 'de facto' high-end buyers. You guys are fine - as I already mentioned, I can totally understand that some people not only can easily afford the top tier card, but they are also willing to pay for it.
I was referring to (what appears to be) a worrying number of more and more 'traditional' gamers that, until yesterday, would only spend ~ $500 for a graphics card, and now, all of a sudden... sky's the limit. Many of them probably can't even truly afford these cards, and yet they keep buying them anyway.
Our 'gaming life stories' are quite similar, actually... Like you, I also couldn't afford any computer parts (well, more specifically, my single mother couldn't), which is why I received my very first PC at the end of 1998 (as a first year of high school present), and this PC was, at the time of purchase, an already outdated Pentium 1 MMX 166 MHz with 16 MB RAM and a 2 MB S3 Virge (which I only managed to "upgrade" in the Summer of 2000... to an ATI Rage IIC 8 MB 😀 ). So, as one can imagine, I too had to endure (for many years) single digit FPS in software rendering (and this was the best case scenario, since many games wouldn't even run).
Fast forward to today, I'm also a working adult, also don't have car/home payments (anymore) and I also have a good software engineering job that pays very well (all thanks to my mother and that very first Pentium 1, which got me started in this field). This is where the similarities between you and me end, though. Because, even though I could easily afford to buy a 4090, I stubbornly choose not to. It doesn't mean that I'm 'better' or 'worse' than you in this regard. I just view things differently, that's all.
2 x PLCC-68 / 4 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 1 x Skt 4 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 6 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
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