cm0002Gamers Are Reportedly Skipping GPU Upgrades Due to Soaring Prices — Paying Bills Takes Priority Over Chasing NVIDIA’s RTX 5090
coacoamelkyThe good games don’t need a high end GPU.
Absolutely. True creative games are made by smaller dev teams that aren’t forcing ray tracing and lifelike graphics. The new Indianna Jones game isn’t a GPU-selling card, and is the only game that I’ve personally had poor performance on with my 3070ti at 1440p.
Terraria minimum specs: “don’t worry bro”
Problem is preordering has been normalized, as has releasing games in pre-alpha state.
Anyone that preorders a digital game is a dummy. Preorders were created to assure you got some of the limited physical stock.
Clair obscur runs like shit on my 3090 at 4k :(
plus, i have a 3060. and it’s still amazing.
don’t feel the need to upgrade at all.
SuiXi3DYeah, my 2080ti can run everything sans ray traced stuff perfectly, though I also haven't had any issues with Indiana Jones or Doom: The Dark Ages.
altkey (he\him)Akschually, Doom DA needs to have raytracing enabled at all times, and your vcard is in the first nvidia gen that has it. While 10xx and 20xx haven’t shown much of a difference, and both series are still okay for average gaming, there’s the planned divide vcard producers wanted. RTX IS ON ads visuals were fancy at best (imho) while consuming too much resources, and now there’s the first game that doesn’t function without it, pushing consumers to either updgrade their hardware or miss out on big hits. Not the first time it happened, but it gives a sense why there were a lot of media noise about that technology in the beginning.
me neither. best is a 1070. don’t play newer ‘demanding’ games, nor do i have a system ‘worthy’ of a better card anyway.
Happy with my used 4070ti super i paid 150 for after trading in my 2080ti.
There is nothing to use your gpu on unless youre a kid and haven’t seen the pattern of every aaa game bring literally the same game every year.
I’ve been waiting for a product that makes sense.
I’m still waiting. I can keep waiting
UlrichI think the Steam Deck can offer some perspective. If you look at the top games on SD it’s like Baldurs Gate, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, etc., all games that run REALLY poorly. Gamers don’t care that much.
Alphane MoonIt seems like gamers have finally realized that the newest GPUs by NVIDIA and AMD are getting out of reach, as a new survey shows that many of them are skipping upgrades this year.
Data on GPU shipments and/or POS sales showing a decline would be much more reliable than a survey.
Surveys can at times suffer from showing what the respondents want to reply as opposed to what they do.
It really depends if they hired a professional cognitive psychologist to write the survey for them. I doubt they did…
Pretty sure the scalper situation makes a lot of that data meaningless too. Also if they keep supply significantly lower than demand then it’s still going to sell out. The survey mentions one of the reasons people are skipping is supply issues.
That’s why it’s best to focus on absolute unit shipment numbers/POS.
If total units increased compared to the previous generation launch, then people are still buying GPUs.
Absolute numbers/POS is just going to tell you if supply is matching demand(it isn’t). The survey is telling us that demand is dropping off too. They’re losing from both sides. With the number of AI cards they’re selling by the pallet to data centers I don’t think they really care that much though.
Shipment/POS do not telling you anything about unfulfilled demand or “unrealized supply”.
It’s just how unit were shipped into the channel and sales at retail respectively.
These are the best data points that we have to understand demand dynamic.
Gamers are also a notoriously dramatic demography that often don’t go through on what they say.
MudManI mean, as written the headline statement is always true.
I am horrified by some of the other takeaways, though:
Nearly 3 in 4 gamers (73%) would choose NVIDIA if all GPU brands performed equally.
57% of gamers have been blocked from buying a GPU due to price hikes or scalping, and 43% have delayed or canceled purchases due to other life expenses like rent and bills.
Over 1 in 4 gamers (25%) say $500 is their maximum budget for a GPU today.
Nearly 2 in 3 gamers (62%) would switch to cloud gaming full-time if latency were eliminated, and 42% would skip future GPU upgrades entirely if AI upscaling or cloud services met their performance needs.
if latency were eliminated
I'm sure we'd all switch to room temperature fusion for power if we could, too, or use superconductors in our electronics.
That's the problem with surveys, isn't it? What's "latency being eliminated"? On principle it'd be your streamed game responds as quickly as a local game, which is entirely achievable if your target is running a 30fps client on a handheld device versus streaming 60 fps gameplay from a much more powerful server. We can do that now.
But is that "latency free" if you're comparing it to running something at 240Hz in your gaming PC? With our without frame generation and upscaling? 120 Hz raw? 60Hz on console?
The question isn't can you get latency free, the question is at what point in that chain does the average survey-anwering gamer start believing the hype about "latency free streaming"?
Which is irrelevant to me, because the real problem with cloud gaming has zero to do with latency.
That last one is especially horrifying. You don’t own games when you cloud game, you simply lease them. We all know what that’s done for the preservation of games. Not to mention encouraging the massive amounts of shovel ware that we get flooded with.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 You don’t own games when you cloud game, you simply lease them.
That’s also how it is with a game you purchased to play on your own PC, though. Unless you have it on physical media, your access could be revoked at any time.
I don't know that cloud gaming moves shovelware in either direction, but it really sucks to see the percentage of people that don't factor ownership into the process at all, at least on paper.
Is this a news story from 4 years ago?
Scrambled Eggs I just paid $400 for a refurbished MSI Gaming Z Trio Radeon RX 6800. The most I’ve ever spent. I never want to spend that much again.
If I keep playing the same games my current CPU and GPU will do me well for a long time
smegIncreasingly across many markets, companies are not targeting average or median consumers. They’re only chasing whales, the people who can pay the premium. They’ve decided that more mid tier customers aren’t worth it – just chase the top. It also means a lower need for customer support.
When did it just become expected that everybody would upgrade GPU’s every year and that’s suppose to be normal? I don’t understand people upgraded phones every year either. Both of those things are high cost for minimal gains between years. You really need 3+ years for any meaningful gains. Especially over the last few years.
It doesn’t help that the gains have been smaller, and the prices higher.
I’ve got a RX 6800 I bought in 2020, and nothing but the 5090 is a significant upgrade, and I’m sure as fuck not paying that kind of money for a video card.
ByteJunkI’m in the same boat.
In general, there’s just no way I could ever justify buying a Nvidia card in terms of cost per buck, it’s absolutely ridiculous.
I’ll fork over 4 digits for a gfx when salaries go up by a digit as well.
Not to mention the cards have gotten huge and you just about need a nuclear reactor to power them. Melting cables and all.
I just picked up a used RX 6800 XT after doing some research and comparing prices.
The fact that a gpu this old can outperform or match most newer cards at a fraction of the price is insane, but I’m very happy with my purchase. Solid upgrade from my 1070 Ti
I have a 6700xt and 5700x and my pc can do vr and play star citizen, they are the most demanding things I do on my pc, why should I spend almost £1000 to get a 5070 or 9070 and an am5 board+processor?
Well that depends on your definition of significant. Don’t get me wrong, the state of the GPU market is not consumer friendly, but even an RX 9070 provides over a 50% performance uplift over the RX 6800.
missingnoI don't think they're actually expecting anyone to upgrade annually. But there's always someone due for an upgrade, however long it's been for them. You can compare what percentage of users upgraded this year to previous years.
ddittyI just finally upgraded from a 1080 Ti to a 5070 Ti. At high refresh-rate 1440p the 1080 Ti was definitely showing its age and certain games would crash (even with no GPU overclock). Fortunately I was able to get a PNY 5070 Ti for only ~$60 over MSRP at the local Microcenter.
5000 series is a pretty shitty value across the board, but I got a new job (and pay increase) and so it was the right time for me to upgrade after 8 years.
“When did it just become expected that everybody would upgrade GPU’s every year and that’s suppose to be normal?” - that’s a really good question because I don’t think normal PC gamers have ever, and still aren’t, like that. It’s basically part of the culture to stretch your GPU to the limit of time so idk who you’re complaining about. Yeah, GPU prices are bullshit rn but let’s not make up stuff
Nah, there was a time when you’d get a new card every two years and it’d be twice as fast for the same price.
Nowadays the new cards are 10% faster for 15% more money.
I bought a new card last year after running a Vega 64 for ages and I honestly think it might last me ten years because things are only getting worse.
When did it just become expected that everybody would upgrade GPU’s every year and that’s suppose to be normal?
Somewhere around 1996 when the 3dfx Voodoo came out. Once a year was a relatively conservative upgrade schedule in the late 90s.
Those cards were like what though, $199?
That’s still not cheap when you account for inflation. Of course there’s a world of difference between “not cheap” and what they charge these days.
Sticking with 1440p on desktop has gone very well for me. 2160p isn’t worth the costs in money or perf.
qweertzStill rocking a GTX 1070 and I plan on using my Graphene OS Pixel 8 Pro till 2030 (only bought it (used ofc) bc my Huawei Mate 20 Pro died on my in October last year 😔)
It’s never been normal to upgrade every year, and it still isn’t. Every three years is probably still more frequent than normal. The issue is there haven’t been reasonable prices for cards for like 8 years, and it’s worse more recently. People who are “due” for an upgrade aren’t because it’s unaffordable.
If consoles can last 6-8 years per gen so can my PC.
Your PC can run 796 of the top 1000 most popular games listed on PCGameBenchmark - at a recommended system level.
That’s more than good enough for me.
I don’t remember exactly when I built this PC but I want to say right before covid, and I haven’t felt any need for an upgrade yet.
Colour me surprised
Resumes gaming with a 1000-series card
Still rocking an EVGA 980 here.
Back when building my PC, I actually considered getting a 980 TI. Luckily I did go with the GTX 1070
(they were both similarly priced)
Lord WiggleFuck Nvidia anyways. #teamred
Fuck those guys too honestly. AMD is fueling this bullshit just as much as Nvidia.
Nvidia is one of the most evil companies out there, responsible for killing nearly all other GPU producers destroying the market.
So is AMD with their availability of literally three video cards in stock for all of North America at launch. Which in turn just fuels the scalpers. Downvote this all you want guys, AMD is just as complicit in all of this, they’ve fuelled this bullshit just as much.
Nvidia is singlehandedly responsible for killing all competition but AMD. They destroyed all other GPU companies with the nastiest tactics to dominate the market, only AMD has been able to survive. You can’t blame AMD for chip shortages, it’s the after shock after the covid pandemic. Never ever has there been a higher demand for chips, especially thanks to the rising EV market.
You can’t say AMD is as bad as Nvidia, as Nvidia is the sole reason the market got ruined in the first place. They are the worst of the worst.
Poopfeast420#teamred
Temu Nvidia is so much better, true. Please support the “underdog” billion dollar company.
I support the lesser evil option, yes. It’s not like I have much other choices now, do I?
I’ve been on Linux since 2018 (my PC is from 2016) and my next GPUs will always be AMD, unless Intel somehow manages to produce an on par GPU
BlackmistStill on a 1060 over here.
Sure, I may have to limit FFXIV to 30fps in summer to stop it crashing, but it still runs.
Hey, I’m also on a 1060 still! Admittedly I hardly game anymore, although I am considering another Skyrim playthrough.