• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Anyone else just unenthused about gaming and hardware?

beany_bot

beany_bot

beany_bot

Soldato
Joined
19 Nov 2015
Posts
4,905
Location
Glasgow Area
Been on this forum and watching tech for some time now. And don't think I've ever been this "unenthused" about the state of things. What with Nvidia being so pricey at launch. Vega being nowhere, and when it does come potentially not even that great. Power hungry, no cards available and all grossly overpriced due to mining craze. Ram shortages and prices.

I'm just really not excited at the moment.
Honestly if it wasn't for Ryzen making the CPU space exciting again at least then I really don't know if I would still bother. It's really not the pricing specifically. But I need to be excited by new tech. And at the moment I'm just not feeling it. There is nothing game changing. Nothing "wow".

I dunno, just ranting but it really seems as if the GPU space is just a total mess right now. Not sure what the future holds for it.
We are all fairly loyal PC folk here but I can't help but think that more casual folk are switching to console rather than enter or stay in this very murky and expensive swamp.
 
Even threadripper though. You won't notice it unless specifically using it. What I mean by that is. For day to day use, you wouldn't notice a difference between an i3 and threadripper.
I remember the first time I got a VooDoo 3DFX card. Utterly utterly blown away. And when I upgraded my CPU from a Pentium to Athlon XP. Again, utterly utterly blown away. (And that was across the whole computing experience) not just specific tasks like rendering.

I know I can't expect these kind of feelings all the time when new tech comes out. But I can't help but think that we are long overdue a "wow" moment. Something more than a slight incremental upgrade. I just feel that we are handing over so much money at the moment for hardware that performs "slightly better in a benchmark".
 
At the moment the GPU scene is between excitements, but this will change when gaming Vega launches (however it turns out), then go back quickly to awaiting the next big thing. Isn't this how it's always been? There's usually little exciting in the GPU world between launches, unless a new API launches and we can spend weeks bickering about that. :D

Personally, I think the currently exciting part of PC gaming is the display part. With 4K now becoming realistic for modern games with high settings, Free/G-Sync starting to be used in more monitors (and soon in 4K ones too I hope), and VR finally getting some traction, I find this the exciting part, taking the mantle from SSDs a couple of years ago.

The last time I was genuinely enthused about a GPU launch was the 5870 due to Eyefinity, which I found a game changer and ran for many years. After that, power increases have been nice, but nothing enthusiastic in the GPU world for me.
 
Problem is it's not like there are any real decent games out there at the moment, anyway. Most if not all top games have been out for at least 2 years, others are designed for console so my toilet-laptop could run anything they throw out. Might as well put the GPU's to use mining while we wait.
 
Yep I felt a bit bored with it all for a little while, I picked up a ps4 to have a play about and quite like the thought of not looking at fps or what settings I can run at.
So far I have been quite impressed and if I could use a mouse for first person I would probably give up on pc gaming all together
 
KonfuciousK said:
Problem is it's not like there are any real decent games out there at the moment, anyway. Most if not all top games have been out for at least 2 years, others are designed for console so my toilet-laptop could run anything they throw out. Might as well put the GPU's to use mining while we wait.
Click to expand...

Not sure about that, plenty of new games give my Maxwell Titan X's a workout at 4k.
 
The last few GPU generations have been bad for me. On the green side, massively overpriced, with their mid-range chip selling for £400-£700.

On the AMD side, £250 has got you 290 performance for the last 4-5 years. 290 -> 390 -> 480 -> 580.

So what we're not seeing is more for you money with each new gen. You either pay more/get more (nV), or stagnate (AMD).

I'm also planning on picking up a PS4 Pro come Black Friday this year, and will probably just play indie games on PC.

With mining, etc, I just can't see us budget-conscious PC gamers seeing any progress. It's like groundhog day and we're all stuck in 2012.

If money is no object you can go see gains each gen, but you're paying about £100 more each new gen for those gains.
 
FoxEye said:
The last few GPU generations have been bad for me. On the green side, massively overpriced, with their mid-range chip selling for £400-£700.

On the AMD side, £250 has got you 290 performance for the last 4-5 years. 290 -> 390 -> 480 -> 580.

So what we're not seeing is more for you money with each new gen. You either pay more/get more (nV), or stagnate (AMD).

I'm also planning on picking up a PS4 Pro come Black Friday this year, and will probably just play indie games on PC.

With mining, etc, I just can't see us budget-conscious PC gamers seeing any progress. It's like groundhog day and we're all stuck in 2012.

If money is no object you can go see gains each gen, but you're paying about £100 more each new gen for those gains.
Click to expand...
You've hit the nail on the head.
I'm in the process of building a Pentium 1, windows 95 retro gaming PC. Puerly because it's something a bit exciting to do. Modern PC has me bored. Sure I can buy Ryzen and run cinebench. But that's just not much fun.
 
VincentHanna said:
Not sure about that, plenty of new games give my Maxwell Titan X's a workout at 4k.
Click to expand...

I'm sure they do but so would my mining rig. My point was more aimed at the quality of the actual games being released, but optimisation leaves a lot to be desired in modern gaming also. In general the "finished" product tends to generally be inferior to the capabilities or just pretty and badly coded. We're lucky to get one decent title a year any more. Never mind it actually being something original. Maybe I'm venting a little, been a long night, I don't intend to come off like I'm berating you.
 
The way the market is now, there's a lot fewer AAA games being released because they are so expensive to develop and take longer than ever before to create.

Publishers are far less likely to take a risk on a new IP because the cost of failure is huge now.

Hence we get a lot of sequels or lower common denominator titles. I'm hoping the Xbox One X will lead to some better optimised games, as developers won't be so focused on 1080p 30fps console versions.
 
1080Ti is pretty mind blowing tbh, awesome performance (and some great deals lately if you know where to look). Plus they're around 4-5 times faster than the 290/X so you can't say it's not a great increase!! If you have the budget then it's a great time to get a Ti + Gsync screen, if not you're stuck with 290ish performance I suppose.

If you don't have the performance PC budget then I'd say the upcoming XBox-X is gonna be a great buy imo!
 
Agreed with Jedi. I am so impressed with my 1080Ti and really enjoying gaming on it. I could actually see me skipping Volta etc and sticking with this but probs won't as that is boring :D
 
JediFragger said:
If you don't have the performance PC budget then I'd say the upcoming XBox-X is gonna be a great buy imo!
Click to expand...
Who does, these days? A 1080ti is £700, to build a PC with similar tier components would set you back between £1000 - £1500!

That's crazy money.

But crucially, do we *want* to price people out of the PC gaming space? That means less effort from developers targeting the PC platform, as all us "norms" ( :p) opt for consoles instead.

If enough people are priced out of PC gaming, even the people with bags-o-money will suffer.
 
Nvidia aren't going to change tack anytime soon, their increasing profitability year on year says it all.

People have proven they are more than willing to spend silly money on GPU's (I spent £1600 in 2015!). I haven't changed them since, but that's a ridiculous wedge of money.
 
I've came the opposite way. I have been a console gamer until my late teens, then PC for a couple of years then back to console for 10 years now back to PC.

The problem with consoles is no dedicated servers on any of the games I enjoy playing. Destiny 2 (successor to Halo) is 4 v 4 as it's peer to peer. It's a great game but 4 v 4 is a competitive mode IMO and it will suck the fun out of pick up and play. Destiny the original had 2 v 2, 3 v 3 and 6 vs 6. Becoming 4 v 4 has made me cancel my pre-order.

Games are a lot cheaper on PC and they are moddable, tweakable, much better fps. Destiny for example only runs at 30 fps.

I'm going to sell my XB1, keep my PS4 for fifa and possibly Destiny 2 but I look forward to just playing games like CS:GO and PUBG on the PC now.

Also you don't need a 1080ti to enjoy any game. I've been running a 750ti for the past 2 years, now a 1050 (which cost me £80), Just bought a 1060 3GB off MM for £165 which is a bit of a rip but i don't plan on buying another GPU any time soon and I can probably sell the 1050 to recover half the cost.

I have never spent more than £200 on a GPU
 
VincentHanna said:
Nvidia aren't going to change tack anytime soon, their increasing profitability year on year says it all.

People have proven they are more than willing to spend silly money on GPU's (I spent £1600 in 2015!). I haven't changed them since, but that's a ridiculous wedge of money.
Click to expand...
So be prepared for PC gaming to be a tiny niche in the gaming market, and developers to treat it as such.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom