When did the PC hardware scene get so crazy and stressful?

[Richdog]

Gotta get that futureproofing in so you can last the 6 months until the next incremental increase you need to purchase to stay future proof

I think the term "future proof" should formally be changed to "future resistant".

 

[Richdog]

As somebody who got into PC building / gaming during the 3dfx v nVidia fanboy wars of the late 90's, I can say it's always been horribly toxic. I've been done with PC's for a few years now. Built a new one recently for MS Flight Sim 2020 and it's barely been turned on. It's just too much hassle. I don't want to have to mess around with drivers, patches and crashes on a weekly basis. I did really enjoy speccing it out and building it though. As usual, if you concentrate on the low-to-mid-range stuff, you get tons more to choose from, get great value, and avoid all the fanboys arguing over benchmarks. I just enjoy the simplicity of my Nintendo Switch a lot more. And I can sit in bed and play Diablo III, which is awesome.

There was alsways some toxicity but it was never this level of obsession and compulsion that I see today. There was the occasional nut, but people were mostly getting along and brand loyalty wasn't yet as vitriolic as it is today.

There's definitely a lot more choice in the lower and mid range, but I don't upgrade frequently so would prefer to put in a high-end part then forget about it and enjoy gaming for a couple of years.

That's a thought that occurred to me.
But I'm the sort of idiot who likes to hang on to old hardware for troubleshooting/friends.
I'm also running a PC that apart from the video card and hard drives is something like 5 years old, I'm hoping to upgrade it next year, but I'll keep the old one complete bar the drives (I always build in a new case, specifically so I have a working machine).

I have a lot of sympathy for people waiting for parts, but at the same time understand that it's not the retailers fault and suspect that the buyers for every company are probably fed up of things (I was watching Airplane the other day and the moment I saw the old controller with the "I picked the wrong week to give up.." I thought of Gibbo and the CS guys).
Nowhere near the same value, but I've been waiting on an order of model parts/paints for ~3 months now because some of them have been held up by a little ongoing worldwide health issue.

I used to always have a crappy CPU and GPU as a temporary solution inbetween upgrades as I used to buy and sell a lot... bit like what I have now in my rig. It was great passing down parts to my dad too. Ahh, simpler times.

Hype has definitely built over the years, and I think part of that is us getting older, and seeing younger people join the scene. I also think you're right; the socio-political landscape is tense, people are board, and they desperately want something to be excited about.

I'm very much in the hang back, buy second hand camp. Almost my entire rig is second hand, and it performs wonderfully at 3440x1440. Im also about 4 years behind the times on AAA titles. I just buy them on sale and play a lot of Indies, old favourites.

I look at all this the same way I do pre-orders, especially digital ones; people are crazy, let them get on with it.

Many of us benefit directly from the madness the moment £1200 cards start selling for £500

You may be right chap, I guess I just wasn't expecting this level of fubar surrounding the launches, having not had to worry about that for the last years with laptops it kind of surprised me. And yeah your upgrade strategy makes sense and I do miss the UK second hand market scene... it made upgrading so much easier!

 

[Richdog]

I've done little upgrading in the past ten years; two gfx card changes, one ssd, and some memory expansion from 8-16gb.

That's it. My i5 2500k was the absolute **** and i enjoyed nearly a decade of 1080p gaming.

Now however, the world is moving onto 4k. Apart from a select few who are desperately holding on to HD and QHD like some decade old hipsters, the real next gen of gaming is here. And it's causing high prices, a lot of demand and no thanks to the pandemic, supply issues. If you can be patient do so and chill out, things will normalise eventually. Otherwise prepare to pay with your wallet and possibly your sanity.

I agree that 1080p is getting long in the tooth, but 1440p is still by FAR the best sweet spot for gaming and hardware performance and isn't going anywhere for a generation or three yet. 4k is gaining traction at the high-end, but it's still a level of performance out of reach of most PC gamers... even new games are struggling at 4k on the latest hardware with RT etc enabled.

https://gearbroz.com/s1mple/

1280*960 is the Res the top csgo player in the world uses.

Why would anyone care what resolution the worlds top CSGO player uses? He doesn't play for 'fun' and everything he chooses, including resolution, is just designed to give him a competitive edge. It's not representative of any average use case.

 

[Richdog]

Just saying Res isn't everything and if you stick with 1080p gaming rigs are stress free and cheap.

I game at 1440p but would have zero issues dropping down if I had to.

You're right that resolution isn't everything, but 1440p should be the achieveble goal for most gamers in the mid range and is I think a big improvement over 1080p... moreso than 4k is over 1440p. I have 1440p and 4k monitors and switch between them depending on the game. I play a lot of older strategy titles like Sins Of A Solar Empire with various mods (Star Wars and Star Trek etc) and they are awesome at 4k.