Why are tech reviewers so mad about the mid range market?

[ThatOneWhoRippedACpu]

Did they expect to get a $400 gpu to replace a last gen high end gpu?Did they miss the "Glory days" where a high end gpu was $700 ignoring the fact that games also get more demanding and for midrange to target high hz 1440p games need to stop adding better textures and do they ignore the fact that every industry has taken a blow these last few years?Do they want 3x more performance per launch? 100% yes but do they think is it possible without cutting wages,lower quality material?Keeping the balance with good prices and a big performance improvement and enough money for the people in those companies is hard guys.

[Levent]

I am not sure what others think but what I have against that argument is that getting for example, %10 performance uplift for more than %10 price increase per generation upgrade. Forget $400 mark, we used to have decent brand new cards at $200-250 price point. Nowadays what do we have? Not even a shitty RX6500 (best case scenario is RTX3050, if you can find one at MSRP).

 

I get that everything is getting more demanding but it is up to hardware to catch up. At one point everything is going to be that demanding and average cost of getting a mediocre computer is going to more than ever.

[manikyath]

they 'do so mad' because prices have become ridiculous, and the mid range is at this point a misnomer because your midrange gpu shouldnt cost as much as the rest of your midrange build combined. and half of the midrange cards available now are honestly just a mess of features and specs that dont make sense.

 

also, the "glory days" are 3 years ago, all the way back to when gaming cards begun. that was when prices made any sense. it's not some historical event, the historical event is how shit pricing and options are now.

 

new generation cards are supposed to be faster than last year's similarly priced model. if they werent, we'd still be buying last year's model. it's how it goes with cpu's, it's how it goes with storage drives, it's how it has always been with gpu's until nvidia somehow turned shortages and increased costs into record profits.

[ThatOneWhoRippedACpu]

6 minutes ago, manikyath said:

they 'do so mad' because prices have become ridiculous, and the mid range is at this point a misnomer because your midrange gpu shouldnt cost as much as the rest of your midrange build combined. and half of the midrange cards available now are honestly just a mess of features and specs that dont make sense.

 

also, the "glory days" are 3 years ago, all the way back to when gaming cards begun. that was when prices made any sense. it's not some historical event, the historical event is how shit pricing and options are now.

 

new generation cards are supposed to be faster than last year's similarly priced model. if they werent, we'd still be buying last year's model. it's how it goes with cpu's, it's how it goes with storage drives, it's how it has always been with gpu's until nvidia somehow turned shortages and increased costs into record profits.

I probably should've been more focused correcting the title lol

[Poinkachu]

2 hours ago, ThatOneWhoRippedACpu said:

Did they expect to get a $400 gpu to replace a last gen high end gpu?Did they miss the "Glory days" where a high end gpu was $700 ignoring the fact that games also get more demanding and for midrange to target high hz 1440p games need to stop adding better textures and do they ignore the fact that every industry has taken a blow these last few years?Do they want 3x more performance per launch? 100% yes but do they think is it possible without cutting wages,lower quality material?Keeping the balance with good prices and a big performance improvement and enough money for the people in those companies is hard guys.

if GPU industry took a blow, I doubt NVIDIA would make a record profit.

The way I see it .
More pricey mid-range build -> Less people who can/want to afford

 

Less people interested in building a PC (presumably because of the price in this scenario) -> less likely they feel they need/inclined to watch a tech channel/news.

If building a decent mid-range PC becomes almost as much as a ... let's say Mac, I think there's quite a bunch that'll just buy Mac, less hassle.
If to game with a mid-range PC needs 3x the money to play a game on a playstation...

Less people using capable PC to play the newest AAA or something -> Less likely AAA industry need to improve faster (no point making and selling games where most people can't play it in it's full glory). Crysis probably a good example, IIRC, it's well known more for it's hardware breaking capability.

Same goes for monitor I think, no point dumping a ton of money into R&D to make a 1000hz monitor faster if they forecast most people only have hardware capable of driving a 144hz for years ahead. It's not like they spend money to R&D just for fun, it's an investment that needs to break even atleast.

[Neroon]

When were high end GPUs 700? Serious question.

 

I remember buying a 7970, which was a high end GPU and there were no new series yet, for under 300.

 

Of course there was like dual GPU and all, but this was absolutely a high end GPU.

[manikyath]

47 minutes ago, Neroon said:

When were high end GPUs 700? Serious question.

 

I remember buying a 7970, which was a high end GPU and there were no new series yet, for under 300.

 

Of course there was like dual GPU and all, but this was absolutely a high end GPU.

i think the 900 and 1000 series were around that pricepoint for the not-titan best cards. cant be arsed to dig up numbers though. the debate is more about trends than actual numbers.

[cmndr]

2 hours ago, Neroon said:

When were high end GPUs 700? Serious question.

 

I remember buying a 7970, which was a high end GPU and there were no new series yet, for under 300.

 

Of course there was like dual GPU and all, but this was absolutely a high end GPU.

Adjusted for inflation... 2004ish 6800 ultra was $500, which is around $765 today. There's probably some stuff from the 1990s that I'm unaware of that also hits that level.

In nominal dollars:
7900 GX2 was $600ish
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-7900-gx2.c172
 

The GeForce GTX 590  was $700 per wikipedia

 

The GTX690 was $1000 per wikipedia

 

The original Titan was $999 in 2013 and the 780 was $650

The GTX 780Ti was $699.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/7492/the-geforce-gtx-780-ti-review

 

Here's a complaint article about the 290x hitting $900 on the street
https://www.anandtech.com/show/7758/radeon-r9-290x-retail-prices-hit-900

 

 

 

I suspect that the big difference these days is that people feel a "need" to go higher. "Back in my days" people kind of just "settled" for what was $150-300ish and then upgraded in 1-3 years if needed. And by that time the new $150-300ish card was 2-4x as powerful.

 

For those trying to date me... I'm younger than Linus.

[Neroon]

Just now, cmndr said:

Adjusted for inflation... 2004ish 6800 ultra was $500, which is around $765 today. There's probably some stuff from the 1990s that I'm unaware of that also hits that level.

In nominal dollars:
7900 GX2 was $600ish
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-7900-gx2.c172
 

The original Titan was $999 in 2013 and the 780 was $650

The GTX 780Ti was $699.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/7492/the-geforce-gtx-780-ti-review

 

 

Weren't those cards like the absolute top? 

Not saying cards were never expensive, but you used to be able to get a really solid GPU for like 200, at 300 you would get the good stuff, and then you would have the insane segment,  which generally never gave you good value, but it would be the best.

 

If I look at the current gen, I would put the 3600 on the lower end gamer cards, 3700 in the mid, 3800 in the high end, and 3900 in the ultra high end.

 

That's not to say that a 3600 is crap, because it's not, but at the current prices that would have put it between high end and ultra like 5 years ago, even if we calculate the high inflation, that should still put it around high end. And that's our starting point these days (or is the 3050 out now?), so when the 3000 serie came out, their cheapest card was more expensive then their most expensive non ultra card.

[jones177]

For clicks.

4 hours ago, ThatOneWhoRippedACpu said:

Did they expect to get a $400 gpu to replace a last gen high end gpu?Did they miss the "Glory days" where a high end gpu was $700 ignoring the fact that games also get more demanding and for midrange to target high hz 1440p games need to stop adding better textures and do they ignore the fact that every industry has taken a blow these last few years?Do they want 3x more performance per launch? 100% yes but do they think is it possible without cutting wages,lower quality material?Keeping the balance with good prices and a big performance improvement and enough money for the people in those companies is hard guys.

The rage is for clicks and likes. 

It is like how they deal with the high end. Everything is overpriced and pointless but they use them and you should not.

 

Back in the glory days I used SLI so going from two GTX 1080 tis to one GTX 2080 ti was about the the same price.

 

The uninflated 30 series prices are about the same as well.

I paid $1,200 for an EVGA XC 2080 ti at launch and $1,200 for an EVGA XC3 Ultra 3080 ti at launch.

Also in 2018 I bought a FTW3 Ultra 2080 ti for $1,400 and last year a FTW3 Ultra 3080 ti for $1,450. Now the EVGA FTW3 3080 tis are $150 cheaper.

My 24gb cards did cost more but they were also inline with 24gb card of the past.

 

Rage pays.

[cmndr]

nVidia and AMD are definitely doing a better job of milking value from their customers these days... though there are technical reasons as well.

And yes, back in 2005-2009ish (when I was most zealous and enthusiastic) you could get 70-80% the performance of a $500 card for around 50-60% of the price. And there was nothing higher.

One big shift that did happen - GPUs are on bigger dies now AND it costs more to design the things. So each card costs more in raw BOM costs as well as design costs. Given the very high design costs it makes absolute sense for nVidia and ATi to pump out as many variants of the same uarch as possible (from tiny die to HUGE die). The $$$$1000 parts are about 2x the die size of the old $500 parts were back in the day.

 

The 6800 Ultra I mentioned for $500 (760 inflation adjusted) had a die size of 288mm². The 3090 has a die size of 628.4mm² so ~2.2x the size. Is it fair to charge 2.2x more for a part that costs 2.2x as much to make (this includes PCB and RAM as well as 10x to design)? Do people even NEED it? The main benefit is playing a very small selection of titles at very high resolutions. Outside of envy I don't see a huge use case for MOST people. And that argument scales down as well.

[Neroon]

So checked up some prices, if we are to assume the 70 cards are midrange, these are the prices within roughly the first weeks to months in euros in my country based on base models from evga.

 

770 370 lowest, 380 average, though in a few months this dropped to under 300.

970 337 lowest, 350 average

1070 520ish lowest, 580 average

2070 580 lowest, 620 average 

3070 1k+

 

Prices have definitely been higher longer than I remember, but what I can definitely see from the price history, that prices used to really drop after a few months, like 25%, that doesn't happen anymore, and there has been a very steady climb. So that 770 you could get for say 300 if you waited a little while, the 970 was quite steady, but after that the prices really ramped up.

 

 

 

Btw not saying the price increase can't be justified. We know materials are hard to get right now, so surely they are paying more as well.

[Heliian]

Hyperinflation and capitalist greed.  It's not just GPUs. 

 

Look how big your toilet paper roll is now. 

 

People have every right to be upset with these trends. 

[TetraSky]

Don't know which reviewer... But I for one am mad at the prices.

Even taking everything going on in the world right now, the fact that I paid $400 CAD in 2009 for what was considered a "high end card"(the HD5870 on the ATI side) back in late 2009, and now that same $400CAD only gets me low end card today like a 3050, doesn't make me want to buy a new GPU.

($400CAD in 2009 is $508.04CAD today with inflation, which should be would be a 3060 ti at MSRP, so it's not just "inflation", it's totally corporate greed, just because something is new and better, doesn't mean the price has to raise UP like it did. Not at all. Otherwise, where does it stop?)

I blame Nvidia for always pushing their prices up with each generations, because they know, they damn well know, that we don't have a choice but to buy their cards if we want to play games. AMD always being late to "compete", with missing features, doesn't help either...

Here's hoping with Intel entering the GPU market as well, that things will finally be competitive and prices come down a little.

 

I'm just about fed up enough that I'm about to ditch PC gaming altogether and just get an xbox with gamepass for my gaming needs. Before with a good gaming PC, you could argue that it was "cheaper" in the long run, but with gamepass, that went straight out the window.

 

13 minutes ago, Heliian said:

Look how big your toilet paper roll is now. 

Yup, a few months ago, my rolls were 435 sheets. They cut that down to 410 sheets, same brand, same packaging, they still dare to say it 1 roll = 3.3 of single rolls. Only thing that changed is the number of sheets reported on the package. That and the price. They RAISED it by a two dollars(10% increase). You'd think cutting down the number of sheets was their solution to "fight" the inflation... Nope, they are raising their prices too. It's corporate greed BS, if they can get away with it, they will do it.