Graphics price/performance has decreased in recent years. The average Steam user has an NVidia 1060, which is an OK graphics card. Original retail price, in 2016, was US249.Today,it costs 549,used.NVidia′scurrententrylevelvideocardcostsaroundUS330.Reviewerssay“Meh”tothatone.Thereasonsforthisincludethemovetothinlaptopswithcoolingproblems,thebacklogatTSMC,thecryptocurrencyminingcommunitybuyingupabigfractionofgraphicscards,5nmfabscosting549, used. NVidia's current entry level video card costs around US330. Reviewers say “Meh” to that one.The reasons for this include the move to thin laptops with cooling problems, the backlog at TSMC, the cryptocurrency mining community buying up a big fraction of graphics cards, 5nmfabs costing 549,used.NVidia′scurrententrylevelvideocardcostsaroundUS330.Reviewerssay“Meh”tothatone.Thereasonsforthisincludethemovetothinlaptopswithcoolingproblems,thebacklogatTSMC,thecryptocurrencyminingcommunitybuyingupabigfractionofgraphicscards,5nmfabscosting20 billion, and NVidia discovering they could raise prices a lot without reducing sales much.

I won't even start on the cost of “gamer laptops”.

This is a problem. The cost of playing high-end games on PCs has gone way up. One reaction has been simpler games. I'm into virtual worlds, and the major virtual worlds are graphically simple. Facebook Horizon, Roblox, and Minecratft are all cartoon-level.

Have we hit “peak graphics”?

(What is going on with this forum editor? I try to fix that mess above and it comes back.)

Yes, there are upcoming sourced engines for rasterizing or whatever for CPU cores, so called software renderers in the past. Many CPUs has a built in computing unit for GPU paralel simulation either. They can even deliver high performance.

The way I see it GPUs bridged units will outperform themselfs if they reflect how monetized they can be by chain mining of cryptos.

Nagle said:
This is a problem. The cost of playing high-end games on PCs has gone way up.

Any hype about ‘high end’ games does not really deliver and only hurts the platform. I see diverging interests of hardware and games industries. The former appearing somewhat shortsighted, the latter (including related media) still riding a hype people can't afford, and they couldn't even if there were no current mining crisis.

Games have to be scalable over a range of power and features which is increasing over time. Resulting compromises cause increasing dissatisfaction on all ends. I don't think that's worth it.

I wish we would move PC platform towards a console like form using APUs, which requires some changes to increase main memory band width. This can't be that hard. Why doesn't it happen? Hot and big PC towers are stupid just to play games. PC gaming currently feels like bragging nonsense.

I also think HW stuff is more than powerful enough, and we no longer need the newest and smallest process for gaming. I'm fine with total stagnation on performance, if we can get decreasing prices and increased availability in return.

JoeJ said:
Games have to be scalable over a range of power and features

One word. Consoles.

The issue with GPUs at the moment is not just related to Crypto Mining but a lot of factors coming together from past years.

Btw. I disagree with the NVIDIA 1060 because I bought one for 150€ back in early 2019.

The primary issues at the moment are related to manufactoring chains and the more occuring bots bying the stuff out of the stores in instant speed. See the trouble on getting a PS5 at the moment.

Ok, we can fight those bot people with the need of setting up a user-account and limiting purchases to a small number for certain time but the manufactoring issue still remains. This is related to a set of causes, first one is that round about 90% of our hardware is produced in China, which is bad at the fact that.

1. Situation is still difficult due to COVID
2. Delivery is affected by global events like an accident in the suez canal
3. China government can delay delivery for whatever reason

So the right way, which I hope is going to start sooner or later, is for the manufactorers NVidia and AMD, to build factories around the world in order to weaken the above list of causes. Focussing on centralized production is leading into a future where nobody can realy rely on having an adequate IT setup and this will affect anyone, not just gamers.

It was already very very hard to me getting a good CPU when my PC broke back in 2020, AMD Ryzen was sold out everywhere and the models from 2 years ago had nearly the price of a good Smartphone.

JoeJ said:
I wish we would move PC platform towards a console like form using APUs

I'm not a friend of console gaming for every game. There are games which play better on console and graphics isn't that bad here but some games and even if you really want RTX then a console might not be the golden solution for all of our problems. Tehy're the same as Laptops and suffer from the same issues which are related to the need of setting everything up in a small space.

I really prefer not to be decreased in performance because somthing is overheating in summer or bying a new Laptopt/Console every 2 years because CPU and GPU sitting near to each other affecting lifetim of both. I'm happy with my “Hot and big PC tower” because it might be big but thanks to good air management is everything but hot.

There is a reason graphics cards get bigger and it isn't because if manufactorers like creating clunky devices rather than the space needed for Chipset, RAM, GPUand cooling.

Going into a console based gaming market will also change how games are made in total. Not speaking of the politics of companies like Sony or Nintendo in order to get on their platform but it'll heavy increase the need for knowledge. Knowledge necessary to optimize the game to run on that limited hardware, the knowledge of the tricks and tweaks of the platforms and the knowledge of producing memory efficient assets. This would lead of a small but steady decay of the indie scene because those companies often don't have the knowledge and I don't want to have an environment of priviledged developers only!

Shaarigan said:
There is a reason graphics cards get bigger and it isn't because if manufactorers like creating clunky devices rather than the space needed for Chipset, RAM, GPUand cooling.

What's the reason then? Higher resolutions? Raytracing which is too restricted and too slow? ML acceleration we do not use at all? More Teraflops to keep our brute force solutions pretending progress?

I'm not going to pay >1000 just to run some impressive demos. If we want to continue improving visuals over time, we better do so with progress in software. Because relying on improved HW performance obviously no longer works. Chips increase in size instead becoming smaller. Moores law is too expensive to maintain, so we can no longer rely on next generations to give us progress for free.

Current manufacturing issues may be temporally, or may be not. And even before that, RTX GPUs were ridiculously expensive.
In contrast, consoles (at promised MSRP) deliver good enough or even better performance at good price. I don't think PC gaming can compete and survive because there is no advantage justifying the high cost. All platfrom get the same games, looking similar on all of them. If consoles had mouse controls, i would say good bye to the PC platfrom already, and i guess many people will do so. If PC systems don't reduce costs, platform will die. It already feels oldschool.

Agree we need more chip fabs, but this will not help with keeping costs down. We just need to be happy with less powerful hardware as well for a meaningful compromise.

Adding to Moore's law, thread ripper CPUs are still not available for middle class, just to sell GPUs and keep NVIDIA and AMD/ATI division existing. They will simply merge their high price with super multi core CPUs, and then migration of DRG software industry will occur. It is for several years it could have happened but it is stuck in the fridge.