Is medium to high end Pc gaming becoming too niche ?

[LukeTbk]

Nvidia in particular seems to want this price bracket to go away so people are just buying old cards and used cards - doesn’t seem very profitable for them

I am not sure old cards would not be quite profitable (they continued to sales 1650-1660-2060 type of card for a very long time, it is a recent shift for Dell to not offer those anymore and at the price they sold I could imagine fanstatic margin), I can see the same happening with the 3050-3060 class.

Maybe they need really small tsmc 5 die to be cheap enough relatively to the larger older node which I am not sure how much it is the case

 

[brennok]

It seems kind of silly to buy an entire PC unless you're basically starting from scratch, but I doubt that applies to anyone here. The last time I got a brand new complete PC was 1997, a first-generation Intel Pentium. Prior to that I had been using a combo of hand-me-down Macintosh computers combined with hand-me-down 386 computers. I had to start from somewhere. But ever since then, every "new" PC I've built has involved bringing over many significant parts from my previous computer. I usually stagger the big purchases. CPU + Mobo (if necessary) + RAM (if necessary), and then 1-3 years later upgrade my GPU, then 1-3 years later upgrade my CPU, etc, again. Hard drives, case, etc, get upgraded when needed. Basically a continuous rolling-upgrade that almost never involves me having to spend more than half of what it would cost to build a new PC at any one time.

Actually applies to me and I keep sitting on the sideline because of it. I usually aim for mid-high end best bang for the buck. My current gaming PC is I want to say 8-10 years old, I7-4770K with Asus Z87-Pro and a now dead 7970. I was primarily a FPS gamer playing COD until I jumped over to Battlefield Bad Company 2 after MW2. Battlefield used to be my build indicator and when Battlefield 1 was disappointing to me I didn't build new. I then didn't really see anything else or have much of an itch to upgrade. My PC still ran things well enough. Finally BFV rolled around and it again didn't make me want to upgrade. I figured BF2042 would finally be it only for it to release and the majority to be disappointed. Diablo 4 is possibly the next thing that might make me build again though I keep having the itch especially considering my 7970 died and I haven't been able to play even old games since it died during the mining run on GPUs.

I can afford the current GPU prices, but they don't feel worth it for me and the mid to low range bang for the buck doesn't feel like it is really out there. Also since I am building new and need everything I lean more towards buying the higher end of everything since I know the same thing will happen where I build a PC to last me a long time. If I am buying everything, up to and including the monitor, why buy stuff I will replace sooner rather than later? I realize I am more an edge case these days especially as my love for gaming dropped pretty significantly over the years, but it feels like these days I have to spend more than I ever have before and not sure I can justify it.

 

[crazycrave]

I played through RDR2 at 1440p on a RTX 2080 which is neck and neck with a 6600 XT. The experience was memorably awesome... and that was before the days of FSR and DLSS being good.

I'm sure the RX 6600 with FSR2 on will pretty much still be awesome at 1440p. 60 to 75fps is real good for the price and the image quality looks totally acceptable. Native is always better, but this is a non-XT 6600 and that's real good results.

It's amazing what that little card can do, prefect paired up with a cheap 4K 60Hz Roku TV for 1080p/ 1440p / 2160p. gives you a lot of choices to game at and the T.V. was about what the RX 6600 cost. it's a 43" T.V. and cheap enough for Eyefinity iRacing Sim

 

[Tactlesss]

Actually applies to me and I keep sitting on the sideline because of it. I usually aim for mid-high end best bang for the buck. My current gaming PC is I want to say 8-10 years old, I7-4770K with Asus Z87-Pro and a now dead 7970. I was primarily a FPS gamer playing COD until I jumped over to Battlefield Bad Company 2 after MW2. Battlefield used to be my build indicator and when Battlefield 1 was disappointing to me I didn't build new. I then didn't really see anything else or have much of an itch to upgrade. My PC still ran things well enough. Finally BFV rolled around and it again didn't make me want to upgrade. I figured BF2042 would finally be it only for it to release and the majority to be disappointed. Diablo 4 is possibly the next thing that might make me build again though I keep having the itch especially considering my 7970 died and I haven't been able to play even old games since it died during the mining run on GPUs.

I can afford the current GPU prices, but they don't feel worth it for me and the mid to low range bang for the buck doesn't feel like it is really out there. Also since I am building new and need everything I lean more towards buying the higher end of everything since I know the same thing will happen where I build a PC to last me a long time. If I am buying everything, up to and including the monitor, why buy stuff I will replace sooner rather than later? I realize I am more an edge case these days especially as my love for gaming dropped pretty significantly over the years, but it feels like these days I have to spend more than I ever have before and not sure I can justify it.

The one game that I ever seem to play anymore is Icarus and higher end hardware can't alleviate the performance issues that game has. Which used to be a major selling point for mid to high end PC Gaming.
Oblivion could run a PS3 but it was more stable on the 360. On the PC, at launch with little to no patches and absolutely no mods Oblivion ran better than both systems if not a tad more stable. For cross platform games that was how it played out over the course of the generation.
With the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 everything basically changed. Now it's a homogeneous experience across the board and that's just fucking absurd.
Now PC gamers can't simply brute force a better experience than console gamers anymore.

If the console experience was like fast food in the past...or, I don't know coffee shops... definitely something with a drive thru window, PC Gaming would have been like having a fully stocked kitchen and competency at cooking?
Well. You can buy McDonald's coffee a grocery store to brew at home with your fancy pour over setup to get it just right. It'll go great with that breakfast sandwich you're pulling out of the freezer.

 

[sethk]

I’d say we have crossed the point where you can’t generally get better settings on new / recent PC ports of console first games. A lot of recent games with PC ports like God of War have meaningfully better settings, frame rate, RT options, FOV adjustments and more that really let you make the most of your rig. Of course if you can’t dial in the one or two games you really care about that’s still a bummer.
The lack of new high value mid range GPUs is criminal but used prices have been dropping fast in the US with AMD 6xxx GPUs in particular being pretty good value used.

 

[Tactlesss]

It's definitely a weird place. More people should obviously be able to play how and what they want. It just seems like we lost a couple of genres along the way.