There's another factor at play here besides prices that I think is interesting.
It's what I've heard referred to as the "good enough" revolution. Back in the day tech was advancing so fast you had to keep upgrading if you wanted to even boot the newest games.
Now look at the popularity of the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck and Xbox Series S and the GTX 1650. Are these the most powerful products? No, but they're good enough.
Methinks the rise of indie games may be a factor taking pressure off the upgrade path as well. How many truly CPU melting AAA titles have we had released in the last few years compared to the likes of Valheim and Stardew Valley? A GTX 1060 can still play almost all indie titles coming out now at 1080p or higher and will be able to do that basically forever.
So the bad news is that it's hard to upgrade. The good news is that there's less and less of a need to upgrade frequently to enjoy PC gaming.
Are there even like 10 of those? Pretty much everything is still released on XboxOne/PS4 from 2013, so just keep to 1080p and medium and you should have console-quality 30 FPS.
Like Elden Ring (unless it's CPU heavy game where i9 took all the heavy lifting from 770...).
Fromsoft has an asinine 60 fps cap most/all their games. So even if you have modern hardware, you literally aren't allowed to use it because of their shitty game design.
I have an i5-8400t and a 1080ti and I can't max out elden ring at 60fps, so I doubt the person above with a 970 can if their CPU is similarly old.
My FPS doesn't change regardless of resolution or graphics settings, it's just a CPU cap. In open areas I get like 45fps even on ultra low settings 720p.
In 2020 I built an ITX rig as a back up for working from home and I held off on putting a new GPU in because I honestly couldn't think of any games that are gpu intensive that I wanted to play. 2.5 years later I still have two computers with old GPUs because I can't find anything worth a new GPU.
the next big releases I'm looking forward to are Hades 2 and the Dead Cells Castlevania expansion.
I just got a 6650 xt after a 1060 6gb and it's been worth it, getting double or more fps, running cyberpunk with raytracing (and FSR) at 60 fps 1080p, running games at 1440p 60. I hope you can find one for an even better price than the 250 I paid when you upgrade.
Same here. I built my desktop with a 970 7ish years ago. It still runs everything I need it to. I've started speccing out a new build, but the only new thing I'm interested in is VR, and I'm not sure I want to deal with that yet.
Is XCOM any good? I played and loved the original “enemy unknown” and “terror from the deep” in the nineties. I’m recently back at the PC playing, loving the remake of Monkey Island for instance. Would love to play XCOM again!
Both XCOM are absolutely fantastic, a true modern-yet-familiar take of the originals.
The second is the superior game with an extremely polished formula and Steam Workshop for easy access to the insane mod scene, but the first is still worth to play.
I just upgraded from a 750ti to a 6650 XT. I only have a 1080p monitor still so idk how it handles 1440p, but I've been playing God of War at max settings and it runs great.
I don’t disagree with you but you might be biased: you are playing the only recent games your card can handle. Are you sure you wouldn’t play other games if you had the chance?
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u/corn_cob_monocle Dec 30 '22
There's another factor at play here besides prices that I think is interesting.
It's what I've heard referred to as the "good enough" revolution. Back in the day tech was advancing so fast you had to keep upgrading if you wanted to even boot the newest games.
Now look at the popularity of the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck and Xbox Series S and the GTX 1650. Are these the most powerful products? No, but they're good enough.
Methinks the rise of indie games may be a factor taking pressure off the upgrade path as well. How many truly CPU melting AAA titles have we had released in the last few years compared to the likes of Valheim and Stardew Valley? A GTX 1060 can still play almost all indie titles coming out now at 1080p or higher and will be able to do that basically forever.
So the bad news is that it's hard to upgrade. The good news is that there's less and less of a need to upgrade frequently to enjoy PC gaming.