For me it’s the GPU prices, stagnation of the technology (most performance gains come at the cost of stupid power draw) and importantly being fed up with AAA games. Most games I played recently were a couple years old, indie titles or a couple years old indie titles. And I don’t need a high powered graphics card for that. I’ve been playing far more on my steam deck than my desktop PC, despite the latter having significantly more powerful hardware. You can’t force fun through sheer hardware performance

It makes me wonder if this will bring more people back to consoles. The library may be more limiting, but when a console costs less than just a gpu, itll be more tempting.

There’s so many games out there I’d like to play, but I’m an adult with responsibilities. I don’t need the newest game or gaming hardware because no matter how hard I try to catch up I never will, so I don’t bother to try and I always have something to play on my hardware.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfsadf :::

The irony is it is optimized in several notable cases, like cyberpunk 2077 and most major ue5 engine based games. It’s just all the mipmap levels from distant to 4k up close really add up when the game actually has a decent amount of content.

I wonder how many people really run games at settings that require the highest detail. I bet a lot of people would appreciate half the DL size or more just to leave 'em out and disable ‘ultra’ settings.

3090s weren’t burning up, though.

Yeah I have a 3080ti, If I had an older card I would 100% be buying AMD right now though.

GPU prices are what drove me back to consoles. It was time to overhaul my PC as it was getting painfully out of date. Video card alone was gonna be 700. Meanwhile a whole ass PS5 that plays the same games was 500.

It’s been 2 years since and I don’t regret it. I miss mods, but not nearly as much as I thought. It also SOOO nice to play multiplayer games without cheaters everywhere. I actually used to be one of those people who thought controllers gave an unfair advantage but… you can use a M/KB on PS5 and guess what? I do just fine! Turns out that the problem was never controllers, it was the cheaters.

But then there is that. The controller. Oh my lord it’s so much more comfortable than even the best gaming mouse. I’ve done a complete 180 on this. So many game genres are just so terrible to play with M/KB that I now tell people whining about controller players this:

Use gaming equipment for gaming and leave office equipment in the office.

1 2-week take home check for me. AMD is where I stay. $650 card lasting me 5 years on a 2k UWHD monitor at more than 180 FPS.

I’ll never understand NVIDIA owners.

Fuck I’m old.

It’s like how banks figured there was more money in catering to the super rich and just shit all over the rest of us peasants, GPU manufacturers that got big because of gamers have now turned their backs to us to cater to the insane “AI” agenda.
Also, friendly advice, unless you need CUDA cores and you have to upgrade, try avoiding Nvidia.

4K is an outrageously high resolution.

If I was conspiratorial I would say that 4K was normalized as the next step above 1440p in order to create a demand for many generations of new graphics cards. Because it was introduced long before there was hardware able to use it without serious compromises. (I don’t actually think it’s a conspiracy though.)

For comparison, 1440p has 78% more pixels than 1080p. That’s quite a jump in pixel density and required performance.

4K has 125% more pixels than 1440p (300% more than 1080p). The step up is massive, and the additional performance required is as well.

Now there is a resolution that we are missing in between them. 3200x1800 is the natural next step above 1440p*. At 56% more pixels it would be a nice improvement, without an outrageous jump in performance. But it doesn’t exist outside of a few laptops for some reason.

*All these resolutions are multiples of 640x360. 720p is 2x, 1080p is 3x, 1440p is 4x, and 4K is 6x. 1800p is the missing 5x.