- cross-posted to:
- pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
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At first I thought this must be obviously bad satire. I thought: “If course newer cards at the same price level aren’t worse than older cards, they are just not as much better as they have been in the past.”, and if you think the same, you may be surprised as well.
Well inflation alone will cause this. But then add shrinkflation and filthy companies and yeah it’s all down hill
and filthy companies
The small section on the end result of AMD nerfing the 6500xt down to 4 lanes of PCIe4 is as good an example of this as any. For the budget offering (and it’ll be even worse if you run it on a PCIe3 motherboard which seems likely for budget builders), it was awful at release and it has very weak staying power. And this is presumably meant to be an entry point for people getting into PC gaming, getting them hooked with a nice enough experience and they hang around to but more expensive cards in future. The 6500xt is about a year and a half old at this point with nothing to replace it, games have only become more demanding and will continue to do so, so anyone buying that as a ‘modern’ card or their entry point (and the price hasn’t gone down that much) I just can’t see their experience as anything but bottom of the barrel, like if you were using a software renderer back in the day because you didn’t have a 3D card yet.
6650xt would objectively be a better buy unless you’re really penny pinching. A couple of them are at $240.
Yeah that’s an option, and philip notes that, however then I think you’re into the siren call of “just a little bit better” for putting a PC build together where it really starts to add up if you’re at the budget end of the market. I’ve seen lots of people do that when they’re discussing spending someone else’s money.
What I think you can’t ignore is consoles, most of the games on test were multi-platform, and I can get a brand new PS5 now with a game for 400 bucks, or much less from looking at local classified. If you’re not into current games or what’s coming out in the next few years then it’s hard not to recommend going for a used PC (if you’re aiming at older/low requirements PC gaming), which is another conversation, and even then looking at classifieds again the pricing isn’t always that competitive (vs last-gen console, series S). Someone is selling a rough equivalent to my 2016-17 build i7-7700k/1070 for around 550 bucks. A lot revolves around the question of how much you really want a PC.
While things have improved, I find it really hard to say PC gaming is good value now unless you’ve got piles of money to throw at it, in which case value probably doesn’t really enter into it as a primary concern rather than gloating “my 4090 is so much value”, because it is, but you’re throwing multiples of the other guy’s whole budget around
Well the biggest issue with PC gaming these days is the high cost of entry. Once you have a PC, you can upgrade as needed or wanted and have your machine how you want it. Versus buying a console that is limited in what it can do and more to that point stuck in a market for games that are sub based or just outright paying full price for games, even years after release. coughcall of dutycough
We are at that point in the current console’s lifespan where they DO make more sense compared to the high cost of entry for PCs and this won’t get any better since we’re dealing with inflation and silicon shortages as things are now. Problem being, and the question people who are in the market right now will have to ask themselves, “What do I want this machine to do for me.”.
If you just want to game, well, a console might be the best idea.
If you want to do more than that and have full control over your system (Especially with Linux gaming being something that is possible now.), then PC might be where you want to aim.
This back and forth has been happening for years, and like you said, used is the best way to get into the PC market as it all stands.
For the record, I did end up with a 6650xt for myself as I realized the value that the card had over the others. I bought mine right at the end of the GPU shortage and paid $400 for it, but that was the best I could get at the time for the money I had. The next step up (Actual worth it step up, I mean.) was $200 more than that. So for me it was a no brainer, but to a budget shopper right now they may not see the benefit of an extra $20-$40-$60 on a video card as it’s really the most important piece to a successful budget build to perform halfway decent. Trust me, I’ve built a lot of machines over the years and I think this build I have now has been my best chosen for being futureproof, current performance, and compatibility, while still being somewhat mid-range. Well, it’s starting to get down towards more low-range now if you’re all about AAA games, but thankfully that isn’t the case for me.
