The main problem with the hardware world...

...in my humble opinion, is the crazy attitudes of the people in it. Perfectly good tech is obsolete in 2 years, despite most not even maxing it out. Prices are way, way over the top, with anything approaching high end being £500 or more. Take the following comparisons of the new Nvidia 3060Ti GPU, vs an Nvidia 1070Ti card:

Comparison 1

Comparison 1

So basically a 50% increase in 2-3 years. Not exactly ground-breaking when you think of it like that, however here's my experience. I bought a factory overclocked 1070Ti two years ago, just before the 20xx series was released. It runs more like a
GTX1080, and is sweet.

I struggle to max the card out on 1080p gaming (settings to max). Most games use 3-5GB of the card's vRAM. It could easily be argued that it's all I need, and I have little need to go for more at present. There are one or two where I lower shadows or AA, but that's more of an FPS issue. I tend to lock a 60/61 fps, where it's sensible. Anything more is overkill for me personally.

Now I completely get that I'm not a 'power gamer' in that sense, and if we remove the bragging rights idiots, and the pro-gamers (One in 1 million across the world), most people don't really need top whack GPUs. Achieving more than 144 FPS is not necessary 99% of the time (Pro-gamers again). I play PubG, in case you think I'm only playing Minesweeper.

Why the rant? I read a user's 'review':

Ladies and gentlemen, the new 3060-Ti! With 2080S-like performance for just $600AUD or $400USD! The 3060-Ti is the best GPU on the mid-range market, until the 3060 releases.

It's kinda like saying a Lamborghini is mid-range compared to an F1 car.

£400-500 here. It's early. Since when is £400 mid-range? Since when is 50% more than "all I need" considered mid range? Since when is 8GB mid-range? Since when are cards that are completely capable of way over 60fps considered mid range?

Back in 2018, I hemmed and hawed about going for a 1060 6GB, but wanted future proofing for 3-5 years. So far, so good. If anything, the 1070Ti has been overkill most of the time. What I wanted back then was a 4-6GB card with the GPU chip of the 1070 or better. Most don't need more than 4-6GB, but most can do with a slightly faster GPU.

Ok, I get that 2K and 4K gaming requires more vRAM, and more GPU, but that's not really mid range either. That's just marketing [censored]. Imagine if they released a 4GB card with a top-whack GPU. Who would buy it? Anyone on 1080p or less, and don't need more than 4GB vRAM (a lot of people potentially).

Just having a random rant. In no hurry to upgrade. I'd probably upgrade my 2700x CPU first, although there's no need for that either.

I'm not quite sure what you are on about.

The projected price of the RTX3060Ti is almost exactly the same as the price of the 1070Ti when it was first on sale (and it seems to have remained fairly close that thay price level). If you thought the latter was a good buy, why wouldn't people go for the former now?

https://pricespy.co.uk/computers-accessories/compute...

For context. The latter was not a good buy. The latter fulfilled the following criteria:

A much faster GPU than the 1060, and more decent GPU than the 1070, and for decent bang per buck at that time, and with 3-5 years of future proofing. See the Cuda cores comparison:

1060-3GB: 1152
1060: 1280
1070: 1920
1070 Ti: 2432

When I was first browsing around, I set an ideal GPU budget of max £300, then I saw the 1070 cards at £290-£400, and the 1070Ti cards at £410-£475.

Doing bang per buck calcs and watching the 1070 card prices rise, I worked out that the 1070Ti was the no-brainer choice between the two. Similarly, while the the 1060 3GB and 6GB benchmarks were similar, the 6GB cards gave more headroom for gaming demands, so for me it was between the 1060 and the 1070Ti. Had the 1060 3GB been a 4GB instead, I might have gone for it, as the GPU potential with 4GB would have been great as a 2-3 year option.

By the time I bought my 1070Ti, the 1060 cards were easily £250 or more, and bang for buck the 1070Ti cards were similar. If you flatten the bang per buck scores, the adjusted prices for 1060s are about 60% of the 1070Ti (e.g. £230 vs £380).

However, I spotted a particular EVGA factory-overclocked model, but it was priced at £465. That was over my absolute max of £400, while other 1070Ti cards started at £410. Then I got the option to buy my perfect pick for £390, so jumped at the chance. The following week, the card was back up there at £465 again.

But the main thrust of my OP was that the 8GB cards are not mid-range. Entry-level gaming would be 4GB, mid-range would be 6GB and 8GB are serious gaming. Pro-gaming could be at the 10GB+ cards, and especially at the prices.

They are re-defining these levels of 'gaming' due to the demand that 2K and 4K monitors are putting on hardware demands. However, there's no need to game at 2K or 4K to be a serious or Pro-Gamer. Ergo, most 8GB cards for 1080p are more than enough. If the world's best gamer plays at 720p, is he a Pro-gamer or not? (Many gamers play at lower settings to clear away the eye candy.)

In that sense, the 2060 was a great card. 6GB, on a par with the 1070Ti, and with the same Cuda cores of the 1070. In essence a 1070Ti with 2GB chopped off. Prices at £300-£350, still not ground-breaking.

See the (Nvidia) price trends. Not dropping anywhere in the past two years. Nvidia is replacing models before their prices drop, and presumably limiting supply of GPUs to ensure the market of older GPUs dries up. I'm sure the 2nd hand market is good, assuming the miners aren't hogging that market.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/video-card/...

Hopefully, AMD's new cards will trigger a drop in prices.

I think Fs2020 is driving the demand for decent cards. For best results you need ultra HD and a hefty graphics card. Especially if you're flying into Kennedy with all the options at their highest.

It is only obsolete if it stops doing what you want it to do.
My mate used a P4 to produce music up to his death early this year. His video editing computer was a 4 core AMD, it did what he needed it to do.
the oldest machine in the studio as the studio is still intact at the moment is a 233Mhz Windows 95 based machine, with a yamaha wave table board mounted to a fiji sound card in a ISA slot. Granted it was only used for the Yamaha wave table in the last 8 years or so,


There is still my old Amiga 500 in there as well, but that have not been used for years, i wonder if it will switch on.

can it play crysis ?