AMD's RX 9070 is on track to become the best-selling GPU on Amazon — RDNA 4 already ranks as the top bestseller in Amazon Germany and UK
AMD's RX 9070 is on track to become the best-selling GPU on Amazon — RDNA 4 already ranks as the top bestseller in Amazon Germany and UK
www.tomshardware.com
AMD's RX 9070 is on track to become the best-selling GPU on Amazon — RDNA 4 already ranks as the top bestseller in Amazon Germany and UK
Too bad I can't fucking buy one in EU. And those that appear to be in stock, I sure as hell am not paying 1200+ € for this.
Buying graphic cards has become total bullshit and I've been buying them for over 20 years now. And not only 1 every 5+ years. I've bought a lot of them. The shit that's happening now is total BS and this is what's actually killing PC gaming. It's not game services or consoles. It's this fuckery with BS imaginary MSRP prices and corporate greed from start to end.
In the end consoles will kill the PC because there you get entire functioning gaming system for half the price of just motherfucking graphic card.
I agree the new graphics cards market is a mess, but thats because they're being bought for AI and crypto which is inflating prices.
However its not killing PC gaming. PC gaming is the single biggest platform, and in reality for most gamers the latest generation of cards are way over powered for most games. In a way we've never seen before.
The AAA part of the games industry is in crisis, because we're now well beyond the point of diminishing returns for graphics. Graphics quality is already very high and each innovation is now having minimal impact on game quality. Its hard to innovate when you're near photo realism - you just get closer and closer. The last generation of cards are already above what is needed to run new games well. And people arent buying $70+ games when all they offer is graphics boosts and crap gameplay - thats breaking the business model of the big publishers who lazily relied on graphics to drive sales.
The PC market has fragmented into lots of smaller indie games. Its big enough overall that a small game targeted at fans of specific genres can be high quality and successful enough. There are so many games being released all the time now that the market may even be saturated - its an amazing time for player choice.
Personally I'm in no rush to upgrade my 3070. Probably won't until something like Witcher 4 comes out and even then maybe I won't need to go to the highest end. Witcher 3 is 10 years old and still looks spectacular to me, Cyberpunk 2077 is 5 years old and I play it on my 3070 card and a separate PC with an integrated gpu. I barely notice the graphic quality difference between the 2 devices even though the 3070 is running at the highest settings while the iGPU PC is running at mid settings.
And then we have Monster Hunter Wilds
They are not really bought for crypto. The energy cost to mine shitcoins is so high that you don't make any money unless you live in a country with cheap electricity. Even then, who wants a multiple year pay-off on the card at MSRP and even longer getting scalped?
At that point it's better to order a proper bitcoin miner
The RDNA-4-based cards just started coming out.
I pointed this out in a comment yesterday, where someone was looking for a latest-model Nvidia card: last-gen AMD RDNA 3-based cards are pretty readily available.
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/4917vs5956/Radeon-RX-7800-XT-vs-Radeon-RX-9070-XT
A Radeon RX 7800 XT doesn't score far off a Radeon RX 9070 XT on Passmark. Both have 16GB of VRAM.
Passmark is not a tool to compare graphic cards. RX 9070 XT compares to RX 7900 XTX and RTX 5070Ti. RX 7800 XT is not even a competition. It's not a bad card, but isn't close at all. Just 16GB memory tells nothing really.
It doesn't trace rays that well. There are games out there that require it now.
I just buy second hand ones now, got a 3050 last year for £110. I don't really think there's ever a reason to buy a gpu day one unless it somehow helps your job, but the improvements with each release are less and less each year so you're often just better getting the previous gen second hand.
110 quid for a used 3050 is borderline highway robbery. 50-60 is already paying too much for that card, especially used.
Console prices are also rising and the old hardware subsidy model is becoming less viable (largely due to broader increases in price for components). With the exception being Nintendo since they always use hardware that several generations behind the current state of the art.