Is the PC market becoming ridiculous? (1080p vs 1440p)

[RichieLee]

Aye, you're probably right there TooNice, maybe it's just my timing looking at things recently skewed to my experiences in buying hardware (not immediately at launch) in the past.

And also my 15yr old comment was a bit tongue in cheek really, of course if you got the money go for it! It doesn't particularly bother me what others do with their cash wisely or otherwise.

I just can't shake this feeling that tech is heading towards a sharp spike in cost for the regular customers and I find it interesting how much it can keep going up before pop and people walk away from buying into the very latest and greatest.

I also find it quite funny when people slate those buying consoles and not PC, when all the headlines on PC enthusiast websites and publications go nuts over GPUs that cost more than a console itself. Of course you could build a very capable PC for the price of a console but it's not really highlighted in tech press. Maybe the steamboxes can change that.

[kalniel]

I just can't shake this feeling that tech is heading towards a sharp spike in cost for the regular customers and I find it interesting how much it can keep going up before pop and people walk away from buying into the very latest and greatest.

If by regular customers you mean the mass market then they're already finding computing much cheaper than it used to be - tablets etc. are far cheaper than desktop systems and do everything that the mass market needs. Phones have gotten more expensive but then smart phones opened up a new category of computing that wasn't available before, and smart phone costs don't seem to have changed hugely considering the power on tap.

But if we're talking enthusiast gaming PCs, then that's a very minority market, and becoming more so, so economies of scale are working against our favour too.

[TooNice]

To be honest I haven't built a new PC in a few years (I have been using a laptop for a few years due to frequent moving) so perhaps I am missing something here, but I always felt that were ultra high end only very few could justify were always around. I vaguely recall review sites doing round up builds in different categories (sub £1000, sub £1500, sub £2000, sky's the limit - or something like that).

I am not convinced that price will creep up forever. People may or may not walk away at some point in life, but for most, it it probably won't be because of price increase. I don't think it is going to be 1, 2 or even 300 pound that is going to stop passionate enthusiasts.

But I am sure that there will be up and downs, and perhaps, as you say, GPU has gone up recently. But if you look back at the cost of various components, such things have happened before. Do you remember the days of the AMD Barton processor? You could get a very fine, upper mid-range processor that, without much effort, could overclock to match the top of the range processor for under £60 at one point. After the reign of the Barton though, we were back to 3 digits price for anything "upper mid-range". It did not stop enthusiasts moving onto Core2 processors which cost quite a lot more.

I think that overtime, there will be some fluctuations up and down in the mid-range but nothing enough to make or break the entire market.

On the subject of 1080p vs 1440p, what would you like to see realistically? 1440p is a higher resolution, currently produced in lower quantity, so it will naturally cost more than 1080p LCD monitor which has been mainstream for a rather long time.. In my mind, quality high end (not top end) monitor has always been around £500-600.

[RichieLee]

If by regular customers you mean the mass market then they're already finding computing much cheaper than it used to be - tablets etc. are far cheaper than desktop systems and do everything that the mass market needs. Phones have gotten more expensive but then smart phones opened up a new category of computing that wasn't available before, and smart phone costs don't seem to have changed hugely considering the power on tap.

But if we're talking enthusiast gaming PCs, then that's a very minority market, and becoming more so, so economies of scale are working against our favour too.

I never really thought of it like that, but yes I think you're right. I always compartmentalized 'computing' into the use of laptops/desktops, I never really took into consideration the use of tablets and phones, which to be fair does serve the general needs of the mass market much more conveniently than a proper computer would. Hell most of the posts on this topic alone I used my phone to do so. If we delve further again, you can see why the majority of 'gamers' who want to play games that simply side with consoles; convenience. It's a matter of providing what they need in a flashy package as opposed to flogging them something over complicated.

And yes I started this topic in the scope of 'enthusiast grade PCs' for lack of a better term. Yes there's always been highly priced hardware I totally agree, and maybe I'm just looking back with rose tinted glasses but I've personally never really recalled the 'high end' products marketed at the 'mainstream' of this niche to be so highly priced. Maybe I was lucky at the times I bought my hardware but like I've said before I've generally paid about £200 a GPU for each new build and I basically went for what was popular at the time in the press and forums.

Now I'm sure the new GPUs are much faster than my 7950 but having a cursory glance; now we have R390s circa £350 and Fury Xs circa £500, 980s circa £400 and 980tis circa £550+ that's marketed as the high end gear to have. It's important to note these aren't the very bleeding edge super duper special editions or Titans or dual card set ups, these are marketed as simply the high end sector unless I'm mistaken somewhere. I'm sure these cards will come down in price eventually but I'm not so sure they'll hit my own attainable £200 price tag... at least not before they're superseded by the next generation.

To be honest I haven't built a new PC in a few years (I have been using a laptop for a few years due to frequent moving) so perhaps I am missing something here, but I always felt that were ultra high end only very few could justify were always around. I vaguely recall review sites doing round up builds in different categories (sub £1000, sub £1500, sub £2000, sky's the limit - or something like that).

I am not convinced that price will creep up forever. People may or may not walk away at some point in life, but for most, it it probably won't be because of price increase. I don't think it is going to be 1, 2 or even 300 pound that is going to stop passionate enthusiasts.

But I am sure that there will be up and downs, and perhaps, as you say, GPU has gone up recently. But if you look back at the cost of various components, such things have happened before. Do you remember the days of the AMD Barton processor? You could get a very fine, upper mid-range processor that, without much effort, could overclock to match the top of the range processor for under £60 at one point. After the reign of the Barton though, we were back to 3 digits price for anything "upper mid-range". It did not stop enthusiasts moving onto Core2 processors which cost quite a lot more.

I think that overtime, there will be some fluctuations up and down in the mid-range but nothing enough to make or break the entire market.

On the subject of 1080p vs 1440p, what would you like to see realistically? 1440p is a higher resolution, currently produced in lower quantity, so it will naturally cost more than 1080p LCD monitor which has been mainstream for a rather long time.. In my mind, quality high end (not top end) monitor has always been around £500-600.

No I don't recall the Barton era I'm afraid, I remember being told off for messing with my older brother's Amiga 500 when I was a nipper but could never afford my own PC until the 8800GTS and Core2Duo days (and my E6750 cost a good £160 iirc). I did pick up my fx6300 on my most recent build for around £80 which I thought was very decent bang for buck, so yeah there's swings and roundabouts to the whole thing. Maybe I'm simply picking things up at different points of their life cycle which is why the price of most recent stuff has shocked me so much.

As for 1080p vs 1440p, I'm currently considering a monitor change. I have an LG 21.5" 1080p monitor that I feel is too cramped that cost about £100 which only intended as a stop gap display until I had funds for something more decent. The monitor I had previously was a 22" LG 1600x???p I forget what resolution exactly but it cost about £200 and that feels like a much larger screen estate dispite the lower resolution. The point being I thought I could get a decent monitor at around the £200-£250 mark but it seems the go to 1440p displays everyone's raving about currently we're looking at £400+ which again blew my expectations right out.

[RichieLee]

FWIW, I'm currently using an old Fujitsu T5010 laptop as my main pc duties as I'm abroad. It's old, looks crappy and rugged but it has a wacom penabled stylus and the screen is glorious for such an old bit of kit (great colour and IPS like viewing angles). I changed the CPU, upped the RAM to 8gb max and installed a 256gb ssd. All in all it cost me £400 maybe £500 tops including the laptop and upgrades. Granted I think it was like a £1600 laptop new.

And guess what I was looking at before I left the UK shores to travel? A Surface Pro 3, and as great as they look I simply couldn't plonk down the £1200 they wanted for an i5 mid spec one and the keyboard. The other thing I was looking for was the wacom companion tablet/pc which was more on the side of £1500. I guess if we consider the new rrps they do actually correlate so I cant really moan, but seriously I sometimes truly wonder how in the world do they find customers for these things new.

I'm not sure what the prices are for top end gaming laptops but I'm sure the razer blades and Aorus's are close enough to £2k for me to have to disregard even looking at them, I may aswell build a high end desktop at that price!

I know, I know just call me an old grumpy cheapskate

Thanks for your input though everyone. It's good to be back on the Hexus forums.

[TooNice]

High end laptops are probably for those of us with some gaming blood in us who either move too often or too far to justify getting a desktop, or live in too small of a space (some part of Asia). Desktop will always be better bang for buck on top of being easier to cool, fix etc. Until last week I was having some major issues throttling issues with my laptop. I thought that was the end of it, but after cleaning it with canned air, I managed to get it back to normal. But it wasn't a thorough job because this laptop was built in such a way that to reach the CPU/GPU fans, I'd have to disassemble most of it (keyboard, screen and everything), and I could not be bothered to do that (one thing I will keep in mind when buying the next laptop is how easy it is to access the interior for some cleaning).

But I digress. I suppose that I just remember the days of £2000 laptops before they even had discrete GPU and I am not exactly ancient (). I didn't buy one, but my first desktop was almost £2000 without the monitor Wanting the best, part of the cost went to the SCSI drive, which also meant I needed a SCSI adapter. Would you believe that I still haven't taken the plunge for SSD despite knowing that it is the single best upgrade I could do

My monitors have by far the longest lasting component, so I don't really mind spending a fair amount of money on them. I personally find 1080p to be pretty sufficient (though I prefer the 1900x1200 resolution of my last monitor) and wouldn't necessarily go for a higher resolution because of the computational demand of higher resolution. For gaming I am more than happy at 1080p, and if I wanted more work space, I prefer dual-monitor setup. I don't know when is the next time I will have the luxury of building another PC, but by then, I hope that 4K will have entered mainstream. Right now they may not be the gamer's choice, I think that there was a time when people would discuss 720p vs 1080p. And of course, by then, people will probably be raving about 8K or 16K. Welcome to technology

But really, I am not surprised that those things sells. After hearing what some people spend on those "Pay to win" games, it doesn't surprise me at all. I am not sure if this is a Japanese thing, but I know a lot of game where you pay anything between £5-15 for a 0.5-1% chance of getting an ultra rare unit/card whatever, and people who have spent £1500 monthly to get them all and stay at the top. I avoid terms like "more money than sense" because frankly, it's none of my business how people prioritise their expense as long as it is within their mean, but clearly some people just have a lot of disposable income OR willing to make certain sacrifices (i.e. living in a tiny place / commuting 2 hours each way per day) in order to fuel their hobby.

Don't get me wrong though, I like a good bargain myself. I want more performance for less, but while but I think that there will be some up and downs along the way. Another example is the cost of RAM. I don't know how much they are nowadays, but price of RAM used to be super volatile.

[shaithis]

Being someone who shifted to 1600p gaming in 2007, there are times when I have wondered why I did it

Then I sit in front of someone's 1080p screen to test a game on their rig and remember why!

For me, I have found the cost to not be terrible, although the price of gfx cards has been on the rise lately due to node-shrink costs, which has been compounded by general post-recession price-hikes. I paid £500 NEW for my first Dell 3007 in 2007 - admittedly, it was a grey import from South America but still...the replacement for it is over a grand now!

I also only buy a new graphics card when one of them can out-perform my dual cards.....I then add another second-hand a year or two later when the prices drop significantly. I have found this approach to be quite cost effective (at least for high-resolution gaming)...in fact it wasn't until earlier this year I added a second 780Ti and will probably sell the pair of them some time after Pascal releases.

Of course, you get the people who blow serious cash on 3 new Titans on release day and that's their prerogative.

So, I roughly spend between 150-200ukp per year on gfx cards when evened out.....now considering I easily play 10 games a year and I pay £20 less per game than a console player, I feel I am more than getting my value for money.

I guess it all depends on how you look at things.

[Lee H]

You may want to have a butchers of these then ;

https://books.google.co.uk/books/abo...4C&redir_esc=y

PC magazines from 1980 onwards and some of the pricing in here for stuff will make your eyes water

[Zak33]

this is a superb thread

its old school HEXUS and new age HEXUS all in one

[MrJim]

You may want to have a butchers of these then ;

https://books.google.co.uk/books/abo...4C&redir_esc=y

PC magazines from 1980 onwards and some of the pricing in here for stuff will make your eyes water

I love it - there's an advert for a 9.5Mb hard-disk for the IBM PC for $3995!!! Oh how times change!

[outwar6010]

I love it - there's an advert for a 9.5Mb hard-disk for the IBM PC for $3995!!! Oh how times change!

There's now a 16tb ssd that predicted to cost like $5,000 to $7,000

[shaithis]

I love it - there's an advert for a 9.5Mb hard-disk for the IBM PC for $3995!!! Oh how times change!

Even in 1991 I paid ~£150 for a 80MB IDE HDD......and that was considered dirt cheap at the time.....and in the mid-90s was using 600MB SCSI drives that completely filled 2 x 5.25" drive bays!

[MrJim]

Even in 1991 I paid ~£150 for a 80MB IDE HDD......and that was considered dirt cheap at the time.....and in the mid-90s was using 600MB SCSI drives that completely filled 2 x 5.25" drive bays!

My first laptop had a 20Mb hard-disk, which was pretty extravagant in 1988 (I know...I'm old...!). Oh, and it had an 80188 CPU running at 4.77Mhz too!

[abaxas]

Ahh the days of SCSI. Buslogic isa controller and a 500mb quantum empire disk. If I remember correctly the quantum empire series was the first disks to run at 5400rpm. My god it was fast.

To put this into perspective, 3-4mb a second and sub 10ms seek time.

[AGTDenton]

I have to say from a non gaming perspective 1080p is an awful resolution and TN is harsher on the eyes. I miss 1200p IPS quite a bit. I had a 2005 Dell Ultrasharp but as the years went on ghosting and tearing became an ever bigger problem in games, not to mention the panel was fading, so I ended up with a 144Mhz BenQ. Which for games is excellent as many games looked new and sharp. For desktop use I prefer my work monitors.

I am gunning for a high Hz IPS monitor and Acer seems to be the only ones on the ball right now.
Just a couple of years ago Acer wouldn't have entered my vocabulary but they seem to be rising up the ranks.

If the Predator XB1 makes the grade its likely to be my next monitor.

[RichieLee]

Yikes! Look at those prices! I'm no tech expert but wow, surely that's like business class gear though? It can't be consumer grade tech? I thought I'd been had over the years! You lot must have spent crazy amounts! I'd better shut my mouth and count myself lucky and plan my purchases more wisely...

So if we zoom out and look at the overall computing industry as a whole then I think we can safely say that personal computing has become much more accessible for the masses. And in fact, if anything, it's even become more 'affordable' for enthusiasts too in the grand scheme of things?

Funnily enough, I recall everyone talking about 21:9 ultrawide monitors a while ago. And whilst they were totally over budget the 29" 2560x1080 versions are now dropping sub £300 which has got me thinking. I guess as outrageous as cutting edge prices are now it goes to show there'll always be more cutting edge so the slightly blunter stuff can fall within meagre mortals' budgets