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

[RichieLee]

I must admit I've not posted all that much on these forums for a long while, real life gets in the way! Plus you all seem far more knowledgeable than I am; rest assured I've been lurking daily, always a good read.

Now is it just me or has the PC market become ridiculous? I know tech pretty much gets superseded the moment you open your spangly new GPU. But hear me out, it seems that the industry has split into 1080p which is just about affordable or 1440p only for the elite that are willing to spend well over the odds.

My 7950 cost about £220 a few years ago and I thought that was silly money back then, now you're looking probably double that or more for a high end card from either the red or green camp. Not to mention the cost for a 1440p monitor and a decent enough PSU to run the requisite GPU.

I understand you have to pay to play with the latest tech, it's always been that way, but in the land of £400+ GPUs and easily £300+ monitors... this kind of price hike is an unsustainable business model surely? Certainly for your average 'gamer' market?

Im interested to hear what do you all think? Can you guys afford the latest and greatest? Will prices really come down to affordable levels for us regular folk? Maybe I'm being a jealous skint grouch but I find it seriously difficult to keep sinking exponentially silly money into this hobby as it's spiking. You can't really blame the guys who buy a console and are done with it.

[Zak33]

honestly... you're smack on right.. and miles wrong

because what you're going through something horrible... growing up

ie... you've done the early adopter part of your life where much of your income went on hardware...

now you're in the "should I keep staying up with the cutting edge?" part of life

and soon you'll end up realising that, with less time in your life, having the latest hardware means nothing as you dont have time to play the latest games!

I am sat on a hex core AMD Phenom.. not overclocked. bog standard and silent. 16 gig ram, half of which is never ever used, but it was cheap
I have dual 1680x1050 monitors.

I had a 1080 for a short time but coudnt afford dual, and so went back to the duals I had which are a tad smaller. But I love dual, and not for gaming.

I borrowed a 4k from Hexus HQ and it went right back. A bugger to set up with dual cables lots of my stuff ran on half the screen, and I realised I wasn't bothered spending all the dough when I wanted a new air rifle too and a new shotgun.

a 1440 would possibly be ideal as it goes.. but can I get 2 to fit the desk? nope.

don't kick yourself to death Richie.... its life matey

[RichieLee]

Thanks Zak that's pretty insightful haha maybe I'm just getting old! I don't know, I'm still not entirely convinced it's simply growing up though. However I admit I rather spend time out on my bike more than in front of a screen in my downtime these days.

I've not had that many computers though, In the past i've had a core2duo with an 8800gts build, and the current 7950 and fx6300 were upgraded from a phenom II and 6850 when I mangled pins taking off the heatsink so took the opportunity to upgrade. So really 2 builds and an upgrade in the span of about 10years? Each time I spent an average £200 on the GPU, and they were considered high end cards. Now it's as if £200 won't get you much card. Plus peripherals didn't seem as pricey in the old builds either, maybe the 'gamer' community has much more disposable income these days but I certainly can't stretch my budget for the latest and greatest anymore.

[Gerrard]

I have a Dell 2407WFP-HC (1200p) which I spent well over £400 about 7-8 years ago. I am still using it now and it is still going strong unfortunately, as I could do with an excuse to upgrade it to a 1440p 60Hz+ screen! It was a lot of money but for something that you will rarely upgrade it is one thing that is worth paying a premium.

Or at least that used to be the case; with FreeSync/G-Sync you could argue that is less likely now. I would like a high refresh monitor but would have to tie myself with one manufacturer and what is suitable for my needs now might not be the case in a couple of generations' time 5 years down the line.

So my issue with the current situation is less that about the money, as the performance jumps haven't been massive and therefore the time between upgrading the GPU is longer, and more about this split between the two camps. Of course, that suits them by locking people into their brand...

[DanceswithUnix]

Now it's as if £200 won't get you much card.

Actually £200 gets quite a nice card, *but* if you bought a £200 card in the last 5 years it isn't going to be a stellar improvement. Things have been static for some time stuck on 28nm.

[MrJim]

a 1440 would possibly be ideal as it goes.. but can I get 2 to fit the desk? nope.

A pair of these might fit

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/24-de...FRGeGwodOlMFBQ

[RichieLee]

So evidently there's always been very high priced hardware then! And currently we're in a flux of poorer performance-to-price ratio? Probably just the way the tech's developing... Looks like I'll simply have to wait for this cutting edge hardware to mature before making a new purchase.

I think what's got me the most is that all the high end hardware that's been discussed this year seems to be focused on cards etc that are easily double if not more in relation to hardware which was considered consumer 'high end' in the past. Back then we were talking about £200ish for 22" Samsung monitors and £200 nvidia GPUs that were considered high end at least in mainstream realms. These days we're talking £3-400 for a 1440p monitor and the same again if not more for the 980s or fury xs etc. I'm probably just waffling needlessly but as nice as new hardware is it ain't double the cost better. I won't say the same for mobos and the other components as I've found those to have been relatively stable cost wise every generation.

[RichieLee]

A pair of these might fit

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/24-de...FRGeGwodOlMFBQ

Funnily enough I was about to through my hands up in surrender and plod along with my 21.5" tn monitor, however this 24" 1440p screen might be ok with my 7950 assuming it's strong enough to run that resolution. Doesn't seem too expensive considering the 1080p 24" dell I was looking at is £180.

[TooNice]

Is it really a price hike when it comes to building a new PC (in recent years)?

Very expensive cards have been around for well over a decade.

High end monitor has always been very expensive. Think back how much 21" CRT cost back in the days. Or better yet, that Sony 24" CRT monitor (it was about double the price of this).

As long as there is a product for every budget, I am fine with it.

Don't get me wrong, I like more for less like any other person, but I am guessing that prices are the way they are because people are buying in sufficient quantities that it is profitable for them.

Money isn't always spent in the most rational manner, especially in the name of entertainment.

[GuidoLS]

It is becoming silly - to whit:

You're a 1080 (or less) gamer/user, yet you are having to worry over a high end card, because for some reason, tech sites don't find you (and the majority of us) relevant any more, because we're satisfied with not being bleeding edge. They won't, in general, review the mid/low range cards to determine if they're useful to the every day user, and if they do, at some point, review a lower end card, some fanboi, usually a 15 year old who hasn't seen the light of day in months because of the black-out curtains cutting out the glare on their tv sets while they play their original XBox, is too busy screaming on all the forums about how lame that particular card is - from his sister's netbook...

Which makes the whole process even more silly, because now you have to go out, find an unbiased source (and there are plenty of sites out there that are solidly green or red) and then hope there are some sort of benchmarks. And more pixels... more pixels... there HAS to be more pixels. To go bad... nothing like a big white spot in the middle of your screen, especially if you're trying to play a stealth/horror game, and you have your nose inches from the screen just so you can make out items in the shadow... details you'll never see, because of that nagging spot of pure bright in the corner of your eye... something that didn't exist in your slightly smaller screen... it's enough to make you want to commit mass murder... so you pop in your favorite frag fest, only to find it no longer works, because of proprietary drivers/software...

Yes, it's silly.

[OilSheikh]

I always wait a few months until prices become affordable before upgrading. These days, I don't even bother upgrading as things are already fast enough for my needs!
The monitor resolutions being adopted for the large screen monitors is also ridiculous. My old Samsung 17" did 2048 X 1536. My new 22" Samsung does 1920 X 1080...not sure if it was an upgrade

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It doesn't help that the E-PEEN edition cards have meant the tiers have been pushed up another level too - that £250 card should have been more like a £150 one.

[abaxas]

It's the curse of modern 3d. Long gone are the days of pure texture mapped triangles, it's all shaders now. This requires massive parallel processing and scales almost linearly with resolution.

To simplify : people want eye candy not framerate, hence eyecandy and framerate costs.

[peterb]

If it's high end graphics cards you want, have a look at this

http://www.netstoredirect.com/24-vid...ice-9860-11540

[RichieLee]

Yeah I've definitely noticed a heavy shift in price ranges if you know what I mean? At least in the mainstream market/ media sense. Before it was 8800gts/gtx gen £200+ then 7950/7970 gen again 200+ (in my experience) which were the poster childs of the GPU world; now most tech media thrust £400+ cards in our faces and wax lyrical about g sync and free sync displays which would again easily top £400. Before I could build a highish end rig on including peripherals for £800 not just 2 components.

I know I'm becoming an old grouch, i'm just gobsmacked at the current trend of things and I'm also in wonderment at how these 15yr old l33t gamerz manage to afford these things too! Last time I checked min wage wasn't so great

[TooNice]

[...]Yeah I've definitely noticed a heavy shift in price ranges if you know what I mean? At least in the mainstream market/ media sense. Before it was 8800gts/gtx gen £200+ then 7950/7970 gen again 200+ (in my experience) which were the poster childs of the GPU world;[...]p

Are you sure you are looking at the product at roughly the same period of it's lifespan? Looking at the Anandtech review here, the 8800GTX and GTS launched at $599 and $449 respectively. And at the time of this Hexus review, this XFX card was just shy of £482. And if I remember correctly, XFX cards tends to be on the cheaper end.

The 8800 was an excellent card, good enough for nVidia to sit on it for quite a while and even rebadge it (9800 series) so I am sure that price did eventually drop in the £200+ range, but that was definitely not the case at launch.

I doubt that most buyers are 15 years old and some family are just that wealthy. I knew a guy who got £500 a week as his "pocket money" (he was older than 15, but regardless it is probably more than what many fresh graduate earn). I am sure a lot of people will have a lot to say about that, but I honestly think that as long as people are living within their mean, it's fine. And for what it's worth, the guy will probably be a high earner himself.