RGB and why it is rather annoying!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Only hardware enthusiasts on forums make excuses for stupid price increases and make a mockery of why enthusiasts started,ie,to get better value by modding their rigs.

They are in some weird bubble - I like to see how something like food,or cars,or something like that went up by 50% to 100% over a few years to see what the general public would say.

I seem to see a MASSIVE disconnect from what I see in forums and literally every single enthusiast and gamer I know in the realworld.

PC enthusiasts on the internet have become some of the most suggestible people I have ever met in my life - its progressively getting worse and worse.

I told you lot yonks ago,once Intel started segregating overclocking,etc it was not a good sign and a number of you said so what,and the Stockholm Syndrome has got so bad,people are now excuse making for companies taking the mickey with pricing,and then patting themselves on the back.

Hardware websites at the same time,are quietly not saying anything about this,so are really adding to all of this too since they are scared of biting the hand which feeds them.

They are not here to fight for the consumer anymore.

The current era of being a PC gamer is just a shambles - full of symphocants who just excuse make for their favourite company to just overcharge more and more,and making excuses for microtransactions.

In the end,but,but shoot the messaging - what a bunch yes-people with vested interests.

4 years with similar card performance under £300. Years ago we could overclock on a cheap board and any CPU.

We had 4C/8T CPUs under £200 years ago.

When Crysis came out we move from the X1950XTX to the 8800GT at under £200 in one year.

PC gaming has not gone forward because of excuse makers,ie, enthusiasts more worried about pointless oneupmanship instead of performance which is what games devs are looking at.

They have such low standards now,they are more slaves to the companies than have any expectations of what the companies should sell them.

I also love how its but,but "you are old",well I am not that old,but I think some of you have the memory of someone who is 110.

Oh how the last 10 years has gone down a spiral with PC gaming,and most of that is down to PC gamers with zero expectations.

[Ttaskmaster]

5.)A feature is only a feature if you need it.

And again, motherboards come with a whole load of gubbins *I* don't want and won't ever need, but still have to pay for.

6.)Last time I checked most people's income does not go up 75% in three years.

Depends if they got into Bitcoin...
But either way, the price is whatever the market will bear.

7.)My relatively expensive aluminium case,does not have a window and neither was there an option for one,so all the lights will be in a dark case,hence I won't see it.

Then you need to buy a new case as well!!

12.)Its up to the consumer to dictate what you want,not what the company wants otherwise you get trapped in the previous point.

Clearly we all want the RGB...

Also,my utter contempt of RGB on everything started between 15 and 35!!

That actually makes me feel old... RGB stuff has been cool since at least the 70s, even if real world tech didn't exist for it.

Also regarding modularity - why not?? I think it would be awesome if it went that way,as you could plug in the functionality you want.

Because that's now another point of design complexity they can use to overcharge, surely?
Yes, your basic board will now only be £300, but any additional modules you want will be £100 each on top... and so on.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

snip

Nah,its apologist on forums who excuse make,since computing companies are their gods.



20% increase over 4 years.


4 years with similar card performance under £300. Years ago we could overclock on a cheap board and any CPU.

We had 4C/8T CPUs under £200 years ago.

When Crysis came out we move from the X1950XTX to the 8800GT at under £200 in one year.

Hardware enthuaists on forums are more worried about religiously defending ridiculous price increases for hardware,which means everything has slowed down,and would rather try to attack other PC enthusiasts instead,since they want to desperately pay companies with owe them nothing more for the same thing.

For most gamers out there performance has stagnated for the last 4 years,and will continue to stagnate because in the realworld,card sales are down,PC sales are down,and consoles have done very well for themselves despite what the PCMR apologists say,since they have zero expectations anymore.

As more and more gamers get pushed out the PC becomes less of a priority. I told you this would happen.

People argued with me about that saying I was wrong - they are as usual wrong.

If the midrange and low end slows down,it screws PC gaming over. Its about numbers not how much you shout about your PCMR rig.

The worst thing is the same excuse makers would shouting all over the internet if Tesco raised prices by 50% to 100% over a few years,or petrol went up the same,or literally 99% of everything else.

Maybe the government can hire the PR firms computing companies use,and see if they can double our tax rates - it might actually work.

Its the same with people just trying to argue with me about phones and the utter silence when what I said turned out to be true.

When I mentioned Intel locking out overclocking,etc it would slow down jumps and jack up prices -no one agreed,and years later it happened. Now people are suddenly amazed about Ryzen.

The same about AMD and Nvidia changing tiers and renaming stuff - a friend in the real world pointed that,and guess what look at card prices in the last few years,and the performance jumps under £300.

I said it would slow down performance jumps in lower tiers ,and the excuse makers said stop talking rubbish.

Oh wait,it has slowed down.

Its a joke when a £400 console has as much GPU performance as the fastest sub £300 card,and that was even before mining.

All the people who tried to argue and mock me are the ones who ended up wrong.

The point is I am the ones laughing at you all,since you are paying more and more for less and less.

All you are doing is buying a CEO another Porsche.

So think about that everytime you make an argument for increased pricing and you are stuck at work wishing you could go home early.

[Zak33]

I admit to being unclear.....

do you not like RGB, CAT?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I admit to being unclear.....

do you not like RGB, CAT?

Read the thread??



OK,then TLDR.

I hate price escalations in the last couple of years for PC gaming due to feature padding,which adds zero performance,and means less people upgrade. One of them is RGB,which was akin to the MP race in compact cameras,which apparently nobody really wanted. Camera enthusiasts said they wanted it. RL,nobody cared. If people cared that much all the consoles would be RGB as standard. They are not.

This by extension leads to consoles catching up,which means increasingly consoles are considered lead dev platforms for games. Confirmed by the financials of more and more gaming companies.

Then OFC you got standard no-expectation enthusiasts then making apologies for all this.

Now,look what has happened to PC - mobile games and consoles tended to be more "games as an on-going service model" and now its moving more and more to PC. The lovely microtransactions.

That by extension also leads to PC games having worse controls,and less customisations,since PC ports and benchmarks tend to be hack jobs:

https://www.gamersnexus.net/game-ben...ameworks-tests

So yes I don't like RGB since it is indicative of where PC and PC gaming seems to heading. All flash and no action!

Oh and one more thing:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Look at the more expensive,GTX1070 against the GTX970. Even after two years it barely matched the GTX970 numbers and at launch the GTX970 was in the top three and the GTX1070 at its highest share is 11. The GTX1070 has sold less cards I suspect.

Look at the top ten cards on Steam - GTX750 to GTX1060/GTX970 level.

The GTX970 was in the top 3,3 years ago.

That is what price escalation leads to - performance stagnation.



That is the four years before the GTX970. The GTX570 and HD7870 had similar performance,so at least a doubling under £300.

Now its more like 20% it appears.



But when has the PCMR ever cared about numbers or facts,that went out the window years ago.

All this price escalation,and feature padding has lead to all of this. Unles you think paying 75% more for a similar spec motherboard with tarted up metal highlights really is something normal.

[Zak33]

so you don't like RGB?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

so you don't like RGB?

I post on OcUK and the odd US forum dude,just saying it won't work but I can understand vested interests and all that!

If you have issues with the text being too small,this is a great value 32 monitor:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/315-...t-hdmi-dvi-vga

[Ttaskmaster]

Wow.... the whole world brought to its knees just from a few flashy lights added on.....

Oh well....


[goes back to playing with pritty pritty lights]

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Wow.... the whole world brought to its knees just from a few flashy lights added on.....

Oh well....


[goes back to playing with pritty pritty lights]

But when has the PCMR ever cared about numbers or facts,that went out the window years ago.

So I am still waiting for your explanation(and your mates) why prices have gone up and performance has stagnated.

Its all quips,snark and no evidence. Thanks for proving the point.

Companies are just laughing at all of you - 20% in 4 years as opposed to 100% in the previous 4 years,and all you can do is try and do that?

I don't think any of you understand what cosmetic padding is,especially when its been done elsewhere to sell subpar products.

This is going to be so much fun to refer back to in a few years time. It was the same snark that tried to bury all of it,and in the end it bite all of you back.

PC enthuisiasts.....PC enthusiasts never learn.

[peterb]

So I am still waiting for your explanation(and your mates) why prices have gone up and performance has stagnated.

Its all quips,snark and no evidence. Thanks for proving the point.

Companies are just laughing at all of you - 20% in 4 years as opposed to 100% in the previous 4 years,and all you can do is try and do that?

I don't think any of you understand what cosmetic padding is,especially when its been done elsewhere to sell subpar products.

This is going to be so much fun to refer back to in a few years time. It was the same snark that tried to bury all of it,and in the end it bit all of you back.

Well unless ‘Ttaskmaster and his mates’ are in the motherboard manufacturing business, I think you’ll have a long time waiting for a definitive explanation. Of course he may have an opinion, which will probably be as valid as yours -unless you are in the motherboard manufacturing business?

[Ttaskmaster]

So I am still waiting for your explanation(and your mates) why prices have gone up and performance has stagnated.

I didn't realise you asked me for one... I merely remarked that I like RGB and so am getting what I want (mostly) and don't have to try and cobble together a half-assed version of it my own self. Didn't realise I was bringing down the whole industry with it....

Beyond that, I assume prices just go up to stupid levels because that's what they usually do, in all walks of life.

I don't think any of you understand what cosmetic padding is,especially when its been done elsewhere to sell subpar products.

Like everything... because most people want their stuff to look nice as well as to work.

Beyond that, I really don't give a monkey's, since I cannot afford even mid-range PC Enthusiast kit any more than I can afford a Bugatti Veyron. I'm delighted for you, that you are at the absolute pinnacle of technology and rich enough to complain about how it's not much higher performance than my pile of junk... but since that's well out of my league to begin with and I can still play all the games I want, I fail to see what difference it makes.

Sorry for bringing your world down, and everything.....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well unless ‘Ttaskmaster and his mates’ are in the motherboard manufacturing business, I think you’ll have a long time waiting for a definitive explanation. Of course he may have an opinion, which will probably be as valid as yours -unless you are in the motherboard manufacturing business?

Thats the thing if RGB was so important for the average gamer,every mainsteam console would have it. Most TVs don't have it. Most phones don't have it.

Other devices?? Most cameras don't have it. Most hifi does not have it. How many cars have RGB as standard??

Chairs??

Is Apple putting RGB on their products??

Most things apparently don't need RGB to sell them,etc.

None of them do,so I think its more a case of companies advertising "a feature" a lot and people thinking they want it.

Also,its the last 5 to 7 years. People have made comments on price padding,slowing down improvements,etc and it always gets the same sort of excuses by PC enthusiasts. Like I said a 75% increase for one specific Gigabyte motherboard I was looking at,over the Haswell version for example,and the Skylake showed a massive jump,and the essentially similar Kaby Lake and CFL versions jacked the price up a bit more. Z170/Z270/Z370 are the same chipset and same socket.

The same with HDDs,graphics cards. Everytime it seems to be a head in the sand attitude. There is something else which show quick price increases - RAM. Almost everytime its happened,has happened due to some kind of price fixing. China is now investigating that,and so on.

Thats another thing - I tend to notice this more,as I tend to help out in the RL and on forums with more sub £1000 builds,etc and its incredibly interesting to see what relative performance you can get. If you are spending loads,sure nice improvements but a lot of people are on relatively fixed budgets and you can see the effect this all has,especially considering how much of a bargain hunter I am.The problem is that the excuses have lead to a massive stagnation - the facts speak for themselves. I said this was happening years and years ago.

The exact same thing happened with microtransactions,people made excuses for them and now its become a real issue.

Sure if all you do is buy £400+ cards and expensive rigs in general its great. But PC games are not going to be based on those people,its the median or average which is important,and that has not drastically improved in the last few years.

But my attitude is PC gamers if they want to put their head in the sand,they can reap what they sow,and pat themselves on the back for it.

It was never the case maybe 10 years ago,when gamers were far more criticial of tech than they are now and games in general,and I can remember that even here. Hence why we had cards like the 8800GT,and CPUs like the Core2. Companies knew they had to work hard to get people to upgrade,but if people have low standards,then guess what so do companies?? They spend the minimum then.

Look what happened when one company decided to actually be agressive to get more customers,we had a sudden 50% increase in core count under £200.

That is because AMD wanted more sales - if AMD had enough sales with Bulldozer,and people had not moaned about performance and bought less of them they would never had bothered.

Edit!!

But I will have to accept if this is what the market really wants,its the way it will go. A shame though.

However,I am not going to get ripped off paying beyond the odds for pointless bling,so I will just use what I have longer and they can find an easier "customer".

75% more for some metal highlights,just wow! Triple price RAM!!

But I can have lots of flashing lights in my PC,even though unlike me most people dump their PC under the desk.

[Xlucine]

...Years ago we could overclock on a cheap board and any CPU.

We had 4C/8T CPUs under £200 years ago...

Consider the following:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-...65w-cpu-retail
https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer...x-motherboards

4c/8t for <£140, and a motherboard that supports overclocking for £70 (even less if you got for the super value ones)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Consider the following:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-...65w-cpu-retail
https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer...x-motherboards

4c/8t for <£140, and a motherboard that supports overclocking for £70 (even less if you got for the super value ones)

I know(done a similar build spec for someone) but it shows you how much things went south after Intel starting blocking off overclocking which people just meakly accepted,and then finally locked out the Xeon E3 CPUs out of consumer chipsets with Skylake. I still remember,you could get something like a Core i3 530 and a £60 motherboard and have a decent overclockable cheapo system,and then going back to the unlockable Athlon II X3s,etc.

The problem is I could build a Xeon E3 1230 V3,motherboard and 8GB~16GB of DDR3 for less,due to the price escalation in RAM,and even in motherboards,as people seem to justify price padding with useless features which just make things more expensive.

Review sites are more worried about boasting about idiotic RAM speeds,than actually commenting on how much this price fixing is pushing up build costs.

The same goes with the Xeon E3 CPUs - I was one of the first to actually talk about them on UK forums. Did loads of builds with them.

How many review sites even seemed to be aware of them?? Zilch. The advantage is you could just get a cheaper motherboard and whack one in and have a solid CPU which would give a few years of service.

All they were doing was selling K series CPUs with all the expensive stuff on the side which bumped pricing up. The same goes with the Athlon II X3s,again just mostly ignored. I did loads of those builds too.

So the people I knew got solid great value PCs,which have lasted yonks.

People just accepted and it took for AMD to really want to go after Intel's marketshare to really change things. If they had decided to just slightly nudge Intel's marketshare it would have all stayed the same.

Plus TBH,the Intel side still is poorly priced when it comes to motherboards. The other problem is RAM pricing has gone to silly levels:

https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/Corsa...context=search

An example of a RAM set a mate has he bought in 2H 2016. 2X to 2.5X increase from the end of 2016.

That Ryzen 5 1400 budget system would easily loose the RX570 it had in it,and probably only know have a GT1030,due to the price escalation in cards and RAM.

I was quite lucky to manage to scour some 2933MHZ memory for one or two Ryzen builds,people asked me to help with soon after it released.

The problem is with newer builds,more and more of the builds are making do with slower RAM,and I have seen people even using single slower DIMMs.

This is the reality I am seeing in the real world with more and more sub £1000 gaming builds.

I mean the market with cards,is just pathetic - how the heck have we come to the point of going from a GTX570 to a GTX970,etc to going from a GTX970/R9 290 to a RX480/GTX1060 over similar time periods??

Its easy,nobody ever questions anything anymore,so why bother?

There are people on forums spending £900 on GTX1080TI cards for gaming not mining,even though they are £200 to £300 more than they should be,so what message does this send to AMD/Nvidia for the next gen pricing??

For instance,looking at builds I have helped with now,they are noticeably slower than say 12 months ago for similar money.

Then when the R9 290 4GB dropped to well under £200 in 2015,you could do a Xeon E3 build with that card,and it was great value. But thats the thing,I have helped so many with builds,I remember these trends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfkp9CZfBBM&t=8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am1sntrRXK8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymIhSnBOrEA&t=17s

Look at Hardware Unboxed,they even noticed pricing is just not good for lots of stuff now,and its especially bad for Intel stuff,and they are one of the few channels to say,don't bother building a gaming PC now.

The others are still just pushing ultra speed DDR4 and MOAR RGB,and then justifying it all for some weird reason,since PCMR would rather bury their head in the sand.

You only have to look at people like Buildzoid,and some of the shockers they have come up with when they look at motherboards. Companies seem more worried about appearance it seems. Instead of calling out companies,for doing that,well people CBA.

[Millennium]

I don't think that the price increases relative to fairly slow(er) performance increases can likely be attributed to lots of things, including the declines in the PC desktop space (outside of enthusiast, though, as far as I know) causing manufacturers who would previously make most of their money from OEM sales to the likes of Dell and HP now have to make their retail products look and feel more 'premium' to bulk out the enthusiast / retail space. I also suspect there's some economics and price fixing at play.
What we've seen play out in the GPU market in terms of diminished performance increases per generation, and ever increasing prices, over the last 4 + years will be coming and has already come to the likes of motherboards and even PSUs. Fortunately, as mentioned earlier in this thread, monitors (all I need - phew!) aren't really affected yet.

It's only a matter of time until a 4k capable 60fps HDR console comes out cheaply with a good ecosystem and people just switch over. These things are basically almost PCs now already. That's my personal belief and I think maybe manufacturers see the writing on the wall too and are milking it in terms of prices and 'feature' differentiation.

[Zak33]

ok CAT....you have now, officially, and with no doubt, made your point.

You may now walk away from the RGB debate.

we utterly understand your despisal of the price rises, the colours and flashing light price hikes and the cost of upgrades.

This subject may now be left to .... not flash.