We are witnessing a lost generation of graphics cards here. Having followed the industry for
20 years, looking back at all those generations, each leaves behind a legacy of some sort-
a story they can be summarised with. It’s normally something as simple as ‘one company’s
products were better than the other, that generation’. Maybe one side had a reputation
for being power-hungry, or hot. Or noisy. Or maybe one company released their cards
long before the other did. But this? What we’re experiencing here is
unprecedented! The products themselves are actually rather good. Raytracing has finally
arrived, and is supported by EVERY card released so far this generation! It SHOULD be a reason
to rejoice- yet instead, the market has never been more dire. No one can afford a card,
with there being a good £500 mark-up on every card in existence. Normally, when this happens
to a generation of products, you can just buy a previous-gen card, and for a heavy discount.
But no! Those have also been immensely marked up. We’re used to prices dropping every
year, but the reverse is happening! There’s no escape! Right now, all you can do is to
hold onto your existing graphics card, and to pray it doesn’t fail on you.
And there’s no end in sight to this situation. It seems utterly hopeless, and if you’re
like me, you’re losing interest in following the hardware scene because of it.
So come, children. Sit down and let me tell you a story from long, long ago. It’s not…
quite the same as what’s happening now, but there’s a happy ending, and it gives
me hope the same will happen this time! Eventually.
Long ago, PCs used to only have one core! One!!! What can you get done with just one
core? Well, people found a way of getting by. Then Intel released their dual core CPUs.
But they weren’t proper dual cores. They were just 2 CPUs strapped together with glue.
It didn’t count. But AMD then launched their X2 series. This -at the time- was AMD’s
greatest moment of triumph! I wanted one of these X2 processors, but AMD-
can you believe- sold these things at high prices. Some were as high as $1,000! And even
the cheapest was about £200. Which was still beyond what I could afford!
Intel responded with the Core 2 Duo. And I couldn’t believe it- these were faster,
more efficient and cheaper than AMD’s X2 processors were! Over night, prices were slashed.
And I ended up getting a Core 2 Duo. It got me through University. I loved that thing.
As a side-note, just a year after this, Intel rolled out a quad core CPU, called the Q6600.
4 cores, in an era when most people had 1! Despite Intel’s aggressive ‘moar cores’
mantra, gamers would be better off saving the money and getting a better graphics card
instead rather than buying into Intel’s aggressive shill marketing blah blah oh wait,
sorry, wrong company. But yeah. At the rate things were progressing
back then, no wonder I was expecting 8 and 16 core CPUs to be out within just a matter
of years. But alas, that didn’t happen. In short: Intel pulled ahead again with the
Core 2 Duo series, and AMD couldn’t catch up again. Sure, for a while, AMD’s X2s competed
with aggressive price-cuts and higher clocked components, but slowly and surely, Intel’s
superior products took hold of the market. Each new generation of AMD CPUs lost them
ground, while Intel’s only got better and better. You might have heard of Intel’s
Core i-series… a name they’re still using to this day! Yeah, that was another big leap
for CPU performance. But this is where the story really got sad
for AMD. They couldn’t hope to compete with the i7’s in the conventional way. So they
designed BULLDOZER, which would combat Intel by offering MOAR CORES! But it failed, hard.
In a best-case scenario, using very specific software, an 8 core AMD cpu could match a
4 core intel one. But most of the time? It would suck, and get out-performed by an i5!
Because Bulldozer’s single core performance was ATROCIOUS. We’re not talking a few percent
worse here- we’re talking terrible. Worse than AMD’s previous-generations of CPUs.
It was at this point that I lost interest in the CPU market. I’ve never been some
one to buy a new PC every generation, but I realised I kept up with the latest products
because I enjoyed the story. The drama, and the competition. I used to excitedly tune
in for each new product release, as though it was a new episode of a TV series I enjoyed.
But when Intel had SUCH an advantage, all this lost its appeal to me. Mid-range was
£150, and you got 4 cores. High-end was 4 cores with hyperthreading, for about £220.
And this would repeat. Every. Single. Generation. Year after year. When it was my time to upgrade,
I bought an i7, then tuned out from the CPU market to enjoy my purchase. Because following
the CPU market had become boring.
THIS is how I feel about the graphics card market today. The situation is different in
that both companies still have decent products. And yet, I can’t think of a generation I’ve
cared less about. Simply because they aren’t available, and certainly not at the prices
they should be at. And this has been enough to drain any interest I have in it. As an
observer, I didn’t think it would matter about that! I can still read the reviews,
imagine how good they’d be at the price they should have been and so on. But I can’t
imagine these cards being available at the prices they should be at. And trying to, it
feels like I’m living in a fantasy land. So I’ve accepted that all graphics cards
today are unreasonably expensive. And for some reason, that really matters to me. I
guess it means I can’t toy with the idea of upgrading my second rig with a cheap new
card. Or to suggest stuff to friends who have been looking to upgrade. All those little
opportunities used to excite me, even if I didn’t end up doing anything with them.
But with the market the way it is right now, these opportunities don’t even exist. The
market, despite having some awesome products… has become boring.
Maybe I’m getting older. Maybe I’ve ‘outgrown’ computer hardware! Maybe my fascination with
it for all those years was just a flash in the pan that I can never hope to rekindle.
Or maybe, it is just boring.
Let’s return to the CPU story. AMD sucked, Intel was releasing 4 core CPUs for the same
price, every generation. Then they started to release 6 core CPUs. 8! And even 10. But
did this lower prices? No! They simply released for higher and higher. $1,000! $2,000! And
the price of the consumer products didn’t budge an inch.
And worse still- any hope of AMD possibly catching up now had well and truly disappeared.
If they couldn’t compete with Intel’s 4 core offerings, what hope was there of them
beating their 6 or 8 core CPUs? Intel could drop the prices whenever they wanted, crushing
AMD in an instant.
And then, in 2016, Ryzen was announced. Whisperings that its 8 cores could rival Intel’s 8 cores!
What would the price be? I can’t find the forum posts to support this now, but from
what I remember, nobody expected Ryzen to be AS competitive, nor as cheap, as it ended
up being. People expected AMD to undercut Intel’s prices… but not by a lot. I think
$500 for an 8 core CPU would have been about as good as anybody was hoping for, and even
that sounded too good to be true.
But we all know what happened, don’t we. 8 core Ryzens could be had for as little as
$330. And instead of a 4-core i5, we could now get a 12-thread Ryzen for the same price.
Per core, it might not have been quite as fast. But it was fast enough. Ryzen revolutionised
the CPU market overnight. But for me, its repercussions lasted for years. I suddenly
found myself excited about CPUs again! I had forgotten how exciting it was to follow new,
competitive products and exciting new architectures! And not only the Ryzen ones- I suddenly found
the story leading up to that point to be more exciting than it had been before. And I was
excited for the future. My love of the CPU market had been rekindled.
And you know what I have to thank for all of that? I thank Bulldozer. I thank the stagnation.
I thank those years where my interest in CPUs completely vanished, as I accepted that AMD
would never be competitive again. My expectations had been set back to 0, only to be blown wide
open by Ryzen again. You couldn’t have written a more exciting comeback story if you had
tried. And I have had hundreds of hours of fun, simply looking up reviews and getting
excited for the story since.
That’s what I HOPE we have to look forward to with the graphics card market. At some
point. Right now, it feels hopeless. There’s no end in sight to the chip shortages, the
scalping, the $1,000+ midrange cards. It’s a shocking display. But that’ll only make
the comeback all the more exciting.
IF it ever happens.