Is the Current GPU Shortage Damaging PC Gaming?

[Pocahawtness]

Just wondering what people think about the shortage...

[tonimark]

Originally posted by ｢C❤️A｣ Pocahawtness:

Just wondering what people think about the shortage...

for time being you most of budget builders like me are locked out of gaming and unable to play power titles like cyberpunk 2077 MSFS 2020 and the new battlefield 2032 (and yes even older games from 2016+ can't run!)in other words we are not allowed to game unless we experience worse than previous year graphics (something horrible)(i tried running an older title and a newer one turns out older titles had better graphics in medium settings like higher titles which have worse graphics and performance in lower settings) combined with poor fps performance for higher end they were forced to buy a budget GPU and lost futureproofness that they would plan to get now their newer graphics card with suck much sooner thanks to shortage

[tonimark]

Originally posted by ｢C❤️A｣ Pocahawtness:

Just wondering what people think about the shortage...

as a mention PC gaming is dying while people are moving from customs to prebuilds and dealing with extra charges upgrades (talking about buy extra 8gb ram) (and older CPUs(my country sells cpus from 2014 rather 2019) (and extra storage) others moved to consoles and cloud gaming

[Sassanid]

I think it does. Think about how many of us are spending more time at home these days due to the covid plandemic, and working remotely a lot more than before, so obviously there's a high demand for hardware (new GPUs) which in turn affects games sales because again, we're spending more time at home these days.

I'm sure a lot fo people are holding off on buying certain games and upgrading simply due to the fact that their aging GPUs just can't keep up any more.

I've been going strong on my water cooled 1080ti and it's nearing the end of its life but thanks to just recently upgrading all my other components to top grade stuff like a 10700k, faster ram,etc, I feel like I'll get a little more juice out of my 1080ti for at least another year or two, hopefully by which time GPU prices will return to normal.

[nullable]

Define damage.

People being unhappy?

Lost revenues?

Switching to consoles?

I mean people who want to upgrade are inconvenienced. But anyone running hardware that was on the verge of obsolescence in 2020 and can't run games being released in 2021 arguably don't make up a cash cow demographic. And even then, there's still hundreds of games being released they can run, as well as older titles. They have options.

There might be a bit of a dip in the short term. But once shortages end I expect it will hardly register. A lot of people will just ride it out and make due with what they've got.

[Illusion of Progress]

Damaging? Depends what you mean. PC gaming is still growing AFAIK overall but this could certainly have impacts on things regardless of that, yes.

The impacts could range from things like less people being able to comfortably play some games (and thus less games sales) to developers targeting less hardware to offset this. How much we see of either depends on how long this lasts. With rising MSRP for the last few generations as it was, enough people were already putting off upgrades to wait for larger jumps, so the average is pretty old and a bit lower (relatively) before this whole situation even got going.

The mid-range and below isn't being refreshed at all. People are being priced down/more out by all of this. Don't be mistaken by thinking that because nVidia and AMD are making bank due to a much larger volume of overpriced high end cards that this reflects the health or progress of the GPU market for gaming.

When most people get priced out of moving up, more and more games will have a lower floor for requirements as a result. We've... honestly already been seeing this for a while now IMO, and I'd argue it's part of what has been contributing to the growth of PC gaming. The big cash cows aren't always necessarily triple A games anymore.

[jphendren]

If the GPU shortage doesn't come to end, I would think that it would impact game and software sales. I am lucky that I had just built a new PC right before covid happened, so I'm okay for a few years most likely. BUT, if these prices don't return to normal by the time I need new components, I don't think I would be likely to pay more than my whole PC cost just for a GPU.

[Snow]

It actually helps a lot, as games receive better optimisation.

[carl]

One of the few good things about this shortage are that youtubers are revisiting older GPUs and testing them with newer titles. It might help those on older hardware on their game purchase decisions.

[tigerxs1]

wouldnt say a shortage,there just purchased and resold/overpriced.you only need the best gpu if you want the best advantage

[GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™]

Get in the que on EVGA website. I just purchased a rtx3060 because it was finally my turn. I've been waiting forever. MSRP baby $399!!!
I've been waiting since December so in my case it was about a six month wait. Much better than getting scalped that's for sure.

[tiger305]

yes, gpu shortage is harming pc gaming ... I've been wanting to upgrade gpu
and monitor , but can't find gpu ( I'm on evgas notify list for 6 gpus) but still waiting.
Also, why buy new monitor when my gpu can't run new games over 1080p...

So, maybe within a year , might start looking at new games and monitor after new gpu.

Still can't get into consoles though...

[Sassanid]

Originally posted by Snow:

It actually helps a lot, as games receive better optimisation.

In an alternate universe, yes, but on planet Earth, the latest AAA games are still being released buggy on PC. GPU shortage has made zero difference or given devs zero extra motivation to optimize better. Not that I've seen anyway.

Resident Evil Village being a prime example.

[Illusion of Progress]

What's wrong with Village (haven't played it)? I know Resident Evil 7, 2 2019, and 3 2020 all ran fine on even less than minimum requirements on the CPU side, but they did ideally want a lot of VRAM, and had a tendency to suffer a hiccup here and there when streaming assets in. Probably only felt if you were aiming for 144 FPS+ and any little drop bothered you though (when playing at 60 FPS, the drops barely register). That, or Minecraft has hardened to me in that regard (it's one of the most inconsistent performing titles out there). But, it's sort of hand in hand that higher frame rates need more system power (and CPU) behind it.

Not sure if Village is even running on the same version of the engine or what other differences it has going on though.

[Vulkan]

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

What's wrong with Village (haven't played it)? I know Resident Evil 7, 2 2019, and 3 2020 all ran fine on even less than minimum requirements on the CPU side, but they did ideally want a lot of VRAM, and had a tendency to suffer a hiccup here and there when streaming assets in. Probably only felt if you were aiming for 144 FPS+ and any little drop bothered you though (when playing at 60 FPS, the drops barely register). That, or Minecraft has hardened to me in that regard (it's one of the most inconsistent performing titles out there). But, it's sort of hand in hand that higher frame rates need more system power (and CPU) behind it.

Not sure if Village is even running on the same version of the engine or what other differences it has going on though.

i highly recommend you watch digital foundry's tech breakdown of the pc port for re village. spoiler alert the port is awful and ive personally experienced all the issues they bought up in their analysis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu61HMZPEXg

such a shame as re 2 remake ,re 3 remake and re 7 all ran beautifully while using dx11 on the same engine . revillage is locked to dx12 which is problematic seeing as the re engine is known to run considerably worst when using dx12 compared to dx11 as seen in the previous titles i mentioned.

[Illusion of Progress]

Ah, that's a shame. And yeah, I was still under Windows 7 during my time With Resident Evil 2 and it was said to run better under DirectX 11 (though, to be fair, it had other issues I forgot to mention, namely with nVidia hardware/drivers, like very dark image reproduction and a certain optional cutscene causing a full Black display). I remember hearing Resident Evil 3 did fine under either DirectX version but haven't tried it much in DirectX 12 myself yet.

Want to get Village some day but that's a shame if it's a poor port. Capcom was seemingly doing okay with those.