great_big_abyss
Well-known member
Arguably, the most important feature of a PC is that it just works, and that it performs all the tasks that are demanded of it, whether those demands are light like running MS Office apps and media consumption, or heavy, like AAA gaming titles. For non-PC-enthusiasts, i.e. those people who just want to game or work, they don't want to be bothered with measuring the performance of their PC. They just want everything to work. Then there are the PC enthusiasts - people (most of here on this forum) who take some kind of perverse pleasure in maximizing performance, or efficiency, or 'bang for the buck'. They spend hours poring over articles and benchmark results, debating endlessly with their peers about whether 3600MHz DDR4 RAM is worth the price bump over 3400MHz DDR4. Those enthusiasts with deep pockets will always try to have the latest and greatest. They'll be logged in to their favorite retailer's site waiting for the release on the newest gen of powerful graphics card, hoping to be one of the lucky few who snag a limited first day release, and they'll be damned what it costs them. They WANT that RTX3090, no matter the cost. Others, perhaps less well heeled, but still enthusiastic, will still want the latest and greatest, but are willing to wait until the madness dies down, prices stabilize, and they can get that RTX3080 or even RTX3070 (because don't you know it's 90% of the performance at 70% of the price?!?) at a relative bargain compared to inflated launch day prices.
Then there are those enthusiasts who don't have the budget to play at the high end of the current generation, but we still enjoy tinkering, and maximizing PC performance. We shop for gently used, almost new high end components, or even mid-range new stuff. Raw performance is less important, however being able to maintain a desired frame rate at a given resolution is the name of game. It's all about maximizing the experience of PC (gaming), while minimizing the cost. Don't get me wrong, it's still expensive. A used high end video card can cost as much as an entire console. The trick is to spend money on components that will help the experience, and not spend money on those components that won't. The excitement comes from knowing which components are required to keep your PC funning smoothly and reliably, in order to perform the tasks that are demanded of it.
Personally, I acquired my Z77 platform 8 years ago in 2012. I bought a new Z77 motherboard, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and an i5 3570K processor. A few months later, somebody on HWC was selling an i7 3770K. I wanted it. Did I need it? No. The 3770K was the highest end consumer grade processor available (not including the 'extreme' family of Intel CPU's - but those are more Prosumer). My i5 was perfectly adequate at the time. Yet I wanted the best. And seeing as it was a few month old used processor, the i7 came at a pretty good discount from buying new. I even managed to recoup most of my investment by selling the i5 3570K to somebody who might have been upgrading from an i3, or completely changing their platform on the cheap. It turns out that wanting to have 'the best' back then was the key to my current upgrade path. Eight years later, my 3770K is still going strong. It may not be the overpowered, underutilized CPU that it was 8 years ago, merely falling under the 'adequate' category by today's standards. But it still works. It still runs everything I want it to. More importantly, my CPU doesn't seem to be acting as a bottleneck to my GPU, ensuring that my hardware as a whole is working harmoniously, and I'm not needlessly spending money in one area while neglecting another - more on this later.
Graphics Cards, are another story completely. Boy oh Boy has their performance been advanced in the last few years. And so have their prices. 8-10 years ago I was playing in the mid-high end. Back then a GTX680 was the highest end single GPU graphics card money could buy. For $500, one could attain greatness. I bought a slightly used GTX680 for $400 while it was still current and briefly experienced greatness. Then the 7XX series came about and changed everything. Nvidia started launching cards like the Titan and the GTX780Ti, which stomped all over the playground and ate the GTX680 (and subsequently renamed GTX770)'s lunch money. For some reason, the price of the high end video cards started inflating astronomically. The new high end Titan was priced at a staggering $1000. The new, slightly less powerful (but only in some ways - compute) but no less spectacular GTX780Ti was priced almost as high. Generation after generation of high end video cards were released, all at ever increasing prices. These days, the absolute high end of graphics cards, the RTX3090, is priced at an astronomical $1500. US. Before store markups (which are huge, due to high demand). What's unfortunate about this is that the previously affordable midrange cards have kept up with their big brothers. Where a decade ago, one could purchase a decent mid-range card like a GTX560 or GTX660 for a couple of bills, nowadays, in order to get into the NEW mid-range graphics card market, you're spending at least double or triple that amount.
Graphics cards are likely the components inside a PC that need to be replaced the most. Graphic card technology is advancing at an astonishing rate, and game design is following suit. If you WANT to run AAA titles at 4K 60FPS, or even 1440P at 144hz, Ultra settings, you basically need to be at the high end of the video card market all the time. When you play with mid-range cards and current games, well, you can either run 1080P at high FPS, 1440P at medium FPS, or 4K at low FPS. Graphics cards are rendered obsolete quite quickly by the standards of every other PC component. My GTX960, which 4 years ago was a very decent card, capable of maintaining high framerates in every game at 1080P, is considered old and underpowered by today's standards. It can't keep up with modern games anymore. You either need to lower in-game settings to minimum or medium at best, or expect frame rates to suffer. And forget about running any kind of VR game on a GTX960. The Framerates will be so low as to be unplayable. Therefore, even though my current CPU architecture and platform is completely capable, the video card is the one component that needed replacing.
Then there are those enthusiasts who don't have the budget to play at the high end of the current generation, but we still enjoy tinkering, and maximizing PC performance. We shop for gently used, almost new high end components, or even mid-range new stuff. Raw performance is less important, however being able to maintain a desired frame rate at a given resolution is the name of game. It's all about maximizing the experience of PC (gaming), while minimizing the cost. Don't get me wrong, it's still expensive. A used high end video card can cost as much as an entire console. The trick is to spend money on components that will help the experience, and not spend money on those components that won't. The excitement comes from knowing which components are required to keep your PC funning smoothly and reliably, in order to perform the tasks that are demanded of it.
Personally, I acquired my Z77 platform 8 years ago in 2012. I bought a new Z77 motherboard, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and an i5 3570K processor. A few months later, somebody on HWC was selling an i7 3770K. I wanted it. Did I need it? No. The 3770K was the highest end consumer grade processor available (not including the 'extreme' family of Intel CPU's - but those are more Prosumer). My i5 was perfectly adequate at the time. Yet I wanted the best. And seeing as it was a few month old used processor, the i7 came at a pretty good discount from buying new. I even managed to recoup most of my investment by selling the i5 3570K to somebody who might have been upgrading from an i3, or completely changing their platform on the cheap. It turns out that wanting to have 'the best' back then was the key to my current upgrade path. Eight years later, my 3770K is still going strong. It may not be the overpowered, underutilized CPU that it was 8 years ago, merely falling under the 'adequate' category by today's standards. But it still works. It still runs everything I want it to. More importantly, my CPU doesn't seem to be acting as a bottleneck to my GPU, ensuring that my hardware as a whole is working harmoniously, and I'm not needlessly spending money in one area while neglecting another - more on this later.
Graphics Cards, are another story completely. Boy oh Boy has their performance been advanced in the last few years. And so have their prices. 8-10 years ago I was playing in the mid-high end. Back then a GTX680 was the highest end single GPU graphics card money could buy. For $500, one could attain greatness. I bought a slightly used GTX680 for $400 while it was still current and briefly experienced greatness. Then the 7XX series came about and changed everything. Nvidia started launching cards like the Titan and the GTX780Ti, which stomped all over the playground and ate the GTX680 (and subsequently renamed GTX770)'s lunch money. For some reason, the price of the high end video cards started inflating astronomically. The new high end Titan was priced at a staggering $1000. The new, slightly less powerful (but only in some ways - compute) but no less spectacular GTX780Ti was priced almost as high. Generation after generation of high end video cards were released, all at ever increasing prices. These days, the absolute high end of graphics cards, the RTX3090, is priced at an astronomical $1500. US. Before store markups (which are huge, due to high demand). What's unfortunate about this is that the previously affordable midrange cards have kept up with their big brothers. Where a decade ago, one could purchase a decent mid-range card like a GTX560 or GTX660 for a couple of bills, nowadays, in order to get into the NEW mid-range graphics card market, you're spending at least double or triple that amount.
Graphics cards are likely the components inside a PC that need to be replaced the most. Graphic card technology is advancing at an astonishing rate, and game design is following suit. If you WANT to run AAA titles at 4K 60FPS, or even 1440P at 144hz, Ultra settings, you basically need to be at the high end of the video card market all the time. When you play with mid-range cards and current games, well, you can either run 1080P at high FPS, 1440P at medium FPS, or 4K at low FPS. Graphics cards are rendered obsolete quite quickly by the standards of every other PC component. My GTX960, which 4 years ago was a very decent card, capable of maintaining high framerates in every game at 1080P, is considered old and underpowered by today's standards. It can't keep up with modern games anymore. You either need to lower in-game settings to minimum or medium at best, or expect frame rates to suffer. And forget about running any kind of VR game on a GTX960. The Framerates will be so low as to be unplayable. Therefore, even though my current CPU architecture and platform is completely capable, the video card is the one component that needed replacing.