În timp ce ne aflăm în prăpastia unei noi generații de plăci grafice de la Nvidia și AMD, o discuție familiară a luat rădăcină online – merită încă cumpărată generația anterioară de GPU-uri atunci când ceva mai nou, mai strălucitor și mai puternic apare la orizont?
Pot să vă clarific asta: da.
Argumentul rămâne același ca și pentru ultimele versiuni generaționale – că este inutil să cumpărați un produs pe punctul de a deveni „învechit” și de multe ori prețurile nu scad suficient pentru a-l face să merite banii. Acolo is logica acestui argument, dar nu reușește să ia în considerare o problemă uriașă: piața GPU-urilor nu a urmat logica de mult timp.
Cel puțin nu în modurile care contează. Da, în anii trecuti puteai să mergi la magazinul tău local de calculatoare și să iei o nouă placă grafică cu relativ ușurință, fie că este un model nou-nouț la MSRP sau generația anterioară pe care o înlocuia la o reducere gustoasă, dar ultimii ani au dovedit că pur și simplu nu poți prezice viitorul unei piețe, GPU sau altfel.
When GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 were first released, plenty of PC gamers and computing enthusiasts believed an upgrade from the previous generation couldn't be justified by the insanely high prices, and that waiting for the 3000 series to drop was the more sensible option – and then all hell broke loose.
Istoria s-ar putea repeta
Rarele GPU-uri RTX 3080 cu tematică Gundam care sunt încorporate într-o platformă minieră au făcut furori online. (Credit imagine: I_Leak_VN)
The Ampere series of cards like the GeForce RTX 3060 had a divisive pricepoint – some finding it to be reasonable, while other lamented the apparent death of affordable graphics cards – but a terrible cocktail of word issues also made them almost impossible to find.
The Cryptomarket saw a boom in Ethereum, which made the cards very attractive to miners who snapped them up in bulk for use in cryptomining farms, while the Covid-19 pandemic caused supply chain issues and a chip shortage that affected almost everything in the tech world, from computing components to cars and appliances.
All this scarcity inflated the price of GPUs to wild levels, with the GeForce RTX 3080 hitting an average resale price of almost x3 times its original MSRP during the height of the Great GPU Shortage. AMD fared a little better, though even Team Red was still blighted by shortages and scalpers.
One difference between how the two companies approached the situation was in regards to cryptomining, with Nvidia eventually re-releasing updated models of almost its entire Ampere series equipped with anti-mining preventatives.
These LHR (low-hashrate) cards weren’t completely uncrackable, but they may have helped dissuade folks from snapping up mountains of RTX 3060s. On the other hand, AMD acknowledged the situation and stated that once a customer buys a GPU, they’re free to do what they like with it.
Cu toate acestea, o mare problemă este că această lipsă nu a afectat doar acea generație de plăci grafice, ci a umflat și prețul aproape fiecărui GPU de pe piață. Argumentul de a aștepta până când următoarea generație de plăci grafice a fost lansată pentru a obține un model mai ieftin, mai vechi sau o versiune nouă la un preț rezonabil, a dispărut complet aproape peste noapte.
It's your money, your requirements and your choice
De ce e atât de fericită? Cine știe, dar pun pariu că GPU-ul ei face exact ceea ce are nevoie. (Credit de imagine: Shutterstock)
Will this happen again? It's hard to say.
The shortage was caused by a variety of issues that just happened to occur at the same time, but should Covid-19 cause more supply chain constraints then it's likely that both Lovelace and RDNA3 GPUs could see their prices start to skyrocket due to demand. The crypto market also has every likelihood to recover given its volatility, so you shouldn’t feel like we’re out of the woods just yet.
I do have a simpler argument in all of this though: it's worth buying a new GPU if it’s worth it pentru tine .
Older GPUs still very much have a place in the market right now. You only have to look at the Steam Hardware Survey to see how many gamers are still using cards that are several generations old at this point, and depending on the games you play, it's likely you don’t actually need an especially powerful graphics card. Most first-person shooters and battle-royale style games intentionally keep the system requirements low to attract more players for example.
I wrote a piece several months ago off the back of the RTX 3070 Ti getting poor reviews. It was marked down for its price and performance, but the joy it has bought me is beyond value. I won’t feel bad for my choices given the circumstances given graphics cards were harder to find than gold dust. Would I have preferred an RTX 3090? Sure, but did I need one? Absolutely not.
Pe măsură ce costul vieții devine din ce în ce mai ridicat în multe țări din întreaga lume, pur și simplu nu are rost să treceți la „următorul lucru mare” doar de dragul de a face acest lucru, iar atât GPU-urile Ampere, cât și RDNA2 vor fi în continuare relevante și capabile. pentru anii ce vor veni.
If you see an especially good deal on a cheap graphics card in the coming weeks, don’t let early adopters try and convince you to wait for Lovelace or RDNA3 unless you’re happy to do so – we simply don’t know what the market will look like when they launch.
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