[zen110]

Current stock and price (graphic and PC components in general) situation is not good and it isn't getting any better as well.

What does it mean for the future of PC gaming? Will graphics cards now follow smartphones and will the current prices now be the standard? Will PC gaming become a niche market for the elites and the well to do? How will game developers respond to this, will it mean less games or maybe games with worse graphics so more people can play them?

What are your thoughts on what effect this will have?

[Iain Baker]

PC games - when done right - are highly scalable, so I'm not concerned. 'Control' is a good example. It runs fine on older hardware, but has extra eyecandy - such as raytracing - for the pcs that have the requisite hardware. I imagine this will become more common in the future. The lower end current gen GPUs will be perfectly serviceable for some time, as will some legacy cards. I'm still rocking a GTX 970 and I can run modern games - such as Control and Doom Eternal - with no problem. I just can't do it at 4K or with Raytracing.

PC gaming can become very expensive if someone wants to go all in and buy / build a top-end rig i.e. one with multi-terabyte SSD(s), high end GPU(s), high end CPU, lots of very fast RAM, gaming mouse, gaming headset, mechanical keyboard, RGB lighting, VR Headset and say 3 linked 4K HDR 120HZ G-Sync monitors etc etc., but this isn't necessary for gaming. A entry-level gaming PC will work fine for 1080p so long as you don't use RT and keep AA fairly low (i.e FXAA). Another thing to consider is that modern games on their lowest graphics settings can look better than older games on their max settings, so, again, entry level is fine.

One factor unrelated to gaming that is keeping GPU prices high is bitcoin/crypto mining, which is irritating. If that stops being profitable then the demand for GPUs may return to 'normal' levels, which may result in GPU prices dropping too.

[Colonol Dekker]

Perk of being 39 tomorrow is I was happy enough with half life 1 running at 640 by 480 to not be bothered by anything over 1024 x 768.  2 decade later, 1080 is my happy place and anything over is wasted so I get good frames per second on almost everyrhing.

[The E]

Current stock and price (graphic and PC components in general) situation is not good and it isn't getting any better as well.

What does it mean for the future of PC gaming? Will graphics cards now follow smartphones and will the current prices now be the standard? Will PC gaming become a niche market for the elites and the well to do? How will game developers respond to this, will it mean less games or maybe games with worse graphics so more people can play them?

This is a bad post that is devoid of content, does not ask any interesting questions, and hints at ominous bad things in order to drive earnest engagement by a person who registered only to ask this question that is a repost from an r/pcgaming post from 2 months ago.

You are a bot, sir.

[Novachen]

Never had a problem to acquire my RTX 3090 to a normal price and without any delays in availibility...

I actually do not even have clue what this is about 

[MP-Ryan]

People can discuss the thread (I'll leave it open) but the poster is almost certainly a bot or spammer.

[karajorma]

Yeah. I've already banned them. But the topic was interesting enough to leave it open.

[The E]

Never had a problem to acquire my RTX 3090 to a normal price and without any delays in availibility...

I actually do not even have clue what this is about 

I "only" paid 800€ for my 3080.... but I ordered it literally half an hour after they went on sale, it took weeks to arrive, and it was "only" a 100€ above MSRP.

It is, quite literally, impossible to find these cards at anything close to MSRP right now. More importantly, it is impossible to find cards on the lower ranks of the product stack at MSRP either; even reputable sellers are putting enormous markups on the damn things.
If you have a way to get a 3090 at or close to MSRP, great. But for anyone who does not share in whatever contacts you have or whatever your expertise in writing bots is, these things are unobtainium.

The only way to get new hardware at anything remotely resembling a reasonable price is to buy a prebuilt system with one in them.

[Colonol Dekker]

I actually enjoy being a year or two behind the current standard, (until my last laptop bought under advisement from The E") as it tends to mean the spec is a fair bit cheaper than the time of release, the games I play tend to be patched to stable playable standards, and in general its a lot less effort to keep up with the joneses.

[Mito [PL]]

In case you didn't see it yet, this LTT video seems to be a pretty good report on what is actually happening with PC components right now.

[CP5670]

Never had a problem to acquire my RTX 3090 to a normal price and without any delays in availibility...

I actually do not even have clue what this is about 

I got one last year at roughly the original price, but lucked out at a retail place (Microcenter). Trying to get anything now at the original prices is a lost cause. The main problem is the cryptocurrency price increase (not likely to fall, because it has been driven up by large institutions).

That being said, prebuilts and gaming laptops are widely available and I don't see it having a huge impact on PC gaming as a whole, even if this situation goes on for another year.

[The E]

That being said, prebuilts and gaming laptops are widely available and I don't see it having a huge impact on PC gaming as a whole, even if this situation goes on for another year.

Yeah, PC gaming is going to be fine. Look at the Steam Hardware Survey: the median system you see there, with 16 gigs of RAM, a quadcore CPU and a GTX 1060 is what most games will be made to run on for some time to come.

[CP5670]

Also, some of them are easier to find than others. The 3090 and 3070 are somewhat available if you work for it (still at 30% markup), while the 6800XT, 3080 or 3060ti can only be found on ebay at a 100% markup because they are more attractive to miners. The mining companies are buying up the whole stock directly from the AIB card companies.

[MP-Ryan]

That being said, prebuilts and gaming laptops are widely available and I don't see it having a huge impact on PC gaming as a whole, even if this situation goes on for another year.

Yeah, PC gaming is going to be fine. Look at the Steam Hardware Survey: the median system you see there, with 16 gigs of RAM, a quadcore CPU and a GTX 1060 is what most games will be made to run on for some time to come.

I feel very seen.