Yea, I'm not going to keep dumping money into PC gaming this direction. I don't have to play games at all. I don't play a lot anyways. But I have no problem just ignoring GPUs for a few years (already done that before) and just play basic games that we enjoy. Most of our games are coop games and share screen and stuff and our low end APU's do it at full resolution no problem and we have a 1660 Super that is killing every game we throw at it at 1080p, so I have no need at all to slurp down a $1k+ GPU.... to play pixel graphic platformers. So I guess I'm not the target audience with these $1.5k+ GPUs. Maybe that's for competitive FPS gamers, VR niche gamers and basically wanna-be-coin-miners?
I would be perfectly find if Ryzen APU's would drop. The 3400G is fine for me for gaming purposes. I'd totally buy one if they were frigg'n MSRP (don't need one with a 1660 Super tho). But in the future, while the GPU wars continue, I hope the Intel/AMD folk drop more APUs that no one will want to waste time on for mining or competitive gaming so people have a realistic way to build an affordable gaming PC for 1080p and not need a discrete GPU at all to do it. I'd rather have a great APU than a big hot GPU anyways. But again I'm probably in the minority as far as PC gaming goes. I'm happy on Steam with a bunch of easy to run games that are mostly non-competitive games that don't require more than a potatoe to run and look great. I guess the big GPU stuff is mostly online FPS gaming or something? Other than the random big title (Cyberpunk) that is hard to run, I mean, what games are so hard to run that you need a $1.5k GPU now? I'm in the dark I guess.
I hope to see some competitive $100 & $200 APUs soon that are a bit better than Vega 11.
Edit: Apparently there are better than the 3400G APU already, they're just in OEM pre-builts and the road map shows two more steps of APU performance. Looking up the 3400G, it seems to perform on par with a GT 1030 GPU (which has inflated to stupid levels over $100 USD). So if considering the 3400G is a 4c/8t CPU with a Vega 11 with GT1030 performance, in the $220~280 range (since it's not MSRP), it's kind of inline with the inflated prices too if you went separates, such as a 4c/8t CPU (like the 3100~3300x series, which are all in the $200 range instead of $100 range) and a GT1030 which is over $100, so to do discrete with the same performance would be over $300. So the 3400G is in line with that, a little cheaper even, despite all the dumb pricing everywhere. The 3400G was supposed to be $149 MSRP.... lol, and looking at it for that price, it is a good deal, but only if it were MSRP. Anyhow, hopefully the newer APUs will be a good step up, something closer to GTX 750 performance in an APU would be great.
Very best,