How come we expect $500 PCs and accept $500 Video Cards?

[RelaxTheMind]

Some people hardcore game... some people just check emails.

Although I've seen lots of old people get top of the line $6000 computers that can barely check email with all the auto logins and toolbars, let alone play a game of solitare.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

actaully that great.
for budget ppl they can find extreamly cheap pcs (x2 3800+ pc for under 300 bucks).
for ppl who want expensive stuff they can find all they can too.

 

[Thraxen]

And soon we get to buy $300 PhysX cards to get the most out of our games... Yipee! Hooray for progress!

 

[Vallybally]

LOL Thraxen. Didn't you hear the next step is a separate AI (artificial intelligence) card. Afterall, we need to keep offloading tasks and chores from these ever-advancing and complex, do-it-all, multi-core CPUs so it can concentrate on more important things like email, Excel and binary math.

 

[Genx87]

Heh a 500 dollar PC couldnt touch any of todays games. You get what you pay for, in this case, a 500 dollar PC is an overpriced typewriter

 

[EvanAdams]

On inflation. Lets say $200 @ 5% 10 years ago. So a system today should be ~$325. So what can you get for that today? You can get an xbox 360 core with some stuff OR you can get a X1900XT.

So in reality the xbox has not really gone up in price all that much. Perhaps a little bit if you consider the package with a hard drive as the standard box. Personally, I'd believe in more than a 5% rate of inflation. I'm a big believer that there is a lot of hidden inflation that is kept at bay from us.

I'd consider a X1900xt pretty high end. Some would not.

I'd also like to point out a difference between the 'upgraders' and the rest of the world. A dell $500 box is not what we can get for $500. That is a pretty well established fact. At that price point a case, OS, and mouse/keyboard suck up a lot of money. So we get a big benefit of already having those items when we upgrade.

Finally, I'd say that the difference between $325 and $500+ for a vid card explains why PC gaming is dieing. Some would differ but I'd point them to Marc Rein's comments on the problems with Intel ruling the PC graphics market. The simple fact of the matter is this: you can run your games at a lower resolution on that 1900xt but our displays have gotten larger faster than our GPUs have gotten faster. It is something that has always perplexed me. Yes our graphics cards have much improved but our LCD's have suddenly gotten a LOT faster and larger so thus we have to play at a native resolution of 16x12 or more. This explains a lot of the postings recently on CRT displays. On a CRT you can game at 16x12 with no AA or AF OR you can game at 12x10 and crank the AA and AF. The latter being what modern GPUs do much better. Thus I think there is a disconnect. I don?t think Nvidia or ATI saw the ms drops in LCDs. They planned on something else.