View: https://youtu.be/ekKQyrgkd3c?si=R2j_f4hQzhbSxN4p
In this video, Steve from GamersNexus points out how an AMD exec said "gamers tend to buy graphics cards under $700", then Steve pulls up the list of the top GPU's according to Steam users, and nearly the entirety of the top 25 consists of cards that were $400 or less when they were new. He makes a joke "you could say that gamers tend to buy graphics cards under one trillion dollars" lol.
He knows that his words and that video won't do any good, but it's a rant that a lot of us have on our minds. As Nvidia gets more and more astronomically expensive, and Intel having all the issues that Intel does, AMD is in the prime position to claim the budget/mid-tier GPU crown, so long as they don't botch the price. Apparently, there has been a lot of internal conflict between AMD execs and the graphics engineering team, with the engineers wanting to aggressively price them as low as they can, while the execs want to keep their formula of "Nvidia minus $50", so there is a huge possibility that this won't happen at all.
At this point, an RTX 5060 could potentially run as high as $500 MSRP, before getting scalped to just under 1K. I really hope that AMD plays dirty this generation and undercuts the competition by a huge margin. Another big thing that Steve argues about in the video is how AMD's GPU market share just keeps shrinking year after year. The latest dataset he pulls up shows AMD having a 10% market share, Nvidia at 90%, and Intel at 0. About 15-20 years ago, it was almost an even 50/50 split between red team and green team. AMD is in the position to gain a larger foothold, but it will most likely not happen.
As someone who is wanting to get a new graphics card in the next year or so, all I can hope for is that these execs realize that most PC gamers, not all, but I would argue most, are a lot like me. Budget conscious, putting value and longevity at the top of our list of what we want in PC hardware. The Steam hardware survey corroborates this claim. I was surprised to see the RTX 2060 in the top 25, and I thought the card I had was relatively unpopular. Even when it was new, it was right around $300 IIRC.
I get that there are so many other factors completely out of the hands of these companies when it comes to pricing, but I also feel that sometimes these companies can be out of touch with your everyday average consumer. A lot of people can easily afford a $2500 graphics card, but do they really want to spend that when you can build an entirely new rig to last a few generations for the same price if not cheaper? Nvidia seems to think that people will throw away this money just because they can afford it, and that is just not the case. Just because you can afford the most expensive item doesn't mean it is the best for you, the person who will actually be using it. Value is a huge factor into building a PC and price isn't the only thing that value stands for.
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