Time ago the high end was above 500$ and the price climbed during this time thanks to cryptomining.
With 200/300 you could buy a modest graphic card that could last 3 years playing top titles. Now in that price range you can just keep up one year and then it's completely trash
I assume the 1060 3GB has a similar problem.
source: I have a 4GB and am currently saving up to upgrade.
edit: also, the rx 580 4GB generally runs at a lower clock than the 8GB counterpart, which affects performance, as well.
Seems to be a VRAM-based calculation. There have been some youtubers looking into the "pop in" effect on GPUs with less VRAM. Basically, GPUs will render images at a lower texture level if the texture wasn't fitting in VRAM. So the failure case is pretty smooth these days and hard to notice.
Basically, the mountain range in the background may only be a 2k texture, but may pop into a 4k texture after a bit. Because the 2k texture is a mipmap of the 4k texture, its actually hard to notice. So you can stretch lower VRAM Settings these days better than you'd expect.
Another thing: just because VRam is allocated doesn't necessarily mean that the VRAM is being used. If you look at a wall in any video game, all the textures are going unused. Taken to the extreme: there are people and objects "behind" a lot of geometries that you'll never see in the game, but will be allocated to VRAM. As such, a game may allocate 9GB total, but not really need the last 2 or 3 GB. So even if a game reports 9GB or 10GB of usage, you may get by with a 8GB card.
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In any case, we're long past the 4GB of RAM mark. Practically speaking, games require 6GB at least and may break 8GB in the near future IMO. 8GB seems to be sufficient for now though (thanks to pop-in, VRAM overallocation, etc. etc.)
Apex Legends recommends an 8GB card because on max textures it will use more than 4GB.
there are a lot of modern titles that will allocate/use more than 4GB VRAM.
If I set a game to low or medium, I can probably maintain 30-40FPS.
The idea of achieving a constant 60fps @ 1080p with this RX 390 on any graphically intensive game made in the last 3-4 years is a pipe dream though, even at low graphical settings. Monster Hunter World is an example of a title which was made for better hardware. On the other hand, Assassin's Creed Odyssey runs pretty well.
I've just gotten used to decent graphics at 30-40fps, and I can eek out a mostly constant 60fps on games like Rocket League where it matters (with only some dips)
So for example I recently installed Far Cry 5, and since it has an FPS counter in the corner by default I know it runs between 40-50 FPS at 1080p, with nice effects like volumetric lighting. For me that's fine.
only if you are trying to get 140fps in battlegrounds or something. An nvidia 1060 will play almost anything just fine unless you are a competitive twitch gamer, or wanting to play at 4k.
In the meantime "gamers" went from 30fps/720p to 120fps/4k.
Just like new entry cars are more expensive than 40 years ago, the baseline moved much higher. (security, speed, standard equipment).
As someone who has fallen out of the arms race thanks to the perfectly serviceable GTX970 I bought just a hair over years ago for ~$300, I am frankly appalled by the lack of value in the GPU market today. At the time, that $300-350 card was decidedly high end in that it was the best 1080p gaming card on the market with the 980/980Ti only making sense for those playing st higher resolution. There still isn't anything on the market worth upgrading for (~30-50% faster in the same price bracket) 4 years later and that is not a good thing for the PC gaming market in the long term.
The idea that one has to spend $300 to play games above medium settings at the resolutions found on midrange monitors is crazy to me. I got by with $100-175 cards (HD4850, HD5770, HD6950) for years before making the plunge into the high end for use in VR but I feel like cards that market is no longer viable in the same way those were.
Today slowest ok cards start at $300 :(
I'm sorry, but that's absolute nonsense. You can get a brand new GTX1050 from newegg for $129: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&D...
And that's an absolutely "ok" card. It will play every new game in 1080p and medium settings. I'd argue that you could go sub-$100 with a GT1030 and still play anything if you are willing to drop settings to low or resolution to 720p.
Wolfenstein 2 is a two year old game at this point, and runs 35-60 on GTX 1050 with fast CPU, and more like constant 35/medium settings on weak one. You have to drop down to 1600x900 for >40fps.
I guess GPU prices dropped from the last time I checked, RX 580/GTX 1060, both delivering playable framerates in current games, actually start around $200 now, so Ill give you that :)
Entry level CPUs. August 1998 Intel started selling legendary(to overclockers) $149 Celeron 300A. By 1999 entry level moved to $100 for ~300MHz Celerons/K6-2. In 2000 entry level moved to $69 433MHz Celeron, $75 533MHz Cyrix III, and $112 600Hz Duron. Top of the line CPUs were around $1K at the time.
Todays entry level CPUs are still around $60 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13660/amd-athlon-200ge-vs-int...
Same goes for motherboard prices. Even RAM stayed in the same price bracket https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm . 1999 computers came standard with ~$100 128MB of SDR, todays standard is ~$100 2x8GB of DDR4. Somehow everything got cheaper, except usable GPUs.
And then on top of all of this, majority of CPUs on the market come with a "competent" GPU, so the effective cost of a GPU for most PC users is....zero. Sure they won't play Anthem, but a new intel or AMD cpu-embedded unit will easily play 3-4 year old games very smoothly. For a lot of people that is more than enough. I'm personally sinking hundreds of hours into mmos like WoW or ESO and they play fine using embedded GPUs. The cost of a GPU here is zero.
So I'd argue that the average cost of GPU per PC user has gone down, not up. It's just that the top end has exploded - you can have multiple 4K displays, RTX, 32x antialias, nonsense like hairworks etc etc. But your regular PC player on average will have a 1080p monitor and is content with playing in medium/high settings. They can absolutely do that without spending lots of money.
As a personal example - I have a living room PC with an i5 2400 + 8GB ddr3 1066mhz + GTX1050Ti. That CPU is literally 8(!!!) years old. And yet this machine can play Forza Horizon 4, brand new title, in locked 1080p and 60fps in high settings. Granted, that's the 1050Ti not the 1050, but the 1050 is not that far behind. Drop the settings to medium and you're playing in locked 60fps. Or keep them high and you will play in locked 30fps.