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Is Pc gaming in a bad place right now?

Spyxos

Member
I'm not talking about the completely overpriced 5080 and 5090, although these are also included. I'm more concerned with getting started in PC gaming at lower budget. There are no more Ryzen 3 processors. The same with Nvidia, there was simply no 4050 desktop card. Of course there are still alternatives from Amd(GPU) and Intel(CPU), but they are usually worse or lack important features.

I wonder if PC gaming can go on like this for much longer. If most stuff only comes out for high end or with high end prices? How do you see it? Am I exaggerating? Or is pc gaming in a bad place right now?


Here is a somewhat older budget build
TbhVh82.jpeg
 
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analog_future

Resident Crybaby
High-end gaming? Yes.


Mid-range and entry-level are in pretty good spots though. The biggest hurdle right now is lack of available inventory.


Here's a quick build I put together for my kid. It's even more expensive because I want ITX/super small form factor, but this will tackle pretty much every game maxed out at 1080p/60fps just fine:


PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($119.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte A520I AC Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($46.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: MSI SPATIUM M480 PRO 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Sparkle GUARDIAN OC Arc B570 10 GB Video Card ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Jonsbo C6-ITX Mini ITX Desktop Case ($59.99 @ Newegg Sellers)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 600 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $720.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-02-15 13:05 EST-0500
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats
lol no it's the bests it's ever been besides the gpu craziness.
It gets all the great games and most are day one now. Japan support is nearly 1:1 unlike in the past and you have a very wide budget range. You don't need a 4090 to play pc games.

Plus you don't need to build a whole new pc every time which is another fallacy about pc gaming.

My son has a an old pc of mine with a 3700x and a 3080 and it runs most games just fine.
 
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Codes 208

Member
lol no it's the bests it's ever been besides the gpu craziness.
It gets all the great games and most are day one now. Japan support is nearly 1:1 unlike in the past and you have a very wide budget range. You don't need a 4090 to play pc games.
Op’s not referring to the games and library itself but whether or not prices are screwed for building budget pc’s in general.

Or atleast thats the gist i got. My 2070 is still playing games just fine
 
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analog_future

Resident Crybaby
PC doesn't make any sense unless you aim for high end. RTX 5080 and 90 still can't do 4K natively at 30 FPS with path tracing. Imagine a mid-range GPU or even a lower-end one.

If you're just gonna game at 60 FPS you might as well buy a PS5 Pro and call it a day.

"natively" means literally nothing in 2025. You think the PS5 Pro does fuck-all "natively"?
 
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Topher

Identifies as young
For the majority? No. Remember, most PC gamers are not gaming on xx90s, xx80s opr even xx70s. They game on xx60 at 1080p. They are completely fine.

Folks like me who want to game on the higher end........that's where the disappointment is right now. But things change on the PC side a bit faster than on consoles. It is going to be fine.
 

NomenNescio

Gold Member
"natively" means literally nothing in 2025. You think the PS5 Pro does fuck-all "natively"?
It is and will always be the only way to objectively measure true performance.

If I'm in the market for the best of the best, then Nvidia's offering should be absolutely demolishing current games with all the bells and whistles. They're pretty far from that.

If we're just going to start with the fakery fake tales then, like I said, let's just buy consoles.
 
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Kilau

Member
PC doesn't make any sense unless you aim for high end. RTX 5080 and 90 still can't do 4K natively at 30 FPS with path tracing. Imagine a mid-range GPU or even a lower-end one.

If you're just gonna game at 60 FPS you might as well buy a PS5 Pro and call it a day.
5090 average 33fps in Cyberpunk PT, Wukong is still sub 30fps at native 4k.
 
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analog_future

Resident Crybaby
It is and will always be the only way to objectively measure true performance.

If I'm in the market for the best of the best, then Nvidia's offering should be absolutely demolishing current games with all the bells and whistles. They're pretty far from that.

If we're just going to start with the fakery fake tales then, like I said, let's just buy consoles.

Just like the term "native", "true performance" means nothing in 2025. Upscaling/AI/frame gen/ray reconstruction/etc.. etc.. are what is going to be leaned on from here on out.


There was a great thread here a few weeks ago asking people to find the difference between native/DLAA/DLSS Quality/DLSS Balanced/DLSS Performance and no one could fucking tell lol. And that was with DLSS 3/CNN model. DLSS 4/Transformer improves IQ even further now.


All this "fake image" nonsense is much ado about nothing.
 

Spyxos

Member
Just like the term "native", "true performance" means nothing in 2025. Upscaling/AI/frame gen/ray reconstruction/etc.. etc.. are what is going to be leaned on from here on out.


There was a great thread here a few weeks ago asking people to find the difference between native/DLAA/DLSS Quality/DLSS Balanced/DLSS Performance and no one could fucking tell lol. And that was with DLSS 3/CNN model. DLSS 4/Transformer improves IQ even further now.


All this "fake image" nonsense is much ado about nothing.
But if we are talking about the same thread, those were just still images. I wouldn't compare them. You can see the differences much more clearly in motion.
 
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Yes and no IMO.

Positives
  • More games than ever before with Japanese devs finally getting into the PC game in the last few years. Some holdouts but the vast majority of devs support PC.
  • Xbox Day 1 releases, and delayed PlayStation releases.
  • The rest of the positives are really just things inherent to PC gaming and hasn't really changed over the years including: freedom of hardware, peripherals, free online, digital refunds, etc.
Negatives
  • PC hardware is at an all time low IMO. We have $2000 GPUs that even a few generations ago would have been $700. Don't get me wrong the new GPUs are impressive and I get that some people think they are good value but we have $2000 GPUs that don't really perform all that much better then the previous gen. It used to be that a XX60 would beat the XX70 from last gen.
  • Related to the previous point hardware is just expensive in general, and the fact that it's become what is essentially a 1 horse race in the GPU sector doesn't help. I just don't get the same price to performance ratio that I used to get.
  • Over reliance on stuff like upscaling and frame generation. I love DLSS and I turn it on in every game that I can but when a 5090 can't get 60fps without frame gen and DLSS something is wrong. Part of me just thinks that devs aren't bothering to optimize their games as much since they can fall back on these technologies.
  • Also just shit ports in general. I'm so sick of traversal stutter and stutter in general.
Negatives not specific to PC
  • There really isn't any identity left in gaming. I'd be lying if I said I don't miss when each and every platform had something unique, and had exclusives that made you want to own them all. Nintendo is essentially the only company with guaranteed exclusives. PC gaming used to have a very specific identity and now every platform plays the same games, and looking at the top played games on PC is sad.
  • Related to the last one is just the state of the gaming industry in general. Games take too long to make and cost too much money. GAAS dominate the landscape with most being predatory.
  • COVID is also to blame for a lot of this on all platforms.
 
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StereoVsn

Gold Member
4080s and 4090s were widely available the last few years
Yeah, and so were 4070Ti and AMD options. I think we will see the market settle in a few months except for 5090 as I suspect that one will be selling for a lot more vs MSRP for foreseeable future.

Even now you can get a prebuilt from say Cyberpower at a markup but not a crazy one. Just will need to wait for a while to ship.
 

GreatnessRD

Member
Whoever made that $1,000 part list in the OP should be criminally tried in court because gross. The 50 series of cards from Nvidia are straight garbage and you can get way more bang for buck GPUs in that price tier new and used. With all that said, PC gaming is in a decent spot as a lot of the commentors already posted. Just the extreme high-end is where it gets crazy. And all of these problems can be avoided if the PC community stopped buying those cards at stupid prices. $3000+ for a 30% better 4090? Ya goofy, lmao
 
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PeteBull

Member
I'm not talking about the completely overpriced 5080 and 5090, although these are also included. I'm more concerned with getting started in PC gaming at lower budget. There are no more Ryzen 3 processors. The same with Nvidia, there was simply no 4050 desktop card. Of course there are still alternatives from Amd(GPU) and Intel(CPU), but they are usually worse or lack important features.

I wonder if PC gaming can go on like this for much longer. If most stuff only comes out for high end or with high end prices? How do you see it? Am I exaggerating? Or is pc gaming in a bad place right now?


Here is a somewhat older budget build
TbhVh82.jpeg
Dunno from where u took that build/crazy prices but use https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ in future instead.
 
PC doesn't make any sense unless you aim for high end. RTX 5080 and 90 still can't do 4K natively at 30 FPS with path tracing. Imagine a mid-range GPU or even a lower-end one.

If you're just gonna game at 60 FPS you might as well buy a PS5 Pro and call it a day.
Incredible nonsense.. Never seen a graphics menu on PC or the garbage image quality of a lot of 60fps modes on console, even on the pro, in your life? At least it sounds like it.... And "natively"?? *Facepalm*
 
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Durin

Member
GPU prices have scaled worse as you get to the high-end for sure, but yet the platform is literally doing better than it ever has been.

Any doom and gloom is not borne out by the growth metrics of the platform, even eclipsing pace of consoles that are more stagnant (but still doing well).

I think it just comes down to the flexibility of the platform, and with graphics hitting diminished returns what people even want with their hardware. Enthusiasts buying high-end hardware are literally a single digit percentage of the overall Steam userbase, with average people squinting at differences between DLSS improvements like the internet meme'd on the PS5 Pro vs PS5 footage comparisons. Nintendo beat out both its competitors in unit sales with a portable that has a bit more power than a PS3, and this next one will be a gen behind too...yet barely anyone will care if their games are still good.

The Steam Deck is the closest thing I've seen come to console pricing, and Intel's B580 is a 12gb VRAM GPU for $250 with great value...just stock is the problem. AMD just needs to do better in the mid-tier, and make Nvidia actually drop cost.
 

T4keD0wN

Member
No, things are better. That Ryzen 3600 for 233 is insane. You can get 14400f for 150 in eu with 21% tax included and itll wipe the floor with it. SSDs are also way cheaper than from that chart.

You can go to pcpartpicker and find a much better PC by comparison and with todays standards for 1k.
 
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T4keD0wN

Member
It is an older Picture. I wanted to show what the prices used to be like.
I realize, but now the prices and offerings are quite a bit better for CPUs, RAM and SSDs especially, you get more for your money everywhere but the GPU sector, which is a bit of a disaster on the mid-high end, but lower tier cards are kind of not that bad, plenty to choose from relative to 1050tis ballpark and the prices are somewhat reasonable if you dont want the latest and greatest and given that those cards (7600XT and 4060 or similar) are most likely to be paired with mostly 1080p monitors theyll perform very well.

Even without inflation in mind id say the situation is better than from the time when the picture has originated. You can get a good build for 1k for 1440p gaming.
 
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One thing for perspective in the US


49% of people who bought a PS5 in the three months ending July 31 2024 were from households with income of over $100,000 per year. By comparison, only 43% of Xbox buyers and 40% of Switch purchases fell in the same category.

Console and PC gaming in the $60-70 new upfront gaming is a premium hobby in my opinion. Besides that, I think gaming has changed. Budget. The Steam Deck is as powerful as a mid range no dedicated graphics card laptop. The most popular graphics cards are consistently the sub $400 cards. The upcoming Strix Halo APUs are comparable to a laptop 7600xt. Over the years that'll end up cheap as new generations come out. The PS4 is still very popular. PC gaming on the high end is rough. PC gaming on the low to mid range is fine (I've played FFVII Rebirth more on my Legion GO than my desktop). I fully expect the PS5 to be more relevant as long or longer than the PS4 so a 3060/3060ti will be relevant for at least a decade
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Indies it’s the fucking tits.

I got galaxy garden and tiny glade.. 2 gems.


High end PC gaming is a fucking scam tho
 
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Fess

Member
I like the PC as a platform and all the possibilities, but the cost has been ridiculous for over a decade at least and things aren’t improving.
The most sane strategy is to aim for the middle and accept that the highest settings remain untouched except for smaller indie-like games.
 

Xyphie

Member
GPUs are the only real pain point component-wise from a historical perspective. Other than that everything is in a very good spot. CPU/RAM/Storage/PSU are at a very good spot in terms of cost, cheap cases and basic motherboards are extremely good these days, 1440p +144Hz monitors are dirt cheap etc.
 
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Crayon

Member
Depends what you're playing. Too many seem to think console-killing is the whole point of pc gaming. That gets expensive. All of the other benefits are cheap.

I have and love both, but If I had to choose between a PS5 and a pc that was a little weaker, I'd probably go with the pc because aside from aaa game performance, nothing else has been compromised and I get all the things I like about pc.

And I'm a console gamer at heart so when I say 'my pc', I mean the one that is hooked up to the tv in the living room that is used as a console that has a full desktop browser (which we'll never go without). It can still be a pain sometimes, but it's mostly very smooth. A gaming focused os like Nobara or bazzite help console-ize it a lot but there's occasionally going to be some little thing that wouldn't happen on a console. Like steam sometimes forgetting where my second drive is.

But even as that console gamer at heart, I'll give up some of that ease of use and even some performance to have that modest pc over the ps5. There's so much more to it than just performance.
 
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Durin

Member
Thats what is currently really good value while still being high end rig, around or above ps5pr0 in performance.
Only sidegrade vs ps5pr0 is gpu, stronger in raster but weaker in rt/upscaling

At least with AMD cards moving forward with FSR 4, upscaling should get better, and hopefully RT won't be too much worse than Nvidia. I just want whatever implementation idTech engine put into their ray-tracing for Indiana Jones (likely next Doom as well) gets shared with the rest of the dev community moving forward, because it the most bang for buck performant take on it so far.
 
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