Idiotic tariffs, indifferent retailers, depraved flippers and AI mania are making the simple act of buying a graphics card the defining misery of PC gaming in 2025.
I budgeted to be able to buy something good, not just good enough.
but those were good, a few years ago. and they are still good. It’s not like performance doubles every 2 or so years, afaik not even near to that. there are a few games from the worst publishers that run garbage on any hardware or only run acceptably on topmost of top tier hardware, but I just ignore the mediocre products of them.
You’re not wrong. I answered in a reply to someone else but I have a gaming laptop with a decent enough GPU to play newer games. Not well, in many cases, but good enough.
It’s just that with prices of everything being so inflated again, I don’t want to pay more for older hardware than it’s worth, especially if it won’t be as significant a step up from what I’m using now.
but those were good, a few years ago. and they are still good. It’s not like performance doubles every 2 or so years, afaik not even near to that. there are a few games from the worst publishers that run garbage on any hardware or only run acceptably on topmost of top tier hardware, but I just ignore the mediocre products of them.
You’re not wrong. I answered in a reply to someone else but I have a gaming laptop with a decent enough GPU to play newer games. Not well, in many cases, but good enough.
It’s just that with prices of everything being so inflated again, I don’t want to pay more for older hardware than it’s worth, especially if it won’t be as significant a step up from what I’m using now.