Yeah, I agree. I think people are expecting the glory days to continue indefinitely. That's just not realistic. Inflation is real. Wafer costs are real. Exchange rates and VAT increases are real. The idea of a 4070Ti costing £550 today is impossible.
On the flipside, what is absurd is, if it's £1000 or more, which is what the 4080 12GB would have been if Nvidia had their way. The 3080 cost was around £700. The 4080 16GB (which is a way smaller die) is £1300. That's an enormous price increase. If the 4080 16GB was £800, that would not be totally unrealistic or absurd. It would suck and I'd never be able to afford it, but I can't afford a lot of things I used to be able to afford. Inflation has gone up but my wages haven't. But the idea of a 4080 16GB being £700 still would be dreamland territory.
This. People simply don't get it.
I was going to post something like this the other day but got distracted with workload.
Any way, yeah, people need to understand the logistics here. I was having a trip down memory lane the other day and looked up a CPU I bought in 2001.
An AMD Duron. It was their "even cheaper than a Sempron" CPU released in the late 90s and carried on for about three years. Any way, if you look at the exposed die on that?
180nm People need to think about that for a moment. As a 5nm die? that would look like a grain of salt.
The problem is that competition has been high, and as usual companies like Nvidia need to innovate even when innovation is not needed due to the games. Those? will ALWAYS be held back by consoles. As such in this day and age you do not need to buy a GPU for about 5 years. If you consider that 10 years ago your GPU would be theoretically useless after about a year? yeah.
Demands increase year on year. As such? AMD and Nvidia need to meet those demands. And it is getting harder and harder and more and more expensive.
If you think for a moment how cheap a 180nm wafer would have been (pennies on the dollar) and how tiny that die is and how many they would have got from that wafer?
Those CPUs, from memory, were about £60-£80 IIRC. And they were as crude as oil. No IHS, literally nothing to stop you cracking the die apart from 4 little pads.
So I reiterate. It will not get better, and it will not get cheaper, and those days like you say are long gone.
People need to now focus on the GPUs that actually matter. And are affordable. Those are the ones where the innovation will bring rewards. Flagships? are flagships. They are not meant for you and the minute people realise that the better.
Not every one can afford a Ferrari. Not every one can afford a Lambo. But that's OK, as most people "get" that. People just aren't getting that there are technology products not meant for them, and expect Nvidia to be able to sell them those products at prices they can afford. It isn't going to happen, and the sooner people wake up and realise that? the better.
Which means it is time (though it never will be tbh) for reviewers and the like to start acting responsibly and making people understand these caveats. But they won't, will they?
It's the same reason why 13 year olds are stabbing each other to death in the streets over a pair of trainers. Because they simply don't understand that £150 trainers are not meant for them.