this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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You can buy a 250$ GPU right now that will run all the modern games. You'll have to live without "ULTRA" settings, at a reasonable resolution with a reasonable framerate but you might just live through it. The idea that the GPU shortage forces you to "ignore a giant chunk of modern gaming" is beyond ridiculous, the vast majority of "modern gamers" don't have current gen GPUs. You believe that anything that is not an Nvidia RTX model is only fit to run Pokemon on a Game Boy emulator but that's really not the case.
What's actually happening is not enshittification it's just you, butthurt that the market has evolved and there is now gear that is above your means. Cover your shame when you try to pretend your minor inconveniences are societal problems.
When did it come to GPUs specifically anyway? 660 was there as your example, and so we rolled with it. But if you want - by spending $250 in the 600 series times, I didn't have to settle down for "well, it kinda runs, not on high, but it does". I could go all the way to Ultra. Why not now?
And yes, I'm speaking from experience. Is it bad, or is it not valid? I know plenty of gamers share my sentiment, and it plays into the bigger picture that many more relate to.
At this point I personally need to upgrade my entire PC: CPU, RAM, GPU, motherboard - you name it. Only storage and PSU are still good to go. And I know I'm not alone.
And prices now and prices then are two very different beasts. "Crises" are used to pump the prices up only to never get them down. The current RAM shortage is just one in a long string of such "crises".
Market didn't evolve, it just learned to squeeze ever more money from the gamers - either in hardware or in subscriptions. All in the name of numbers going up, of course.
My problem is not with gear that I cannot afford - I never targeted the enthusiast segment of the market - it's with the fact that the gear from the same price bracket gets ever more expensive generation after generation. Sometimes it is reflected in the MSRP, sometimes it's done more covertly by blaming it on temporary externalities that just happen to persist through the entire market cycle of the product. In any case, it's the users that get screwed.