Why Gamers Aren't Upgrading Their GPUs & How OLD Cards Defy Longevity Expectations

My main reason to not upgrade is just the fact that i dont see modern AAAs worth playing i often just find myself replaying older titles which my current gpu can handle pretty well.

Um... Am I the only that doesn't upgrade just because GPUs are stupidly expensive now and you pay a lot of money for very little in return?

There is an article on Eurogamer that states that games older than 6 years account for 60% of play time.

The real reason? PC Price went from $1500 to $2500 in 4 years.

Considering graphics are 10% better but somehow need 200% extra GPU power I'm going to stick to medium settings.

the main reason i am holding on to aging hardware (literally running it until it dies) is because i am poor AF on top of everything getting a price hike with each new release

I buy a new PC every 10 year, because only after 10 year I will see the new PC speed and capacity can be at least doubled or more on every benchmark.

My GTX 1070 OC (8GB) still holds on. Can't turn on all the new reflections and shinny things, but still gives me decent frames in modern games.

Single most impactful cause is price. GPUs since 2020 have been valued at over double what they are actually worth. Buy used. Know the pitfalls. Get deals.

Only cause there is no price competition..

I can confirm my Vega 56 is still somehow pulling along just fine

My 2060 is doing fine, and I dont have plans to change it since most of the games I play are old

I have had a 5700xt, which is basically a slightly better 1080ti, at least for more recent games, for almost 4 years now and I am not planning to upgrade anytime soon. It still plays 1080p perfectly.

I'm on an RTX 3090, but I still keep my GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition as a backup. You never know when those power hungry bricks will give up the ghost with their insane power peaks that can go up to 600W or beyond. I've already had to change TWO PCIE-E power cables due to partially melted connectors. I can only guess it's due to these intermittent power peaks that happen for milliseconds and saturate the capacity of the wires, which in turn melts the plastic around them. Now I only run my RTX 3090 undervolted. Nvidia should really revise the power consumption and delivery on their newer high-end graphics cards.

I think part of it too is that the average buyer has gotten wise to the "stack shifting" scheme we've seen with the last few generations, and are content with waiting longer for those full ~80% generational jumps within their chosen price bracket. They can fudge the labeling all they want, but $1000+ cards have no place within the normal consumer lineup and shouldn't even be on the radar for most people.

When it comes to big AAA titles, there is hardly anything worth playing these days, so no need for better hardware.

EVGA 2070 Super here. Still going strong at 1440p.

I bought my 1080Ti a few weeks after launch, and it's going strong today. It's no longer in my main gaming PC, or even my secondary. It's in the machine I daily drive -- the one I'm using right now.

No reason to upgrade, all the games are trash, I play 5+ year old games, literally no reason to play anything new besides Indie games which don't require monster hardware anyways.

The problem with the inflation argument is that incomes do not keep up with it. We are losing purchasing power constantly. Companies are forced to raise their prices because of the endless money printing, but we, the people, make less and less of that money for ourselves. It's still at least as hard to make a given amount of money today as it was in 2016 or 2012, but the prices are leaps and bounds above what they were back then. And that's in every aspect of our lives, meaning that luxury goods like computer hardware become a much lower priority.