Video games are, in many ways, reflections of our future in technology. We can see it in the dystopian future of Cyberpunk 2077, the conundrum of cybernetics in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and experience the horrors of artificial genetic mutation in Bioshock. Other than science fiction, gaming itself stands as a testament to how far we have progressed in our ability to merge hardware with software. With that thought in focus, let us quickly go over some of the most prolific gaming tech trends we have seen so far in 2022.
High Price and Unavailability of NVIDIA RTX 3000-Series Desktop GPUS
The graphics card market for desktops has remained disappointing for gamers even in 2022. Nvidia promised to control the sale of their graphics cards to crypto miners several times in these last few years, but none of those promises amounted to much, as powerful desktop-grade graphics cards in the RTX 3000-series were sold at 2 – 3 times their original price quite openly.
The RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti which the crypto miners did not want, were released at some point, but they turned out to be cash grabs as well because both GPUs failed to outperform the 3-year-old GTX 1660 Ti. NVIDIA was and still is selling more GPUs by catering to crypto miners, which continues to be an open secret. A business cannot be blamed for catering to customers with significantly greater potential, but it did mark a decided shift in the tech market.
Gaming Laptops: Better Value than Gaming Desktops?
Nobody could have really predicted that a gaming laptop will offer better value for money than a gaming desktop. However, that is how the situation is right now. As one might imagine, this shift in trend is a direct result of:
- Desktop components, especially GPUs and CPUs being sold at several times their original price.
- Crypto miners taking the most powerful gaming hardware off the market in bulk.
Presently, the cost-to-performance value of buying a branded laptop gaming PC such as the Lenovo Legion 5i is hundreds of pounds ahead of even getting a self-assembled gaming desktop. Desktop PCs are still going to be more powerful, even if the configuration seems similar on paper. However, the cost of getting that slight performance boost is ridiculously high and makes no sense for gamers anymore.
Next Gen AMD RX 7000-Series GPUs are on their Way
The AMD RX 7000-series of GPUs are likely to be released in late Q3 or Q4 2022 and that’s great news. The AMD RX 6000-series already caught up to NVIDIA’s low – mid end GPUs in 2021/22, but the RDNA 3rd Gen RX 7000-series could potentially outperform even the top-end NVIDIA cards. It should also be noted that right now, AMD GPUs are comparatively more affordable, as compared to what NVIDIA is selling.
Although not much is likely to change for gamers even after the NVIDIA 4000-sereis of GPUS are released later this year, AMD may just bring hope back to gamers still looking to build a powerful gaming desktop PC later in 2022 or early 2023.