A better analysis wouldve been comparing what it took to get 2x more performance back in the PS4 launch era or rather 2017 if we are going by the same time frame as this video. IIRC, the 970 was launched in 2014 and could run everything on the PS4 at 1080p 60 fps with better visual settings. And that was a $350 card. Not a $600 monstrosity.
By the time 2017 rolled around, we had the 1070 out. It was a $379 card and was roughly 3-3.5x more powerful than the PS4 running everything at 1440p 60 fps. Their $600 1080 was a 4k machine or 4x more powerful than the PS4. i am sorry, but how can you make a video like this and not point out just how terrible the PC market has been in terms of price per dollar relative to its OWN PAST. lets not even bring console prices in this. Just look at how much more you got back in 2017.
I like these comparisons and I want to see more, but this feels rather hollow. Especially when he couldve paired it up with his 4800s cpus.
this is a case where two anomalies meet:
ps5 gpu for the price it is being offered at (400 bucks without disc) is just crazy and can't be matched. whereas ps4 gpu for the price it is being offered at was much more reasonable.
with 400 bucks ps4, you had the gpu power of super lowend GPU back in 2013
with 500 bucks ps5, you had the gpu power of a solid midrange GPU back in 2020
that too plays a role about how you perceive the performance to price metrics. ps4 bounced back between 750ti and 1050ti. i'm not defending nvidia but i'd say Pascal to PS4 situation benefitted a lot from PS4 having a super lowend GPU. if ps4 was designed like a ps5,
ps4 would have a GPU comparable to GTX 770 (without weird dx12 limitations) in it at launch. which would automatically make all the references you made about 1060/1070/1080 turn much different. OR imagine if PS5 somehow had a 1660 tier GPU in it back in 2020? because that is literally what PS4 was back in 2013. ps4 was super underpowered in terms of GPU power. ps5 is quite the opposite, it gives great bang for buck. naturally this creates this anomaly where it seems everything is more extreme than it seems.
back to my original point; NVIDIA at this point prices their GPUs based on the additional features they put in their cards. So a more valid comparison would be against AMD GPUs if you're going to disregard them and do a pure rasterization comparison. I mean after all if you do not care about these features, you really should go the AMD route anyways. you cannot think of NVIDIA cards and their pricing with rasterization alone. it is just the product itself being sold as a whole package. you may not like it, then you really don't have to choose it. imagine a scenario where NVIDIA forces you to buy a motorbike if you want to buy their GPU. let's say it is 1500 bucks motorbike. so a 300 bucks 3060 becomes 1800 bucks 3060+motorbike bundle THAT YOU CAN'T AVOID. think of it like: "if you don't want to bike, you can't get the GPU". in that case you would have a 1800 bucks product that cannot even beat PS5. NOW, I cannot quite put a price tag on exactly how much DLSS/ray tracing cores cost. But they must have some kind of cost. Besides research and development.
And if you also look at things from research and development standpoint: Would PS5 has the same price if it had advanced features like those? Or even when you get features like those at some point on consoles, don't you still fund it through PS plus subscriptions or in general by paying more to more expensive games as opposed to what you would pay for games on PC?
I don't want to derail the topic too much so back to the GPU-console comparison: right now 500 bucks MSRP gets you a 7800xt. which puts you around 1.7x of the power of a PS5.
So you used to pay 50 bucks less and got a GPU that 2x the PS4 (I'm not sure you can double the PS4 and then better visual settings. GTX 970 barely hits 1080p 45-50 fps average in PS4 equivalent settings in god of war and rdr 2. early gen games was super cpu bottlenecked on PS4 so you couldn't even see proper true power of its GPU actually. you could run games like arkham knight and gta 5 and witcher 3 crazy good on gtx 970. limitation for ps4 was mainly its CPU)
Now you pay 100 bucks more and get a GPU that has 1.7x the power. This is the exact amount of price increase for a PURELY rasterization focused GPU. I won't even accept RDNA2-RDNA3 cards having ray tracing cores as an argument. They're just horrible at it. The fact this 7800xt probably trades blow with a 3070ti or 3080 from 2020 is just... not cool.
If you do the same comparison with NVIDIA, everything goes wrong. You pay 400 BUCKS more to get a 4070ti super and get barely 2.2x power over PS5. as you can see, the difference is stark. it is caused by NVIDIA pricing. so when you pick 4070ti super over something like 7800xt, you pay
- 1.6 times more money
- get 1.25 times more performance
the rest is dlss, ray tracing + NVIDIA pricing. if you do not think they're that valuable. just pick an AMD GPU. it still holds somewhat DECENT price to performance ratio against consoles. the value is worse compared to the past but it is still not horrible. is it worse than PS4? definitely. but I also explained how PS4 itself was an anomaly as to how gimped it was and how great the PS5 has for a GPU for its price.
And of course from my knowledge you can simply find RX 6700xt on for 300 or so bucks. I'd say that card is cool too. Gives you 1.1.5-1.2x power over PS5 for %75 the price of the console.
Nothing is as it seems. Sony or Microsoft are not dumb. NVIDIA just saw that people pay crazy prices for their midrange GPUs, they went for it. People do pay for PS plus and have a habit of paying 60 bucks+ full price on games there. On PC you can see how games sell more copies over the years because most people over here wait for sales, but also THEY CAN, because building your library on PC, you tend to have a massive backlog so you never have to worry about playing the newest thing. Console userbase in general is also caught in a "hype" FOMO that actually causes them to buy games day 1 all the time, leading to much better sales on consoles. as a result, Sony recoups all the money they lost making the console and then some. As you can notice, NVIDIA or AMD does not even have similar way to achieve that on PC. so whatever they sell has to make them raw money upfront. it is just how this world works.
Could the PC GPU pricing be better? Could be. But it is what people are willing to pay, and there's nothing we can do about that. People are willing to pay yearly price to get cloud saves and online functionality? It didn't have to be. But people are willing to pay.
