Yeah, trust me I get the sentiment. I was just reading how the $200-$300 video cards account for 75% of the market share of cards sold, and the upper level cards account for less than 5% and it amazes me how people on forums really think the upper end is where anybody in the industry really cares.
It seems that the market is first supplying average buyer where a 965-DS3 or maybe an Infinity is plenty, and second going for the extreme high end niche market of the rediculous 680i. There really isn't much for the people inbetween average joe know nothing and kid in parents basement with daddy's credit card who somehow needs 2 gigabit ethernet ports?
I think it's more mental than anything, it's so easy to buy performance these days. It used to be most overclockers spent ~$400 on a video card and tweaked it. Now there isn't much tweaking, because with SLI/Crossfire you just buy 2! Want a faster machine than your buddy, instead of working with what you have, Intel has an "enthusiast" lineup of processors that's more expensive than ever! Add in the insane power supply that feeds all of it, and the "gotta have" $200 cases and the high end market is just heads and shoulders above what the "average" person can buy. More so than I remember in a long time.
So what do average people do to compensate? Try to push there budget systems faster. I mean honestly, most motherboards out there support a 100% increase in speed for these processors, aren't we being awful hard on the industry when "gigabyte sux" for not maxing out cherry picked D9 memory at a 300% overclock? I think that simply more than ever, you have to pay to play.
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