They still need to iron out their drivers. They've gotten much better but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone as their primary GPU. If you are buying one just to play around with it, in a secondary system, sure. I hope they get their drivers ironed out. The more competition the better.

As Darc Requiem has said, they're better than what they were at launch, but they're still behind AMD and Nvidia in terms of ease of use and support for older games.

They're no longer at a point where buying one makes no sense, but there may still be situations where an average consumer won't know what to do.

But who knows. Given how much they've improved in such a short amount of time, maybe in a couple months they'll be able to iron most of those problems and be a viable option for everyone.

Honestly, at the rate Intel is improving, Arc maybe the superior choice at the low end if you only play newer games soon (6 months or so). Intel's raytracing implementation is much better than AMD's. It's actually competitive with Nvidia's. However when you can get a RX 6600 for roughly $225 or a RX 6600XT for around $275, it's hard to recommend Arc for someone on a budget. Personally I'd take an Arc 750 or 770 over anything Nvidia has at the low end. Their prices are absurd and the RTX 3050 should never bought by anyone ever. Even with mature drivers the performance of that card is just terrible.

I agree with you.

It's interesting how AMD cards have fallen in price to not only MSRP, but below that after the crypto crash, but the Nvidia cards have barely dropped to MSRP, and some not even that. That's why it's very hard to recommend any Nvidia card in the mid and low end.

I feel like it's becoming artidfical, I mean it's mostly a tiny pocket of AAA's demanding this, yet once again, the gameplay and visuals and loading are almost the same as say, PS5.

What is me absolutely needing to dedicate 15gb memory to my game, going to get over what you can already play on a console, that doesn't require a full on 16gb?.

it just smells like laziness to me, like how some games asked for a 1080 freaking Ti for their games, and ended up being stuttery as hell. I really wish devs would outright explain WHY they need to use 16gb, like don't even need to go all Flux capacitor on our asses, just tell us in simple terms as to why we need to go out and buy 32gb kits now, when current gen isn't loaded with 32gb kits themselves. 

I mean, either of those sound extremely plausible from Sony's side, because even though they are now wanting that PC money, they still ultimately want you to buy a PS5 and lock yourself into their already dominant console ecosystem, so making either poor ports or stupidly high hw demands ends up making their console specs more enticing for those undecided.

Like all this does for me really is to just not buy the game and wait another 5 yrs till it's dirt cheap and I have a new rig, instead of day 1, because their hw req's are becoming whack over time. I waited nearly 2yrs for HZD, primarily due to it's pricing and poor perf metrics, and Days Gone I waited half a year because of it's pricing, but heard it wasn't as bad as HZD, perf wise.

It's just weird seeing only a tine handful asking for 16gb, when literally no one else out there, even indie-dev wise, are asking for a fat 16gb in it's entirety.

I think Sony should have to bear the burden of proof and show us what that 16gb gets us, and not some 30 sec fluff trailer video either. 

That's the job of the reviewers, not Sony. The likes of Digital Foundry or Techpowerup that check how the games perform are the ones that have to check is those games really need that much RAM or not.

I do agree with what you are saying with Vram and Nvidia has done this for pretty much every generation other than Pascal. But I do think that going with Radeon just because of Vram isn't the answer either because they have a lot of other issues that people aren't mentioning is the point I am trying to make.

I am not saying that Nvidias relatively low Vram is okay or anything of that sort cause yes as you said  it is effectively planned obsolescence. But going onto Radeons camp where the experience is bad but in different ways is not a good option either imo.

We also don't know what next gen engines will do as we have yet to see any games with next gen tech. Things like Sampler Feedback and DirectStorage for GPUs are supposed to significantly lower the Vram usage. But there's also a chance that devs won't use them or will use them but use the added savings to add even more enhancements. But we won't know until games actually come out with those tech. Not to say we should buy vram limited gpus and put our hopes on them but I also wouldn't buy Radeon and put our hopes on them providing a good experience either. It's just better to wait and see if Nvidia discounts their 4080s and see what next gen engines do with vram limited gpus.

I do think if Intel continues to support their gpus for a long time, Arc will age better than both it's Nvidia and AMD counterparts. Arc essentially has the featureset of Nvidia with 16GB of vram if you get the A770. It's still hard to recommend because of the drivers but man, does it have big potential.

PS: I am currently staying at a village where they use the Rooster 🐓 to know when to wake up with no wifi and getting internet connectivity via phone ain't easy. 3G is essentially a luxury.

A far cry from my tech heaven that I call my home but it has it's own niceties. Suffice to say, along with time zone differences, I won't able to reply within meaningful time frames.