Indeed. Even more so when AMD will be able to counter that with the RX 6800 that matches the performance of the 3070Ti (in non-RT situations),has 16GB of VRAM and already sells for roughly that price.

But well, at least Nvidia isn't screwing the buyers of the 4070 over memory size like they did with those that got the 3070-/Tis.

RTX 4060 is still the main card on my radar for an upgrade but if it's over $350 which it very well might be they can forget it. We'll see what the RX 7600 can offer.

This is my main gripe with the whole situation; the vast majority of PC gamers are looking for the same thing. Only a tiny percentage go all-in on the hardware, so screwing over potential customers wanting decently performing cards at a reasonable price is stupid beyond belief, as this is by far the largest volume of sales and revenue. Paying high prices for enthusiast components and gear is one thing, pricing mid and low-tier cards absurdly is just dumb. At this rate, the PC gaming market might take a hit in certain segments due to people flat-out failing to find reasonable rigs and parts to play on. On the hardware side, this is already happening, we'll see how the revenue per capita figures look about 1-2 years from now.

The current GPU climate:

Buy Radeon and deal with half baked features
Buy Nvidia and sell your Kidney
Buy Intel and deal with driver/performance problems in the hopes of it getting good

The only thing impressing me more than the performance gain for every Intel driver update is the thought of how shit the routines must have been from the start.

Lol so true. I do think A770 with it's 16GB or vram for so cheap could end up like the RX 480 of this generation. Nvidia level Ray Tracing, XeSS, AV1, and a very cheap price. And with each driver update, it is becoming less and less of a gamble.

And of course the NVidia stingy VRAM™ negative, which hampered the GPU already in some raytracing titles where the cache flew over so much that the Radeon was comfortably ahead (well, as comfortable as you can be with sub-30 FPS) and soon AAA titles will overfill that with raster alone. So unless it's only used as a stopgap I'd rather choose the Radeon.

At that price, it would be about what the 6700XT costs right now, and that one will probably still be more powerful outside RT and have more VRAM to boot than a 4060.

Come now, Yuri, you're giving Nvidia a bit of a benefit of the doubt in the same breath as "wait till AMD does an Nvidia", there.

Besides, Nvidia already has the jacked up prices, they've already shown their hand, DLSS 3 is also locked behind the 4000 series, and we know that FSR is open and still not holding a candle to DLSS, but at least it's open and I can use it, while I cannot use DLSS 3.0, because Nvidia wants me to sell my kidneys. 

I know you're likely to say you aren't at all influenced, but we're humans my man, we are absolutely influenced in some way by a bit of bias, be it by the products we own or services we partake in. I own my 1080ti to this day, but because I don't own a 4000 series, I will wholly admit, yes, I am salty, but at the same time, you own a 4090, and you're kinda pulling my leg a bit with the "well AMD on the other hand".

C'mon broskie, you gotta admit you're getting a tad flustered by that GPU of yours, just a smidge. Yes both sides have done good and bad, but right here, right now, Nivida is doing bad, only good thing is the tech, the band aid we absolutely need, because no one has figured how to not need a band aid to use RT yet (which I still don't like at all to count as a bonus, because we shouldn't have to rely on DLSS to do RT to begin with, it's like a stop gap in the tech cycle).

We better hope that Nvidia doesn't screw the 4000 series with DLSS 4.0 in the future, because that again would be bad, no matter the magical excuses made for something that isn't even a decade old.

You know there are definitely some folks out there in the marketing gig that like to think they are being clever when they try to toe the line with what their customers are willing to accept/deny.

But sometimes, not all the time, that idea doesn't work so well for very long.

Case in point, me; I've skipped 3 Nvidia gens now and I am beyond fed up. All this shit has done is given us a band aid in terms of software tech and a few added nodes for clever corner cutting to produce something that should be handled by raw power alone, and even then it's being sold at a premium for 3 gens now...

I know they are trying to play the waiting game, but I can play it quite well myself, but sometimes with certain companies, I'm not entirely going to forget how I was treated while waiting. I waited years for MS to get it's fucking act together in regards to PC gaming. They finally came back, oh boy did they ever, but I still didn't forget, and I still forever hold them at a pole's pace, never letting it go any shorter, not letting them get any closer, because I was burned by them and made to wait nearly 2 decades for them to return to form on the platform.

In short, I don't forgive so easily and I ain't going to forget how I was treated.