Summary
- Failing GPUs, underwhelming performance uplifts, & high prices plague recent tech.
- Buying new tech offers fewer benefits as progress slows; older devices are still solid.
- Wait after launches to see if new hardware is reliable & worth the purchase, consider mature technology for stability.
There’s an undeniable thrill when it comes to buying the latest and greatest technology. Whether that’s a brand-new graphic card or the latest OLED TV. However, the cost of being the first to the checkout is more than just money, and these days that hidden cost is too much in my opinion.
Failing GPUs, Underwhelming Performance Uplifts, Too High Prices
If you follow the tech news, especially in the PC hardware space, you know that we haven’t had much good news in the last few years. As I write this, the news is rife with stories like the RTX 5090 power cables melting, or that some 5090, 5080, and 5070 Ti cards are defective. Not that you can find one to buy, defective or not.
Add to this the latest and greatest Intel CPUs aren’t much faster than the 13th- and 14th- generation chips they replace, but maybe that’s OK because the older generations are irreparably damaging themselves and crashing constantly. Don’t think AMD isn’t in the news for the same stuff. Late in February of 2024, stories started circulating about 9800X3D CPUs failing too.
To add insult to injury, the best-performing GPU should cost “only” $2000, but in the real world you can pay double that. It’s madness from top to bottom.
The Benefits of Buying First Are Fewer by the Day
In many areas of computer and other digital technologies, progress has become quite slow. Gone are the days of major generation-on-generation performance leaps and amazing new features seem to be over for now. The average person couldn’t tell you if they were working on a computer that came out last month or five years ago, because for the vast majority of people, computers became “good enough” a decade ago.
Related
The RTX 5090 Is an Excellent GPU—If You’re Not a Gamer!
A (two) grand but ultimately unnecessary card for gamers
Even if you’re a hardcore enthusiast, selling your current gear at a huge loss to pay eye-watering amounts of money for maybe a 10% improvement that’s only detectable on benchmarks doesn’t seem rational.
The only real motivator here is pure enthusiasm, unless you’re someone who needs the latest and greatest hardware because it makes you money, and even 10% more productivity is worth it in the end. Even then, you’d still want your investment to actually work, since a broken-down or buggy piece of technology isn’t making money for anyone other than the company who sold it to you.
Your Stuff Is Probably Good Enough
I’ve never quite understood the urge to pay for single-generation upgrades. Whether we’re talking PCs, phones, tablets, or anything else really. My last iPad upgrade had a five-year gap. I went from an M1 to an M4 MacBook. From a GTX 1660 to an RTX 4060 laptop. In other words, I tend to wait a good while before upgrading until the juice is worth the squeeze.
The time it takes for a large enough improvement to form seems to be getting longer with each generation. However, it might be a little unfair to only focus on the performance and specifications of newer gadgets when a lot of the focus is now on power efficiency, or making things smarter and more intuitive. It’s a little like the evolution of road cars. Any car you can buy these days will go as fast as you legally need it to. There’s little point in pushing higher performance figures for the average person’s car, so now the focus is on safety, creature comforts, handling, and so on.
So the latest hardware might not be much faster than what came before, but now it might use half as much power and make less than half the noise. Be that as it may, I still don’t want to be the beta tester for something that’s so new it’s not entirely clear that it can be relied on.
Buy the Latest Mature Generation, or Wait
So what is the rational thing to do in the face of expensive, unreliable, and generally unimpressive new technology? For me, it’s always worth waiting weeks to months after a new product launch before even considering a purchase. There will always be early adopters, and it’s best to let people who will buy the latest things (and common sense be damned) no matter what anyone says, so the rest of us might as well benefit from these voluntary beta testers.
If, after a month or two of being in the real world, those gadgets or components are still working as intended, and they offer a big enough improvement to be worth the money, then by all means go ahead and click that checkout button.
However, why not consider upgrading to something a little older, but with a history of stability and maturity? For example, with the release of the RTX 50-series, it seems like the perfect time for people to invest in tried-and-tested 40-series cards. You’ll give up 10 to 30% in performance, depending on the card, and lose one new feature in the form of multi-frame generation, but you’ll save hundreds of dollars, find new and used stock to buy, and won’t have to worry about any nasty surprises. Seems like a good plan to me!
