Games are actually pretty well optimized nowadays. I mostly "game" on a 10 years old computer with a mid-range GPU I bought maybe 3 or 4 years ago and on a Steam Deck.

I sometimes have to disable graphical options but it's more the exception than the rule. On a lot of games, I can even play in 4K.

Of course as you can imagine, I don't game at 245 fps :D

I hope so.

Resource usage has been on a hedonic treadmill at least since I came online in the 90s. Good things have come from that, of course, but there's also plenty of abstraction/waste that's permitted because "new computers can handle it."

With so many gaming devices based on the AMD Z1 Extreme platform (and its custom Valve corollaries) over the past few years, it'll be great to see that be the target/baseline for a while. Brings access to more players and staves of e-waste for longer.

RAM usage is super easy to dial down, it's just texture quality.

Not really new, Nvidia's GTX 1070 launched in 2016 with 8 GB of VRAM and they've been slow walking VRAM increases for the last decade.

Today's RTX 5060 has 8 GB for basically the same price that the 1070 did.

For $650 you can go up to 12 GB in the 5070, if you want 16 GB it's $1000 for the 5070 Ti, or hundreds more than that for the 5080.

I know there's inflation and $380 in 2016 was more money than it is today, but if you'd asked me 10 years ago I would've bet on VRAM capacity doing better than "the same money is worth less but still gets you exactly same amount of memory 10 years from now."

With prices going up, I half expect Nvidia to launch the RTX 6070 and tell everyone "It has 4 GB of memory and we think you're going to love it. $900." Or they'll just stop bothering with consumer GPUs entirely.

Very few games target high specs to begin with.

win win, considering the slop game studios are pushing out these days.