Because most people conflate “buying a more powerful computer” with “future proofing”, which is wrong.

I future proofed when I built my desktop in 2017. We knew am4 was going to be supported for several more cpu architectural generations, so I knew that I’d have an easy upgrade path ahead of me, for cheap. And I did. I went from a 1600x to a 5700x, and from an rx 480 to an rx 6700xt. I fully intend to get another couple years out of this pc, and it’s looking like I’ll be able to get possibly a full decade of useful life out of it. That’s future proofing, and pretty cost effective.

On the other hand, had I bought the best available at the time, which was Intel 8th Gen coffee lake, it would feel so much more outdated and I’d already be in need of another upgrade.

In any case, I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a future proofed MacBook. Aren’t they pretty limited in terms of upgrade options?

They last a long time because the build quality has been excellent, historically, and also because 99% of the user base never runs an application heavier than a web browser. But then, my decade old windows laptop is also fine for web browsing.

I mean, it’s because 1gbps is and has been enough for 99.99% of workloads.

It depends on the workload, but we’re comparing apples and oranges. No amount of apple magic or apple consumer money can change the wild performance differences between high end desktop and “ultra portable”, generally speaking.

Pretty sweet. Looking forward to 2024 though, knowing what’s coming from Strix point and other similar apu products. I think handheld devices 12-24 months from now are going to be absurdly powerful by comparison, especially at resolutions like 1280x800.

The crazy thing is that’s not even really true. RDNA2 competed extremely well with Ampere. In Raster it was generally slightly better than its direct competition, and excluding the insanity of Covid and supply shortages, it was always cheaper as well.

I paid $360 for my 6700xt in Dec 2022. Now 6700xt’s are routinely like $300 on sale. The equivalent from Nvidia is… what? The 4060ti is slightly faster but only has 8gb of VRAM, and launched at $400 fucking dollars. The 4060ti 16gb is the same performance with more VRAM and launched at $500 fucking dollars.

At this point what’s propping up Nvidia is unfathomable levels of mind share. The product stack doesn’t actually deserve to sell anywhere near as well as it is currently.

It’s certainly not unheard of in the tech world for this to happen. Look at Apple releasing a fucking $1600 MBP with 8gb of RAM, and then trying to gaslight their customers into believing it’s better than it is, like they aren’t being ripped off. Shit’s absurd, but the average consumer is a pre-programmed midwit that relies almost entirely on brand loyalty to make their purchasing decisions.

And while I’m not super impressed with RDNA3 at launch, it’s significantly better as the prices slowly creep down. I kind of figure the 7800xt will slowly creep down towards $450 being a normal price, and the 7700xt will probably creep under $400.

The 7600, when priced below 250, especially in the low 200’s, like $220-230, is fantastic value as well.

Even at the high end, the 7900xt at $700-750 is a solid buy, and the 7900xt at $900 or less is very good as well.

Lovelace is fantastic from a technical perspective, but Nvidia outdid their own previous records for greed when it comes to the product stack and the pricing.

What a dumbass title.

Another bulldozer? Bro, rdna2 in particular took the fight to Nvidia on both perf and price. The 6800xt was on par with the 3080 for less money. My 6700xt cost me $360 and is almost as fast as a 3070, while having 12gb of vram.

Also, the Radeon groups budget is probably less than what Nvidia spends on a big corporate lunch. The products those people put out on a shoestring budget is honestly nothing short of miraculous.

Rdna3 disappointed me a little bit, but when priced correctly it’s not bad. The 7800xt at 450 or less is honestly a great buy. And if the 7700xt drops to 350-400, which it will, it’s a solid buy.

The 7600 is slowly inching towards 200…fantastic 1080p card.

We’ll have to see what rdna4 ends up delivering, but so far the products themselves are very good, as long as they’re priced appropriately.

Look for bf deals. There was a 4060 deal yesterday for like $220. The 4060 at 300 is bullshit, but it’s a lot better at those discount prices.

And the continued rdna2 sales are fantastic, too. I mean we’ve seen 400 dollar 6800s for a while, and sub $450 6800xt’s.

We’ve also seen things like $275 3060tis, though that’s been more rare.

Point being, rdna2 and ampere are on good sales regularly, and even rdna3 and Lovelace are starting to come down. I’m expecting good holiday sales this year.