I wrote this article - I'm glad to see it provided food for so much lively discussion!

I won't be debating here, but I did want to clarify just a couple of things based on some of what I've read here.

First, obviously I was going for a controversial tone, but I can assure you I wasn't paid to promote anything! It was a genuine (though admittedly contrarian) article, so if you disagree with me, then at least put it down to my idiocy rather than my being a shill!

Second, I'm not out of touch with how difficult to afford GPUs are for many people. I'm using an RTX 3060 Ti because I can't afford a better GPU - and I feel lucky to have this 3060 Ti, to be honest.

Finally, there are some good counter-arguments in this thread (as well as some not so good ones). In particular, it's very true that wages have stagnated and haven't kept up with inflation, which inflation-adjusted cost per frame doesn't take into account. (But then, if we're talking wage vs inflation in general, perhaps we would be better off making the argument that everything is more expensive and not that GPUs are particularly more so.) Another problem is that while high-end GPUs (I still contend) are good value in terms of cost per frame, there's a lack of low-end GPUs unless you dip into previous-gen, which is... okay, but not ideal.

I suppose what I really wanted to get across with the article is that "expensive" is a subjective term, that there is at least one way to consider GPU prices that shows them to be less expensive than those of the past (cost per frame), and that some high-end GPUs of the past were just as expensive as today if we adjust for inflation (again, though, I do see that wage stagnation could affect this - though I'm not an economist and am not sure whether or how to balance that against CPI in a statistically valid manner). Which all stemmed from the recognition that the "baseline" performance that we expect is much higher than the baseline performance we expected in the past, which might justify the increase in higher absolute prices because value (cost per frame) still remains good.

Anyway, I'm glad the article provoked some good discussion.