Enthusiast hardware market raked in $9.5 billion last year

[Matthew DeCarlo]

There's a lot of cash pumping through the enthusiast hardware market -- about $9.5 billion last year alone, according to Jon Peddie Research. In 2009, 46% of the money spent on "gaming-motivated PC hardware" went toward enthusiast-grade parts, which it defines as boutique PCs, high-end processors and graphics cards, SSDs, specialized gaming mice, keyboards, speakers, monitors and so forth.

The firm predicts that spending on upper-tier parts will continue to grow, but interestingly, it will represent a smaller portion of the overall gaming PC market. By 2013, the enthusiast sector will lose share to the performance and mainstream segments, from 46% to 35% of dollars spent. However, JPR notes that the "shrink" will occur in an expanding market and the enthusiast class will grow from $9.5 billion to nearly $12.5 billion.

Video game analyst Ted Pollak believes the phenomenon is the result of PC hardware catching up to software. In other words, more people are turning to performance-grade hardware because it is able to cope with demanding games. Despite that shift, JPR says enthusiast components will always be a good market, as there is a style element to high-end parts, and some people just enjoy maxing out their systems.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/38356-enthusiast-hardware-market-raked-in-95-billion-last-year.html

 

[Souljacker]

Half of it being graphics cards with their crazy prices, heh.

 

[Clrabbit]

I dunno I spent more money on my Ram then I did my video card... Low Cas lat ram now theres some high prices... but in a lot of the programs I use... worth every penny.

Although it's also true you normally update a video card twice, per system live span vs good ram is normally good for the life of the system or some times even 2 or 3 systems.

Saddly even really low lat DDR2/DDR3 doesn't come close to the hold DDR my old DDR system can still run circles around my DDR3 system in quite a few programs as long as ram usage is below 1Gig, issue being most of the time I need 6+gigs and no matter the timing on the DDR system once you're using Vram things go to molasseses fast.

 

[TomSEA]

I'm not so sure I would lump it all into "gaming motiviated PC hardware." A lot of those high-end components are also used for people into video/photo editing, music creation and engineering apps. We have a sizeable engineering and GIS department where I work. And their PC's have damn near the same components as my hobby PC at home.

At any rate, glad to hear the industry is doing well.

 

[Deso]

I would enjoy maxing out my system for sure if I could afford it
all I have is a 5850 ;p

 

[captaincranky]

The statistic is a bit ambiguous unless we know how much money was involved with non "enthusiast grade" parts.

That percentage is important in motivating manufacturers toward R & D in the high
end.

It makes sense though, it seems the computer is the "hot rod" of the third millennium. There just aren't enough '55 Chevy bodies left to go around.

 

[red1776]

get your rod right man

. There just aren't enough '55 Chevy bodies left to go around.

1963 split widows!

 

[EXCellR8]

perhaps there are more people spending money on enthusiast grade parts than i thought...

 

[captaincranky]

1963 split widows!

The bottom line is, there never were enough '63 Split Window Coupes to go around.

But I suppose the term "hot rod" actually entails the 1932 Ford coupe.

The wisdom of the ages goes like this, "speed costs money, how fast do you want to go"? Which holds true for all things fast, be it cars or computers. This nicely brings us back to topic which was, "how exactly much was spent on fast", at least with respect to computers.

But speaking of money spent on mainstream parts, I just burned a DVD with image burn, an i3-530, 4GB 1333Mhz RAM, Win 7 64 bit. Fascinating, I hit "burn", and all four threads essentially remained "flatline". It didn't use more than 4% CPU average through the entire process. It's frightening to think what the results would be if I weren't too poor. or too cheap to spring for "enthusiast grade" parts.

 

[Archean]

I guess its less about performance/speed and more about bragging rights Captain; as the value for money diminishes at the higher end of the spectrum.

 

[TorturedChaos]

captaincranky said:

But speaking of money spent on mainstream parts, I just burned a DVD with image burn, an i3-530, 4GB 1333Mhz RAM, Win 7 64 bit. Fascinating, I hit "burn", and all four threads essentially remained "flatline". It didn't use more than 4% CPU average through the entire process. It's frightening to think what the results would be if I weren't too poor. or too cheap to spring for "enthusiast grade" parts.

I need a setup like that for doing my graphic design for signs at work...but I can't get my boss to spring for it. Ever try to work with a 4ft x 8ft raster file @300 dpi.....with 2 gigs of ram on an Athlon 64 x2 4200+? its rough. Hit save and go to lunch for an hour...maybe its done by the time you get back..... have the blasted Vmem cranked up to like 8 gigs....

So yah as one person all ready mentioned, I bet a good chunk of that goes in for video/photo editing and graphic design machines.

 

[captaincranky]

Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face......

I need a setup like that for doing my graphic design for signs at work...but I can't get my boss to spring for it.

I know it doesn't seem like it, but there's an upside to all this. If the subject comes up, you can always blame the boss for any lack of productivity.

Although that being said, you don't really have to have good sense or good insight to want to be in charge, just paranoid delusions of grandeur.

Those file sizes would tax anything though. I come up with about 417 MBs @ the size you quote, but that's only one layer...!