That's not really true because of the advancements in compute technology and energy efficiency since then. It'll definitely use a lot less energy than a GTX 760 at the very least.
For a 7" screen jumping down to 720P is just fine. It's market niche is clearly not to compete with even a GTX 1050, but to be a little less than that to manage most games reasonably well and even newer games with a a minimally playable performance anywhere you go. I'm looking at it as a Nintendo Switch with a massively larger available library that can play most games I already own and don't have to wait & hope for ports when it's already more powerful than a Switch, the most comparable portable device available.
I mean that you can just set the game to be 720p with very little noticeable difference. Also at either 720p or 800p many custom graphics options are just not going to make things look any better/worse on a screen that size & resolution.
And 30FPS is just fine, especially for an ultra portable, and when you can probably get more than that out of it with customized graphics options. When I played Witcher 3 years ago it was actually on a machine that barely kept it going at 30FPS w/ low-medium settings. It was fine. One of the best games I played, and the lack of high quality textures too nothing away from that. Do you think people don't know they're making a quality trade off when they play the Witcher 3 on a Switch? Of course they know! NOW they'll be able to play it on a more powerful device that can serve as a full PC and has access to an enormous library.
You're complaining that this isn't good enough to be a primary gaming PC, and that misses the point: That's not the market target. This is setup to be a secondary device for existing gamers and an entry to PC gaming for others that want a wider selection than on a console or a Switch.
>Same. I already have $1,100 saved for a gaming PC, but since that might only buy a GPU right now I’ll just jump into this and hopefully wait out the GPU crunch.
Ah, yeah. $1100 will still buy you a significantly better gaming rig, and even better if you're willing to assemble it yourself.
I guess if you're holding out though, maybe the Deck will scratch the "buy new gaming shiny object" itch, and play games reasonable well at it's native resolutions, but if you have $1100 and it's not getting you what you want in a gaming rig, the Deck doesn't fill the gap.
Also I'm not confident that GPU cards will became easier and cheaper to find for a while. Someone that is related to the general chip industry told me 1.5 years. Until then constrained supply will probably make demand even more frantic.
Heck, just on cars alone: I just traded in a car for 2x the value it was listed at about 6 months ago. It was 12 years old and I knew I'd need a new car sometime in the next 1-3 years, and a new car today has massively more safety features (I have kids to worry about that for too) so I wasn't going to hold out and hope the used market went even higher.
And if car manufacturers whose electronics don't need the latest fab methods have these bottlenecks, I don't see the high end chip market getting much better, especially with Apple & Samsung eating any capacity TSMC can provide.
