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Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Today desktop PCs are declining in popularity because nobody wants a big box huffing and puffing away in the living room where there's nowhere to put it. That's why most people today have a laptop or even just a tablet, and game consoles like the PlayStation 5 are popular even though they cost more than a typical PC (quite the change from the 90's when they were far cheaper). A full-size gaming PC with all the extra stuff is just too unwieldy, as well as too expensive for all but the most hardcore gamer to justify.

It depends on the market segment.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pc-ga...research-pzvse


The Global PC Gaming Hardware market is anticipated to rise at a considerable rate during the forecast period, between 2023 and 2030. In 2022, the market is growing at a steady rate and with the rising adoption of strategies by key players, the market is expected to rise over the projected horizon.


https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/de...umers-to-spend

PC gaming is huge. The market will generate $35.9 billion in 2021, driven by 1.4 billion PC gamers. As a result of the pandemic and other factors, demand for PC gaming hardware has skyrocketed at a time when supply is short.

Laptops Are Also Popular Among Dedicated PC Players
Thanks to quickly evolving mobile chip technology, laptops are a viable option for many dedicated PC gamers. Around 38% of the group uses a laptop as their main gaming PC.



https://www.techradar.com/computing/...al-winner-here
Another crypto-mining boom threatens CPU prices, with AMD’s Ryzen 7950X now sold out – and Intel could be the real winner here

Enter stage left the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X, a 16-core processor which excels at those kind of mining workloads, thanks to the AMD CPU’s support for AVX(512) instructions (which Intel Core CPUs don’t offer since Alder Lake) and its plentiful L3 cache.



https://www.extremetech.com/computin...-crypto-mining

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X CPUs Are Out of Stock Thanks to Crypto Mining
The CPUs are now more coveted than an RTX 4090.

We all remember when the pandemic joined forces with a cryptocurrency boom to make GPUs impossible to buy. Those were dark days, but crypto eventually crashed, GPU prices returned to normal, and we figured that was the end. Not so, as crypto prices are skyrocketing again, but miners are buying CPUs instead of GPUs this time. They've already cornered the market on one particular CPU—the Ryzen 9 7950X—which is reportedly more profitable for mining than an RTX 4090.

If you glance at online retailers right now, you will see that the Ryzen 9 7950X is out of stock everywhere, and it's apparently due to revitalized mining operations. AMD's flagship Zen 4 CPU offers AVX512 instructions, which is reportedly useful in mining a currency named Qubic, according to Wccftech, and thus has led to the current shortage. Intel no longer supports AVX512 on its CPUs, as it began disabling it starting with Alder Lake, making AMD CPUs more desirable for specific mining operations. The reason it's also a better option than a powerful GPU is due to recent bans in China on cards like the RTX 4090, which have driven up prices and made those cards unaffordable and hard to find.
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For now, we just have to wait and see what happens with crypto, as it's again experiencing a meteoric rise in value. Bitcoin crashed to around $20,000 per coin a few years ago but was recently selling for as much as $73,000 per coin. Ethereum is also on the move and has more than doubled in value in the past six months, though it can no longer be mined with GPUs. We also looked up Qubic, as it's reportedly responsible for this current CPU outage, and it, too, is on a trip to the Moon.


Complex algorithms can gimp GpGPUs and benefit wide vector-equipped CPUs.