8 PCWorld JANUARY 2022NEWS GAMING LAPTOP PRICE SPIKE
graphics card—a rather ho-hum GTX 1650
Ti—is $1,800 at its full retail price (fave.
co/3oYG8Ad). Models with beefier hardware
and more advanced screens creep up over
the $2,000 mark quickly. A fully loaded Blade
17 with 4K touchscreen, Core i9 processor,
and RTX 3080 graphics card will cost you
$3,700 (fave.co/3IR04Nd).
You could find a used car for
less than that, though
admittedly not one you’d
actually want to drive.
But Tan’s prediction isn’t
exactly hot gossip in the PC
industry. With Intel and
AMD in a surprisingly tight
fight for processor
performance (fave.
co/3FgvPfZ) and demandfor PC gaming hardware not
slowing down any time soon, it
only makes sense that newer
and more powerful hardware
(fave.co/3q0NrXc) will be
more expensive. Nvidia is
making a few motions toward
bringing back older and less
expensive hardware just to
throw a bone to gamers on a
budget, but in all other areas
of the industry, you can expect
better internals to cost more.
And, on top of that, to cost
considerably more in relation
to current hardware (fave.co/3chTZtW) than
new hardware used to.
When will we see some relief? Even the
titans of the computer industry really don’t
know (fave.co/3wOPaBP). “Probably not in
2022” is about as close as we can get to a
consensus.Nvidia is looking at bringing back older and less expensive hardware.The prices for gaming laptops, such as the Razer Blade 17, are
expected to increase in 2022.