Yes. Quake 2 was December 1997, Quake 3 was December 1999. In that span, the game went from "use a GPU and you'll get colored lights and a higher resolution" to "use a GPU or else you don't get to play the game at all".
GPU power seems to be increasing as fast as it always was, but the things we can do with that extra power are less impressive. So if you're playing games, it's not so big a deal any more if your graphics card is five years old.
GPU power seems to be increasing as fast as it always was, but the things we can do with that extra power are less impressive. So if you're playing games, it's not so big a deal any more if your graphics card is five years old.