I think there's your "problem". There was a time (I'd put it 94-2004ish, but only because I'm too young) where there were major shifts every year. So if you were interested in that space... 286 - interesting, 486 - interesting, the first Pentiums - eh, kinda interesting ;), 3dfx - VERY interesting, and so on.
You could replace your hardware every year and the latest games would hardly run on a 1-2y old model/gfx card. Now compare it to "today". I last upgraded in 2019, from a 2012 CPU (with a 2015/16 gpu) and it was mostly "eh, about time, this is one of my main hobbies" and not because it was strictly needed. Now the machine is 2.5 years old and I can run everything I throw at it at 2560 with max details and I think this will hold up for a bit.
TLDR: If you're thinking about the same timeframe it was just a weird outlier of tech breakthroughs in the narrow field of personal computing/games every year. +20% more CPU performance is simply not exciting if the game already works.
I think there's your "problem". There was a time (I'd put it 94-2004ish, but only because I'm too young) where there were major shifts every year. So if you were interested in that space... 286 - interesting, 486 - interesting, the first Pentiums - eh, kinda interesting ;), 3dfx - VERY interesting, and so on.
You could replace your hardware every year and the latest games would hardly run on a 1-2y old model/gfx card. Now compare it to "today". I last upgraded in 2019, from a 2012 CPU (with a 2015/16 gpu) and it was mostly "eh, about time, this is one of my main hobbies" and not because it was strictly needed. Now the machine is 2.5 years old and I can run everything I throw at it at 2560 with max details and I think this will hold up for a bit.
TLDR: If you're thinking about the same timeframe it was just a weird outlier of tech breakthroughs in the narrow field of personal computing/games every year. +20% more CPU performance is simply not exciting if the game already works.