Comment by utopiah

I played competitive Quake on LAN and online. If your setup, hardware/software, can't handle your configuration you either get a better one (spending money, rollback your OS, etc) or adjust it (lower your configuration, nobody plays competitive gaming for the aesthetics, Quake in such a context is damn ugly and nobody cares).

It's not about a drop in game, it's about being prepared for the game. If you get a 7% drop, or even a .1% drop (whatever is noticeable to you) then you adjust.

To be clear I'm not saying worst performance is OK, I'm saying everybody wants 500FPS for $1 hardware but nobody gets that. Consequently we get a compromise, e.g. pay $2000 for 60FPS and so be it. If you have to pay $2000 + $600 or lower graphics settings to still get 60FPS that's what you do.

PS: FWIW competitive gaming is niche in gaming. Most people might want to compete but in practice most people are not, at least not professionally. It's still an important use case but it's not the majority. Also from my own personal experience I didn't get performance drop.