While a select few can push the envelope with technology alone, a bit of talent seems to easily compensate for almost any technological limitations. The "latest and greatest" is the easy route to mediocracy.

That's been true for all creative disciplines: from photography to writing to animation. There might even be a mechanism, where inferior (or at least different) tools may be a restriction that nurtures creativity, or at least guarantees results that are easily distinguished from the rest of the market.

Yeah, tell that to the Octane Render community. There's plenty of incredible starving artists using consumer GPUs in their workflow to render top-notch work.