News It's Still a Terrible Time to Buy a Graphics Card

[Admin]

Nvidia's GPUs have soft-launched, we're waiting for AMD's Big Navi, and everything is selling out faster than you can hit refresh. If you can find one of the new GPUs in stock, great, but patience will be your best ally.

It's Still a Terrible Time to Buy a Graphics Card : Read more

 

[Loadedaxe]

Your absolutely right. I did a build for my granddaughter for her birthday and all I am waiting on is a GPU.
While currently she doesn't play above 1080p, I would like to get her a new GPU so I do not have to fool with it for the next few years as she is getting older and talking 1440p, to which her mother is thinking of getting her a 1440p monitor for xmas.
I was going for the 3070, had all my auto notifies in at nvidia, new egg etc. Never received an email, and they are non existent and if you do find one they are tremendously overpriced.
Her Bday is in 6 days so waiting for RX6000 series is a bust. I can not even think about spending the prices they want for these older GPUs. Time is running out. I have to do something in the next day or so.

I am on the fence, but I think I am going to get her a 1660 Super for now. It should hold her over until this madness ends, if ever. I just feel like I am wasting $250

 

[Gurg]

While originally thrilled by the new Nvidia GPUs, I've since cooled. The newest drivers have given my 2080S a shot in the arm and its been clocking to 2100-2115 mhz and doing just fine paired with my 28" 4K 60hz monitor. As I don't play "shooters" where higher frame rates may be beneficial, don't need to upgrade my 9600k, 3600mhz RAM, 280mm AIO cooling or 970+ M.2s I'm thinking more about buying a curved 32" 4K monitor @ 60hz if I can snag a great deal in Black Friday sales. Then exhibiting "patience" until 4070 or 4080 to upgrade GPU.

 

[spentshells]

The 5600xt was 225at the start of the month I wonder if they just upped the price because they could and it wouldn't look to bad next to all the 500-1000 dollar cards.

 

[Pytheus]

This is all very frustrating. I started to build a PC for my daughter's VR headset. I already bought most of the hardware and thought I should wait for the new graphics cards to see what they offered and hoped to have picked up one of the older cards at a discount. However I see stock of the older cards are low or gone and prices actually gone up!?! I've tried to snag a 3070 but Best Buy wouldn't ship to my address, I live in the US what addresses couldn't they ship to!?!? So I'm stuck with a PC with no graphics card considering the 5600xt as a temp solution, but I don't want to spend hundreds on a card I don't intend to keep. Sigh

 

[wr3zzz]

I have a suspicion that Asus and Gigabyte have been hoarding 3090 and 3080 chips in order to bin them for more expensive factory OC cards.

Anecdotally in China, a huge market but no consumer protection like class action lawsuit for hoarding, Asus and Gigabyte have been selling only their lowest end cards and even those in very scant quantity comparing to their peer MSI and second tier brands who have been releasing cards to retail in more volume and across their entire product range. I also see hardly any mention online of people who are not influencer or reviewer having Asus Strix cards but many people having MSI Ventus and GamingX.

This is just my personal speculation but the pieces kinda fit.

 

[Shadowclash10]

6GB felt okay a year ago, but now it's at the bottom of what we would suggest for a GPU that costs close to $300.

Wait what? So what card is $300 and is 8GB of VRAM? All cards at <=$300 are <=6GB of VRAM.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Wait what? So what card is $300 and is 8GB of VRAM? All cards at <=$300 are <=6GB of VRAM.

RX 5700 was routinely available for around $300 for most of this year -- it's only in the past maybe 2-3 months that prices have gone back up to $350 and above. But the point is, if you're buying a $300 or higher graphics card, you may find 6GB of memory ends up being a problem in some games. It's not a HUGE problem, but all things considered I'd rather have an 8GB card than a 6GB card (assuming the GPU is otherwise similar performance). Which means probably RX 6500 XT or RTX 3060 maybe? No ... not 3060 because I bet Nvidia does just 6GB again, so more like 3060 Ti.

 

[ashburner]

I've had my EVGA 3080 FTW Ultra sitting in a box for the last two weeks. Just waiting to hopefully snag a 5950x in 6 days to go with everything else pre puchased. Thank you EVGA for having a fair and honest distribution of the Ampere cards!

 

[junglist724]

Your absolutely right. I did a build for my granddaughter for her birthday and all I am waiting on is a GPU.
While currently she doesn't play above 1080p, I would like to get her a new GPU so I do not have to fool with it for the next few years as she is getting older and talking 1440p, to which her mother is thinking of getting her a 1440p monitor for xmas.
I was going for the 3070, had all my auto notifies in at nvidia, new egg etc. Never received an email, and they are non existent and if you do find one they are tremendously overpriced.
Her Bday is in 6 days so waiting for RX6000 series is a bust. I can not even think about spending the prices they want for these older GPUs. Time is running out. I have to do something in the next day or so.

I am on the fence, but I think I am going to get her a 1660 Super for now. It should hold her over until this madness ends, if ever. I just feel like I am wasting $250

EVGA's notification queue was the only way I could find a card.

 

[BogdanH]

I would prefer if media would stop using "recommended" prices in various comparisons. RTX3070 for $500 doesn't exist and never did. Hence, 3070, for example, is not $80 cheaper than RX 6800 at "recommended" price of $580.
Here in Europe, latest nVidia cards are pure paper launch. And even there would be availability, I would never buy ANY nVidia card -prices are way overblown. In short, as an option, brand nVidia is non existent for me.
As casual gamer, I prefer AMD cards which used to be more wallet friendly. But that also changed with 6000 series. And I'm afraid, we can expect unreasonable prices here too -because some are ready to pay.
Being happy owner of RX5600XT, I can play most popular games at 60Hz, which is enough for me (at given price).
There's a difference between "wish" and "need" -answer for yourself and stay calm

 

[Endymio]

Anecdotally in China, a huge market but no consumer protection like class action lawsuit for hoarding,

You honestly believe any government interference in supply-chain management would do anything but cause a huge, expensive and obstructive boondoggle? Why not learn from history instead of suggesting we repeat its mistakes?

 

[Friesiansam]

Wait until a few months into next before buying. Stock should be readily available by then and early adopter prices will have eased.

 

[Wilcal]

Nvidia's GPUs have soft-launched, we're waiting for AMD's Big Navi, and everything is selling out faster than you can hit refresh. If you can find one of the new GPUs in stock, great, but patience will be your best ally.

It's Still a Terrible Time to Buy a Graphics Card : Read more

On the other hand, if you are in the market for an upgrade to an older system and dont need the latest greatest and new, this could be a good time to buy.

 

[King_V]

First off:

AMD also has lower tier not-so-Big Navi GPUs coming.

Really, though, mom was right and we need more patience.

Those are my two favorite lines in this article.

RX 5700 was routinely available for around $300 for most of this year -- it's only in the past maybe 2-3 months that prices have gone back up to $350 and above.

Maybe a little earlier than 3 months ago, but yeah. And to think, when I got my son's 5700 for $273 in March (after rebates) because it was about the same price as the 5600 XT, I still wondered "if I waited a little, would an even better deal come?"

Still, it was compelling enough for me to snap it up, not something I typically do so hastily - and I told my son "So, your birthday gift is a couple of months early this year..."

Her Bday is in 6 days so waiting for RX6000 series is a bust. I can not even think about spending the prices they want for these older GPUs. Time is running out. I have to do something in the next day or so.

I am on the fence, but I think I am going to get her a 1660 Super for now. It should hold her over until this madness ends, if ever. I just feel like I am wasting $250

Given the above, at around that price, it would probably be worth it to go for the 5600XT, of which (as of the moment I'm writing this) the least expensive model of it I've seen is $259.99 after mail-in rebate. For a net of only $10 more, it's hard for me to recommend the 1660 Super over the 5600 XT.

Still, there seem to be deals popping up every so often, so... uh, almost the same as with the newer stuff? It becomes at least a part time job to try to snap up a good deal. There was a recent deal somewhere on the 1660 Super, I think, and I distinctly remember Tom's Hardware posting a deal that had come up for a 5600 XT at $219.99, I think a month ago?

It becomes this weird waiting game... even with the older gen cards.

 

[Jake Hall]

May as well wait, anyway.. All the new games are being pushed back, like usual.

 

[wr3zzz]

You honestly believe any government interference in supply-chain management would do anything but cause a huge, expensive and obstructive boondoggle? Why not learn from history instead of suggesting we repeat its mistakes?

You need to broaden your economic history to learn what hoarding and class action are. Hoarding to control price is market manipulation and without class action the only recourse of individual is to rely on government for help against the abuse of big corporations. Also I did not say what I "speculate" Asus is doing constituates manipulative hoarding. What I said was that companies would abuse their power more in China for lack of class action, which is true. Free market is wonderful but it's subject to abuse and not all class actions are frivolous lawsuits. Seriously, don't let politics cloud your learning.

 

[Wolfshadw]

And here is where I toss in the obligatory reminder that the Tom's Hardware Forums do not tolerate discussions involving Economics or Politics. If you need a reminder, here is the Official G,R,A,P.E.S. policy

Wolfshadw
Moderator

 

[spinmove_]

Yeah, I read the articles earlier this year, including "now is a terrible time to buy a GPU" and waited until the RTX 3080 launch. It took off like a poorly folded paper airplane thrown by an anemic 6 year old. I was rocking a 4 year old build at the time (Core i5-6500, 16GB DDR4-2133, RX480) and wasn't about to go through another winter attempting to play Hunt Showdown and Borderlands 3 among other newer games that may or may not be coming out on that. I also knew that with The 'Rona affecting EVERYONE'S supply chains EVERYWHERE that if the 3080 was going to be THIS "available" then everything else is going to suffer the same fate or have more than normally inflated prices. Not to mention the wait on initial release dates just to see if I'd read the tea leaves correctly.

Given this, like a day or two after the 3080 launch I just said screw it and built a new PC anyway (Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT). I'm still stuck in 1080p land, which is fine for now, so I didn't need a ton of GPU horsepower. Yeah, Zen 3 would give me ~20% IPC over Zen 2, but who knows how available that's going to be next week. Same with RX 6000 series stuff. This PC gives me a decent enough base to replace an aging machine that was choking on what I needed it to run, was available, at a decent price I might add, and didn't have to worry about the supply.

I'll probably end up upgrading the GPU 2 years ahead of schedule when I finally decide to join 2K land and I'll end up overhauling everything else 2 years after that. By then, The 'Rona should be done, supply chains renewed, even newer stuff coming out, and I'll be in a much better position to not be behind the 8-ball.

If you're rocking something right now that can run 2K decently, then yeah, totally wait. If you absolutely need to run 4K, sorry you're kinda effed. If all you're running is 1080p, there's still some decently priced options. Good luck playing economics chicken with that right now though.

 

[Joseph_138]

Sellers are anticipating continued supply problems for the RTX 30 cards for the foreseeable future, that is why they are raising prices on the older cards. The situation will likely be the same for AMD's cards when they drop unless they have a few million of them stashed away to ward off scalpers and miners.

 

[ScrewySqrl]

This is all very frustrating. I started to build a PC for my daughter's VR headset. I already bought most of the hardware and thought I should wait for the new graphics cards to see what they offered and hoped to have picked up one of the older cards at a discount. However I see stock of the older cards are low or gone and prices actually gone up!?! I've tried to snag a 3070 but Best Buy wouldn't ship to my address, I live in the US what addresses couldn't they ship to!?!? So I'm stuck with a PC with no graphics card considering the 5600xt as a temp solution, but I don't want to spend hundreds on a card I don't intend to keep. Sigh

You could stp bck one further generation and go with a RX-580 8GB for about $180

 

[Clarence_Darrow]

You could stp bck one further generation and go with a RX-580 8GB for about $180

Good advice. Get a 500 series with 8gb and you can resell it to miners when the GPU you want comes in stock. 5600xt would work for the same thing.

 

[King_V]

You could stp bck one further generation and go with a RX-580 8GB for about $180

And even THAT is a little strange. From about a year ago, the price of RX 580 cards have stagnated, maybe crept up very slightly, and RX 570 cards, a little more than slightly. At this point, the RX5500XT 8GB has dropped a little, so it appears to be roughly equal in price to the RX 580.

Odd that now we're at a place where the GTX 1650 Super is, maybe by a slight margin, the price/performance king in this category. Slightly slower, but slightly cheaper, than the 580 8GB and 5500 XT 8GB. The Nvidia card is limited to only 4GB, but it still manages to be close in performance, and does have the bonus of notably lower power consumption.

 

[g-unit1111]

I'm waiting until next year. I've already overshot my PC hardware budget for the year and by the time I am ready to buy next year hopefully the market will have settled a bit and things like new monitors will be introduced.

 

[g-unit1111]

Good advice. Get a 500 series with 8gb and you can resell it to miners when the GPU you want comes in stock. 5600xt would work for the same thing.

Hardware mining is no longer a thing. Coin mining is now ASCII based and runs almost entirely on software.

 

[Friesiansam]

On the other hand, if you are in the market for an upgrade to an older system and dont need the latest greatest and new, this could be a good time to buy.

When a lot more people can buy new cards, probably next year, there will be a big increase in used card supply.