The Simple Act of Buying a Graphics Card Is the Defining Misery of PC Gaming in 2025
Idiotic tariffs, indifferent retailers, depraved flippers and AI mania are making the simple act of buying a graphics card the defining misery of PC gaming in 2025.
My RX480 from 2016 is still kicking, if crashing a bit. At this rate when it breaks I'll just use my steam deck docked instead of selling my liver to buy a new GPU
I've been gaming on my SteamDeck for quite a while and I will continue that. There's no way that I'm paying that much money for a new gaming computer
Crypto, followed by NFTs, followed by LLMs... The GPU market has been fucked for years now. Whenever something starts to drop off, another tech bro idea that requires 10,000 GPUs to process takes its place.
The Crypto to AI transition was brutal. Just as demand for GPUs was coming down because people were starting to use ASICs to mine Bitcoin, along comes AI to drive up non-gaming demand again.
The only good news is that eventually when the AI bubble pops there will be massive R&D and manufacturing geared towards producing GPUs. Unless something else comes along... But really, I can't see that happening because the AI bubble is so immense and is such an enormous part of the entire world's economy.
Truly just the brute force solution. Need a shitload of compute? GPUs can do it! No one stops to think if we really need it. It's all about coulda, not shoulda. Yeah, ML and AI has a place, but big tech just thinks "slap an LLM everywhere". Just such horseshit
Been that way for years. There was a brief respite when people were switching to ASIC bitcoin mining and away from GPU intensive mining and you could actually get a GPU for a fair price, retail, non-scalper price gouging.
Now it’s right back to basically unaffordable for a name brand GPU. Literally more than a mortgage payment.
You know, I was thinking about upgrading my graphics card this year along with the rest of my PC but I think I can squeeze a couple more years out of my 3060 TI at this rate.
I squeezed 7 years out of my 1070 before I replaced it.
You can easily get another 2-4 years out of your GPU. A 3060ti isn't even old.
My desktop still has a 1060. It's not great in new games but still works.
I just kept an eye on Micro Center’s refurbished cards for a few weeks and was able to snag a 3090Ti late last year with a 3-yr warranty for the same price I paid for a 980Ti in 2015.
I think that might be my plan too, but I'm still waiting a paycheck or two before I even monitor the situation. My 2070 is fine and ultimately I just want to pass it down to a spare PC for kids to mess around on as my oldest hits 3. I know my the time I hit 5 I was playing shit like Dune 2, admittedly with hacked save files my dad setup.
The 9070's on eBay are getting cheaper and cheaper the further we get from the launch. I think scalpers underestimated AMD's stock and they are slowly discovering that.
Immediately after the launch the XT seemed to be starting at $1,200. Now they are down to $800. The non-xt is down to $650.
Depends on how much stock AMD can provide in the coming weeks and months, but I'm still thinking I'll be able to get one at MSRP this year.
I'm not sure where you are seeing this but on eBay they are still showing a ton of cards from 12-1800.
This shit is a problem and only the apathetic retailers can fix it.
Being bought, or being sold? There's a difference. If they're not being bought at those numbers, they'll still show up the most.
They also said "starting", which implies that's what it's being sold at, not what you see the most listings for.
It still see them more around 800-900€ which is more than what i paid for a 7900XT wtf
I'm having a good time on a laptop with no fancy graphics card and have no desire to buy one.
I also do not look for super high graphical fidelity, play mostly indies instead of AAA, and am like 5 years behind the industry, mostly buying old gems on sale, so my tastes probably enable this strategy as much as anything else.
Modern high end iGPUs (e.g. AMD Strix Halo) are going to start replacing dGPUs in the entry and mid-range segments.
Same here, have never owned a graphics card in my life. When I occasionally do want a modern game it doesn't need to be 200FPS RTX.
I've been using minipcs with integrated graphics ( and one with a laptop class GPU) instead of desktops and see no reason to stop.
Probs the only reason for many to buy a console these days. For the cost of a high end GPU you can get an entire system and some games.
I have a powerful computer for my work with a 3090, i9 etc. I still prefer gaming on the Xbox, it's in the living room, it doesn't bother me with driver issues, CPU overheating, and other random bugs I get on the big machine, and it's in the living room where I'm also spending the time with my family rather than stuck in my cave upstairs.
Funny thing about AMD is the MI300X is supposedly not selling well, largely because they priced gouge everything as bad as Nvidia, even where they aren’t competitive. Other than the Framework desktop, they are desperate to stay as uncompetitive in the GPU space as they possibly can, and not because the hardware is bad.
Wasn’t the Intel B580 a good launch, though? It seems to have gotten rave reviews, and it’s in stock, yet has exited the hype cycle.
I looked for months for a b580 for my wifes pc. Couldn't get one in stock for MSRP during that time. Finally caved and grabbed a 6900xt for $400 used. The intel cards are awesome, if you can get one. I do hope intel keeps up the mid range offerings at sane prices
Intel b580 still showing out of stock everywhere I normally look.
In stock, but not at the right price. MSRP is $250. The cards I'm seeing are $350 and up.
For $250 it's a good card. For $350 not so much.
Well the B580 is a budget / low-power GPU. All the discussions going around are for flagship and high-end GPUs. Intel isn't in that space yet, but we can hope they have a B7xx or B9xx lined up which makes some waves.
It's pretty okay if you're like me, i.e. have no needs above full hd res and can either take or leave rtx
It should still be better. Or at least cheaper.
