Why Nobody Is Buying Graphics Cards Anymore

When a gpu is nearly a rent payment, it makes it hard to justify. Especially when a new one will be out in 1-2 years.

There was never a graphics card more than 500 bucks I was tempted to buy. The companies are nuts!

the problem with the high end gpu market, is that you can get an entire desktop PC system (with a good video card) for what they are asking for a single video card.

I'm still rocking my 1080 Ti. It works great for 1080p gaming. I would really enjoy an upgrade, but I can't justify the cost because I just dont have much time to play games anymore.

It's like nVidia and AMD are actively trying to kill PC gaming.

I remember when the most powerful cards were an eyewatering £400. Now you can pay double that and still be 2 or 3 tiers below the flagship card.

I think we also need to consider that the most popular games on PC right now are free-to-play esport games like Fortnite, Valorant, Apex and so on. And all of these run at 200 frames or more on pretty much every modern GPU, even on some APUs. The bigger market has no reason to change.

Got a RTX 2070 super right before the huge spike in prices, it lets me play all the games I enjoy on high or max setting with little to no stuttering for the most part, even 3 years on. I have literally no reason to get a better card.

The GPU market is a great lesson on how even if there is a duopoly, the market still has to compete with other products because 1600 dollars used to buy a GPU is 1600 dollars that could be used on a trip, new hobby, fancy dinner, tickets, Steam Deck, console, etc. People only have a certain amount of money and at some point they'll just use that money on something else.

I remember a time where you didn't have to save up for months just to buy a PC component... but now it's insane

It seems to me that the scalpocalypse kept game developers from leveraging the horsepower of the newer GPUs, since to sell games they had to accomodate people with several-year-old hardware. Then the market became flush with last gen's GPUs, those who wanted them went ahead and got them, and now there's no killer apps pushing recently sated gamers to the next generation. Games coming out today can run passably on hardware almost a decade old. And as far as I know there's no experience on PC that requires a 4080 to enjoy.

I upgraded back in 2018 to a new PC with a RTX2080. Up until then, as far as I knew, the 1080 still was up there as one of the best cards and has been for years. Picture me surprised when NVIDIA released the 3080 just 2 years later.

During the crypto craze, Nvidia and AMD fell for the illusion that gamers want high end cards. Most don't care as long as your card can pump out more frames than your monitor can handle. Now that mining is dead, the performance/price is simply a massive overkill. I still have a 1650 Super and most games run fine. It feels like GPUs have reached the same kind of product maturity as smartphones.

Blows my mind when you can buy a full rig with a beast graphics card for just slightly more than the card you want on its own. THAT IS INSANE!

My current card is a Radeon RX 580, which I got in late 2020 before the GPU price hike and shortage. It still runs new games just fine. I mostly play indie titles and ports of older games nowadays so there's not much incentive to upgrade other than playing games in native 4K.

My GPU journey for the last 10 years was going from GTX 560 to a RX 480 to a RTX 2080, which still feels like the smartest thing I've ever did. Bought the 2080 from eBay for ~350€ when the next generation came along, so I've been comfortably looking at all these prices as they went by 😅

I was an avid hardware guy for years. Now though, once prices exponentially rose, I have tuned out of the hardware scene. I play on 1440p and am content with my old 8700k and 2080Ti. The only concession I took two years ago was to double RAM from 16 to 32 GB. I’m happy and play everything I want to play.

I had a 1060 up until a couple of weeks ago. I now have a 3070 that I picked up used for a very reasonable price. It’s quite the difference, but to be honest, the 1060 was still holding its on pretty well. Nvidia and AMD have lost their minds with this pricing.

I'd been wanting to upgrade my entry level graphics card for something better, now that I've gotten more experience in gaming. But, the high prices kept me playing with the one I had. Recently it started having problems, so I started looking around again. Surprisingly the prices have started going down and I picked up a new 8 gig RX6600 at a decent price. It was already discounted 20% and I added my relative's 10% discount because they work at Amazon, where I bought it. The difference in my gaming experience is HUGE and it I didn't have to mortgage the house to do it!

When the nvidia 2000 and, not long after, 3000 series were announced (and their equivalents), I bought extras of the GPU I still use which is the gtx 1080 and 1080 TI. Got them before prices spiked. One of the best PC decisions I've ever made.