How much is too much to spend on a graphics card?

[Julio Franco]

There was a time when spending $500 on a graphics card felt extravagant. That kind of money bought you a serious high-end GPU, and $300 could get you something pretty capable. Fast-forward to today, and those numbers almost seem quaint.

Our latest GPU pricing update paints a rather depressing picture. Graphics card prices have climbed 35% in just the last three months, with mainstream models selling well above their original MSRPs. An RTX 5070 that was supposed to cost $549 now sells for around $900 in the US, while the high-end market has become increasingly detached from what most gamers would consider reasonable.

Of course, everyone's budget and priorities are different. Some enthusiasts are perfectly comfortable dropping $1,000 or more on a GPU they'll use for several years. Others have drawn a hard line at $300 or $500, regardless of how much faster the latest hardware gets.

And there's another question worth asking: how about value? have we simply become accustomed to paying more? What felt outrageous a decade ago might now seem like the price of admission for serious PC gaming.

So here's this weekend's question: What's the most you've ever spent on a graphics card, and what's your absolute spending limit today? Have rising prices pushed you to skip upgrades, buy used, or settle for a lower tier? Or are you willing to pay a premium if the performance justifies it?

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How much is too much to spend on a graphics card?

 

[Kirby1]

More than $800 mspr is too much.

 

[yRaz]

Just spent $850 on a 9070XT and I feel like that was too much. Definitely a much needed replacement to my 6700XT. I like to put things in terms of beers (assuming a beer is $3 at your local watering hole) I feel like paying more than 200 beers on a GPU is unecessary and it is unreasonable for a dev to ask you to have a GPU worth more than 200 beers just to play a game. I'm not against 1000 beer GPUs, I just have a hardtime understanding how a GPU could ever be worth that much. I'm glad that the people who bought 5090s got more beers out of it than they put in, but when it comes time you that you need to upgrade a 5090 it could be worth less than the 250beers I paid for my 9070xt.

I also wait for steam sales to get games so it's often a year after release when the game has most of its updates and optimizations before I play it.

Beers aside, it's hard for me to recommend anything other a 9070XT right now. There is no way in hell that 5060's or 9060s are worth anywhere near the current asking prices. I get that everything is overpriced right now but if you're going to overpay, atleast overpay for something that can still give a good experience. Aside from that, just enjoy your beers. I don't see anything worth remotely it's asking price right now. I get that there are people with hard budgets with not much wiggle room. While I can respect that, my best recommendation to those people is go through your backlog on steam. GPUs aren't getting any cheaper anytime soon.

 

[noel24]

150$. I suppose that's max for most of the World. I was myself shocked, but that's a number that people tell Me when asked what card to buy. Cry, scream, remove this post, like You did in the past, that's the number that's people in the middle income countries believe is the decent price for GPU. Outside of few high income countries, The World is waiting for true competition, even from China, if It's cheaper.

 

[Dr Roboto]

It used to be $350, then Crypto and AI came. That pushed me to about $500. I was lucky to find a deal on a 9070XT for $550 several months ago. It was really hard to spend that much. I was very uncomfortable at that price, but new it was a deal of life time (now I know it was). I am unlikely to upgrade again

 

[NumberNine]

I have a few very nice GPUs, but it's unlikely I'll ever have the desire to pay the margins for another so I've been living in my retro collection and learning how to create my own games, pixel art, music, the works. It was an easy decision, considering the price of everything and how many other hobbies and skills I've cultivated that aren't gatekept by sociopathic corporations. Not that anyone at the top of the food chain would care.

 

[MiqWalsh]

I know many of you will sneer at a "lowly" entry-level GeForce GT 1030 with "only" 2 GB of GDDR5....but honestly, given that MY gaming consists almost entirely of mid-to-late 90s/early-to-mid 'noughties' retro gaming (think Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake 1+2+3, etc., and other related games using the same engines), I really don't NEED anything more than that.

I paid around GBP £110 for an Inno3D GeForce GT 1030 'passive-cooler' last Xmas. That's the most I've ever paid for a GPU.....and the most I ever WILL pay.

I have nothing that justifies paying the exorbitant prices these top-end cards are going for.

I hardly think that I count as a 'gamer', anyway, considering I only mess around with these for the odd half-hour or so when I'm really at a loose end. 95% of the time, I have far better things to be getting on with....

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, as the saying goes. We ALL have different priorities, y'know?

Miq.

 

[zavrix]

The way things are looking I've upgraded for the last time for gaming in my life I'd imagine, unless something like a major Ai crash happens. Cost me about $1300 NZ to purchase the RX 9070xt almost cried at that price but the RTX 5070 ti was an extra $500 and now you can add another $530 NZ for the same RX 9070 xt card. My ram cost $350 NZ for Cl30 and now the price of that is just out of control If things stay like this in the future I'll be playing older games once this thing gets tired.

 

[maxxcool7421]

DID YOU SAVE MONEY TO BUY IT?
ARE YOU ABLE TO PAY RENT?
ARE YOU ABLE TO BUY FOOD?
ARE YOU ABLE TO PAY YOUR BILLS IN THE SAME MONTH YOU BUY THE CARD?

THEN IT DOESN'T MATTER.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I was ready to spend $700 on a 3080 but they quickly went over twice that thanks to crypto and I still haven't spent that much for a GPU as nothing in that range has offered enough to make it worth it yet.

I generally hang in the $500 range.

 

[yRaz]

I was ready to spend $700 on a 3080 but they quickly went over twice that thanks to crypto and I still haven't spent that much for a GPU as nothing in that range has offered enough to make it worth it yet.

I generally hang in the $500 range.

I'm mad I didn't pull the trigger on the 9070XT when it was still $600, it just didn't make sense at the time. I was still playing 40k:rouge trader last winter and my 6700xt so I was able to play that at 4k no problem. I decided to do another playthrough of Baldurs Gate 3 after that and by then most of the winter was over and I was going to be back to work fulltime. Now I'm sitting here think I'm am ***** for not doing it back then but now it's trending up towards $1000. So right now I have this weird mix of feeling dumb for overpaying while also thinking I got lucky to "only" get it for $850. And benchmarks have shown in still leaving around 20-30%% on the table performance because I'm still on my 58X3D. So I can do a platform upgrade hopefully next winter. I might not be ready for GTA6 and the only other game I really careabout is TES6 which might not even be out until 2028 so I'm not exactly in a hurry to upgrade and most of what I play these days is actually just EvE and a yearly stealth archer in Skyrim. I actually did an original Oblivion playthrough lately because the colors in the remaster take away from the atmosphere. The Oblivion gates look way better than original but 95% of the game is spent outside the gates so....

 

[RudyBob]

>$400

 

[TooQik]

I draw the line at $1000 AUD, with the intention to keep it for at least 5 years before looking to upgrade again. Currently running a RX 9070 XT which I picked up for just over $900 AUD.

My most expensive GPU purchase was a tri-SLI setup consisting of three eVGA GTX 670 FTW at $400 AUD each.

 

[ActualViking]

I don't have a hard limit. What really matters is where the sweet spot when considering performance per $, plus of course if it is performance that matters for my use case.
So to put it differently if I get good performance for say $600 and spending $800 buys my 10% extra performance and $1000 another 5%, then I'll be very unlikely to spend more than $600. But if the $1000 brings 50% extra performance compared to the $600 and what I got for the $600 was barely good enough, then I'll spend the $1000.

It sucks that prices are like double or worse than they were a year or two ago, but in the history of PC gaming what there is now is more like normal and what we had a year or two back was bargain prices.

Some perspective - my first PC which I bought in 1991 cost the equivalent of $5.700 in today's money. Now it was a big machine for its time, but for gaming - I had to add a sound card for it to do more than 'beep', which was another $850 in today's money and that was without the speakers.