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.
Yep, this basically sums up my experiences a couple months ago. I’ve been telling myself since about 2016 that I would save up to go all in and build a solid gaming desktop.
But then there were floods in southeast Asia hindering supplies where I lived. No biggie, they’d recover quick.
Then crypto took off and GPUs and some other hardware tripled or quadrupled in price. No biggie, it’s a fad that will go away quick.
Then COVID destroyed production and distribution of computer hardware. No biggie, gives me time to save up more to afford these new crazy prices.
Then everyone needs GPUs for the AI craze, and prices went up even more. No biggie, I’ll just…cope?
Finally, I was at the point of “Fuck it, I’m tired of waiting. I’m buying a 5080, even if it costs as much as 2 PS5s.”
So I planned it out, made sure I had everything lined up to immediately snag one once they were available. And then day of:
Nvidia’s store: Never had any in stock at any point.
Microcenter: In-store purchases only, and stores were given single-digit stock while hundreds of people queued up for days.
Newegg: Never loaded until their stock was all gone.
Best Buy: Had a very attractive “Add to Cart” button display for a period of about 10 minutes at random intervals throughout the day, which placed me into queues that all ended with me getting kicked out after a few minutes.
Amazon: Well, fuck Amazon, but they didn’t have any either.
So then I thought, forget Nvidia. Just because their cards are dropping earlier in the year doesn’t mean it’s them or nothing. I’ll just get an AMD card if Nvidia doesn’t have stock by then.
I usually buy AMD for their open-source support. I wanted nvidia this time around to fiddle with AI stuff, which is better-supported on nvidia right now.
For years now the prices on this year’s latest cards are so high that I don’t know who buys them. I can afford to spend $1000 but I never would when I can probably get 85% of the performance for $250.
This is what I got from the article as well. Jesus, buy a previous gen GPU and fiddle a bit with your graphic settings, it’s just games, not life or death.
Good luck finding a used one that isn’t barely on its last legs from being poorly OC’d/cooled, or is just an outright brick that burned out in a crypto mining farm and is now being resold by a shell entity of a shell entity of a shell entity on Amazon or Ebay.
I’ve been telling myself since about 2016 that I would save up to go all in and build a solid gaming desktop.
Finally, I was at the point of “Fuck it, I’m tired of waiting. I’m buying a 5080, even if it costs as much as 2 PS5s.”
I assume that whatever you’re running right now isn’t terribly new if you’ve been thinking about upgrading for nine years.
The 5080 is a 16GB card. A quick skim on Amazon suggests that 16GB Nvidia cards are in short supply, but that you can get a 16GB AMD GPU without problems.
They aren’t quite as fast on the Passmark benchmark as the 5080, but they also cost a lot less (even if the 5080 were available), and I assume that they’d be a lot faster than whatever you’re running now.
Could go with that (or something less-fancy) and then if you felt that you wanted to spend more for more performance, do so when GPUs become available.
To add a bit to the story, I did spring for a gaming laptop in 2021 because my 2013 MacBook was starting to show its age, and the model I bought came with a 2070 mobile GPU which has been fine playing newer games at modest settings at 1080p.
Laptops and prebuilts were basically the only affordable option in the pandemic, and I had a laptop need at the time. But for a while now it has still been a goal of mine to put together a good desktop. The last desktop I built was in 2010 (I snagged a GTX 580 GPU and felt like such hot shit then).
I’m so glad I built a high end computer last fall because I was lucky to afford it. Now my 4080 S used is now worth 600 dollars more than what I paid for it at MSRP.
Yep, this basically sums up my experiences a couple months ago. I’ve been telling myself since about 2016 that I would save up to go all in and build a solid gaming desktop.
But then there were floods in southeast Asia hindering supplies where I lived. No biggie, they’d recover quick.
Then crypto took off and GPUs and some other hardware tripled or quadrupled in price. No biggie, it’s a fad that will go away quick.
Then COVID destroyed production and distribution of computer hardware. No biggie, gives me time to save up more to afford these new crazy prices.
Then everyone needs GPUs for the AI craze, and prices went up even more. No biggie, I’ll just…cope?
Finally, I was at the point of “Fuck it, I’m tired of waiting. I’m buying a 5080, even if it costs as much as 2 PS5s.”
So I planned it out, made sure I had everything lined up to immediately snag one once they were available. And then day of:
Nvidia’s store: Never had any in stock at any point.
Microcenter: In-store purchases only, and stores were given single-digit stock while hundreds of people queued up for days.
Newegg: Never loaded until their stock was all gone.
Best Buy: Had a very attractive “Add to Cart” button display for a period of about 10 minutes at random intervals throughout the day, which placed me into queues that all ended with me getting kicked out after a few minutes.
Amazon: Well, fuck Amazon, but they didn’t have any either.
So then I thought, forget Nvidia. Just because their cards are dropping earlier in the year doesn’t mean it’s them or nothing. I’ll just get an AMD card if Nvidia doesn’t have stock by then.
And, well…here we are in this article.
PC gaming is the best deal, eh?
Consider buying a previous generation card. You can sometimes find good deals on used ones.
Yeah. I bought a 3060 on eBay for $240 a few weeks ago. Works great.
Brand new Intel ARC B580 puts up numbers in the 4060 range and only costs around $250
I usually buy AMD for their open-source support. I wanted nvidia this time around to fiddle with AI stuff, which is better-supported on nvidia right now.
I.e. one of the same things that causing gouging on GPUs and the market to be pushed out of gamers hands.
I was upgrading anyway. My RX 580 wasn’t cutting it for games any more.
People at home using their gpus for a mix of gaming and local ai are not really the source of that issue
For years now the prices on this year’s latest cards are so high that I don’t know who buys them. I can afford to spend $1000 but I never would when I can probably get 85% of the performance for $250.
Out of curiosity, what GPU is getting 85% of a 5080’s performance at $250? Genuine question.
This is what I got from the article as well. Jesus, buy a previous gen GPU and fiddle a bit with your graphic settings, it’s just games, not life or death.
I actually had thought of that too, but see my reply to someone else further below:
https://lemmy.world/comment/15537041
Good luck finding a used one that isn’t barely on its last legs from being poorly OC’d/cooled, or is just an outright brick that burned out in a crypto mining farm and is now being resold by a shell entity of a shell entity of a shell entity on Amazon or Ebay.
I assume that whatever you’re running right now isn’t terribly new if you’ve been thinking about upgrading for nine years.
The 5080 is a 16GB card. A quick skim on Amazon suggests that 16GB Nvidia cards are in short supply, but that you can get a 16GB AMD GPU without problems.
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/4982vs5721vs4917/Radeon-RX-7600-XT-vs-GeForce-RTX-5080-vs-Radeon-RX-7800-XT
They aren’t quite as fast on the Passmark benchmark as the 5080, but they also cost a lot less (even if the 5080 were available), and I assume that they’d be a lot faster than whatever you’re running now.
Could go with that (or something less-fancy) and then if you felt that you wanted to spend more for more performance, do so when GPUs become available.
To add a bit to the story, I did spring for a gaming laptop in 2021 because my 2013 MacBook was starting to show its age, and the model I bought came with a 2070 mobile GPU which has been fine playing newer games at modest settings at 1080p.
Laptops and prebuilts were basically the only affordable option in the pandemic, and I had a laptop need at the time. But for a while now it has still been a goal of mine to put together a good desktop. The last desktop I built was in 2010 (I snagged a GTX 580 GPU and felt like such hot shit then).
I’m so glad I built a high end computer last fall because I was lucky to afford it. Now my 4080 S used is now worth 600 dollars more than what I paid for it at MSRP.