Hey yall, with card prices getting out of hand these days and my 1080 nearing the end of its viability, im looking to upgrade my GPU by making a responsible decision that invests in the guture but also isnt $2000. Buying a 5060 feels like a poor future investment but a 5080 prices are absurd. My 1080 is still running without issue but I've exhausted the batch of older games Im interested in and would like to play some newer games with non-dismal settings. For example, I bought Stalker 2 and even with optimized settings, im only getting 45fps. Its playable but could and should be a much better experience (slava Ukraini). That being said, i just played through elder ring on high and had no issues. Im not asking for 200fps in 8k, but my monitors are sad from my card bottleneck.

I also have 2 computers. My old rig with 2018 cpu slots and my wife's new computer with ddr5/current cpu slots. Id likely be trying the new card in my old rig to see how my CPU bottleneck is and if thats bad, I'll just toss it on hers. Note: she's running a 1080 as well because i used to have SLI 1080s until games stopped supporting it and built her a computer around it in 2024

My rig Specs:

GTX 1080

i7-6700

500gb SSD

32gb DDR4

Wife's rig Specs:

GTX 1080

i5-12400

2tb SSD

32gb DDR5

Anyway, like I stated before, looking for a card thats a lot of bang for your buck and will let me play current games into the future. Will spend up to ~$1K and ray tracing means nothing to me. Open to any company that'll fit in the slot.

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[–] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You're pretty much limited to just a few cards for under $1,000; unless you happen to land on some fantastic deals, black friday is coming but I wouldn't get too excited. I picked up a rx9070xt 16gb for $650 a couple of months ago at Microcenter but that same card is going for $920 right now.

I would suggest picking out a couple of cards you like and wait for a random sale because prices are inflated for Black Friday. You might find a good deal, but stores always inflate prices around this time so that the Black Friday sales look better than they really are. There's also the used market but buyer beware.

Here's a quick pricing guide off the top of my head for around the normal AI inflated prices from my tracking around 6-8 months ago. I'm not going to bother with links because most are broken due to BF sales.

RTX5060 16gb ~$600 RTX5070 16gb ~$700 RTX5070ti 16gb ~$800 RTX5080 16gb ~$1,000 rx9060xt 16gb ~$650 rx9070xt 16gb ~$800

I would recommend shopping for a RTX5070ti or rx9070xt with 16gb.

This card was $650 back in August, now it's $920. https://www.microcenter.com/product/689903/powercolor-amd-radeon-rx-9070-xt-reaper-triple-fan-16gb-gddr6-pcie-50-graphics-card

The Nvidia cards are going for double what they were in August. A rtx5070ti is going for $1,400 right now, probably just so some sucker will pay the inflated prices up until BF then on BF people will think they're getting a good deal and impulse buy. In my opinion a good rule to go by is if you can buy a whole new PC with the card pre installed for just a few hundred more than just the card alone then you can reverse the math to see what the card should cost at the time that PC was assembled.

For example. You can buy rtx5060ti for $1,000 or buy a fully functional PC for $1,400 or a rtx5070ti laptop for $1,600. https://www.microcenter.com/product/712043/powerspec-g732-gaming-pc?ob=1

GPUs are insane right now. Recommend waiting until Feb/March 2027 and hope to find a random good deal because stores are taking advantage of people right now.

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