Digital Foundry: Why We Recommend Buying a GPU Now

Omnipunctual Godot

Omnipunctual Godot

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According to the folks at Digital Foundry, if you've been considering a GPU upgrade, now is likely the time to move. They note recent memory shortages and pricing issues, as well as the cancellation of the Super lineup for 50-series cards. Plus, with some cards reaching their peak in terms of availability, it might be a now-or-never situation for some.


Are you upgrading any time soon, or do you plan to wait for the next gen?

I just upgraded from a 1080 ti to a 5090, and I'm hoping I won't have to deal with this crap again for a long, long time. The constant refrain of "I'll wait until next gen" because the current gen is colored by some new shade of bullshit (be it shortages, scalping, or underwhelming performance) started getting old after a while.
 
oh ok

brb grabbing my wallet and 4k usd out of it
 
If DF recommend it, sure, than it is a absolutely must do

Season 6 Thumbs Up GIF by The Office


Season 3 Lol GIF by The Office
 
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Omnipunctual Godot said:
This is what I did with the 30 series. I skipped because the price jumps seemed insane. But they never actually got lower. And the memory shortages happening right now will absolutely affect the prices of upcoming hardware.
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The cards will undoubtedly get more expensive — that's known, and neither I nor anyone with common sense needs a recommendation from DF for that. DF, the holy grail. Everyone's lining their pockets; unfortunately, that's how it's always been in recent years.
 
The shortage of GPU's is indeed going to be unprecedented.

Companies like Coreweave, Applied Digital, Nebius, Microsoft etc are being allocated the lions share of the supply chain to build out enormous AI datacenters.

The demand for GPU's is already sky high despite FUD news articles talking about bubbles and stock being stuck on shelves etc.. it's utter nonsense, at work our head of security was trying to secure £13m worth of H100, H200, and Blackwell Ultra. They were told that they are all fully sold out for the next 3 years with a huge backlog.

It's insane considering blackwell is soon to be replaced...
 
That doesn't change the fact who's the big elephant in the room and telling us his game runs on which hardware specs. All charts aside, you can't measure and quantify this problem but it keeps happening anyway.
 
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The thing is, if you are thinking in buying a new PC or a new GPU soon, then buying it now is the best time as many GPUs are matching or below MSRP at the moment. But with the spike in memory prices GPUs will eventually also have to increase in price as GPUs also use memory on them. Some ppl expect the memory prices to go back to normal around the middle of 2026 when the supplies should be back to normal, but its just predictions.
 
Hudo said:
DF are saying you should buy, which means I will wait.
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It all depends what u got on board now, personally i can still stick to my old trusty 3080ti from middle of 2021 at least till early or even late 2027 when new family of gpus will launch, both from nvidia and amd.
On the other hand if some1 sits on something very weak/outdated (say 3060ti/4060 or even weaker/older card), i would suggest to buy new gpu asap, depending on ur budget and standards at least 16gigs 9060xt even up to 5070ti.
 
Just as google throws their TPU into the ring, possibly negating half the need for GPUs in AI

Sit tight, crash coming sooner rather than later. Then I'll make them beg for my business.
 
DF a few months late to this party as usual

Bought my 5090 a few months ago when they dropped to MSRP

I'm seeing they are back up above MSRP again today

The other RTX 50 series cards are at good prices for BF right now tho
 
Nocty said:
The shortage of GPU's is indeed going to be unprecedented.

Companies like Coreweave, Applied Digital, Nebius, Microsoft etc are being allocated the lions share of the supply chain to build out enormous AI datacenters.

The demand for GPU's is already sky high despite FUD news articles talking about bubbles and stock being stuck on shelves etc.. it's utter nonsense, at work our head of security was trying to secure £13m worth of H100, H200, and Blackwell Ultra. They were told that they are all fully sold out for the next 3 years with a huge backlog.

It's insane considering blackwell is soon to be replaced...
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Yep, next two years is going to be a shit show. If you need/want a PF or an upgrade, do it right now before "old stock" runs out for GPUs and pre-builts.

See the other thread where Nvidia stopped bundling VRAM into the chip package for AIBs.

And yeah, we can barely get any allocation at work either. This is a fairly large corp and we have some decent gov contacts as well :(.
 
RCX said:
Just as google throws their TPU into the ring, possibly negating half the need for GPUs in AI

Sit tight, crash coming sooner rather than later. Then I'll make them beg for my business.
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Google, MS, Amazon, Meta are all working on their custom chips with Google being the furthest ahead. You are still not going to see demand dip for years though (witness all the international data centers going up in Middle East, Europe, Asia, etc).
 
Magic Carpet said:
RTX 5080 prices seem to have dropped down near to 1000 USD. Maybe it is time to buy.
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Around 1100 in EU for some models. I can find them for 900 used in Italy. Which is a lot less than the price it was at the beginning of the year (1400-1500).

Still expensive but it will get worse from now on, if you are on the fence it's a decent time to buy.
 
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They are 100 percent right. If you are even considering buying a GPU within the next 6 to 12 months....buy it now.

Also, good to see someone reporting the cancellation of the super cards I mentioned a few weeks back.
 
Mister Wolf said:
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Eh, it's all about the use case.
I'm not buying a steam machine for the latest aaa games. I have a ps5 for that.
I'd be buying one for the 300+ steam games (and emulation) I own but haven't had access to for 8+ years when I got rid of my last pc.
 
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It's solid advice. If you were looking to upgrade within the next year it's probably better to bite the bullet and do it now. Too late for RAM though.
 
Are 5070 Tis likely to go further on sale tomorrow for Black Friday or on Cyber Monday, or are the deals we're seeing right now the best we're going to see this weekend?
 
Pc gaming is fucking dead.
Get a ps5 pro

Keep using your old 30X cards
Absolutly no fucking reason
To get higher end cards
 
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darrylgorn said:
Actually, the best time was when the 5 series came out and you could get a decently priced 4080 that still holds its own today.
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I ordered a 4080 Super just before the 50 series got announced. Never received it, was put on backorder.
 
Unless you go for the lower end (like 9060 XT 16GB) it's a pretty bad time for buy a new GPU

When the next gen consoles will come out, GPUs with less than 20-24 GB VRAM will start being obsolete/unable to match console settings
 
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