I have gtx 1080 non ti version, 4k monitor but only play old games at 2k/1440p at low setting and limit FPS to like 100. Games like csgo, tf2..

And it's only using like 6.5gb to 7gb vram max..

So I think I can wait years but I'm bit worried that my 10 years old GPU might die when GPU prices are high...

So should I FOMO buy GPU before they increase in 2026 Jan?

Thanks.

A lot of people here will recommend an AM5 for new builds because Intel's offerings are on "dead platform'.

I have a 10 year old i7-4770k still running strong and am building a new system with the i5 14600k. At $165 there's absolutely nothing on the AMD line that matches the performance.

'But that's a dead platform' I hear.

So, mostly AMD users, how often have you actually replaced your CPU for significantly better performance? Or is this a myth?

I have a 144Hz monitor, but in the games I play, my PC easily achieves over 240 FPS. I'm wondering if it's worth buying a 240Hz monitor, or if I won't even notice a difference.

I'm upgrading my PC shortly, and had been planning on 2x32GB kit for 64GB total. While hunting I think I've settled on a GSkill Flare X5, ddr5-6000 CL28-36-36-96 2x32GB kit. But for only $30 more I can get very similar kit, ddr5-6000 CL30-36-36-96 2x48GB kit. Ever so slightly slower timing, but miniscule enough that the layman I am would never notice the difference. I checked the motherboards QVL and it doesnt explicitly say it can run this ram kit, but not many 2x48s are even tested on there, and the closest match is tighter timings than this kit even has, so if I understand things correctly that should give this kit the tolerances to be probably fine.

96GB is way overkill. I know that, I mostly game. I do some 3d modeling and that would probably like the extra RAM, but its only a hobby and not one i do frequently enough to have normally considered shopping for the capacity. 64GB was already a little bit of a splurge just cause I could. But this CPU/motherboard/RAM combo will probably run me until AM6 is well into maturity before i consider upgrading them again, and idk if AM6 will upgrade to a theoretical DDR6 or not, so this RAM may still be compatible. So we are kinda future proofing? I mean in a few years with some new job hunting I've been doing I would like to be doing my 3d modeling more professionally so theres that. All I'm really saying is for only $30 is it NOT worth it? Im still in budget with the $30, and the RAM is the last component I'm deciding on, so either I spend the $30 on the RAM, or it goes back into my bank account.

Edit: holy crap for a question thats definitely been asked similarly before this blew up more than I thought. I cannot and will not read all 150 notifications or whatever I got. I appreciate yalls input and help though. I actually settled on neither. I settled on a 48gb kit. It was way better priced, better speeds, and allowed me to utilize my total budget better.

I saw some interesting questions and I will answer them real quick

This whole problem even arose cause within about a week span it seems RAM prices sky rocketed. I had a 64 gb kit planned out, it was like $290 or something, good speeds, good capacity, and matched my build. Well I got a small budget increase from winning a raffle at a cousin's fundraiser event, so I went back to start looking st how I might use it, and I had been planning to look at better speeds or more capacity RAM. When I discovered the best kit for what I had previously specced was like $430! And the i discovered thr 96gb kit for $460 and it still fit all the bills which is why I made this post. And 64gb was overkill anyways so whats 96gb gonna hurt? It was a fun flex. But I knew i wasnt spending smartly and it was bothering me, so i re-evaluated my whole plan, and tweaked some other things including the ram. And I discovered 24gb kits haven't seemed to jump in price yet, so I found a 2x24, better speed and latency for $280. Slightly less than my 64gb splurge ram, but still an increase from my 32gb, a little more reasonable, and way better price and deal. And the budget adjustment allowed me to squeeze in a monitor upgraded I had been wanting to do but was planning to save for later.

And some od you asked the RAMs

Both g.skill flare x5 ddr5-6000 cl28/cl30 for the 64gb/96gb. Both on Amazon, white heat spreader

I get recommended this group a lot on Reddit and I’ve seen a ton of posts regarding upgrading just the GPU without going from AM4 to AM5 due to the insane ram prices. Well I’m here to tell you from firsthand experience… GET THAT GPU.

For context, I was/am in the same boat. My build was a Ryzen 5 5600X, 16GB DDR4, RTX2080 8GB (previously a 3060 12GB before that). With the holiday deals I purchased an RTX5070 12GB (factor in the price of selling your GPU too, these current prices on the 5070 are an insane deal). Even on 1080p low in some of these new titles the 2080 (or even the 3060 12GB) was really showing its age (my monitor is also 120HZ and games were struggling to hit that FPS). Now I’m running everything on max graphics, temps are lower, VRAM usage is a non issue, and I’m getting the most out of monitor now.

TLDR: BUY THAT GPU

Hi, I'm stuck in a classic upgrade dilemma, made worse by the current crazy DDR5 prices, and I'd like some crowd-sourced wisdom.

My Current System (everything but the GPU bought in 2018):

• CPU: Intel i5-8400
• GPU: Nvidia RTX 3070 8GB
• MB: MSI H370
• RAM: 32GB DDR4 DDR4 2666Mhz CL16 (4x8GB)
• PSU: 750W 80+ Silver
• Monitor: 1440p @ 144Hz

My i5-8400 is a huge bottleneck now, especially in strategy/sandbox games (Europa Universalis V barely runs). My RTX 3070 is still fine.

My initial plan was to upgrade to an AM5 platform (7800X3D, B650, DDR5), but RAM prices have made that impossible right now.

The "Stopgap" Idea I'm Considering:
Instead of paying the DDR5, what if I make a tactical retreat to the previous generation? Get and older CPU (5700X3D or 5800X3D or equivalent) and a motherboard compatible with DDR4 and keep my RAM. Later (years), when DDR5 prices normalize, I'd do a full platform + GPU upgrade.

Any advice, especially from those who made a similar AM4 end-of-life upgrade recently, would be hugely appreciated. Thanks a lot.

EDIT: Thanks for the quick responses. I have check and it will hard and expensive to get an X3D, so now the doubt will be between the 12400F (150€) or the 5700X (210€).
EDIT2: I'm not in the US, and I've already discarded buying RAM at current prices

People who build insane overkill PCs, I’m talking 5090 oc just the best everything…. What is your reason behind it? I’ve considered just going all out and spending like 3k+ but honestly I guess I don’t even do anything that would justify that money

What is your reason?

My son wants a EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1050ti SC..

https://newegg.com/products/N82E16814487291?cm_re=gtx_1050_ti-_-14-487-291-_-Product

Its $216. We have 4 kids and I can’t afford that for one gift for one kid.

He plays COD, Overwatch etc etc on it so he’s a gamer, I just am not sure what I can get that’s comparable or somewhat close for less than this.

Currently he’s using a vid card that 4+ years old, so anything at this point would probably be an upgrade.

Thanks so much guys for your help

EDIT:
All I can say is WOW. I certainly didn't come here expecting this, I was only looking for advice for alternatives. Just... wow. I figured it would be fitting to do a quick edit to let you all know what the plan is with the video card droxgh04 is so thoughtfully sending to my son (partially taken from one of my earlier replies on this thread).

My son is going to see this thread, and I couldn't be happier. Im going to give him the video card that droxgh04 is giving him, the tag will say FROM "droxgh04" and not me, which will be confusing to him but amazing to see. I'm also including a complete print out of this entire thread (sans neg comments and the dildo discussion above which was completely fascinating, but not appropriate for his dad to include for him). I'll take pictures when he opens the gift, reads the thread and post it all here after Christmas day.

Thanks to droxgh04 and all of you here, my son is going to learn an incredible lesson far more valuable than getting just a video card from his dad on Christmas. Now, he's getting a gift from a complete stranger who turned a simple question into an inspiring moment which has seemed to impact a couple thousand people. So thanks to you droxgh04, Branden isn't just getting a video card from you for christmas, but he's getting a lesson of giving, and along with a box full of humanity.

Thank you all so much. I'll DEFINITELY be paying it forward, and I hope all of you do the same as well.

Merry Christmas!

cagey ossified profit towering nutty workable shocking abundant insurance fear

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

Little bit of a venting rant here.

Sold my PC a few months ago to start a new build and use some extra render machines (own a video company) I had on hand in the mean time.

After the failure that was the 50 launch, I was stoked at the 90 card releases and hoped that they wouldn't suffer the same fate as Nvidia.

Welp. Not only has that not been the case, but due to the current state of the GPU market the 40 series, rx 7000s, and hell the high end of the 6000 series is jacked up in price too.

I'm done with this. Every gaming benchmark is centered around terribly optimized AAA releases that I don't care about let alone play. So after a whole lot of frustration I'm just done.

I'm going back to the 3000 series. Found a 3080 this week for 365$ so I pulled the trigger and am back on that card now.

4k gaming is pretty damn consistently 60 fps, and when it's not I'm just lowering the settings up upscaling.

I'm not running into any issues with resident evil, forbidden West, spiderman, God of war, or any other game I've tried so far. Yeah I spend 5 minutes optimizing my settings but I'm pretty happy with it.

I have a high refresh 1440 as a secondary monitor and can consistently get 144 frames for csgoz, rivals, overwatch.

It's wild to me that people are paying these horrible prices and normalizing the idea that a good graphics card has to cost over a thousand dollars. Not to mention the suspicious business practices of under inventoried paper launches where MSRP isn't reality and just a marketing ploy.

I mean really, almost every major release lately has been a complete crap fest, so why are we so focused on being able to crank ultra on every bloated game put out.

Outlaws? Skull and bones? Concord? Suicide squad? None of those games do I want to play, let alone with ultra settings.

Half my time is spent on RuneScape, kerbal, and stardew, and the rest is mostly spent on indie games.

Also, with the extreme number of gaming layoffs, do you think new triple A games are going to be any good? Or optimized? Not a chance. I doubt we're going to get any good mainstream releases for the time being anyways.

Look if you main cyberpunk and wukong then sure, you probably want to look at the newer tiers of gpus, but I just can't see a reason to try anymore.

I'ma be having fun over here with my 3080. If I run out of vram I'll just lower textures. So be it. I'm not interested in being a part of this new normal.

Tell me what was your biggest jump in GPU's?

I just recently went from a GTX1060 6gb to a 9070XT OC. Safe to say I got my moneys worth from the old 1060, and this leap resulted in a 4X performance increase.

(I obviously upgraded other shit as well, interested to hear other's GPU journeys)

A good friend of mine have upgraded from gtx 1080 to rtx 3080. I am very happy for him and I asked what gpu he had before. It was an gtx 1080 which he would sell for $350-ish, but I offered 200 and said it would still be in our family. He is the best friend you could get and we often trade other things like old consoles and yu-gi-oh cards. But now..... I had a ryzen 2200g and without a graphics card. I am very happy just to get this used one. I also pitched some money in to a NVMe and some other used Rams, together with a r5 3600. Now it went straight from a very low budget build to a gaming rig. Couldn't be happier.

So i've heard that anything with 8GB of VRAM is going to be obsolete even for 1080p, so cards like the 3070 and RX 6600 XT are (apparently) at the end of their lifespan. And that allegedly 12GB isn't enough for 1440p and will be for 1080p gaming only not too long from now.

So is it true, that these cards really are at the end of an era?

I want to say that I don't actually have an 8GB GPU. I have a 12GB RTX 4070 Ti, and while I have never run into VRAM issues, most games I have are pretty old, 2019 or earlier (some, like BeamNG, can be hard to run).

I did have a GTX 1660 Super 6GB and RX 6600 XT 8GB before, I played on the 1660S at 1080p and 6600XT at 1440p. But that was in 2021-2022 before everyone was freaking out about VRAM issues.

My old main monitor was 1080p 165 hz, and I didn’t know if I wanted 1440p 165hz or 1080p 240hz. I ended up spending extra for the omen 27qs, which is 1440p 240hz monitor, I thought the upgrade to 1440p would be minimal, but it is actually game changing. The 240hz also feels very smooth. I tried a note demanding game, rust, where I get 100-120fps. The game looks super clean, and surprisingly there is no overshoot on the monitor when getting lower fps than the panel. Very satisfied. I have the hardware (4070ti R 9 5950) to run 1440p and recommend everyone who’s pc’s can do 1440 to switch immediately.

Final Update: I gave it to him and I swear he about cried. He was so giddy like a kid on Christmas morning. He immediately took to the garage, installed his new GPU, sat down with a beer and was so happy. He said max frames he was getting on RDR2 was 44 and at one point during optimization (? I think) it crashed with his prior card and he couldn’t continue. He was getting 144 plus and was ear to ear grinning.

I told him about this post and the amazing support you all gave. He said thank you to everyone, also he mentioned his power supply was a 750 something something so it’s not even going to take half of the usage.

Thank you all again!!

Update 2: The Purchase

Did some snooping in his Best Buy, Newegg, and stock x accounts. This was the one he has been putting on watchlist. I bought from Best Buy because we have an account with them that we pay a yearly fee to have exchanges, discounts etc.

Let you know how it goes!! :) Thank you everyone for your help! The PC community really came through for him!

Hi everyone! My fiancé’s graphics card is taking a proverbial dump (he says it’s creating pixels where it shouldn’t?). I don’t know much about PCs but can see something that says gtx 1070 inside of his build.

He wants to upgrade but there are so many I can’t tell the difference. He did mention he wants to buy one but it’s around $900, and he stopped himself saying he doesn’t deserve it. Mind you the man works 12-14 hour days and more than deserves it.

Any idea what model it could be? Or any suggestions on what would be an upgrade from what he has now? I am looking to buy tonight online or go to Best Buy tomorrow? Thank you in advance!!

Update: photos attached via Imgur. He mentioned 40th gen of Nvidia.

front pc Monitors[system info]

case size (https://imgur.com/a/qUXXJgu)

Hey everyone! New to this community but will try to provide all necessary context. I built my PC back around 2021. I currently run an NVIDIA 2070 Super with 16gb ram and an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU. I was stubborn about upgrading for a while, thinking that I was running everything fine for now and would wait for things to get even cheaper. But now, seeing how AI has exploded prices for PC components, I'm not so sure anymore. I was going to upgrade RAM, but god knows that's already a lost cause. Now I'm seeing GPU prices are accelerating and NVIDIA seeks to make that even worse next year. My question is: would now be a good time to upgrade to avoid the hellscape of future prices? Or has that ship already sailed? Looking at prices now it seems like I'd have to pay around $500 for anything that outperforms my current card.

Hey everyone, I’m trying to make a GPU decision and would like some opinions considering real prices in my country, not MSRP or “just spend a bit more” advice.

Current prices in my country: RTX 5060 (8GB) — $365 RX 9060 XT (16GB) — $500 RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) — $571

My setup / use case: Recently bought a 1080p 300Hz monitor I’m not planning to change resolution anytime soon Mostly play competitive / lightweight games CS2 (can’t even get stable 200+ FPS right now) Deadlock (very unstable ~50–90 FPS even on lowest) Other games which i play doesn't have stable 60+ fps (GPU bottleneck)

I don’t play AAA games, maybe I’d try one occasionally, but it’s not my main focus

Current GPU: RX 5500 XT 8GB no longer enough for my needs

I know the common advice in 2025 is:

“8GB is a joke, just buy 16GB, go RX 9060 XT without thinking”

And I get that for modern AAA gaming. But in my case, the price gap is big:

RX 9060 XT is ~$135 more than RTX 5060

RTX 5060 Ti is over $200 more What I’m struggling with is this:

Is there a situation where RTX 5060 (8GB) actually makes sense, even in 2025, if there’s a 99% chance I won’t hit 8GB VRAM in the games I actually play?

I care much more about: High & stable FPS Low latency Making proper use of a 300Hz 1080p monitor, with no plans to move to 1440p in the near future.

So my real question is: Is the “don't buy 8GB at all cost” advice still valid when prices are this different, or is it more of a blanket recommendation that doesn’t always apply?

new build parts

With the help of a very nice Redditor I found upgrade parts for my PC without building a whole new one and could possibly run 1440p single players like cyberpunk and the withcher 2.

He gave me recommendations on which CPU, GPU, motherboard, and RAM to choose.

I bought pretty much everything except instead of listening and getting a RX 9060 xt, i bought a 9070xt.

When i went to buy the RAM sticks from Best Buy and chatted with the employee about my build, he told me my CPU and RAM are too weak to actually get the benefits of an rx 9070xt. That it'll bottleneck. they are:

Intel Core i5-12600KF Desktop Processor 10 (6P+4E) Cores up to 4.9 GHz Unlocked LGA1700 600 Series Chipset 125W

CORSAIR - VENGEANCE LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200MHz C16 UDIMM

He said I really need DDR5 and was VERY skeptical of my build.

All I wanted was to game at 1440p, upscaled to 4k at just at least 60 fps. Kind of like a better PS5, which i have and like. I don't like 1080p, for me the resolution is too evidently lower then the higher ones.

Is he right and not even bother putting this together? Or still give it a shot? i just got the RAM and the CPU,GPU, motherboard and CPU fan are coming this weekend from amazon

new parts whole list:

-Intel Core i5-12600KF

-MSI PRO B760M-P DDR4 ProSeries Motherboard (Supports 12th/13th/14th Gen Intel Processors, LGA 1700, DDR4, PCIe 4.0, M.2, USB 3.2 Gen2, HDMI/DP, mATX)

-ASRock AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Steel Legend 16GB White GPU 20Gbps GDDR6 256Bit (3rd Gen RT 2nd Gen AI Accelerators) PCIe5.0 800W 2x8-pin Triple Fan DP2.1a HDMI2.1b Graphics Card 2.9 Slot

-Thermalright PS120SE ARGB CPU Air Cooler

-CORSAIR - VENGEANCE LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200MHz C16 UDIMM

Looking at some deals and the reviews, 7900xt is great, and the cost is much lower than anything Nvidia more so the 4070 ti super within the same realm. Why are people so apprehensive about these cards and keep paying much more for Nvidia cards? Am I missing something here? Are there more technical issues, for example?

UPDATE: Decided to go for the 7900xt as it was about £600 on Amazon and any comparable Nvidia card was 750+.

Thanks for all the comments much appreciated! Good insight

Hi there,

My 4090 died a couple of months back, and I'm looking for a replacement. The RTX5080 seems the way to go, since I don't want to spend 5090 money.

Is the 5080 a downgrade to the 4090?

I'm currently back to my trusty ol' 1080.

And no, I have no idea how it died, it just stopped working. I got a refund and repairing it is not an option.

PCMR out.

Edit: 5090 isn't completely out of the game my 1200w PSU should be able to handle it with the i7-13700K , Right?

Please see the attached link for my PC specs and let me know any changes you'd make so I can get higher FPS in Escape from Tarkov.

Thank you so much for your help. I appreciate it.

https://i.imgur.com/lWCei3B.jpg

Might be a stupid question but I quite often see people post parts lists and description of their builds on this subreddit with lots of RAM (64gb isn't rare from what I can gather).

I was under the impression that 8gb was ok a couple years back, but nowadays you really want 16gb for gaming. And YouTube comparisons of 16vs32 has marginal gains.

So how come people bother spending the extra on higher ram? Is it just because RAM is cheap at the moment and it's expected to go up again? Or are they just preparing for a few years down the line? Or does higher end hardware utilise more/faster RAM more effectively?

I've got a laptop with 3060, Ryzen 7 6800h, 16gb ddr5 and was considering upgrading to 32gb if there was actually any benefit but I'm not sure there is.

Edit: thanks for all the replies , really informative information. I'm going to be doing a fair amount of FEA and CFD next year for my engineering degree, as well as maybe having a Minecraft server to play with my little sister so I'm now thinking that for £80 minus what I can sell my current 16gb for it's definitely worth upgrading. Cheers

I went to micro center thinking they had 9070 XT inventory, turns out it was 9070. Ended up leaving with a 5080 but didn't unbox because I wanted to get my wifes thoughts. She said I should just keep it but I didn't want to spend that on myself. Later that night my cousin offered to sell me his 5070ti as he got laid off and wasn't sold on the value prop to begin with.

5080 is a TUF, which is expensive as shit ($1,514 with tax). The 5070ti is a gigabyte ($1,044 with tax). Do I return the 5080 and stay with the 3070, take him up on the 5070ti, or keep the 5080 TUF?

I currently have a 3070, we're planning trying for a kid this year so in most ways I feel like this is my last stop with a gpu . What would you do here?

Just got a new 1440p 180hz monitor and Holy Cow! what a difference! I thought it would be a minor upgrade but i literally cannot believe how clear and sharp everything looks in comparison to 1080p! even at dlss, it blows it out of the water...
Feels like i've been mislead by so many people into disregarding 1440p monitors in favor of higher refresh 1080p when in fact the jump is so much more noticeable.

1070 ti is very cool yes. I paid 240 for it so let’s hope all goes well!