Don't tell Nvidia: 56% of you are willing to pay over $600 for your next graphics card... and 19% would spend over $1000 😮
We've been tracking graphics card prices for the past twelve months and after yet another pricing surge last week, there's been a wave of depression sweeping the PC Gamer offices. It's Nvidia GPUs that have been hit the hardest, with the ludicrous situation where the cheapest RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB we can find is more expensive than the cheapest RTX 5070.
What's even more ludicrous—and surely entirely unsustainable—is that both those cards are both close to $800. These are the fourth and fifth tiers of Nvidia's RTX 50-series lineup and that pricing is utterly punitive for PC gamers.
So, that had me wondering what this might mean for the next generation of cards, and how much you dear people, our PC Gamer readers would accept paying for your next graphics card. So we've been asking: How much would you be willing to spend on a new GPU? And honestly, the answers have surprised me; you're willing to spend way more than I could!
How much would you be willing to spend on a new graphics card?
Given the recent price hikes, here's what the PC Gamer audience be okay spending on a new card
Votes (%)
$600 - $80022$400 - $50018$800 - $100015$300 - $40010$1500+10$1000 - $15009Up to $2008$200 - $3007Votes (%) DataProductValue$600 - $80022$400 - $50018$800 - $100015$300 - $40010$1500+10$1000 - $15009Up to $2008$200 - $3007
The recent pricing surge is all down to the AI-backed memory crisis, and these 16 and 12 GB cards respectively are seeing their pricing rocket as a result of the healthy dollop of GDDR7 memory attached to the GPUs. But it's not just production constraints pushing up the price of cards going into retail, it's also going to partly be down to AI enthusiasts looking for Nvidia GPUs with high VRAM capacities to run their local AI systems.
And yes, once more PC gamers are suffering at the hands of folk using both the technology and our graphics cards for things other than gaming and massively spiking the prices as a result.
But I'm surprised that a hefty 56% of readers who responded to our poll would be willing to spend $600 or more on their next graphics card, though I think the number that got me thinking most was just how many of you would actually drop $1000 or more on a new GPU. 19% is a not statistically insignificant percentage, and that is going to make Jen-Hsun's face light up as he considers pricing the new RTX 6070 Ti at $1,000, despite looking at dropping the VRAM capacity to 4 GB of GDDR5 because of the ongoing memory crisis. DLSS 5 will take up the slack, right?
Statistically speaking, it's also interesting to see the parity between the 10% of readers looking at the $300 - $400 segment and the other 10% waaaaay down the other end of the spectrum happy to spend $1500 or more.
But the $600 - $800 segment is the most popular among our readers, with 22% of the vote, and $400 - $500 just behind that with 18%. That's probably where I'd find myself, to be honest.
Given the state of the market, maybe you guys are just being realists in terms of what new GPUs will cost. But it's still kinda surprising to see so few people around the budget end of the market; that's something I've always seen as a strength of PC gaming, but it's also been an underserved colour in the GPU spectrum of recent times.
Let us know where you fit in the spectrum in the comments below!
This week we want to know how you feel about monitors...