I've finally got enough disposable income to spend on a mid-high PC but graphics cards at that tier are just ludicrously priced, especially from Nvidia. I remember building my first computer in 2013 and being flabbergasted that people were paying $1000 for a GTX Titan, the best card in existence back then, at launch—that was probably twice the price of my entire build back then (Radeon 7770/FX-8350... simpler times). Now this generation's equivalent, the 4090, is $1599 at MSRP, and often pushed up to $2000 by resellers and scalpers. The next rungs down aren't far behind either, with the 4080 at $1200 and the new 4070ti at $799. AMD isn't as bad, but their software game is so far behind and DLSS is very appealing for extending the life of my card as long as I can.

I was excited to make a new build and leap to 1440p/144hz but the expense has sucked a lot of the appeal out of it. I might just bite the bullet and shoot for a 4070ti deal to see if I can mitigate the tax at least. I know I'm part of the problem for buying new but I just want to be done with all this and have something I can keep for the next like 6-8 years.

    • TheCaconym [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Exactly the way I go at it too. My current card is a 1080TI one, has been for years, and I haven't hit any performance problem for any games yet - and that's with many, perhaps most, games played going through wine+dxvk. Mind you I don't insist on enabling all the highest graphics shit (cyberpunk comes to mind here); nor do I do VR, or play higher than 1080p. I imagine more recent models would help in such use cases but really, beyond VR - which just gives me headaches after 10 mins - I can hardly tell the difference visually anyway.

      • ProfessorAdonisCnut [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I'm kinda amazed how little I regret shelling out for a 1080Ti. I've had it for over 5 years, and it feels like even now getting something that would meaningfully upgrade from it would cost as much as I bought it for back then.

        I'm at 3440x1440 and I do play in VR (Reverb G2) so I'd definitely notice upgrading to a 4080 or something, but the price of doing that is just nasty compared to where it used to be