The big Nvidia price hike has begun and I think we can quite categorically state that if money means anything to you, you should ignore every GeForce GPU with more than 8 GB of VRAM right now. That’s not a comment on the need gamers might have for high levels of memory in their graphics cards, it’s all about the price.
We’ve previously reported that Nvidia graphics cards were expected to jump in price by up to 30% after Taiwanese outlet, Electronic Daily News reported the rising costs of GPU bundles of chips and memory. That was at the end of July and it seems like already retailers are putting the prices of their current stocks of cards up.
The most egregious is the cost of the Nvidia RTX 5070 today. I updated our page, which has been tracking the lowest available price of every current-gen GPU chipset, just yesterday and noted that the mid-range GeForce graphics card has hopped up from an almost-MSRP of $550 last week to a ludicrous $700. But that $700 card is now out of stock and the cheapest RTX 5070 I’ve found today is $755, with most sitting around the $800 mark.
Latest Videos FromPC Gamer
That’s actually far higher than the original 30% prediction. Going from $550 to $755 is fully a 37% increase.
That’s around $800 for a graphics card I gave a 61% score to because it was a smaller, weaker GPU than the RTX 4070 Super card it was meant to be replacing. At least the odd positioning of the RTX 5070 being cheaper than the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB card has been reversed, though that card itself is still a ludicrous $650.
As a PC gamer I honestly feel a bit like a lobster in a pot as the temperature is slowly rising in the water around me—powerless and in peril. These are not-great fourth- and fifth-tier GPUs going for what was absolutely top-end GeForce pricing not so long ago.
The reasons for this pricing rise are manifold, but largely it boils down to AI is ruining all our fun. For one thing, datacentres are hoovering up as much memory as providers can manufacture, and that inevitably means there is an impact on other forms of memory supply, such as VRAM. But you’re also getting the AI curious, or the AI enthusiasts looking at GPUs with a bunch of VRAM to start experimenting with local models. But whatever the reasons, the prices of these gaming GPUs have become unsustainable.
So please, please don’t pay them.
Not when there are excellent alternatives out there for much less. I know we’re expecting AMD cards to follow suit with their own price increases, but at least for now they are far better value, and the RDNA 4 architecture is genuinely good.
Upscaled gaming performance
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB | 95 Avg FPS, 82 1% Low FPS |
| RX 9070 | 16 GB | 111 Avg FPS, 96 1% Low FPS |
| RTX 5070 | 12 GB | 107 Avg FPS, 81 1% Low FPS |
| RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB | 86 Avg FPS, 72 1% Low FPS |
| RX 9060 XT | 16 GB | 78 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS |
The Radeon RX 9070 GRE, another 12 GB GPU, is available for $500 at Newegg today and will deliver gaming performance practically on par with the RTX 5070. Sometimes a bit lower, but still very, very competitive. Especially when FSR4 is brought to bear on supporting games. And the Radeon RX 9070 (our favorite GPU right now) is $650, the same price as the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, has the same VRAM quotient, and absolutely slams it in our benchmarks.
These are dark times in the PC gaming hardware market, and for me the top five tiers of Nvidia graphics cards have now entirely priced themselves out of all proportion. I simply couldn’t recommend any PC gamer who needs to keep track of what’s in their bank account consider buying any one of them.
Best graphics card 2026
