It is happening again.
While the situation doesn’t feel as dire as it did back when the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 cards went on sale in 2022, or even when Nvidia’s 30-series cards launched in 2020, it still feels like a real bad time to be shopping for a new graphics card.
Scalpers are helping to make fairly priced 5070 Ti GPUs hard to find right now, but it’s a breeze compared to finding an RTX 5090 card for the $1,999 price that Nvidia recommends.
I’ve seen 5090s going for as much as $4,500 on eBay, and hey, if you have a spare five grand sitting around burning a hole in your pocket—godspeed. The rest of us can wait until stock evens out and prices settle down.
But what scares me is that some people will get fleeced while prices are so volatile. I’ve fielded questions from readers and friends for weeks about why these cards are so expensive and whether they’re worth buying, so I’m nervous that some people will feel compelled to waste time and money hunting for the best shiny new GPU to put in their rig.
I feel that way because once upon a time, I felt the same. I remember getting so irritated back in 2020 when it seemed like Nvidia, Bitcoin miners and the pandemic itself were conspiring to keep the latest and greatest Nvidia cards incredibly scarce.
I was gaming on a 4070 Super not two weeks ago, and thanks to DLSS I had a blast playing Cyberpunk 2077 at a steady 60 FPS with full path traced lighting and all the settings cranked to max. (Image credit: Future)
But I learned from that experience, and I think the state of PC gaming is so good right now that most of us really don’t need the power of these new 50-series cards at all.
Not long ago I was gaming on the RTX 4070 Super in our Acer Predator Orion 5000 review unit, and the difference between playing Cyberpunk 2077 on that rig vs. my Xbox Series X is massive. While I wouldn’t mind a smidge more power so I didn’t have to rely on DLSS as much, I think I could be very happy just gaming on a 4070 for the next five years.
So if you’re feeling stressed about buying a new Nvidia card this year, let me reassure you that you can breathe easy: you don’t need a 5090 to play the best PC games at good framerates and have a great time. Heck, I don’t even think you need a 50-series card this year if you don’t want one. Here’s why.
More money and power =/= more fun
At 1080p even the RTX 3070 in this old iBuyPower Y60 review unit can run a demanding game like Cyberpunk 2077 well, proving you don’t need a lot of cash to have a good time. (Image credit: Future)
Put simply, I think you can enjoy massive savings and improvements in your mental health by lowering your expectations below the 5090. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the lower you can go, the happier you’ll be.
I say that because the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has an MSRP of $1,999 and requires a massive 1000W power supply, but the price and power demand drops precipitously as you move further down the RTX 50-series power ranking.
I think anyone with their eyes on a 5090 and less than five figures to blow on a new PC should shoot for an RTX 5070 Ti instead
The 5080 is $999 and requires 850W, for example, while the 5070 Ti has a $749 MSRP and requires a 750W PSU.
So right away, I think anyone with their eyes on a 5090 and less than five figures to blow on a new PC should shoot for an RTX 5070 Ti instead. The power of the 5090 is incredible, but it’s going to be wasted if you don’t pair it with an equally matched (and equally pricey) CPU, motherboard, monitor and power supply.
Plus, I can’t remember a time PC games and PC game ports were better optimized than they are today. While there are still plenty of games that run like garbage on PC (in part because devs have to account for thousands of possible PC hardware configurations), Steam versions of major releases and ports of big console games tend to run pretty well in my experience.
And since the current consoles are now nearly five years old, even the latest and greatest game releases of the next few years are probably going to run well on a moderately-specced gaming PC.
So I actually think that if you’re building a gaming PC this year and you’re not excited about the prospect of spending $1,000 or more on a graphics card, going hunting for a great deal on an old RTX 4070 Super (which currently retails for about $649) wouldn’t be the worst idea.
Just make sure that if you’re buying a used GPU you verify it was never used for crypto mining, because that kind of work really takes a toll on the hardware.
DLSS 4 is the real hero anyway
At CES 2025 Nvidia showcased two identical PCs running Marvel Rivals, the only difference being the graphics card. As you can see, the 5070 system reliably generated more frames than the 4090 system. (Image credit: Future)
Finally, I want to quickly remind you that paying for raw muscle on an Nvidia graphics card is less important than ever thanks to the company’s own DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) upscaling technology.
Overall I’ve come to love DLSS because in some games it really does make the difference between a playable and miserable framerate.
While it didn’t start out amazing, DLSS has improved by leaps and bounds over the years and is now something I at least try out in every game that supports it. I’ve definitely had mixed results and some occasional graphical issues, but overall I’ve come to love DLSS because in some games it really does make the difference between a playable and miserable framerate.
More importantly, it can let you check out some of the advanced features of Nvidia GPUs without taking serious framerate hits.
I played a fair chunk of Cyberpunk 2077 on Xbox, for example, but once I was able to play it on PC with DLSS and path tracing enabled at 4K with a steady 60 FPS I could never go back to console.
Even small added details like the way the game displays convincing street reflections on the glass window of a cop car as it rolls past, for example, feel mind-blowing.
I had that experience last week on an RTX 4070 Super gaming PC from 2024, and you could buy the entire PC right now for less than one new RTX 5090 ($1,799 vs. $1,999).
And while Nvidia claims the 40-series cards will never be able to support the Multi-Frame Generation feature that allows the RTX 5070 to hit higher framerates in Marvel Rivals than the RTX 4090, I don’t think you need it to have a good time.
In fact, I’ve already seen reports that some enterprising users have managed to get a version of Multi-Frame Generation working on 40-series Nvidia cards. Since Nvidia itself has said that all DLSS 4 features save Multi-Frame Generation are coming to the 40-series cards, it’s not hard to imagine these features could run just as well on a 4070 or 4090.
Bottom line
The RTX 5090 demos we saw at CES 2025 do look amazing, but is it worth the high cost? (Image credit: Future)
If you’ve made it this far I hope you know I’m not trying to take any of the fun or the thrill out of building a blazing-fast gaming PC in 2025. If you have your eyes fixed on buying an RTX 5090, vaya con Dios.
But if you’re feeling even a hint of the old fear and frustration that we went through in the last few Nvidia card launches, I hope this brings you some comfort.
I can’t remember a time when Nvidia was riding higher in the market, but a lot of that has to do with the way the company has doubled down on AI in the last few years. If you don’t care about that stuff, I think the business of playing games on Nvidia graphics cards has never been better.
So if you’re on the fence about buying an RTX 5090, take it from someone who’s lucky enough to get to test all this stuff for free: it’s great, but it’s not everything, and I have loads of fun playing the best Steam games on PCs that are two or three years old all the time.
For my money an RTX 5070 Ti seems like a much smarter investment, and frankly I bet you can get by with a good 40-series card for years to come.
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