Alexandra Hall: Nvidia's New 4000-Series PC Graphics Cards Are Too Damn Expensive

So Nvidia has its viewpoint. But viewing events from the consumer side, it really feels like the costs of enthusiast PC gaming are continuing to skyrocket, and at a time when the costs of just about everything else are, too. I hope there is some sort of relief on the horizon, because as the one Redditor put it, “I love PC gaming, but I can’t fucking afford to be a part of it anymore.”

I'm not buying any of the new NVIDIA GPUs, but I do sympathize with the desire to have the latest and greatest, but not being able to afford it.

The best I can say is that while people are balking at the $900-1400 price range of these new cards, I think it's worth remembering that GPUs have been accelerating so fast in recent years that we have an insane amount of power available to us, even if we don't buy top-of-the-line cards.

For example, I have an RTX 2070 Super in my PC, a nearly 3 year old card, and I can still play every single game that comes out very well. If it's a game also on PS5 and Xbox Series X, there's also a good chance I can play it at similar or sometimes higher settings than the console version. You can buy my card on eBay for $200-300 which is far more affordable.

Even if you want more than that, the current mid-range NVIDIA card goes for about $550 most places, and may drop after the new 40 series of cards releases next month.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I have absolute sympathy for people who can't afford to buy the latest and greatest, but it's also great that you can buy any NVIDIA GPU from the past few years and play everything coming out at quite high settings.