A new GPU is the most thrilling thing when you're a PC gamer. After all, it's often the single most impactful component in a PC, and upgrading your graphics card can give you a major performance boost in all your games.
I get it. I love it, too. But the reality is that you probably spent too much on your graphics card—I know I have. Here's why I think that most of us can get away with something way cheaper than what we often end up with.
Most gamers don't need a high-end GPU
That's a fact, not an opinion.
Justin Duino / How-To Geek
I spent close to $1,100 on my GPU when it first came out, and while I don't regret it, I always knew it was overkill. Although the latest games keep pushing hardware requirements up and up, the vast majority of gamers stick to a more reasonable price point.
Steam's monthly Hardware Survey provides some good insight into where we're at. It's 2026, but the most popular GPU among surveyed players is still Nvidia's RTX 3060, a graphics card that's now almost five years old.
This is followed by the RTX 4060 laptop and desktop versions with a combined share of close to 8%. Those GPUs aren't the latest generation, but even when they were, they were budget-oriented and mainstream. Going down the list gives us the RTX 3050 and the GTX 1650 as the next two entries. In fact, Nvidia's latest RTX 50-series doesn't even appear on the list until the 17th spot, and that's still the budget RTX 5060 with a 1.69% share. The first high-end GPU on the list is the RTX 3080 at number 19, and the RTX 5080 doesn't show up until even later.
1080p still remains the go-to option
It's not just GPUs, either. The main reason to get an expensive graphics card is to match it with an equally impressive monitor, but those are still scarce. The good old 1080p , although outdated, remains the top resolution used on Steam with over 50% respondents, followed by 1440p at 20.59%. 4K sits at under 8% if you combine 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios.
If it's not the monitor, then it's usually game requirements that drive the sales of these high-end GPUs . But are those requirements really that steep?
Ultra + ray tracing is a money pit you may not need to chase
Is it nice? Yes. But is it necessary?
Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek
One of the reasons why I bought my RTX 4080 Super when it launched in 2024 was that I wanted to play everything at max settings with ray tracing enabled. And, although it's been two years and it's far from the most powerful GPU out there, I'm happy to say that I can still do just that in every game that I play.
However, in retrospect, I could've gotten away with something that can only run games at high settings without ray tracing, and I probably wouldn't have noticed much of a difference.
Certain games really make the most of what a GPU can offer. Obviously, Cyberpunk 2077 comes to mind. I freely admit that walking through the streets of Night City with full lighting effects is an experience, but during actual gameplay, I don't have time to observe the scenery—I'm too busy playing. At that point, it's less about lighting and visuals and more about maintaining solid frame rates.
Ultimately, I'm not going to tell you whether you need to play at maximum settings or not. My one word of advice is to watch reviews from sources you trust and look for comparison videos for the specific games you want to play. You may find, like I did, that the game still looks fantastic at slightly lower settings.
Modern GPUs are less about hardware than ever before
For better or worse.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
We live in an age where hardware upgrades are slowing down, but the software stack keeps evolving with each generation. In the case of Nvidia, it's only the RTX 5090 that receives meaningful upgrades to things like CUDA core counts. The rest of the lineup moves at a slower pace, although the RTX 50-series gave us a switch from GDDR6X to GDDR7. VRAM capacity largely stayed the same, though, apart from the RTX 5090.
This state of iteration, rather than evolution, is likely here to stay. The early days of PC graphics brought us massive hardware improvements with every gen, but these days, we're getting upscaling and frame generation instead. As such, the difference between a mainstream and a high-end GPU is not a choice between playing at max settings and struggling with low frame rates, but rather about how much you want to rely on various FPS-boosting techniques.
Nvidia's DLSS 4 and AMD's FSR 4 can go a long way in letting you play at higher settings than your GPU might normally be able to support. The AI features do a lot of the heavy lifting, and with the latest versions, the tradeoffs aren't too punishing. The latency goes up, but tools like Reflex help. Artifacting can happen, but it's hardly ever game-breaking.
While DLSS/FSR are certainly a useful crutch (and a big reason to keep things conservative when shopping for a GPU), they don't replace a high-end graphics card completely. I remember that when the RTX 50-series was announced, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claimed that the RTX 5070 would deliver RTX 4090-level performance. That didn't come true even with DLSS, but it's a fact that the 5070 can punch well above its weight in the titles that support frame generation.
Now is not the time to buy an expensive GPU
The GPU market is on fire (in the worst way possible).
Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek
GPU prices have been less than amazing for a good few years now. We had a brief reprieve from graphics cards selling well above their recommended list price (MSRP), but we're right back to square one now, thanks to the RAM-pocalypse and AI demand. After all, t he RTX 5090 costs up to $5,800 now—it's the worst it's ever been.
Unfortunately, the RTX 5090 isn't the only card that's overpriced. GPUs are going up in price across the board, with the RTX 5070 Ti now selling for close to $1,300, which is a massive increase from its MSRP of $749.
Even mainstream cards, like the RTX 5060 , haven't been spared ... but it hurts less to spend an extra $30 on an RTX 5060 than to shell out a $550 premium on a card that's already pretty pricey.
Right now, cards like the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, RTX 5070, RX 9070 XT/non-XT, and the RX 9060 XT 16GB are the way to go if you need a new graphics card. Aiming for slightly more VRAM than just 8GB is always a good idea, but beyond that, those GPUs will do just fine at every resolution, provided you don't shy away from frame gen and don't mind lowering your settings sometimes.
