A little under 6 months ago, I wrote an article about the prices and stock shortage of graphics cards and the causes of that increase. Today, I take a look at what has been done by the manufacturers and retailers in this time, as well as what still needs to be done.
The Founder’s Edition GTX 1080 Ti
Christmas is just around the corner, and incredible sales are undoubtedly coming. If you haven’t been following the PC building scene for the past year or two, then some things may seem daunting at first. For instance: What’s up with crazy high RAM prices? And why are some CPUs and graphics cards out of stock?
If you’re planning to build a new PC this Christmas, then there are some important things to know about. Consider this your Christmas 2017 PC hardware shopping guide.
A few weeks ago, NVIDIA released the GTX 1070 Ti for $450. As you might expect, its performance and price fall between the GTX 1070 ($400) and GTX 1080 ($500), though it’s thankfully much closer to the 1080.
Long story short: At $450, this graphics card is a logical purchase and we are happy to recommend it. We have added it to our GPU recommendations in the Excellent and Outstanding tiers, as upgrades to the standard recommendations.
After months of dealing with graphics card shortages and price spikes due to unsustainable demand from cryptocurrency miners, some very welcome headlines have recently come our way:
The GT 1030
Three lower-end graphics cards have released recently, but you may not have heard anything about them. AMD and NVIDIA generally do not throw major parties when they release ~$70 products, so do not worry about it if these launches slipped under your radar!
The three new-ish cards are:
The Gigabyte RX 580, which is… Basically the Gigabyte RX 480.
This week, AMD releases two new graphics cards: the RX 580 and RX 570. Actually, calling them “new” is an overstatement. AMD has taken two cards from last year (the RX 480 and RX 470) and is now selling them with new names and a small overclock.
Just two weeks following its official announcement, the GTX 1080 Ti has launched at $700, replacing the Titan X Pascal on the highest end of our graphics card recommendations. Simply put: It is the new king of graphics cards, inching out ahead of the $1,200 Titan X in overall gaming performance. On average, the new 1080 Ti is 2-3% faster than the Titan X, while priced $500 lower.
We have added the 1080 Ti to our GPU recommendations in the Exceptional, Enthusiast, Extremist, and Monstrous tiers on our homepage.
Build a PC or buy a console? The debate rages on…
With the release of the PlayStation 4 Pro over the holidays, the debate over the performance needed for 4K gaming on PC has been fierce. With games like Last of Us Remastered running in the PlayStation 4 Pro’s 4K 60 FPS mode, it is a testament to the level of optimization that can be achieved when working to a single specification. Yet what sort of performance can a PC builder get for the same $400?
At CES 2017, everybody has been waiting for AMD to drop all the pricing and performance information on their next generation GPU architecture codenamed Vega, but AMD couldn’t do that simply due to the fact that Vega is still in active development. Engineering samples have been shown running both Star Wars: Battlefront and DOOM in 4K at max settings, but that is all.
Ladies and gentlemen, it has begun! We’ve have been waiting a year for Black Friday sales, and Newegg’s current Black Friday deals are great!
These sale prices are guaranteed to be the best prices on these parts through Black Friday, which means you can safely buy them now without worrying about a better deal showing up on Black Friday.