Graphics Cards - Page 3

QuakeCon 2026 kicks off this weekend, with the event once again offering PC gamers the opportunity to take part in the world's biggest LAN party alongside celebrating id Software franchises like DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein.

This year NVIDIA and its GeForce RTX brand are once again a major QuakeCon 2026 partner, and in addition to sponsoring a $10,000 mod contest and giving away GPUs, it's also offering attendees a pretty special deal.

Yes, per the headline, NVIDIA will be at the event selling Founders Edition models of its GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards at MSRP. While supplies last, PC gamers at QuakeCon 2026 will be able to pick up a GeForce RTX 5070 for $549 USD, a GeForce RTX 5080 for $999, or a GeForce RTX 5090 for $1,999. If you've been following GPU prices, especially with the current memory and component crisis affecting all corners of the PC gaming hardware market, picking up a Founders Edition GPU at its original MSRP launch price represents a fantastic deal.

Someone just found an RTX 3050 sitting in a thrift store bin for less than the price of a coffee, and honestly, stories like this feel like the only good news coming out of the GPU market lately.

According to Reddit user u/Nervous_Highlight752, they picked up an MSI GeForce RTX 3050 Ventus 2X 6G OC at a Value Village thrift store in Canada for CAD $4.99, which works out to roughly US $3.50. The card is used and a few years old, but it apparently powers on and works fine. That same MSI model is still selling for around $209 on Amazon right now, so this is close to a 98% discount if you actually needed one.

The buyer says the plan is to drop the RTX 3050 into a second PC that has been limping along on an ancient GTX 750 Ti, a pretty solid upgrade path for basically pocket change. The RTX 3050 is not a powerhouse, but it still handles most games at 1080p on medium to high settings without much trouble, and it remains one of the few Ampere-era cards NVIDIA keeps in production because budget GPU demand refuses to die down.

A Redditor says ASUS canceled his already-paid RTX 5090 order and then asked him to hand over close to $500 more to get the same card. It's a pretty rough look for the company right as GPU prices keep climbing across the board.

According to u/IndependentOk1031 on the r/ASUSROG subreddit, he placed an order for an ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 through NVIDIA's official marketplace and paid $4,607 after tax. Sometime after that, ASUS canceled the order outright.

When he asked what happened, NVIDIA told him ASUS was unable to fulfill it at the "previous rate," essentially blaming a late price update. He was then asked to pay $5,090 for the exact same GPU, an increase of nearly $500 for a card he had already bought and paid for in full.

AMD has confirmed it will hold the opening keynote speech for IFA 2026, and I'll give you just one guess at the topic.

That's right, it's AI, and VideoCardz noticed that Jack Huynh, who is SVP & GM of Computing & Graphics at AMD, posted the confirmation of the keynote on X (see above).

The full title of the keynote is apparently: "The Era of Personal AI: The Future of Imagination". We're told that Huynh will expand on AMD's "vision of the next era of computing" where "AI transforms the relationship between people and technology".

MSI is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and to celebrate, it's launching a new line-up of premium limited edition 'DRACO EPIC EDITION' gear. Inspired by a mythical dragon by the name of Draco, who "guarded the golden apples to become the North Star," all you really need to know is that the blue, gold, and dragon iconography looks absolutely stunning when paired with MSI's PC hardware.

Of course, that's a subjective take, but after seeing the line-up up close at Computex 2026, it was hard not to be impressed by the craftsmanship, including custom etching and a premium finish. The full line-up covers a motherboard, graphics card, liquid cooler, chassis, headset, keyboard, mouse, and mouse pad, with MSI noting that they'll be available soon in "limited quantities."

And with that, let's take a quick look at the line-up, starting with the MEG X870E ACE MAX DRACO EPIC EDITION motherboard. This is a flagship AMD X870E board with USB4, Wi-Fi 7, PCIe 5.0 SSD support, and premium thermals and power delivery reimagined with its custom Draco design. It's joined by the GeForce RTX 5080 16G SUPRIM DRACO EPIC EDITION graphics card, which also reimagines one of MSI's flagship vapor chamber-cooled cards with a custom backplate and other Draco touches.

GIGABYTE is one of the biggest names when it comes to PC gaming graphics cards, offering a broad line-up of both GeForce RTX 50 and Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs. With several recent reports indicating that both NVIDIA and AMD are increasing the prices for their GPUs (that is, the GPU and memory bundles it offers to partners like GIGABYTE), the latest price-increase news comes from a wholesaler in Japan.

According to a new notice from Japanese retailer and supplier CFD-BIZ (via Wccftech), which has been sent out to its various customers, GIGABYTE GPU prices have now increased by around 20% to 40% for any new orders placed from August 1, 2026. The notice cites a "price revision by the manufacturer," which indicates this is coming directly from GIGABYTE.

The notice doesn't mention any specific products, but by stating "GIGABYTE VGA products," it sounds like a catch-all for all of the brand's graphics card products across GeForce RTX, Radeon RX, and workstation products. A 40% price increase is massive, but the bad news doesn't stop there.

Although not indicative of the full PC gaming landscape, Valve's monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey data offers some great insight into trends and where the PC gaming hardware landscape is sitting. It's a valuable tool not only for hardware makers but also for game developers of all sizes looking to optimize their games to ensure they run on the various PC systems out there.

When it comes to the latest July 2026 results, there's a notable change when it comes to VRAM capacity. That is, looking at all of the discrete and integrated GPUs out there across AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel, 16GB is the most popular VRAM capacity with 25.9% market share, followed by 8GB with 25.3% market share.

It's the first time we've seen 16GB take the lead, which covers a wide range of cards like GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, Radeon RX 9070 XT, and more. That said, when looking at the bigger picture, the majority of gamers are still gaming with GPUs and VRAM capacities less than 16GB, thanks to the popularity of 12GB cards like the GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 5070.

With prices for GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs increasing in several markets due to the ongoing memory crisis, the current state of PC gaming hardware is not exactly ideal. Far from it, as we're seeing the prices for critical components like discrete graphics cards increase to the point where MSRP is starting to feel like a distant memory. Even with the current situation, it's looking like the GeForce RTX 5070 might go down as one of NVIDIA's most popular and successful gaming GPUs in a long time.

As seen in the latest data from Valve's Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for July 2026, the GeForce RTX 5070 is sitting at 3.62% market share, which is pretty much on par with the GeForce RTX 4060's 3.63% share. It's not only the most popular card in the current RTX Blackwell and RDNA 4 era of PC gaming, but its rapid adoption has made it one of the most popular PC gaming cards on the market, right behind the GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 4060.

What makes the RTX 5070's popularity interesting is that it's outpacing the more affordable mainstream GeForce RTX 5060, which is normally the model that defines a GeForce RTX generation when it comes to popularity. Part of the RTX 5070's appeal, or the RTX 5060's slower growth, probably comes down to the latter's 8GB of VRAM - which is proving to be a limiting factor when playing modern AAA titles.

GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards are getting noticeably pricier in South Korea this month, with retailers there reporting hikes of up to 30% depending on the model. According to ZDNet Korea, multiple domestic importers and distributors confirmed that major board partners are rolling out the increases starting this week, and some had already quietly raised prices over the weekend.

The culprit is the same one we keep talking about: memory. NVIDIA bundles the GPU die and GDDR7 modules together as a single kit for its add-in board partners, so when GDDR7 pricing climbs, the kit price climbs with it. Research firm TrendForce says standard 2GB GDDR7 modules are now going for the low $20s each, and TSMC's own wafer price hikes on its advanced nodes are adding another layer of cost.

Korean price tracker Danawa listed the cheapest RTX 5060 Ti 8GB cards around 700,000 won (roughly $488), up about 70,000 won ($49) from before. The RTX 5070 12GB climbed to around 1.1 million won ($767), a jump of nearly $140. The RTX 5090 32GB is apparently the hardest hit, now selling for around 7.3 million won, or about $5,087, up as much as $1,045 from mid-July pricing.

The developers behind popular HWiNFO64 have introduced a pre-release update featuring support for per-chip VRAM temperature monitoring on AMD's Navi-based GPUs. The update follows the company's introduction of per-chip VRAM temperature monitoring on RTX 50 series GPUs with GDDR7 memory, as well as other RTX-based cards featuring GDDR6 or GDDR6X memory.

The patch notes for the pre-release version (8.51) fail to mention how per-chip temperature monitoring was implemented and discovered for AMD cards. But the timing of this update alongside the discovery of per-chip temperature monitoring on NVIDIA's counterparts suggests a correlation somewhere. Regardless, AMD RX 5000 through 9000 series GPU owners are now able to monitor and check if a memory chip is overheating on the card.

To recap, modders recently discovered that NVIDIA's entire lineup of previous and current-generation RTX GPUs using GDDR6, GDDR6X, or GDDR7 has the capability to read memory temperatures per IC, but, for unknown reasons, NVIDIA has opted to block these sensors from mainstream consumers. Despite this, modders have figured out how to bypass NVIDIA's restrictions and have modded per-memory-chip temperature monitoring into third-party apps such as HWiNFO64 and MSI Afterburner (through a mod for the overclocking application).

A Redditor going by u/LittleBanditReddit walked into a local Goodwill and picked up a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti for two dollars. Not two hundred, not twenty. Just two.

The card was apparently just about to be placed on the shelf by staff, and the buyer grabbed it before anyone else noticed. Back home, the GPU booted up fine and ran Cyberpunk 2077 at roughly 30 FPS at 1080p with FSR set to Balanced. For a card that launched back in 2016, that is a fairly solid result on a modern game nearly a decade later.

Finding a working GPU at a thrift store for pocket change is rare enough that it tends to go viral every time it happens. Earlier this year, one gamer walked away with a GeForce RTX 3060 12GB for five dollars, and stories like these keep popping up as more people realize old office and gaming PCs often get donated with the graphics card still inside.

AMD is reportedly moving ahead with a fresh round of Radeon price increases, with board partners now being told to expect a jump of at least 10% starting in August. According to Chinese industry source Board Channels, cited by VideoCardz, AMD has sent official notice to its add-in board (AIB) partners confirming the increase on GPU and memory kits.

The GPU kit is the bundled package that pairs a Radeon GPU die with its VRAM memory allocation before shipping to partners like ASUS, PowerColor, and Sapphire. It's worth separating this price increase from the Radeon price hike chatter from earlier in July. This latest notification is a fresh confirmation, and apparently ties back to the plan AMD finalized last month but chose not to implement right away. It is apparently part of the 10-15% price hike AMD flagged for the second half of 2026.

Interestingly, the reporting suggests AMD sat on this decision deliberately, waiting to see what NVIDIA would do first. NVIDIA has already been raising GeForce kit prices for its own AIB partners in recent weeks, and now that Team Green has made its move, AMD appears ready to follow with its own increase. We have been seeing this hide-and-seek pattern all year between the two GPU manufacturers.

Stripped graphics cards keep turning up in secondhand listings, and the latest one is an MSI GeForce RTX 4080 that a Reddit user picked up locally for just $200. Once he cracked the shroud off, the PCB underneath was essentially empty. It had no GPU die, no VRAM chips, nothing but the power delivery components still soldered in place.

The post landed in r/LinusTechTips, and the photos show a graphics card that looks convincing from the outside. The heatsink, thermal pads, and backplate all appear intact, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes this dangerous for anyone shopping for a used GPU right now. An RTX 4080 still sells for close to $1,000 on the open market, so a card missing its two most expensive components is basically a paperweight.

At first glance, this looks like it lines up with a trend we have tracked all year. Memory prices have climbed steadily through 2026 as the wider shortage tightens supply everywhere, and both NVIDIA and AMD have pointed to VRAM cost as a reason for raising GPU prices.

If you're worried about graphics cards getting hit by further price hikes, it seems those fears might be justified, as a new report indicates that NVIDIA is increasing its pricing considerably - and it's backed up by a second rumor that comes via YouTube.

The first report is from the Economic Daily in Taiwan (as spotted by Eurogamer), which cites a BenchLife report, and a claim that NVIDIA has just bumped up the price of its graphics cards by about 20% to 30%, which is a big leap.

It's noted that this follows two previous price hikes this year, one of which happened at the very start of 2026, and another which followed in May (just two months back). The latter increased the (now astronomical) price of the RTX 5090 only, but this time around, the rest of the Blackwell line-up is being repriced in an upward direction.

An initial review of AMD's new RX 9050 has popped up and the GPU doesn't fare that well in comparison to NVIDIA's RTX 5050, at least not at first glance - although there are issues with this evaluation as we'll see.

The RX 9050 has just arrived on the scene, and the 8GB graphics card has been tested by Japanese tech site Hermitage Akihabara (as flagged by VideoCardz).

Hermitage Akihabara put these AMD and NVIDIA GPUs through their paces in a head-to-head, comparing synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks across a raft of titles.

Around a week ago, we heard rumors that NVIDIA was planning to increase the price of its GeForce GPU bundles, which pair RTX chips with GDDR6 or GDDR7 memory. This week we've got more information on this rumored price increase, which would be what NVIDIA partners like ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, and others pay for GeForce RTX hardware.

According to a new report from Taiwanese outlet Economic Daily News, the price increase will see NVIDIA raise prices for all GeForce GPU bundles by 20 to 30%. This isn't the first increase of its kind this year; this up to 30% price hike would be the third for NVIDIA. OF course, NVIDIA isn't alone, as the DRAM crisis has also seen companies like AMD and Intel pay a lot more for GPU memory for their consumer graphics card products.

Based on this information, it seems that this price increase is already taking hold in China. As reported earlier this week, cards from partners like Colorful are now selling at prices 60% higher than their original MSRPs, with MSI's line-up of GeForce RTX 50 Series cards having seen their prices increase by 20% in the past week alone.

The classic GPU swap scam is becoming an all-too-familiar sight, with buyers opening supposedly sealed RTX boxes only to find everything from rocks to bags of grain instead of the graphics card they paid for. Now, another buyer has fallen victim to the same trick.

A customer in Moscow ordered a GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5070 Ti from Russian online retailer Wildberries for 90,000 rubles, around $1,125, only to find a two-liter plastic bottle of water inside the factory-sealed box.

Fortunately, the buyer had the foresight to film the entire unboxing with store employees present. The video, shared on X by @oldValkyrie, shows a Wildberries employee handing the package directly to him. Before opening anything, he holds the box up to the camera to show the serial number label and outer plastic wrap, both of which appear completely intact.

After promising FSR 4.1 support several weeks ago, Valve has officially introduced AMD's latest upscaling technology to the Steam Machine. In a Steam blog post, Valve states that FSR 4.1 is now available for Steam Machine owners to take advantage of in compatible games with the introduction of FSR 4.1 to the experimental branch of its Proton compatibility layer. Valve has also introduced a CAD file featuring the Steam Machine's external geometry for users who want to make their own accessories for the console.

Valve also provided an update on the Steam Machine's reservations and Waitlist, noting that they are fulfilling orders on a daily basis. Valve also expects everyone in the reservation queue to have the option to purchase a Steam Machine by the end of this year.

FSR 4.1 is AMD's latest upscaling technology that was originally aimed at RDNA 4 GPUs, but several weeks ago AMD finally announced official FSR 4.1 compatibility with RDNA 3 GPUs, with RDNA 2 support debuting in 2027. Around this time period, Valve also announced collaboration with AMD to bring FSR 4.1 support to the Steam Machine.

AMD just released the RX 9050 8GB, its latest entry-level graphics card based on the RDNA 4 architecture. However, rumors and product pages (that have now been taken down) revealed that AMD was also planning to release a 4GB trim of the card with significantly lower memory performance. According to an X post by Hassan Mujtaba, AMD officially confirmed that the RX 9050 4GB is a real SKU, but it will only be available to one system integrator in the US.

VideoCardz found the system integrator that the RX 9050 4GB is being shipped to, that being CyberPowerPC. Unsurprisingly, CyberPowerPC put the RX 9050 4GB in one of their cheapest pre-built machines, featuring a Ryzen 5 5500, 8GB of DDR4 memory and a 500GB M.2 PCIe SSD.

AMD reportedly introduced the RX 9050 4GB in this unorthodox way to "deliver strong overall value for entry-level gaming customers". We will likely never get the card's pricing, as the card is being sold exclusively as an OEM-only product, but it's likely being sold well under the RX 9050 8GB's $279 MSRP (not considering extra discounts OEMs typically get from buying GPUs in bulk).

Brazilian GPU repair specialists Paulo Gomes and SidNelson say they have traced a recurring burn issue on GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 boards back to a flaw in the card's VRM design, and not the HDMI port that was initially suspected.

The pair focused their investigation on the GIGABYTE RTX 4060 AERO model after noticing the same failure pattern showing up again and again. Affected boards show heavy PCB carbonization near the HDMI output, which apparently led some owners to assume the display connector was the culprit.

Gomes and SidNelson say that is not the case. Using an oscilloscope and multimeter, they compared damaged samples against a working GIGABYTE card and an Inno3D RTX 4060, checking all four phases of the GPU's power delivery.