Graphics card prices are lower than they’ve been in years, making it especially difficult to predict whether you should wait until Black Friday to buy one.
The weekend after Thanksgiving has long been a popular shopping season here in the United States, but these days the savings start earlier every year, and we’re already seeing some of the season’s best Black Friday deals hit stores.
This is generally good news, but it makes knowing the best time to buy a new graphics card tricky. To help you make the best decision, let’s take a look at why you should and shouldn’t wait until Black Friday to buy a new GPU.
Of course, one perennial piece of advice applies: Buy what you need when you need it. So if you absolutely need a new GPU, don’t feel bad about grabbing whatever is the best deal you can find right now; the important thing is not to break down waiting for a perfect storm of purchase conditions that may never arrive.
Why you shouldn’t wait for Black Friday to buy a new GPU
Graphics card prices, which were once astronomical, have been down since the first quarter of the year. While you can still occasionally find it overpriced, especially if you’re buying the latest and greatest cards from third-party vendors, most GPUs can be had for MSRP these days.
(Image credit: Nvidia)
Sure, you’re not likely to find much on a new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, but cutting-edge cards like this $1,599 beast rarely go on sale earlier this month. If you just want a new mid-range card from the likes of AMD, Intel, or Nvidia, now’s a great time to start looking for deals.
(Image credit: Nvidia)
They’re coming so fast and earlier this year that we’ve already started our Black Friday deals liveblog, and it’s a great page to keep an eye on if you’re in the market for a new GPU. While you may see better deals the closer we get to Thanksgiving, this year retailers like Best Buy and Newegg have started slashing prices early enough that we don’t have to wait.
Why you should wait for Black Friday to buy a new GPU
That said, if you really want one of the latest and greatest Nvidia GPUs, it would be smart to wait and see. The hottest deals will be held until just before the end of November to build interest and will likely include the new Nvidia GeForce 4090 and 4080.
If you don’t care about owning the latest cards, you might as well start looking for deals now, because we’re already seeing significant price cuts at retailers like Best Buy and Newegg. But if you want one of the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-series cards, the best deals are likely only available in the Black Friday exclusion zone.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang showed a 4090 card in his hand. (Image credit: Nvidia)
Why should you wait for a new 40-series card? In addition to offering a performance boost over the previous generation, these cards are the only ones to support Nvidia’s new DLSS 3 upscaling technology. Nvidia implemented this new DLSS 3 technology along with the 4090. DLSS is a big deal because it uses machine learning to intelligently try and “enhance” graphics that are rendered at artificially lowered resolutions, giving you the low resolution performance without a large drop in graphics performance.
Nvidia introduces DLSS 3 as leaps and bounds more effective than DLSS 2, and to use DLSS 3 requires the 4th generation Tensor cores and the new Optical Flow Accelerator technology integrated into Nvidia 40 series cards like the GeForce RTX 4090, which carries a recommended price of $1,599. So if you want one, better wait for a Black Friday deal!
