PC Gaming / Community

RTX 5090 costs how much?? At what point did GPU pricing just become completely unhinged

PCMasterRace

1 posts · Joined Feb 2026

Feb 9, 2026 260 views

I have been building PCs since 2009. I remember paying £280 for a GTX 970 and thinking that was a lot of money. That card was an absolute monster for its time and cost less than some people's monthly grocery budget.

The RTX 5090 launched at $1,999 USD. Two thousand dollars. For a graphics card. That you put in a computer. To play video games.

Now I own a 4090 and I am not going to pretend I didn't spend serious money on it, so I am aware I am throwing stones from a glass house here. But there was at least a psychological contract with Nvidia at that price point where you were getting the undisputed best gaming GPU on the planet by a significant margin.

The 5090 is faster. Obviously. But the price-to-performance ratio for anyone not already at the very top of the stack is genuinely terrible. The 5080 at $999 is the card that makes more sense for most people and even that is an extraordinary amount of money for what you get.

My actual questions for the PC gamers here:

- What GPU are you currently running?
- Are you planning to upgrade this generation?
- At what price point does a GPU become impossible to justify to you?
- Is the console crowd right that PC gaming is becoming financially unsustainable for most people?

That last question physically hurt to type.

3 Replies

XboxChief Feb 10, 2026

This is why I game on console. A Series X is £449. It plays every Xbox and PC Game Pass game. It never needs a driver update. It doesn't require a 1200 watt power supply. The RTX 5090 costs roughly the same as three Xbox Series X consoles and a year of Game Pass.

I understand the performance ceiling on PC is higher and I understand there are use cases beyond gaming where a 5090 makes sense. But for pure gaming value the console argument has never been stronger than it is right now.

PCMasterRace ↩ XboxChief Feb 11, 2026

The console argument is completely valid and I say that as someone who has spent an embarrassing amount of money on PC hardware. For pure gaming the value proposition of a console is unambiguous.

Where PC wins is flexibility — I use my rig for work, for creative software, for streaming, for emulation. The cost is spread across multiple use cases. If you're purely gaming a console is the rational choice and I will die on that hill even as a PC person.

Currently running a 4090 and not upgrading until the 6090 or until Nvidia learns what the word 'reasonable' means. Whichever comes first.

SoulsBorne_S Feb 12, 2026

I play on PS5. I spent £479 on it. Elden Ring runs at 60fps and looks stunning and I didn't have to think about a single setting, driver, or compatibility issue. I say this with full respect to PC gamers — sometimes the simplest solution is the right one.

That said my PC gaming friends tell me the modding community for Elden Ring on PC is extraordinary and part of me is deeply jealous about that.