The RTX 50-Series: Should You Wait to Get One to Build a New PC?

If you're a PC builder or just a PC gaming enthusiast, you're always waiting. In just a few months, RAM prices are expected to drop. Oh, don't buy now, there's a shortage of this, or the prices of that are ridiculous, or - the most tempting reason to hold off on that upgrade of all - there's a new graphics card generation coming out.

Nvidia has just unveiled the highly anticipated 50-series graphics cards, and while they are boasting a lot of big numbers, if you're not sure what all of that means, and want to know if it's worth waiting to battle the bots when pre-orders and sales go live, then keep reading, as we'll dive into how these cards can affect your gaming performance.

As expected, Nvidia came out swinging with the 50 series. While the 40 and 20 series were not as well-received, it seems the odd-numbered generations of cards are often the outstanding hits. The flagship model, the 5090, is not designed for your everyday gamer, but taking a look at the specs, you see how beastly it is. 21,760 CUDA cores clocked at 2.01GHz with a boost clock of 2.41GHz, a whopping 32GB of GDDR7 memory and a 512-bit wide memory interface. Of course, you'll be paying the price both literally and in power consumption for this $1999 GPU, but it goes to show just how far we've come in computing.

The 5080, 5070 Ti, and 5070 are going to be of much more interest to someone looking to just play games. As mentioned, we won't go over the individual numbers for each card, but the prices aren't as hefty as we'd feared. The $549 RTX 5070 is likely going to sell out as soon as it's released, but the price point feels rather acceptable, especially with the tagline of it offering 4090 levels of performance.

The way the 5070 can accomplish such a feat is largely down to AI, the technology that Nvidia dipped its toe into with the 40 series and has now dived into with both feet. The RTX 50 series introduces AI to shaders with RTX Neural Face, frame rate boosting with DLSS 4, and even autonomous game characters made using AI. All of this sounds very impressive, but is it something you'll want?

From now, these cards are going to be in incredibly high demand, with it being unlikely you'll find one at RRP, as you'll likely have to venture to other manufactures with a higher price. The performance and the AI features are going to bolster the 50 series to strong performance levels, but if you're holding fire to upgrade until you can get your hands on one, you may wish to just pull the trigger, as even though these cards have been revealed, and will even be in laptops by March and April, getting your hands on one for your next build might take a lot longer.

There's also the fact that some, not all of the features available in the 50 series are coming to the 40 series in future updates. In the US, where expected tariffs could cause the price of GPUs and other PC parts to rise, now might just be the time to step in. There's no perfect time to build a computer, but at the same time, that means every day is the best day to build one. Of course, there have been worse and better times to make PCs. We all remember how high prices were during COVID, but in an industry where there's always something new, always the next big thing to wait for, it's up to you when you decide to pull that trigger. If you want to wait for the 50 series, they do look mighty impressive, but if you want to be as informed as possible, you'll likely be waiting a while until people can come out with reviews, benchmarks, and more. Nevertheless, a new GPU gen is exciting, and this could be one of the biggest breakthroughs we've seen in PC gaming.