NVIDIA Launches GeForce RTX 5050 for Desktops and Laptops, Starts at $249

[lexluthermiester]

I'm indirectly saying it's a class above the cards the TPU database compares it to.. Which would obviously favor your argument... lol

It seemed like you were objecting to my point, based on your choice of words.

Either way, it's gonna be a hard sell regardless considering you can just buy a 5060 with 10 more SM units for $50 more ($299 MSRP). I think NVIDIA could have gotten away with $200-230 if the die is small enough, but I digress.

8G RTX 5050 = 20 SM @ $250 (320gb/s)
8G RTX 5060 = 30 SM @ $300 (448gb/s)
8G/16G RTX 5060 TI = 36 SM @ $380/$430 (448gb/s)


Relative SM per price: (SM/MSRP)

5050 =0.08
5060 = 0.1
8G 5060 TI = 0.094
16G 5060 TI = 0.083
5070 = 0.087
5070 TI = 0.093
5080 = 0.084
5090 = 0.088

Highlighted cards offer the most SM per $, bar driver optimization. Blackwell seems to "Sweetspot" raster around 5070 class based on W1zzards latest review when looking at "Performance per MSRP"

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-9060-xt-pulse-oc/35.html. Bottom of page.

tl;dr: everything is relative.

Again, I'm not debating price. It's been argued to death and many have differing opinions.

My point here is that if the 5050(or any other of the budget GPU) is an effective upgrade and provide the performance needed, it's a good thing.

 

[jaszy]

It seemed like you were objecting to my point, based on your choice of words.

Nah.. the database is off, esp since GDDR6 spec is 14gbps there. It will be closer to a ~4060 given Blackwell's general scaling. I wrote that out, but I guess it wasn't super clear.

Again, I'm not debating price. It's been argued to death and many have differing opinions.

My point here is that if the 5050(or any other of the budget GPU) is an effective upgrade and provide the performance needed, it's a good thing.

The price is relative though. It's ~$50 less than a card it prob matches in raster (4060) while having stronger memory bandwidth, but at the same time, it's going to be a worse price/perf metric than the $300 5060 with +10 SM and higher bandwidth.

I think NVIDIA could have gotten away with at least $230.. Would seem more linear with the rest of the Blackwell lineup. Ironically has worse SM : MSRP than the 5090.

But like I said prior.. people are ignoring cost from consumer inflation and modern PCB requirements. It's also a full die GB207 which could be used elsewhere via Quadro or what not.

 

[Calicifer]

WoW, this absolutely excluded CPU Architecture designer experience and creativity. Only the lithography node dictate everything. Do you sure?

CPUs also had significantly decreased in size since a decade ago and newest manufacturing technology has moved into chip production, only producing the most important parts on expensive nodes. Either way, yes. Node dictates major part of the pricing. Then comes PCI and VRAM configurations which also had universally risen in price. Nvidia price hike is them preserving their margins and passing them down to the consumer.

You should keep track of nodes rather than GPUs, because upcoming nodes essentially dictate everything. If for example, AMD is going to have a node advantage, they are going to either win or be very competitive to Nvidia per tier basis. You can also guess in what ballpark performance will be of new GPUs. Market will also either improve or get worse depending on node availability. As there is shortage of cutting edge nodes at the moment, it is the reason why GPUs were struggling to keep up with games growing demands and TSCM monopoly lead to high prices in GPUs.

As for RTX 5050, I sure love how people who are not in the market for the product love to contribute with their negativity. It is a good GPU. The only questionable GPU this generation is RTX 5060 Ti. It is in the odd place due to lack of performance and VRAM. RTX 5080 was disappointing too. Other than that, it is a good year from Nvidia to round up Lovelace/Blackwell generation. People will need to get used to Moore's Law being dead or they will be just boomers constantly complaining how things used to be back in the day.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Yes, a good answer. It has already been liked, but it politely bypasses the question of the creativity of architecture designers. For me, creativity is not expressed in the devilish cramming of more and more transistors per square millimeter and inflating the operating and turbo frequencies. This is precisely the absolute lack of creativity, lack of brain activity in designers. The use of brute force.

 

[Rover4444]

BOO

$50 too high.

 

[jaszy]

CPUs also had significantly decreased in size since a decade ago and newest manufacturing technology has moved into chip production, only producing the most important parts on expensive nodes. Either way, yes. Node dictates major part of the pricing. Then comes PCI and VRAM configurations which also had universally risen in price. Nvidia price hike is them preserving their margins and passing them down to the consumer.

You should keep track of nodes rather than GPUs, because upcoming nodes essentially dictate everything. If for example, AMD is going to have a node advantage, they are going to either win or be very competitive to Nvidia per tier basis. You can also guess in what ballpark performance will be of new GPUs. Market will also either improve or get worse depending on node availability. As there is shortage of cutting edge nodes at the moment, it is the reason why GPUs were struggling to keep up with games growing demands and TSCM monopoly lead to high prices in GPUs.

As for RTX 5050, I sure love how people who are not in the market for the product love to contribute with their negativity. It is a good GPU. The only questionable GPU this generation is RTX 5060 Ti. It is in the odd place due to lack of performance and VRAM. RTX 5080 was disappointing too. Other than that, it is a good year from Nvidia to round up Lovelace/Blackwell generation. People will need to get used to Moore's Law being dead or they will be just boomers constantly complaining how things used to be back in the day.

This.

Most people fail to understand that NVIDIA's pricing per mm2 more or less tracks linearly since the GTX600 series with RTX 20 and 30 series sorta diverging off a little in regards to die size per GPU class. 40 series went back to a more traditional segmentation and 50 series has a behemoth 750mm2 flagship on a current node.

Add stuff like SPS, PCI SNR requirements, and layer count and the prices aren't too far off from the 2012-2016 run with basic monetary inflation.

It's not that they're massively increasing pricing. SM counts and power requirements have also increase significantly since the GTX1080 with its mere 20 SM's @ 314mm2 via TSMC 16.

100% agree. NVIDIA wants to persevere legacy margins. They've always done this..

 

[Vayra86]

Not sure what folks are expecting. Since we love to compare everything to the flagship, let's go ahead and do that. Here's how the 5050 stacks up to the 5090:

View attachment 405196

In everything but VRAM, the 5050 is 1/8 of the 5090. Not-so-coincidentally, so's the price. Should the 5050 be less than USD200? Absolutely. But we showed Nvidia that we're perfectly willing to shell out four figures for high-end cards, so the outrage that they'd dare sell entry-level cards at 2-1/2 Benjamins is rather amusing at this point.

This in a nutshell spells out why people should have zero business in the segment of x50 and x60. Its just a shitload of e waste considering all these chips need a shroud, a box etc. And then you pay relatively just as much as you would pay for something not practically obsolete from day 1.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

This in a nutshell spells out why people should have zero business in the segment of x50 and x60. Its just a shitload of e waste considering all these chips need a shroud, a box etc. And then you pay relatively just as much as you would pay for something not practically obsolete from day 1.

Going to have to hard disagree with you there. I've spent a goodly chunk of my PC gaming career on 50 and 60 caliber cards, and they largely served me very well, even PCMR whipping boys like the 550 ti and 3050. Admittedly, this is in large part because, as an inveterate bargain hunter slash cheapskate, my approach differs from what we'll go ahead and call an enthusiast. If not for my distributed computing habit, I'd wager that my purchase cadence would be similar to that of someone buying 70 and up cards, with around 1/3 the money spent.

In short, I firmly believe there's a place for this class of cards, presuming they're priced appropriately. Which is the rub, considering nothing's priced appropriately right now (IMO). Which kinda means that everything is, I guess? Market economics can be a right b****.

 

[Calicifer]

These cards definitely have their place. Old systems need such cards, because old CPUs are bottlenecked by anything remotely modern. For example, I have i5-4670 at my home town. When I upgraded from GTX 760 to used GTX 1060 it was on the absolute edge what this processor could do. Often both running at 100%. Anything more powerful is just wasted effort. So, I managed to trade in cheaply RX 6500 XT. It's absolute crap of GPU, but it runs everything which I want to play on it. I do dreamed about replacing it with RTX 3050 and now RTX 5050 would be amazing too. If I would need to do that purchase again, I would buy RTX 5050, because it is simply hands down the best GPU for gaming on those old systems.

PC enthusiasts in general are very narrow minded and hypocritical. They don't see anything past FPS/dollar and they still don't care about it and buy flagship GPUs. They just scream and cry, because their game for decade was cheering AMD in order to force Nvidia to lower their prices. Now everyone is wise to their game and Nvidia rose their prices to properly represent their premium experience. Those people will keep throwing temper tantrum, but hardware surveys will be dominated by Nvidia. Their PCs often also have Nvidia cards for some half assed reasons.

These new GPUs are not comparable to used market too, because it wasn't used, it has guarantee and you won't get scammed. Used market is a mental barrier for people to even participate in and when they do, they have to be clever enough not to get scammed (my friend was scammed on his first GPU purchase like that). Then there is no guarantee how old that GPU will live. My GTX 1060 died within the first year of ownership. So, money well thrown away. People are right to prioritize lower performance for same amount of money just because it is new.

 

[Vayra86]

Going to have to hard disagree with you there. I've spent a goodly chunk of my PC gaming career on 50 and 60 caliber cards, and they largely served me very well, even PCMR whipping boys like the 550 ti and 3050. Admittedly, this is in large part because, as an inveterate bargain hunter slash cheapskate, my approach differs from what we'll go ahead and call an enthusiast. If not for my distributed computing habit, I'd wager that my purchase cadence would be similar to that of someone buying 70 and up cards, with around 1/3 the money spent.

In short, I firmly believe there's a place for this class of cards, presuming they're priced appropriately. Which is the rub, considering nothing's priced appropriately right now (IMO). Which kinda means that everything is, I guess? Market economics can be a right b****.

Full agreement if you put it like that. I've spent a good 10+ years on that class of cards too, and if you simply settle for it, that's that.

But times have changed. Its 2025 and we're knee deep in leather jackets now. GPUs have been an investment for a while now, not just price wise, but also in terms of longevity. Ever since Pascal the paradigm changed radically, because if you owned a Pascal card... I mean I could just run that shit for 6-7 years fine and do everything, even bumping up my resolution along the way. That's unheard of prior to 2016; though perhaps the 980ti was the first appearance of such a fantastic longevity, and going back further in time, there are a few more. But Pascal matters here because it also marks the end of an era and entry of a new one.

We are still in that era, except now the performance gen to gen is yanked out and GPUs aren't getting cheaper. You can still last a long time with a GPU now, except there is no upgrade path unless you spend more than you used to do. And in THAT world, spending on something that just might fall short pretty soon, is just burning cash. Even if you settle at x60... you're gonna fall down the performance chain gen to gen but you do pay more. Even consoles are going to surpass it.

 

[Calicifer]

Didn't Pascal coincided with maturation of rasterization graphics? We got titles like Doom, Battlefield 1. From that point onward, game graphics stagnated and in a lot of poorly made AAA titles they even regressed. There isn't that much of graphical jump from Doom to Doom: Dark Ages. The biggest, most demanding title is Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 which did pushed recommended bar to Pascal.

Then we started to get new age games like Control which put raytracing to the front. Cyberpunk then newest titles like Indiana Jones, Alan Wake 2 or same Doom: Dark Ages. They had seen dramatic rise in requirement, not because games look that much better, but they have in built ray tracing. These have minimum requirements of Turing, but recommended is Ampere. We are progressing rapidly in growing demands as raytracing becomes more complete as path tracing which demands cutting edge GPUs.

However, if you ignore that, gaming was never more accessible than it is before. Upscalers and growing library of old games makes percentage of demanding titles lower and lower. The most popular title: Helldivers 2 is undemanding. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 also can run fine on modest systems. We had seen however poor performance on newest engines like Unreal. However, with latest patch, their performance issues were fixed and they had gained whole tier of GPUs in performance. It is just sad on all games built on previous engine versions though.

We had poor, awkward middle child with Turing architecture, but Ampere was just stellar only if flawed in VRAM. An issue which few had predicted due to PS5. System requirements closely follow newest consoles. This is entire reason why VRAM requirements exploded seemingly overnight as more and more PS5 optimized games showed up on PC. This made all the low VRAM GPUs bottlenecked very rapidly, arguably making Pascal starting to show its age after 4 years of release. It also made a lot of Ampere obsolete in a same manner quick if you didn't bought RTX 3060 12 GB and RTX 3080 or above. Lovelace was particularly poor generation due to Nvidia giving us poor memory bandwidth. We were hurt by crypto mining. Blackwell had remedied a lot of those issues, but we at the moment were bottlenecked by technical limitations. Cutting edge cores being in high demand and lack of 3 GB memory modules. Hence, we got what we got.

Overall, I don't see that GPU market being bad. We are pushing new frontiers in graphics hence games who do that will always require newer than 10 year old GPUs. These days people have it good. Back in my day I remember when the primary concern will be whatever game will launch at all since every new generation seemed to introduce feature set which would revolutionize graphics and be fundamental in even launching newest releases.

We are not even getting less for more. That is typical mistake which tech enthusiast do, because they don't understand concept of inflation. You cannot think in prices of 10 years ago. You have to inflation adjust your pricing and then everything more or less fall where you should expect, especially if we consider that GPUs today are simply worth more than back then with all their software support and specialized cores. If you inflation adjust GTX 1060 it will sit somewhere between RTX 5060 Ti 8 and 16 GB version. Considering this is one of the worst GPUs out of Blackwell and we might soon get Super refresh, things look okay. If an equivalent today is RTX 5060 Ti Super or RX 9060 XT 16 GB then I'm not sure why tech enthusiast even complain so much. It seems like they are becoming boomers with 'back in my day I could buy a house with my summer job' type of deal. I guess, every generation will get old...

 

[dark_globe]

These cards definitely have their place. Old systems need such cards, because old CPUs are bottlenecked by anything remotely modern. For example, I have i5-4670 at my home town. When I upgraded from GTX 760 to used GTX 1060 it was on the absolute edge what this processor could do. Often both running at 100%. Anything more powerful is just wasted effort. So, I managed to trade in cheaply RX 6500 XT. It's absolute crap of GPU, but it runs everything which I want to play on it. I do dreamed about replacing it with RTX 3050 and now RTX 5050 would be amazing too. If I would need to do that purchase again, I would buy RTX 5050, because it is simply hands down the best GPU for gaming on those old systems.

completely wrong .
rtx 5050 could not be more terrible for gaming on old systems for the price .
it lacks 32-bit PhysX support for older games (which means it has to be done via CPU)
furthermore you would be running at pcie 3.0 x8 speed , even worse if by chance you have h81 chipset motherboard
your rtx 5050 would be choked by pcie 2.0 x8 speeds ...
you can buy rtx 2070 super which is a full pcie 3.0 x16 video card , with same performance , supports older technologies while also having acces to DLSS and RT
it also has same amount of VRAM and you can find it for half the price at second hand market places .
even better you can get 12gb rtx 3060 which is a bit slower than 2070s but has more VRAM and is one generation newer and consumes less power .

 

[Calicifer]

Like I wrote, you will buy old Turing GPU and it will die within an year. Well spent, money was.

I don't disagree that PhysX 32 bit removal is bad. This is the reason why I chose to skip this generation all together and go with Ampere GPU. However, your concerns about PCIE 3/4 x8 speed is largely misplaced. PCI gen 4 sees very minor drop in performance. PCIe gen 3 sees considerable drop in performance, especially when it comes to 1% lows. However, you are not likely to encounter this issue. Your old CPU won't be able to utilize such powerful GPU as RTX 5050 to its fullest extent either way and you don't want your old CPU dying at 100% in trying to service GPU. It makes entire system laggy. I actually put RX 6500 XT to an old system. It runs just fine on it and I do play older or lighter games on it. That card has PCIe gen 4 x 4 which is even worse, but it runs games well and I can't tell the difference without extensive testing. That system becomes bottlenecked by anything more powerful than GTX 1060.

People are just misguided by those tech youtubers. They get top of the line CPU, then they bottleneck PCIe lanes to emphasize bottlenecks and then everyone plays dumb or pretend that these are real life scenarios. These tests are far more unrealistic and even more pointless than CPU tests which they do. You are never going to have i9-14900K or 9800x3D in your poor, old gaming rig with old dusty PCIe gen 3 interface. At this point, it is literally just manufactured drama for drama sake. Notice how channels like Hardware Unboxed never does any real life testing, because it would immediately undermine their findings.

Btw: I was recommending people RX 6600 for the longest time who wanted an entry level GPU. RTX 5050 is not the best GPU for this purpose, but it wins by default, because there simply isn't any modern card in that price range. Intel has huge CPU overhead issue. AMD doesn't bothered to show up to the competition. I don't proclaim hardware to be bad depending on my expectations. I evaluate hardware depending on what is available in the market at the moment. I would wholeheartedly welcome RX 9060 for 250 dollars MSRP and would recommend that to everyone who needs an entry card GPU. However, AMD didn't bothered to make a better version of an entry level card. It makes no sense, but AMD is a company which never misses to miss opportunity. They are someone who won't take a free win off the ground. If anything, we should hate AMD for being this incompetent rather than Nvidia for servicing the market needs.

 

[dark_globe]

Like I wrote, you will buy old Turing GPU and it will die within an year. Well spent, money was.

funny , you talk about misinformation and misguidance yet you spread it yourself ...

i bought my rtx 2070 super 3 years ago for 220€ and it is still running flawlessly .
i previously owned rtx 1080 (which is still running by the way) , i´m now building a low cost 1080p gaming system with 8700K and 1080Ti for a friend .
i haven´t bought a brand new gpu for personal use since 2018 (rx 580) and yet the last gpu which died on me was radeon 270x circa 10 years ago
(and that was due to electrical circuit issues in the house which was later revealed , it killed more devices in the house not just that gpu)


sure gpus will die on you if you have been running them on a potato 20 bucks PSUs with out of specs ripple and voltage regulation the entire time
such PSU will reduce the life expectancy of a gpu (and motherboard) by half or more , so yeah then it might die on you after a few years ...
if you buy from a respectable and trusted seller who has been running his gpus on good power supplies you have nothing to worry about .

People are just misguided by those tech youtubers. They get top of the line CPU, then they bottleneck PCIe lanes to emphasize bottlenecks and then everyone plays dumb or pretend that these are real life scenarios. These tests are far more unrealistic and even more pointless than CPU tests which they do. You are never going to have i9-14900K or 9800x3D in your poor, old gaming rig with old dusty PCIe gen 3 interface. At this point, it is literally just manufactured drama for drama sake. Notice how channels like Hardware Unboxed never does any real life testing, because it would immediately undermine their findings.

Btw: I was recommending people RX 6600 for the longest time who wanted an entry level GPU. RTX 5050 is not the best GPU for this purpose, but it wins by default, because there simply isn't any modern card in that price range. Intel has huge CPU overhead issue. AMD doesn't bothered to show up to the competition. I don't proclaim hardware to be bad depending on my expectations. I evaluate hardware depending on what is available in the market at the moment. I would wholeheartedly welcome RX 9060 for 250 dollars MSRP and would recommend that to everyone who needs an entry card GPU. However, AMD didn't bothered to make a better version of an entry level card. It makes no sense, but AMD is a company which never misses to miss opportunity. They are someone who won't take a free win off the ground. If anything, we should hate AMD for being this incompetent rather than Nvidia for servicing the market needs.

i always take tech youtubers with a grain of salt , i have been building and studying desktop computers and computer parts
for the past 15 years so i know my stuff very well i dare to say (i have been building computers since phenom II era) ...
and i´m also aware that those drawbacks would not be so dramatic with that cpu
but why buy a cut down product which would not be able to perform that well with older hardware ?
as i was saying if i wanted to revive an old haswell system for gaming i certainly would not put a new entry level GPU for 250 bucks in it .
it is a waste of money
(the best graphics card for such system to play old games would be gtx 1660 super/ti for 70-80 bucks) .

for instance:
for 150-170 bucks i can put together a new foundation with 12100f + H610 motherboard , 512gb m.2 drive and 2x8gb of DDR4 memory (brand new)
i can then reuse the psu and the case . this system would be ridiculously faster than any haswell based machine
all i need is a graphics card at this point and i still have 100 bucks to spare (i should also be able to sell my old cpu+memory+motherboard+hdd combo for 50 bucks) .
so for the price of the rtx 5050 i can basically have an entirely new gaming platform instead of choking on an old quad core cpu .

 

[Calicifer]

GPUs can die at any time for any reason. I bought GTX 1060 and something short circuited between power connectors. Buying used is always a gamble. I bought one and I lost. This is why when I bought used RTX 3080 it was with warranty and I'm only planning to use it for 2 years total and I'm going to replace with Nvidia's next gen GPU. Oh, also don't let me tell how many shady sellers I had encountered while doing it. One who bid on their own listing. Ones who have suspiciously low prices, lack of photos and lack of reviews. Oh, don't let me tell how people scam you through ebay by buying fake tracking number and sending you nothing. Ebay and banks do nothing until you involve the police. Have fun with your used GPU purchase as a newbie!

People don't like buying used, because they are socially anxious. There are scams to avoid. My friend was scammed and lost his money as a poor student when trying to buy his first GPU. This resulted in him not having ANY real gaming system for the longest time until he ended his studies. Then people rightfully don't want to buy used GPUs, because lack of warranty and questionable lifespans. An old GPU can die at any time and you have to go through the whole ordeal again which will make more expensive route overall than just buying something new in a first place.

I also love RTX 3050 6 GB, precisely because that there are many potato PCs which don't have proper PSUs or anything really. Motherboard fed GPUs are a god send for converting old potato into something usable for light gaming. However, tech youtubers and tech enthusiast crucified it. I guess, if you are not rich enough, PC gaming is not for you. I will be sure to pass that to all those poor families who buy refurbished office PCs for several hundred euros that their kind is not welcomed here.

 

[dark_globe]

GPUs can die at any time for any reason. I bought GTX 1060 and something short circuited between power connectors. Buying used is always a gamble. I bought one and I lost. This is why when I bought used RTX 3080 it was with warranty and I'm only planning to use it for 2 years total and I'm going to replace with Nvidia's next gen GPU. Oh, also don't let me tell how many shady sellers I had encountered while doing it. One who bid on their own listing. Ones who have suspiciously low prices, lack of photos and lack of reviews. Oh, don't let me tell how people scam you through ebay by buying fake tracking number and sending you nothing. Ebay and banks do nothing until you involve the police. Have fun with your used GPU purchase as a newbie!

this is pretty easily avoidable if using common sense .
i also don´t go in blind trying to buy lets say a used car on my own
(because i know nothing about it - so first i do extensive research by myself and then i take advice from someone who has experience in that field
ideally taking him with me to check it out and do a test drive etc.)
if someone doesn´t know anything about pc parts yet still somehow thinks it is a good idea to go and search for used parts on his own (without doing any research) ...
well i can´t cure human lack of common sense (nicely put)

i never buy stuff from ebay myself , i use local market places
i´m buying from people with high trust factor and from people i previously encountered and i know for a fact that they are solid .
if i´m building a low cost PC on a budget for a friend or a newbie i often times deal with purchasing a second hand gpu myself -
basically taking those risks if anything goes sideways . i also search for gpus that are still under warranty with receipt (if possible)

even better if you are a newbie there is a second hand pc parts section on my "domestic" pc forum
where you can buy from people that are pretty well known by a local community and they won´t risk losing their long term hard build reputation over a few bucks .
(many of them even offer you half year/one year "personal" warranty (myself included if i´m reselling something) if the gpu dies on you) .

 

[Calicifer]

So, a common person should not buy used. Kinda defeats the whole point of recommending it as a general advise to everyone.

We don't have local marketplace with trust ratings. Furthermore local pricing is even worse. My friend did buy local, went personally to take GPU and due to lack of experience, he got scammed. Considering how inept modern people are socially, they are easily fooled by people doing the fooling. What you are going to do when a seller shows up with GPU in hand, smiles and tells everything is fine. You got his phone number and he gives you a guarantee? Most people will take the GPU and won't make fuss about it.

 

[dark_globe]

So, a common person should not buy used. Kinda defeats the whole point of recommending it as a general advise to everyone.

a common person should buy used
but said person should not be going in blind and buy the first "shiny" thingy
so maybe instead of scrolling on tik tok or insta said person should dedicate some time and effort to study the subject a little bit more before buying .

also most people have at least that one person in their wider social circle who knows a thing or two about computers - so don´t be ashamed to ask for advice .
and even if our hypothetical person doesn´t know anyone like that in person than the forums like this one also exist ,
so we can point this person in the right direction
point out that some deals sound too good to be true and dismiss some that are straight up fishy

i´m sure that even in your region there are market places where sellers actually receive some feedback which can than be displayed for the buyer to see .
respectable sellers will often offer you an opportunity to actually test the card in a running system as well
and not just hand over the card like "trust me bro" take your money and "smile" at you ...

of course the risks of buying used products will never be zero ,
but you can eliminate the risk to a bare minimum, just by asking for advice and by using common sense .
you can be searching for a month or more for the right deal to occur so patience is also advised .

for example i was waiting/filtering/searching for 6 months until i finally found the right car for me on a second hand market
(and i was a complete BOT/NOOB when it comes to cars beforehand but i was doing my research while also taking advice and using the knowledge of several people well-versed on the subject)
(and it paid off - the car is running flawlessly for 4 years now and it still doesn´t even have 70K mileage on it . also there was no need for any investments outside of basic maintenance .
and what´s best i was able to actually pay for it in cash instead of taking a lease on a brand new car which would cost me 3x more in the end ...

 

[Calicifer]

Other people are not like you and they can't do a simple google search. Much less being a part of some hardware group.

There isn't any pages with reputation. Skelbiu is the biggest. The most you get are comments under listing. Completely anonymous besides number of sales and ID confirmation via bank (optional). You might think that it is enough, but only users who tend to have those things are small businesses who already have their webpages. Most peer to peer selling is done by new people or with very little prior history. There is Eneba. It has history of an user and comments. It also has protections. However, it is a very small player and as such, you can't even find all the major GPUs there and pricing there tend to be considerably inflation. Then there is Facebook marketplace which is even worse.

When you are dealing with Ebay, it also isn't all that better. I think that you can cheat some positive scores on your account, probably selling to yourself. I had a person bid on their own GPU in order to inflate pricing. That person had a very good personal score, but it didn't had many sales or reviews. You could avoid people like those, but guess what, it is most of ebay. In fact, it is a common scam method. Ebay account gets hacked and then it is repurposed to scam people. Its previous history what is valuable to scammers. So, don't forget to pay attention if account didn't had a giant gap in activity and suddenly started selling stuff. Who knows, it might be a guy who is doing some house cleaning or a scammer. Take your bets.

 

[Vayra86]

GPUs can die at any time for any reason. I bought GTX 1060 and something short circuited between power connectors. Buying used is always a gamble. I bought one and I lost. This is why when I bought used RTX 3080 it was with warranty and I'm only planning to use it for 2 years total and I'm going to replace with Nvidia's next gen GPU. Oh, also don't let me tell how many shady sellers I had encountered while doing it. One who bid on their own listing. Ones who have suspiciously low prices, lack of photos and lack of reviews. Oh, don't let me tell how people scam you through ebay by buying fake tracking number and sending you nothing. Ebay and banks do nothing until you involve the police. Have fun with your used GPU purchase as a newbie!

People don't like buying used, because they are socially anxious. There are scams to avoid. My friend was scammed and lost his money as a poor student when trying to buy his first GPU. This resulted in him not having ANY real gaming system for the longest time until he ended his studies. Then people rightfully don't want to buy used GPUs, because lack of warranty and questionable lifespans. An old GPU can die at any time and you have to go through the whole ordeal again which will make more expensive route overall than just buying something new in a first place.

I also love RTX 3050 6 GB, precisely because that there are many potato PCs which don't have proper PSUs or anything really. Motherboard fed GPUs are a god send for converting old potato into something usable for light gaming. However, tech youtubers and tech enthusiast crucified it. I guess, if you are not rich enough, PC gaming is not for you. I will be sure to pass that to all those poor families who buy refurbished office PCs for several hundred euros that their kind is not welcomed here.

I've never lost on a second hand GPU purchase, and I resell my own GPUs too.
My 6,5 year old GTX 1080 is currently purring happily in a friend's system. Runs as it does on day one - never even repasted it. Might do that if temps are actually going to creep up and buddy asks for it.

Similarly, sold GTX 780ti is still alive, resold to someone else. He's had to change fans on it.
A neighbour of mine is using a GTX 1660S Ventus (cheap model..) that has already seen two other systems in its days and in one of them, was caked in dust.

Need more examples?

Socially anxious... scammers.. yeah. They are all part of life. This is where due diligence and not being oblivious comes in, as a buyer. The skills you need to get your hands on any good purchase that is more than filling your cart at the supermarket. Life skills. But people lacking them says nothing about the quality of second hand GPUs. It says something about their own skillset and filtering out the bad actors. If you want to Ebay your GPU from some nobody living halfway across the globe (or so is said) then sure, you have a solid chance of getting a dud sent to you. But if you use a local website or tech forum and/or collect the stuff in person and even better, get to see it working before you buy... the risk is pretty much zero.

As for warranty... a used GPU doesn't need warranty because its already expired anyway; PLUS, a GPU that has been used for months isn't suddenly going to develop a factory-originated problem. You'll have seen that by then already. Warranty in second hand markets is pretty much a nothingburger anyway.

So yeah it takes effort, and people are fucking lazy. That's true. And that's all it really is. With some minor maintenance and two brain cells, GPUs can last upwards of 7-10 years no problem.

 

[Calicifer]

You severely overestimate what a common person is like. Used market is not for them. It is not even for people who know their way around googling stuff or chat gpting stuff these days who are young as they too can easily fall victim to scams and their income levels are very low. They lack confidence, common sense and experience to handle those situations. What you are saying is true for people like you, but it is poor advise to give in general. For an average person, it is far better to buy refurbished from official sellers or just something cheaper. Like I had said, if you do not have risk tolerance, you should not take risks. My friend didn't had risk tolerance as a poor student. He got scammed and that was it for his whole student gaming years.

Reliability of hardware is like a coin toss. Sharing it is pointless. I had one used GPU die on me within an year. My friend bought used and it was producing graphical artifacts. So, is buying used now worthless or best thing ever? It is in fact always a coin toss. A bet which you are taking that you are going to save money buying used rather than lose it. If a GPU dies in short to medium term since purchase, it becomes more expensive than just buying new. The likelihood of it happening now is elevated as all those mining cards are circulating used market, so it is just minefield and a very bad place to be. While newer stuff from RTX 4000 are still being sold only at a small discount making it pointless.

I was talking largely about ebay which you admitted is dangerous. Maybe direct marketplace person to person is more reliable. However, it once again largely depends on where you live. I live in a small nation, this means that availability of used parts is low and thus they often are more expensive (making any savings less attractive). In other nations, scamming can be culturally a lot more common. Local, direct to person sales are more reliable, I do agree with that. However, that is largely depends on where you live and it still doesn't remove possibility of scam happening. My friend was young and inexperienced. They agreed to meet. However, seller came with GPU in hand and started exchange. A lot of people, especially young people will lack social skills and common sense to walk out from such a deal. That is, even if they don't find that suspicious in a first place. I read in local market that a lot of people just use mail to deliver packages between each other, often pay first - deliver later. So, I don't think that you take into account what most people are and what is best course of action for them is. For you or me, I don't doubt that used market can be a very fruitful field.

 

[lexluthermiester]

You severely overestimate what a common person is like. Used market is not for them.

This common is the embodiment of the phrase "Pot meet kettle". You have no damn clue what you're talking about. Put that cork back in your bottle.

 

[Calicifer]

That is literally my own life experience. My friend is dealing with IT tech support in major institution and doing tech repair on the sides and he tells me how it is. I know better than most people here what industry is like. Not to mention, that I pick computer parts for average people. This is what separates me from you. You talk only about how it is like for yourself (tech enthusiast). I'm actually dealing with average people and know better how they are like.

 

[dark_globe]

However, it once again largely depends on where you live. I live in a small nation, this means that availability of used parts is low and thus they often are more expensive (making any savings less attractive). In other nations, scamming can be culturally a lot more common. Local, direct to person sales are more reliable, I do agree with that. However, that is largely depends on where you live and it still doesn't remove possibility of scam happening. My friend was young and inexperienced. They agreed to meet. However, seller came with GPU in hand and started exchange. A lot of people, especially young people will lack social skills and common sense to walk out from such a deal. That is, even if they don't find that suspicious in a first place. I read in local market that a lot of people just use mail to deliver packages between each other, often pay first - deliver later. So, I don't think that you take into account what most people are and what is best course of action for them is. For you or me, I don't doubt that used market can be a very fruitful field.

That is literally my own life experience. My friend is dealing with IT tech support in major institution and doing tech repair on the sides and he tells me how it is. I know better than most people here what industry is like. Not to mention, that I pick computer parts for average people. This is what separates me from you. You talk only about how it is like for yourself (tech enthusiast). I'm actually dealing with average people and know better how they are like.

the size of a country has nothing to do with it .
i´m living in a very small country in europe and yet i never got scammed
(and most locals here who are selling anything on a second hand market would tell you all sorts of fairytales just to earn those 5 bucks more on a deal ,
but for a person with average intellect it is actually very easy to decypher these bad actors) ...

when it comes to lifespan of a graphics card it usually takes decades for it to die .
even the mining cards are still running and i´m not affraid of them either
(i deal with people who are transparent about it and they admit they used those cards for mining but it was done in a professional way)
(just recently i bought 1660 super which was used as a mining card for a few months -
the seller has like 100 of these cards on hand and he is selling them below the usual market price
i got one which i will later use in some build for 60 euro -
which is a pretty sweet deal for a card that can still do 1080p esports and is basically as fast as rtx 3050 in rasterization)

i build a gtx 5900 (2003 video card) based retro system not so long ago
(and yes i bought all the parts from second hand market , it was like putting together a jigsaw)
and just yesterday i road 25 miles to buy a 4770K / gtx 1650 4gb 2x8gb system in person (paid 80 bucks for the entire thing) -
and surprise it is running (and pretty good at that)
but i will still do a bit of tweaking and restoration and it will run even better
after i´m finished i will resell it or give it to the kids in my family .

basically all i´m saying is you don´t need to be too much tech-savvy even
you just need to use common sense and ask for advice from people who actually know their stuff .
but that would take you few hours or even days of actual research . and that is the problem - this generation wants everything in 5 seconds ...
(i don´t want to attack young people (crazy for me to say since i´m actually not that old myself being born in the late 80s)
but it is true they are generally more lazy and more susceptible to being scammed (but that´s largely their own fault) -
extensive use of social media just makes people dumber in all areas - then they are severely lacking in both life skills and social skills .
they need everything served on a golden platter kinda and yet they still act like they are the smart ones
(also personal experience based on interactions with gen-Z kids) ...

when i watch my dad fixing a car or building something on his own it is me who feels like a dumbass compared to his generation ...
but the thing is i can acknowledge his generation was/is much more skilled when it comes to repairing/building stuff ,
while most of todays kids have zero respect .


anyways I digressed :
this all comes down to the one simple fact:
nobody can help you if you are too lazy to even ask for an advice .
and people on forums such as this offer their expertise and knowledge for free ...
second hand market is fine as long as you are not lazy and oblivious to certain things .
not to mention learning a few life skills and actually doing some in person deals and interactions can help you in the long run .
(if you want to practice your communication skills just go to the bank (let them try to sell you insurance or some lease or something)
or just visit some local shop or a local market place
and have a bit of a back and forth exchange of wits with the salesman a couple of times)

 

[Calicifer]

That is the issue, you use anecdotical evidence as a proof. In this case, just because it didn't happened to you, you assume that those things don't exist or isn't a problem. My friend got scammed, so that settles it. Furthermore, I talked about limited supply of used parts in a local market, you had misread my post.

Graphics cards do have limited lifespan. However, instead of it just outright dying, often some part of its dies. I got used GTX 1060. It died, because certain PCIe power cable started to short circuit it on a specific connection. Probably easily fixable, but just bringing that to an expert is a major part of what that entire GPU is worth in a first place. My original GTX 760 also died. With cards used for mining, it is a lot worse as you can't guess how much abuse that card has sustained. It could had been underclocked and ventilated room with not that much time spent. Or that is more likely, it can come from unscrupulous people who didn't done their regular maintenance and maximized profits.

The problem is that you are recommending what works for you to everyone. Believe it or not, very few people want to be tech enthusiasts like you. They just want to play games and couldn't care less about becoming one. They are not interested in multi-year, self development journey just to get themselves a GPU. Your advise is like that, it works for you, but not for most people. You don't want to risk first experience being a bad one nor most people are interested in going through this journey of acquiring old hardware. They just tell you their budget and you give them few options.