Now is the worst time to buy an Nvidia graphics card for your workstation or gaming PC

When you buy through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more.

• Nvidia recently announced its RTX 30-series graphics cards (GPUs), making the worst time to buy a graphics card right now.
• The new RTX 30-series GPUs won't be released until September 17 and later, so they're not even an option right now. Still, don't buy or preorder them until you've seen reviews and benchmarks.
• Otherwise, any Nvidia 10 or 20 series GPU you can buy today for $500 or more is obsolete.

Nvidia announced its brand new RTX 30-series graphics cards (GPUs) based on its new Ampere siilicon architecture on September 1 with some pretty humongous claims. If those claims are accurate, it's an exciting time for PC gamers.

Some of the biggest claims included promises of 4K and even 8K resolution gameplay at smooth 60 frames per second, depending on which RTX 30-series card you're looking at. Nvidia also announced massive gains with ray-tracing technology — a feature that makes in-game lighting look more realistic.

But, claims are just that — claims — and they haven't yet been validated by benchmarks or reviews. With that in mind, it's not a good time to preorder Nvidia's RTX 30-series GPU.

So, that's the boiler plate reason why you shouldn't preorder the new RTX 30-series specifically just yet. But, what about Nvidia's older 10 and 20 series GPUs? Surely, those are a good value now with price drops and decent performance?

Nope. Here's why:

Any Nvidia 10 or 20 series GPU you can buy today for $500 or more is obsolete

Do not buy an Nvidia 10 or 20 series GPU that costs $500 or more, whether used or new — Nvidia claims the new, $500 RTX 3070 has better performance for half the price of the previous generation's top high-end flagship, the $1,000-plus RTX 2080Ti.

I'd be pretty upset if I had just recently spent around $1,000 for a new RTX 2080Ti, or even $750 for a used one online, or even a used GTX 1080Ti that's going between $400 and $500. Even today, vendors like Newegg are still selling RTX 2080Ti GPUs for well over $1,000, which is insane, quite frankly.

Still, the new RTX 30-series GPUs need to be benchmarked and reviewed, and we might find that Nvidia's claims were too ambitious. With that in mind, it's still better to wait for the benchmarks and reviews before buying an RTX 30 series card, or buying a 10 or 20 series Nvidia GPU at all.

Even 10 or 20 series Nvidia GPUs under $500 may also become obsolete soon

Even if you're in the mid range or low end market for a GPU under $500, it's still a bad time to buy anything in Nvidia's 10 or 20 series.

Nvidia has shown that it announces and releases additional models some time after its initial announcements of a new series, especially in the mid-range and entry-level quality tiers. With that in mind, your best bet is to wait and see what Nvidia has in store for the mid-range and low-end in its RTX 30 series.