PC Gamer recently conducted a reader survey asking how much players are willing to spend on their next graphics card. The results show that 56% of respondents are willing to spend over $600 (approximately 4,032 RMB), 19% are willing to spend over $1,000 (approximately 6,721 RMB), and even 10% of players are prepared to invest more than $1,500 (approximately 10,081 RMB).
In terms of specific distribution, the $600–$800 range was the most popular, chosen by 22% of respondents, followed closely by the $400–$500 range at 18%.
Those with budgets of $800–$1,000 accounted for 15%, $1,000–$1,500 for 9%, and over $1,500 for 10%. The budget segment had a relatively low share: $300–$400 accounted for 10%, $200–$300 for 7%, and under $200 for only 8%.
This survey comes against the backdrop of a year-long surge in graphics card prices. PC Gamer has been tracking GPU prices over the past twelve months, showing that prices rose again last week.
NVIDIA graphics cards have been hit the hardest. The cheapest RTX 5060 Ti 16GB now costs more than the cheapest RTX 5070, with both cards approaching $800. As fourth- and fifth-tier products in the RTX 50 series, this pricing is quite harsh for PC gamers.
PC Gamer editor Dave James stated, The result that 56% of readers are willing to spend over $600 was surprising, especially given that 19% are willing to spend over $1,000.
He joked that this data might lead Jensen Huang to price the next-generation RTX 6070 Ti at $1,000 while cutting its VRAM down to 4GB GDDR5, since DLSS 5 will be there as a safety net anyway.
However, he also pointed out that the surprisingly low proportion of budget-conscious players is unexpected. PC gaming has always had the advantage of a low barrier to entry, but in recent years, the low-end GPU market has indeed been severely neglected.