Skip to main content

A YouTuber proved there’s a problem with Nvidia’s prices

Want to build a gaming PC but don’t have thousands to shell out for an RTX 4080? We’ve got good news for you. Kyle Hansen of the Bitwit YouTube channel built a PC with a Ryzen 5 and Radeon RX 6800 for half the price of an Nvidia-powered machine.

Let’s be honest. Hansen was lampooning Nvidia and Intel when he slapped together this “budget” gaming PC, but the results were shocking. Forza Horizon 5 rendered at 110 fps on ultra settings (2560 x 1440), which is a respectable rate and undermines Nvidia’s claims of the RTX line being the only good GPUs on the market.

Kyle Hansen looking suspiciously at an RTX 4080 GPU
Bitwit / YouTube

Hansen added 32 GB of RAM to his build and bought himself a practical yet capable MSI B550-A Pro motherboard. The entire build cost him $1,198, including the case. When you compare that to the $1,199 price tag of a single Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card, it becomes clear there is a problem with Nvidia’s pricing.

Nvidia made a few people angry in September when they claimed falling GPU prices were “a thing of the past.” And while AMD has been cutting prices on their chips, Nvidia remains stuck on high prices.

Another problem arises from the hordes of scalpers who have decimated the supply. It can be hard to find Nvidia graphics cards from direct channels, but a quick trip to eBay will surface hundreds of people selling RTX GPUs at inflated prices.

Hansen proves you can avoid all of that and build a low-cost performance PC with in-supply chips from other brands.

AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series processor just had a price cut, so you can spec out your new build with top-of-the-line chips for a lot less than you would spend on an Intel and Nvidia combo. And as Hansen proved, the performance is just as good.

Editors' Recommendations

Nathan Drescher
Nathan Drescher is a freelance journalist and writer from Ottawa, Canada. He's been writing about technology from around the…
This Starfield mod adds Nvidia’s DLSS 3 — for free
An astronaut stands on the moon in Starfield.

Starfield has already been the center of a ton of controversy concerning its decision to exclusively use AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2). Modders launched versions of Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling 3 (DLSS 3) just hours after the game released, but even that has been the topic of discussion due to a subscription requirement.

Now, there's a free version.

Read more
AMD FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution): everything you need to know
amd radeon rx 6700 xt 12gb gddr6 vram

AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is a supersampling feature available in a large swath of games. It has a simple goal: improving gaming performance on the best graphics cards. To help you understand how it works and why you should turn it on in your games, we rounded up everything you need to know about AMD FSR, including the newly announced FSR 3.

It works by rendering your game at a lower resolution, but the magic of FSR comes in the upscaling. It attempts to fill in missing details to make your game look like it's running at native resolution, just with a massive boost in performance. Here's all you need to know about it.
What is AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution?

Read more
Starfield bet on FSR, and now Nvidia players are paying the price
An astronaut explores a planet's surface in Starfield.

Starfield is a great change of pace for PC releases in 2023. The game is very stable, relatively bug free, and it's optimized to run on a wide range of hardware. That doesn't mean the game isn't demanding. It is very demanding, and it's clear Starfield leans on AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2) to push frame rates higher.

As I was gathering my best settings for Starfield on PC, it became clear that the game is designed around having FSR 2 turned on. That's not inherently a problem. For a game as demanding and visually impressive as Starfield, though, leaning too heavily on a singular feature can make some players, especially those on less powerful hardware, choose between performance and image quality. And in the case of Starfield, that's not a decision they should need to make.
The reality of the situation
AMD is Starfield’s Exclusive PC Partner

Read more