Pondering whether you should wait for Black Friday to buy a graphics card is an annual event for most PC players. While GPU prices reached an all time high thanks to a concoction of situational events, prices are starting to look a lot more reasonable, if not actually appealing. This is something that could bait you into picking up a new card with a pretty modest discount, but there are still plenty of reasons to wait for the annual sale first.
Let’s be real, as gaming PC enthusiasts, waiting seems to be all we do. Therefore, holding off for Black Friday graphics card deals might not be so much of a chore. That said, not everyone is sitting with a capable GPU already in their system, and as time goes on, the chances of you being able to run the latest games becomes less likely. Putting off upgrading your card might save you some cash, but it’ll potentially eat into valuable time you could spend playing new releases, and that’s something a price cut can’t fix.
But hey, things have changed a lot since the start of the decade, and graphics card discounts are already in a better place ahead of Black Friday. Now that supplies are healthy and the crypto bubble has exploded, inflated prices are becoming a thing of the past, not to mention most cards are in stock. There’s even a new selection of new gen cards now available like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which should help encourage retailers to reduce older stock. With that in mind, let’s chat about the best approach to finding the best Black Friday or Cyber Monday GPU deals before the bonanza kicks off.
Price history
Typically, we’ll judge current graphics card deals based on price history, as it helps determine whether better GPU discounts are a possibility. While inflated pricing is something we’re contending less and less with these days, checking both a card’s MSRP against its current and previous price points is also vital, as no one wants to be paying more than the original going rate.
Applying the above habits when shopping for GPUs will ultimately help answer whether you should wait for Black Friday or not. For example, if you’re eyeing up an RTX 4080 right now, you’ll be able to use tools like Camelcamelcamel to see its lowest price at Amazon. At the moment, that specific GeForce card is a chunk more expensive than it was during the retailer’s Prime Big Deal Days sale, which suggests it may end up that price or lower this November again. It’s not a guarantee, but more often than not, sale events follow a predictable back and forth pattern.
If a graphics card is already down to its lowest price, or marked with a “clearance” badge of any sorts, you might want to pounce on the offer sooner than later. Doing so is fully dependent on if you’d rather not risk availability and/or higher pricing come Black Friday, as many of these deals will be instigated by the product's age and retailers wanting to clear out stock before November.
Availability
Following on from the point above, graphics card availability plays a huge role when it comes to deciding when to buy. That's particularly true when it comes to older models, as retailers won't want to hang onto old stock forever. So far, we haven't really spotted any "reduce to clear" discounts ahead of Black Friday 2023, and some aging models out there still have inappropriate, inflated price tags attached.
Ideally, we'd love to see last gen RTX 30-series and Radeon RX 6000 cards get the chop. AMD RDNA 2 discounts are pretty common right now on the likes of Amazon, with a nice variety of cards available for a chunk less. Nvidia Ampere deals are sadly less common, as the company seems to be happy with two generations of GPU existing at the same time for now.
New gen pricing
When eyeing up older cards, we'd heavily advise checking any deals you find against the price of new gen equivalents. For example, if you can grab an RTX 4060 for $299, you won't want to necessarily pick up an RTX 3060 for $289, as the performance difference is not remotely worth the $10 saving. This applies to various models across the board, but we're noticing it more and more with entry-level options.
So long as you take extra time to double check specs, prices, and availability, you should be able to snag the perfect GPU deal. Most of the time, the answer to whether you should buy a graphics card before Black Friday is going to be no, but there's always a chance you'll stumble across a rare situational deal ahead of time that November will struggle to beat.
Go for power and portability in your gaming setup for less with the Black Friday gaming laptop deals. Alternatively, browse Black Friday SSD deals and boost your rig's storage.
