Do you guys think mid-range GPUs are actually gonna see some decent price drops by Black Friday 2026, or are we just stuck with these inflated MSRPs for good? Ive been building my own rigs since like 2014 back when the 970 was the king of the hill, so I usually have a good feel for the market cycles and when to pull the trigger on an upgrade but looking ahead to late 2026 feels different this time around. My current 3060 Ti is really starting to show its age when I try to push high settings at 1440p in some of the newer games, especially with how vram hungry everything is becoming lately and the stuttering is driving me crazy.

I have a strict $450 budget set aside for this and I am trying to figure out if I should just grab something now or if the wait for the 2026 holiday sales will actually be worth it. Living out in rural Oregon means I dont have a Micro Center within a six hour drive, so I am at the mercy of whatever Amazon or Newegg decides to do with their "deals" which we all know can be pretty fake sometimes. I am worried that with all the focus shifting toward AI silicon and high-end enterprise cards, the mid-range "gamer" segment is just gonna get neglected or kept artificially high to force people into the enthusiast tier.

I am specifically looking at the xx70 series equivalent or whatever the mid-range RDNA 4 or 5 cards look like by then. I usually aim for that sweet spot of price-to-performance but it feels like that spot is moving further out of reach every year. Do you think the inventory levels will actually be high enough for real discounts by then? Or should I just lower my expectations and expect to pay full price even during the "sale" season because of how supply chains have been acting up lately. Its just hard to tell if the "wait for next gen" strategy even works anymore...