Hardware
PC Gamer just crowned 2026's 'best budget GPU' — and I think its 8GB of VRAM is a trap
The RTX 5050 is the cheap pick and the RX 9070 is the overall pick. Only one of them still makes sense a year from now.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 24 · 7 min
gpu buying guide
9 articles · newest first
Deals
GPU deals are basically dead this month — here's the short list of stuff still worth buying
Every major GPU tracker just posted its worst numbers of the year. I went through the wreckage to find what's still a fair price.
Nadia Rahman · Aug 15 · 6 min
Hardware
everyone's ignoring the $300 GPU that almost matches a $900 RTX 5070 — here's the catch
12GB of VRAM for around $300 sounds like the easy answer to Nvidia's price spike. It mostly is — you just have to fight the drivers a little.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 15 · 6 min
Hardware
the RTX 5070 just hit $900. I ran the local-AI math and almost couldn't recommend it
Nvidia's mid-range GPU is up 36% in two months — here's whether it still makes sense for running models at home, or if $900 changes the answer entirely.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 15 · 6 min
Hardware
you're probably retiring your GPU way too early — here's how long they actually last
Owners with decade-old GTX cards still running fine say the real lifespan number isn't what upgrade-cycle marketing wants you to believe.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 7 · 6 min
Hardware
everyone's obsessing over the 9800X3D — for local AI, it's basically a rounding error
The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the CPU every gaming build guide wants you to buy right now. If you're building for local AI too, here's where that money should actually go instead.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 7 min
Hardware
nvidia's flagship GPU just crossed $5,100 — for local AI, that math doesn't work anymore
South Korea is the canary. TSMC wafer costs and $20 memory chips just pushed the RTX 5090 to 2.5x its sticker price — here's the actual buy-or-skip math for running AI models at home.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 8 min
Hardware
Nvidia's new RTX 5050 is barely faster than a GPU from 2021 — skip it
It launched at $249 promising a fresh budget option. A few months later, a used RTX 3070 for about the same money makes it a hard sell.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 3 · 6 min
AI
AMD's big AI event was all about chips you'll never buy. the one you actually can already shipped
Instinct MI400 and Helios racks got the headlines at Advancing AI 2026 — but the actual local-AI hardware for individuals already exists, and it's cheaper than an RTX 5090.
Lena Fischer · Aug 1 · 7 min