In the era of stratospheric RAM prices, putting a new GPU in an old PC might be your best upgrade bet, but be sure to grab the right monitor, too

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• How a new monitor could be your best upgrade option
• Low-cost options that are big-time upgrades

DDR5 prices are continuing to climb toward the sky, and the morale of PC builders is cratering along with them. What good is a shiny new Ryzen 7 9800X3D when a RAM kit to go with it costs almost as much or more than the CPU itself? If you’re feeling DDR5 pricing pain this Black Friday season, you might be considering a GPU upgrade instead. But if you’re contemplating a new graphics card, make sure that your monitor won’t hold you back from the best gaming experience.

Now is a good time to grab a graphics card, as prices on many of the best GPUs, like AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 XT and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, have finally fallen to MSRP or even below. And GPU price increases are likely on the horizon due to the AI data center gold rush that’s consuming every available silicon wafer.

But throwing a powerful new GPU into your existing system won’t necessarily improve your gaming experience all by itself. You’ll want to make that upgrade without limiting a GPU’s utilization or spending its performance potential on rendering wasted frames that don’t get displayed. You can also see some of our other tips for navigating the shortages in our RAM pricing survival guide.

How pairing a new GPU and a new monitor could be your best upgrade option

If you’re rocking a five- to eight-year-old CPU and a 1080p monitor of a similar vintage, your CPU might not be able to keep up with the overhead of feeding a modern GPU at what is now considered a low resolution.