It has been a staple of mobile carriers to offer trade-ins for new phones, and now Asus has brought that model to PC Gamers with their new Trade Up Your Graphics program. With this new program, customers can upgrade to the latest and greatest Nvidia cards more affordably.
The program only applies to purchases of Asus brand graphics cards at the moment, but includes the ROG, TUF, Dual, Phoenix and Turbo families of cards. Customers who buy any of these cards can trade-in an older graphics card and receive a cash rebate upon approval of their claim.
Cash for scrap
Cash for scrapThe program allows customers to trade in any Nvidia GeForce card starting from the GTX 650 upwards. Unfortunately for all you AMD owners, it appears only the Radeon RX 480 and RX 580 are eligible for the program at the moment.
The graphics cards are ranked in tiers: Good, Better, and Best. These tiers are not based on the physical condition of the card but rather the card’s chipset and are irrespective of brand. As one might expect, the higher the tier, the greater the rebate.
For example, a GTX 1080 Ti of any make, falls in the Best tier and can earn you up to 270 pounds or approximately $340. The AMD cards fall in the Better category along with the GTX 980 and 980Ti which would net you an approximate $133. Lower tier cards like the GTX 650 and GTX 750Ti fall in the Good category and can earn you a tiny $44.
But don’t worry about guessing how much your card will net you. There is a handy calculator on the Asus Trade Up website that lets you know how much you can expect to get.
How it works
To use the Trade Up program, customers need only buy an Asus graphics card. Once that’s done, they have up to 30 days from purchase to complete a claim which includes details like proof of previous purchase and their bank details.
Once the claim is received and validated, it is approved. Customers will receive an email of the approval, and a handy postage label is also sent via email, making shipping a breeze. They then have up to 45 days in which to ship in their old graphics card to Asus.
Asus will then of course check the old graphics card, and if it meets their standard of approval, the rebate is sent via bank transfer. While the entire process may take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months from start to finish, it’s a simple enough procedure.
A big upside to the program besides the obvious rebate is that gamers no longer have the hassle of selling an old graphics card on eBay or having it gather dust in their basement. Shrewd owners could possible get a better deal by selling it themselves but for everyone else, trading up makes excellent sense.
At the time of this writing, the promotion seems to be limited to the U.K. but we expect this will grow to other regions in the near future.
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