By iwano@_84Posted on April 28, 2022 Table of Contents Graphics Cards Are Finally Back in Stock The past 18 months have not been kind to any PC enthusiasts looking to upgrade their graphics cards. GPU prices on the best graphics cards have been terrible, with many cards peaking at over three times their official MSRP. But the long, dark night is coming to an end, as we knew it eventually must. There has been a steady downward trend in 2022 on GPU pricing, and we’re now at the point where many graphics cards are actually in stock at prices relatively close to MSRP. In fact, there are even a few selling below MSRP. As you might suspect, cards that had higher launch MSRPs are more readily available at MSRP, while those GPUs that had seemingly “too good to be true” prices are still marked up a bit. But paying slightly higher prices for a third-party factory overclocked card isn’t exactly unusual, as those have usually been marked up about 10–20% over the base models. We’ll provide a rundown of all the latest generation graphics cards, with thoughts on the current price and performance on tap. Our GPU benchmarks provide the performance data for our discussion of overall value, and we’ll list both online retail prices as well as the average eBay price over the past week — both of which are prone to fluctuation, so while the prices at the time of writing were correct, things will inevitably change. The previous-gen GPUs (i.e., Nvidia Turing and AMD RDNA) may also be worth considering if there are any decent deals, though that will mostly be via purchasing on eBay/used. If you’re looking for the best bang for the buck, we’ve ranked the various GPUs by FPS per dollar spent. There are even a couple of AMD cards, the RX 6600 XT and RX 6600, where you can find some models on sale for less than AMD’s MSRP, and a few other cards are basically being sold with prices starting at MSRP. It’s a big change from just a few months ago. With cryptocurrency mining profitability on a steady decline and ‘The Merge’ still supposedly coming to Ethereum, we don’t expect miners to support falling prices — unless something drastic happens. The following represents a snapshot in time, as of April 26, 2022, and prices are likely to drop even further unless something changes, like reduced supply due to China’s current Covid lockdown. Overall Graphics Card Value Ranking Here’s the high-level overview, ranking all of the current and previous generation graphics cards based on the best prices currently available — that means eBay, where the average price is lower than the retail price, otherwise retail pricing. We’ve sorted the following table based on the FPS per dollar spent, using the 1080p ultra performance. That will penalize cards that only have 4GB VRAM, but using 1080p medium would similarly penalize the faster GPUs since they cannot show their true grit at such low settings. Prices are in a wild state of flux, so things can and will change quickly over the coming days. We’ll periodically update this table if and when we notice any major swings in pricing. Graphics Card Current Price 1080p Ultra FPS/$ 1080p Med FPS/$ 1440p Ultra FPS/$ 4K Ultra FPS/$ Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB* $160 0.2092 0.4184 Radeon RX 6600 XT* $379 0.2063 0.3610 0.1449 Radeon RX 6600* $324 0.2058 0.3636 0.1424 Radeon RX 6700 XT $514 0.1868 0.3109 0.1371 0.0749 GeForce RTX 2060 $309 0.1786 0.3133 0.1253 GeForce RTX 3050 $299 0.1720 0.2990 0.1258 Radeon RX 5600 XT* $344 0.1689 0.2923 0.1222 Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB* $238 0.1673 0.3049 0.1195 GeForce GTX 1650 Super $199 0.1668 0.3410 0.1155 GeForce RTX 2080 Super $517 0.1642 0.2666 0.1256 0.0668 GeForce RTX 2080 $501 0.1641 0.2658 0.1245 GeForce RTX 2070 Super $473 0.1616 0.2625 0.1215 GeForce GTX 1660 $248 0.1608 0.3026 0.1150 GeForce RTX 2070 $423 0.1605 0.2617 0.1206 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti $579 0.1580 0.2586 0.1204 Radeon RX 6500 XT* $199 0.1529 0.3289 0.0904 GeForce RTX 2060 Super $426 0.1527 0.2486 0.1132 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti $291 0.1508 0.2813 0.1084 Radeon RX 6800 XT $832 0.1496 0.2172 0.1217 0.0703 GeForce GTX 1660 Super $297 0.1496 0.2789 0.1060 Radeon RX 6800 $748 0.1493 0.2331 0.1170 0.0675 GeForce RTX 3070 Ti $699 0.1489 0.2323 0.1181 0.0670 GeForce RTX 3060 $488 0.1438 0.2434 0.1078 GeForce RTX 3070 $729 0.1369 0.2163 0.1063 0.0592 Radeon RX 5700 XT $546 0.1350 0.2305 0.0976 0.0536 GeForce GTX 1650 $203 0.1311 0.2519 Radeon RX 5700 $496 0.1307 0.2243 0.0951 Radeon RX 6900 XT $1,019 0.1282 0.1827 0.1050 0.0617 GeForce RTX 3080 $919 0.1265 0.1887 0.1040 0.0660 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti $764 0.1256 0.1985 0.0985 0.0584 GeForce RTX 3080 12GB* $1,024 0.1216 0.1741 0.1015 0.0647 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti $1,279 0.0965 0.1368 0.0808 0.0520 GeForce RTX 3090 $1,599 0.0792 0.1114 0.0666 0.0430 GeForce RTX 3090 Ti* $1,999 0.0662 0.0901 0.0570 0.0379 * Factory overclocked card that may not fully represent ‘typical’ performance What’s particularly interesting is just how good AMD’s current “midrange” GPUs do compared to Nvidia’s offerings. The RX 6600, RX 6600 XT, and RX 6700 XT take top honors, with only the RX 5500 XT 4GB beating them. While you could argue the RX 5500 XT takes first place, you’ll have to deal with eBay and a used card, and prices tend to fluctuate more on eBay. For Nvidia, the RTX 3050 represents the best value for an RTX 30-series card, ranking sixth overall and coming in just behind the RTX 2060, which you can find as a new card for just a few dollars more purchased directly from EVGA. Cards like the RTX 3090 Ti through RTX 3080, along with the RX 6900 XT, all rank near the bottom of the chart due to their higher prices. It’s possible to justify many of the cards in the 0.12–0.15 FPS/$ range (at 1080p ultra) thanks to their higher performance, but relative value drops precipitously with the 3080 Ti through RTX 3090 Ti. Ultimately, only you can decide how much you’re willing to spend and when you need to upgrade your graphics card. Unfortunately, budget-minded shoppers have largely been out of luck throughout the latter half of 2020 and all of 2021, and even now, it isn’t easy to find truly good budget offerings. However, things are headed in the right direction once more, and if you’ve been sitting on an older GPU and hoping to upgrade without spending a fortune, you should soon have more than one or two options to choose between. Now let’s move on to the individual GPUs. We’ve sorted things based on performance, from high to low, with Nvidia first and AMD second. Nvidia RTX 30-Series GPUs (Image credit: Asus) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti$1,999 MSRP; $1,999 retail; $2,029 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Asus RTX 3090 Ti TUF Gaming at NeweggEVGA RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Black Gaming at EVGAGigabyte RTX 3090 Ti Gaming at Newegg As the fastest and most expensive graphics card currently available, the RTX 3090 Ti can be found at MSRP right now, though overclocked models can push the price into the $2,100–$2,400 range. However, that’s largely because of the extreme pricing and does not make this a ‘bargain’ in any way, shape, or form. If you simply must have the fastest GPU around, power and price be damned, this is the card to get. Just know that Nvidia Ada GPUs are likely to arrive around September, and we fully expect the “RTX 4080” (whatever it ends up being called) to deliver better performance than the 3090 Ti for about half the price. (Image credit: EVGA) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090$1,499 MSRP; $1,599 retail; $1,703 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3090 Dell OEM RTX 3090 at AmazonEVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra Gaming at EVGAMSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio at Newegg Stepping down to the RTX 3090 presents some interesting compromises. RTX 3090 cards have memory on both sides of the PCB, which generally leads to higher GDDR6X temperatures — too high in many cases, frankly. It’s about 8–9% slower than the 3090 Ti, for about 20% less money. That mostly means stepping up to the faster card represents diminishing returns, but if you’re willing to spend this much money on a graphics card, you might as well go whole hog and buy the faster 3090 Ti. There aren’t many original 3090 cards available either, which leads to prices still being at least $100 more than the nominal MSRP. (Image credit: Zotac) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti$1,199 MSRP; $1,279 retail; $1,337 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3080 Ti EVGA RTX 3080 Ti XC3 Ultra Gaming at EVGAGigabyte RTX 3080 Ti Eagle at NeweggZotac RTX 3080 Ti Trinity OC at Amazon The main difference between the RTX 3080 Ti and the RTX 3090 is that the 3080 Ti has half as much memory. It’s also technically clocked a bit slower, at least going by the reference clocks, but in practice, the 3080 Ti is only a few percent slower than the 3090. If you’re still interested in cryptocurrency mining, note that the 3080 Ti cards all have Nvidia’s LHR limiter in place, whereas the 3090 and 3090 Ti do not, but we hope you’re not looking to buy more cards for mining at this stage in the game. As one of the more recent Nvidia releases, the MSRP is also quite inflated — too inflated, many would say. We expect the future “RTX 4070” will deliver roughly the same level of performance for half the price. (Image credit: MSI) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 12GBNo MSRP; $1,024 retail; $1,034 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3080 12GB EVGA RTX 3080 12GB XC3 Ultra Gaming at AmazonMSI RTX 3080 12GB Ventus at NeweggZotac RTX 3080 12GB Trinity OC at Amazon Nvidia’s 12GB update to the RTX 3080 adds a few more GPU cores and doesn’t come with an official MSRP, though unofficially we’d put it at around $999. Depending on the card you get, the factory overclock can nearly make up for any loss in GPU cores compared to the RTX 3080 Ti, though normally we expect it to be about 5% slower. You still get the same 12GB of GDDR6X memory, and it’s one of the better high-end offerings right now, particularly if you want Nvidia’s superior ray tracing hardware and DLSS capabilities. (Image credit: EVGA) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 10GB$699 MSRP; $919 retail; $1,093 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3080 Asus RTX 3080 TUF Gaming at AmazonEVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming at EVGAGigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC at Newegg The RTX 3080 launch presented a price and performance ratio that was almost too good to be true, and we’ve never really seen the GPU in large quantities sold for anywhere close to its $699 MSRP. Early on, scalpers pushed the price well above $1,000, and at the height of cryptocurrency mining, the 3080 was selling for over $2,100 on eBay. Even now, relative to the MSRP, this is the most “overpriced” card. However, EVGA will sell you an RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming for $919, and considering the performance and features, it’s still a great card at that price. Again, bear in mind the pending Ada launch, which will likely have an “RTX 4070” class card for less money with more performance. (Image credit: Asus) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti$599 MSRP; $699 retail; $768 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Asus RTX 3070 Ti TUF Gaming at NeweggEVGA RTX 3070 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming at AmazonZotac RTX 3070 Ti Trinity OC at Newegg There’s a relatively large gap in performance going from the RTX 3080 down to the RTX 3070 Ti, mostly thanks to the loss of memory and memory bandwidth. At higher resolutions, 1440p and 4K, the 3080 delivers 15–30% higher frame rates — sometimes more, in cases where 8GB simply isn’t sufficient for the data set (like in Total War: Warhammer 3 at 4K ultra). The move to GDDR6X memory also caused an abnormally large jump in power use compared to the vanilla 3070, though it can be difficult to find the standard 3070 in stock these days. (Image credit: PNY) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070$499 MSRP; $729 retail; $741 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3070 Asus RTX 3070 KO Win at AmazonPNY RTX 3070 XLR8 at AmazonGigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming OC at Newegg Nvidia’s RTX 3070 might as well be effectively discontinued at this stage, as it’s difficult to find cards in stock. Of those we actually could find, several cost more than the least expensive 3070 Ti cards. So unless you really want to avoid the higher power use of the Ti and are willing to pay more money to do so, there’s little reason to consider the vanilla 3070 at current prices. There’s also relatively little difference in performance between this and the 3060 Ti below, which is more readily available. (Image credit: MSI) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti$399 MSRP; $579 retail; $682 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3060 Ti EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW Ultra Gaming at AmazonGigabyte RTX 3060 Ti Gaming OC at NeweggMSI RTX 3060 Ti Ventus at Newegg Like the RTX 3070, the RTX 3060 Ti seems to be more difficult to find and currently sits at higher prices, relative to the MSRP, than other Nvidia GPUs. However, the lowest price we’re tracking is still 45% higher than the suggested starting price, and in terms of performance, the 3060 Ti lands between AMD’s RX 6600 XT and the RX 6700 XT. Given the extra memory and added performance of the 6700 XT, being able to find it at a lower price makes it an easy pick, unless you absolutely love playing DXR games with DLSS enabled. (Image credit: Gigabyte) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060$329 MSRP; $488 retail; $490 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3060 EVGA RTX 3060 XC Gaming at AmazonGigabyte RTX 3060 Vision OC at NeweggPNY RTX 3060 XLR8 at Amazon Nvidia’s RTX 3060 was the first card to implement the LHR mining rate limiter, which was subsequently broken and then fixed with a new revision of the VBIOS. Perhaps partly due to that, retail prices on the card are still nearly 50% higher than the official MSRP, which was perhaps too ambitious to begin with. Nvidia’s 3060 competes well against AMD’s RX 6600, which also has the same nominal $329 starting price. Hopefully, we’ll see these cards drop another 20–30% in the coming months, as we don’t anticipate seeing an Ada alternative “RTX 4060” until sometime in 2023. (Image credit: Asus) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050$249 MSRP; $299 retail; $353 eBayRead our full review: GeForce RTX 3050 Asus RTX 3050 Dual at AmazonEVGA RTX 3050 XC Gaming at EVGAMSI RTX 3050 Ventus at Newegg Nvidia’s slowest RTX card to date, the 3050 generally comes in a bit behind the previous generation RTX 2060, despite having 2GB more VRAM. There are a few exceptions, but overall the 2060 remains the superior card — just avoid using settings that go beyond its 6GB VRAM limit. We’ve seen the RTX 3050 in stock several times during the past month at $250, meaning no price hikes at all, though right now the best we can do is $300. That’s still only a 20% markup, which isn’t bad considering what we’ve seen in the past 18 months. If you want a 3050, try to hold off until you can pick it up for closer to $250. AMD RX 6000-Series GPUs (Image credit: MSI) AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT$999 MSRP; $1,019 retail; $1,179 eBayRead our full review: Radeon RX 6900 XTMSI RX 6900 XT Gaming X Trio at NeweggPowerColor RX 6900 XT Red Devil at AmazonSapphire RX 6900 XT Nitro+ at Newegg The RX 6900 XT presently reigns as AMD’s fastest consumer graphics card, though rumors of an impending RX 6950 XT indicate it will have higher GPU and memory clocks and should arrive in the next few weeks. If we ignore ray tracing and DLSS performance, the 6900 XT already trades blows with Nvidia’s best. It’s technically a bit slower than the RTX 3090 Ti, by up to 15% at 4K ultra, but performance is tied at 1080p ultra and only 5% slower at 1440p ultra. It’s an entirely different story in DXR (DirectX Raytracing) games, where even the 3070 Ti outperforms the 6900 XT by a few percent, and the 3090 Ti is 75% faster overall. You can pretty much find the 6900 XT at MSRP these days, but that’s only because the official MSRP remains quite high relative to what you get. (Image credit: Sapphire) AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT$649 MSRP; $839 retail; $832 eBayRead our full review: Radeon RX 6800 XTMSI RX 6800 XT Gaming Z Trio at NeweggSapphire RX 6800 XT Pulse at AmazonSapphire RX 6800 XT Pulse at Newegg The RX 6800 XT only drops performance by about 7% compared to the 6900 XT, but it’s available for about 20% less money. So overall, it’s the far more sensible choice and arguably the best high-end AMD offering. It’s not clear whether AMD will refresh the 6800 XT along with the other 6000-series XT cards, but it sounds like that’s not the plan, meaning AMD aims to create more of a separation between the 6800 XT and its fastest GPU. In traditional games, the 6800 XT trades blows with the 3080 Ti, falling somewhat behind (by 9%) at 4K ultra, but even without DLSS, it can only keep up with the RTX 3070 in DXR games. (Image credit: ASRock) AMD Radeon RX 6800$579 MSRP; $799 retail; $748 eBayRead our full review: Radeon RX 6800ASRock RX 6800 Phantom Gaming D at NeweggPowerColor RX 6800 Red Dragon at AmazonSapphire RX 6800 Pulse at Amazon AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 has always been in a bit of a tight spot. The official launch price was only 10% lower than the 6800 XT, while performance was about 15% slower due to the curbed GPU shader counts and lower clocks. However, Mining performance basically matches the 6900 XT, which meant that at the height of the crypto-bubble, the vanilla RX 6800 cost nearly as much as the RX 6900 XT and was very hard to find. These days, the price remains higher than we’d like, and you only save about 5% compared to the 6800 XT while still sacrificing 15% performance. So look to the 6700 XT if you want a more affordable but still fast AMD GPU. (Image credit: Various) AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT$479 MSRP; $514 retail; $540 eBayRead our full review: Radeon RX 6700 XTASRock RX 6700 XT Challenger D at NeweggMSI RX 6700 XT Mech 2X at NeweggXFX RX 6700 XT Speedster at Amazon Trimming the shader counts, die size, memory capacity, and Infinity Cache size relative to the faster Navi 21 GPU helped AMD to cut prices quite a bit. The Radeon RX 6700 XT currently ranks as one of the best overall values, with a retail price that’s only 7% higher than the official MSRP. Performance remains strong at 1440p ultra, landing halfway between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti in standard gaming performance — but slightly behind the RTX 3060 if you enable DXR. Considering the price is $60 lower than the 3060 Ti and over $100 less than the 3070/3070 Ti, however, the 6700 XT is certainly worthy of consideration. (Image credit: Various) AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT$399 MSRP; $379 retail; $423 eBayRead our full review: Radeon RX 6600 XTASRock RX 6600 XT Challenger D at NeweggMSI RX 6600 XT Mech 2X at NeweggXFX RX 6600 XT Speedster at Amazon The relatively good deals on AMD GPUs continue with the RX 6600 XT. It’s also the first GPU in our list that can be found for less than the official MSRP, though again, the launch price was arguably a bit high. Performance lands midway between the RTX 3060 and the RTX 3060 Ti, with a price that’s $100 lower than the former and $200 less than the latter. That’s at 1080p and 1440p, though quite a few games may struggle to hit 60 fps at 1440p ultra. Also, note that DXR performance takes a big 20% step down from the 6700 XT and basically only matches the RTX 2060 for ray tracing games (still without DLSS). Don’t buy this for ray tracing, but it’s otherwise a good upper midrange solution. (Image credit: MSI) AMD Radeon RX 6600$329 MSRP; $324 retail; $347 eBayRead our full review: Radeon RX 6600ASRock RX 6600 Challenger at NeweggMSI RX 6600 Mech 2X at NeweggMSI RX 6600 Mech 2X at AmazonSapphire RX 6600 Pulse at Newegg In terms of online prices right now, the Radeon RX 6600 only costs about $25 more than the going rate for the RTX 3050. The RX 6600 averaged 30% higher frame rates in our standard gaming test suite and tied the RTX 3060, making it well worth the price. Like the RX 6600 XT, it’s also available for slightly less than the official MSRP. The vanilla 6600 mostly serves as a good 1080p gaming solution, generally handling ultra settings at 60 fps or more (except for in the more demanding games like Flight Simulator and Total War: Warhammer 3), but you’ll mostly want to stick with medium or high settings if you plan on running games at 1440p. Also note that ray tracing performance on the RX 6600 was quite poor, if that’s something you care about. (Image credit: PowerColor) AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT$199 MSRP; $199 retail; $230 eBayRead our full review: Radeon RX 6500 XTASRock RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming D at NeweggPowerColor RX 6500 XT at AmazonSapphire RX 6500 XT Pulse at Amazon Last and least of the current generation GPUs, the RX 6500 XT underwhelms in a lot of ways, but it tries to make up for that with its budget pricing. Like all of the other GPUs above it, the 6500 XT initially sold out at launch and tended to go for $300 or more, but word of its lackluster performance got out quickly and prices plummeted. You can find it now for the suggested $200 without too much difficulty, though performance only matches up against the older GTX 1650 Super and even trails the previous generation RX 5500 XT 4GB. If graphics card availability continues to improve, we expect RX 6500 XT prices to stabilize at closer to $150 eventually. Nvidia Turing and AMD RDNA GPUs (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware) The current generation Nvidia Ampere and AMD RDNA 2 graphics cards are all still in production and supplies seem to be improving. That’s not true of the previous generation cards, where prices haven’t dropped nearly as much as on the latest GPUs and supplies remain tight. If you want to buy a previous-gen card, your best bet will often be eBay, as retail prices are either nonexistent or horribly overpriced. Here’s the quick rundown of all the previous generation GPUs and the prices we’re currently seeing, though do note that the eBay listings are typically for used cards. GeForce RTX 2080 Ti: $1,199 MSRP, $999 retail, $764 eBay GeForce RTX 2080 Super: $699 MSRP, $849 retail, $517 eBay GeForce RTX 2080: $699 MSRP, $897 retail, $501 eBay GeForce RTX 2070 Super: $499 MSRP, $679 retail, $473 eBay GeForce RTX 2070: $499 MSRP, $1,199 retail, $423 eBay GeForce RTX 2060 Super: $399 MSRP, $569 retail, $426 eBay GeForce RTX 2060: $299 MSRP, $347 retail, $309 eBay GeForce GTX 1660 Ti: $279 MSRP, $427 retail, $291 eBay GeForce GTX 1660 Super: $229 MSRP, $319 retail, $297 eBay GeForce GTX 1660: $219 MSRP, $324 retail, $248 eBay GeForce GTX 1650 Super: $169 MSRP, $300 retail, $199 eBay GeForce GTX 1650 GDDR6: $159 MSRP, $209 retail, $195 eBay GeForce GTX 1650 GDDR5: $159 MSRP, $159 retail, $203 eBay Radeon RX 5700 XT: $399 MSRP, $750 retail, $546 eBay Radeon RX 5700: $349 MSRP, $1,240 retail, $496 eBay Radeon RX 5600 XT: $279 MSRP, $616 retail, $344 eBay Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB: $199 MSRP, $549 retail, $238 eBay Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB: $169 MSRP, $379 retail, $160 eBay That list should make it immediately obvious why we’re saying you should generally avoid looking at previous-gen GPUs right now. The GTX 16-series cards are still technically in production, as far as we’re aware, but only a few cards are available at prices you might consider paying — unless you want to try your luck at an eBay auction and simply refuse to go above a “reasonable” price. Your best options for previous generation GPUs right now are the GTX 1650 vanilla, the RX 5500 XT 4GB, and the RTX 2060. The 2060 beat the newer RTX 3050 by 8% on average, and it trailed slightly in a couple of the games that exceeded it’s 6GB VRAM. We wouldn’t pay more than $250–$300 for the 2060, but if you can find it at that price it’s still a decent midrange card. You’ll also want to pay attention to how performance stands up to the newer cards using our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. For example, the RTX 3050 might be slower than the RTX 2060, but it’s also about 15% faster than the GTX 1660 Super, and it supports the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature set along with DLSS. Why anyone would pay $300 or more for an inferior GTX GPU is a bit of a mystery — unless they’re still trying to turn a profit with crypto mining. Closing Thoughts (Image credit: Shutterstock) If you’ve been holding off on a graphics card upgrade for the past two years, you might be tempted to finally take the plunge. The RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT represent the best overall picks in our book, as neither one is likely to be immediately replaced with a new RDNA 3 GPU later this year. The RX 6700 XT also represents a good value, though we do expect the $500-class cards to see more competition this fall. Nvidia’s graphics cards continue to be more sought after, based on current pricing and mark ups. If you want DLSS support and better DXR performance, be prepared to pay more for the privilege. The Nvidia GPUs selling at or close to MSRP also tend to have much higher MSRPs to begin with, while the most desirable cards in theory, like the RTX 3080, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti, and RTX 3060, are all still selling for 30–50% over MSRP. If you want one of those cards and aren’t willing to go with AMD, we’d suggest waiting a bit more as we expect prices will continue to fall. Intel’s Arc Alchemist GPUs are also slated to arrive for desktops in the near future, but it’s difficult to predict where they’ll land. Early benchmarks of the mobile variants aren’t particularly promising, but the higher end cards may be able to take on the likes of the RTX 3060/3070 and RX 6600/6700. Or they might fall well short, in which case only lower prices will keep Intel competitive. For Nvidia and AMD, we expect new high-end and extreme graphics cards to arrive before the end of the year, and rumors indicate AMD will launch refreshed RX 6950 XT, RX 6750XT, and RX 6650 XT cards in May. Those should be a bit faster than the existing models, and hopefully prices will remain competitive. The fact that AMD is doing a refresh in the near future suggests RDNA 3 won’t arrive in volume until the very end of the year. Nvidia’s Ada architecture meanwhile should land round about September, so if you’re eyeing the RTX 3080 Ti or above, it will likely be worth the wait. HARDWARE Tags: CardsdealsGPUGraphicsMSRPSelling