The best graphics cards for PC gaming: Prices are finally coming down

Prices may be relaxing, but currently, the much-maligned Radeon RX 6500 XT is still the only semi-reasonable sub-$250 option around. If you can find it for a good price, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 is a much more capable modern graphics card, but its pricing is typically inflated at around $300. The Radeon RX 6500 XT is less appealing thanks to its nerfed memory, PCIe lanes, and limited ports, not to mention lower performance, but you can often find them going for around $200 on the streets these days. Those hardware limitations mean you’ll need to stick to Medium or High graphics settings at 1080p resolution in modern games in order to achieve playable frame rates, but if you do that, you’ll enjoy the experience.

AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 and Nvidia’s rival GeForce RTX 3060 both ostensibly carry the same $329 MSRP, but on the streets, there’s a much wider gap. You can find the 6600 going for prices starting around $300, while the cheapest RTX 3060 begins at $400. Those are both steep entry costs for 1080p gaming—at least compared to the GPUs of yesteryear—but with 8GB of fast GDDR6 memory, insanely good power efficiency, and AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution in tow, the Radeon RX 6600 is a great graphics card for people looking to game at 1080p resolution at 60fps or higher without compromising on visual fidelity. (Or breaking the bank.)

Nvidia is on its second-generation of dedicated ray tracing hardware, and its killer DLSS upsampling feature is in hundreds of games to claw back the performance lost to turning on ray tracing (which carries a steep performance penalty). At $330-plus, it ain’t cheap, but if enabling those cutting-edge lighting effects is a priority, you’ll want to go with GeForce. The RTX 3060 is another solid option, but it’s $400 on the streets and delivers performance on par with the $300 Radeon RX 6600 in games that don’t use ray tracing.

In a sane world, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti would dominate 1440p gaming at its $400 MSRP. It’s that good, and it offers superior ray tracing performance to AMD’s Radeon rivals. But we still aren’t living in a sane world, and the RTX 3060 Ti is going for $500+ on the streets, and often $550 to $600. Nvidia’s RTX 3070, ostensibly $500, goes for $650 to $700 online. Get AMD’s Radeon RX 6700 XT instead. It’s plenty fast for 1440p gaming at 60fps+ without compromise, while its beefy 12GB of GDDR6 memory provides plenty of headroom for flipping on all the most intense graphical features. The one downside? AMD’s card is only capable of playing ray-traced games at 1080p resolution unless you activate Radeon Super Resolution, or FSR 1 or 2 in games that support it. One the flip side, the Radeon RX 6700 XT can take advantage of AMD’s awesome performance-boosting Smart Access Memory feature if you’re running a modern Ryzen system that supports it.

Yes, the RTX 3060 Ti remains overpriced compared to its MSRP, going for $500+ rather than the expected $400—but that’s because it’s that good. If you want a killer 1440p gaming experience with top-notch ray tracing as the cherry on top, this is the card to buy even at an inflated price. The step-down GeForce RTX 3060 is also worth considering, though you may need to turn down some graphics settings when you enable ray tracing, while the step-up RTX 3070 doesn’t deliver enough of a performance boost to justify spending yet more.

If you’ve got a 4K monitor and want to put all those pixels to work, the RTX 3070, 3070 Ti and AMD’s Radeon RX 6750 XT and RX 6800 are all decent cheaper options. But if you want the best possible experience without any visual compromises, spend $800 and pick up the 10GB version of the RTX 3080. (The $1,000 12GB model isn’t worth the upcharge despite being slightly more future-proof.) The GeForce RTX 3080 packs enough power to blow through games even at 4K resolution with eye candy cranked, including ray traced games thanks to Nvidia’s killer combo of second-gen ray tracing hardware and DLSS.

The one problem? This is an insanely popular GPU, and it can still be difficult to find models around the 3080’s $800 MSRP (though they’re definitely popping up). AMD’s rival Radeon RX 6800 XT is easier to find, just as fast, and packs a whopping 16GB of GDDR6 memory, but Nvidia’s superior ray tracing and DLSS chops earn it the nod for this price point if you’re able to find one around MSRP.

All that said, new GPU generations from both Nvidia and AMD are expected before the end of the year, and when those launch, paying MSRP price for the two-year-old RTX 3080 or any of its rivals may sting, since new graphics families usually demolish the performance of last-gen’s high-end GPUs for a similar price. Consider whether you want to hop on board now, or risk waiting a few months to see what’s brewing.

Graphics cards that cost $1,000 didn’t used to exist, but now they’re commonplace, with the $1,000 12GB RTX 3080, $1,000 Radeon RX 6900 XT, $1,100 Radeon RX 6950 XT, $1,200 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, $1,500 GeForce RTX 3090, and $2,000 RTX 3090 Ti all available in this price range.

Their steep price increases don’t translate into a lot of extra performance over the more affordable RTX 3080 or Radeon RX 6800 XT, so we recommend most people stick with those instead. But prices are being slashed rapidly at the high-end, and if you’re looking to splurge, we recommend the Radeon RX 6950 XT for most people.

The Radeon RX 6950 XT is faster than the RTX 3090 for $400 less, and comes with an ample 16GB of memory. Heck, it even surpasses the $2,000 RTX 3090 Ti in performance in some games. If you simply want to play some games with face-melting speed and fidelity, the 6950 XT is a killer value option, and it will deliver a killer experience—especially if you use AMD features like Radeon Super Resolution, Smart Access Memory, and FSR. (The same holds true for the Radeon RX 6900 XT, which we’ve seen on sale for less than $900 now that the GPU crunch is letting up.) It isn’t as good as Nvidia’s GPUs at ray tracing, however, so opt for the RTX 3080 Ti instead if you’re a gamer looking to flip on all those cutting-edge lighting effects. Note that the Sapphire Nitro+ Pure model we reviewed is an ultra-luxe enthusiast-class version that costs more, and deservedly so, though you can find other RX 6950 XTs for MSRP.

If you want some of the best gaming performance on the planet, including ray tracing, and also want to do some work on the side, the $1,500 RTX 3090 is the graphics card to buy. This card works hard and plays hard thanks to a massive 24GB of ultra-fast GDDR6 memory that makes it excel at content creation and machine learning tasks, especially high-res video rendering. And it slings gaming frames with the best of them. The newer RTX 3090 Ti offers slightly faster GPU and memory performance, but costs $500 more, making the non-Ti 3090 a much more (somewhat) practical choice. You pay for the privilege, however, with the Radeon RX 6950 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti delivering similar gaming performance for significantly less.