I mean I get that the sub $150 pricepoint is basically taken by iGPU's, but still, its 7 years old and theres nothing else thats a better deal. I wonder how things will look a year or two from now after AMD cuts driver support for it.
You're not wrong, but with a full 8gb VRAM, and at least performance parity with all of the cards around it, I don't see a more rounded option. That said that half height a380 isn't bad for an sff build, and for 110 that other a380 isn't a really terrible option. Every other card has a bigger trade off though, less VRAM, requires PCIE4, requires bios tweaks, the RX 580 8GB doesn't have those issues. Also these options are from microcenter and all are supposedly brand new and have a full warranty like the other new cards around it. I guess we'll be seeing these for years considering how many were produced as mining cards, im sure there are still tons of unused dies in warehouses.There are a few arguments to be made here and there with alternative cards in that very image. A380 6GB at $110 in the top left is a decent budget card, and then for a little more then the rx580 you can find the A580 8GB. 6500XT is pretty much on par with an RX580, just have to make sure you have PCIe 4.0. RTX 3050 6GB is also in the price range. Not great, but not a bad choice for upgrading an office PC.
Those refurb/recycled rx580 are questionable as well. A lot of them are former mining cards with new (cheap) coolers stuck on.
I wouldn't say the price point disappeared either, just that the entry level price point is now $200 due to inflation and a little price gouging from the likes of TSMC and everyone inbetween.
XFX is probably more represented than most because their cards tend to be more minimalist in their aesthetic which often results in better pricing. Sure, nothing is more bare-bones looking than the Powercolor Fighter but I'm thinking that Powercolor has been putting more effort into making flashier cards like Red Devil, Red Dragon and Hellhound. Looking at their designs, it also would appear that XFX SWFT cards have more efficient cooling solutions than Powercolor Fighters. All of these AIB partners were selling directly to cryptofarms and I think that XFX's products and prices just made them the most attractive of the bunch to miners.That might be the only exception actually looks like an XFX board and a decent heatsink. It is possible those are harvested chips sold in bulk and put on new PCBs. As long as they warranty it, should be okay.
XFX was doing a lot of straight to miner GPUs, so they may have ended up with trays of unused GPUs when the market crashed.
RX 5600 XT is faster than RX 580, and can be found used, at the same price point.
I wouldn't trust used Polaris cards, at this point, because a lot of them are going to be coming from mining farms, especially if the seller is located in China. Chinese sellers tend to have multiple listings for similar cards, so it's pretty much a dead giveaway, that they are breaking up a mining farm.
A Vega 56/64 card may also be an option. I don't see these being sold in bulk quanties, like RX580/590 cards.
If you have more money, you can also consider a Radeon VII, but they are building collectible value, because of rarity, so the value equation doesn't work, for me. If you see a Radeon VII, in the same price range as an RX 580, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. Cards being sold for parts might sell for that, but typically not working cards.
If you're talking about graphics cards in general that can be purchased for around $150, I think that statement is incorrect. For about $100-200 a used GTX 1070 or 1080, and whatever sub-model, has a higher benchmark than the RX 580. Not an SFF size, of course, but they're all PCIE 3.0 being older hardware.
I purchased my GTX 1070 OC for about $100 last year, it still runs pretty well even though it has broken fans and the thermal pads were never changed. It's probably just someone's mining equipment they were getting rid of, but I think it was a great deal for the price.
I also don't trust those kinds of unknown brands, I couldn't say if they're any better or worse than a large company or buying used items but I would rather spend the extra dollar on something that was branded by a company known to a wider amount of people, such as MSI.