News Best Graphics Card Deals for Prime Day October: Cheap Nvidia and AMD GPUs

[mickrc3]

So who is Peladn and why should Toms even mention this brand? What kind of track record do they have?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

So who is Peladn and why should Toms even mention this brand? What kind of track record do they have?

Long-time Chinese company, and I thought we mentioned them as being a bit questionable. Honestly, they're probably fine, as they most likely take the core reference design from Nvidia and just slap a cooler and stickers on it. But even as the cheapest 3080, I wouldn't give them my money — RTX 3080 simply far too expensive right now. It's why I wrote the "AMD is a better value at every price point" article.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-graphics-cards-are-better-value-than-nvidia

 

[Elusive Ruse]

6700XT seems like a good transition choice if you need a GPU now but are willing to upgrade within a year or so.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

Long-time Chinese company, and I thought we mentioned them as being a bit questionable. Honestly, they're probably fine, as they most likely take the core reference design from Nvidia and just slap a cooler and stickers on it. But even as the cheapest 3080, I wouldn't give them my money — RTX 3080 simply far too expensive right now. It's why I wrote the "AMD is a better value at every price point" article.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-graphics-cards-are-better-value-than-nvidia

Thanks for keeping an eye on potential deals Jarred, I was wondering if you were planning to add the XTX, XT and 4070Ti to the GPUs you track in this article?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Thanks for keeping an eye on potential deals Jarred, I was wondering if you were planning to add the XTX, XT and 4070Ti to the GPUs you track in this article?

Not in this article, though the GPU prices piece does include them. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index
(Yeah, I didn't do the early March update yet...)

 

[digitalgriffin]

Some of these are horrid deals.

3080 is about same as 4070 in raster
3080 is much slower as 4070 in RT

And they want $50 more for a 3080?

 

[digitalgriffin]

I actually played Miles Morales with and without DLSS 3. Without pixel peeping and doing a bunch of extra stuff, I can honestly say I never noticed anything that made me feel like FG was causing rendering errors. Did it look better? No. Did it look or feel at all smoother? On the 4080, at maxed out settings and 4K, yes. I think it did. I imagine there's a sweet spot between a minimum real FPS requirement and a maximum where DLSS 3 feels best.

That's important to understand. In normal use, without going to great lengths, it's difficult for even a professional graphics card reviewer to detect the errors. It's not that they don't exist, but it may very well be that they don't really matter.

If you listen to the lengthy explanations given on the problems with DLSS3, what it all devolves to is that you generally have to carefully look for rendering problems, sometimes going so far as to intentionally do things to create the problems (like moving the mouse around really fast). It's a pain in the rear to test, as you need to capture 4K at 120 Hz basically. Some of the rendering errors are quite bad, but the inconsistency of the problem means the actual gameplay experience may not be affected all that much.

I'm still not sure what to actually think, having tried DLSS3 in several games now. For me, it was fine. I could enable or disable it and not really notice much of a difference — again, without putting in a lot of time to test and try and figure out precisely what's happening on a frame by frame basis. But the 4090 and 4080 are already so fast that perhaps it's less of a problem. How will Frame Generation feel on a future RTX 4050? I suspect a lot of the problems discussed by others will become far more noticeable. That's not going to be a good experience, in other words.

But ultimately, I do like having choice. Maybe some games I decided I like the FG effect, others I don't, some run fast enough without it, etc. It's the same reason I like that Miles Morales also supports FSR 2.1 and XeSS alongside DLSS 2/3. The more the merrier! I mean, I'm never going to be upset that a game has MSAA, TAA, FXAA, DLAA, DLSS, FSR 2.1, XeSS, etc. Maybe I never use some of the options, but maybe someone else cares enough to use a specific setting.

This I agree with for several reasons

Our eyes cannot detect detail loss on moving objects that well. That's the whole basis of mpg working.

For static images though (like a cockpit steering wheel) it's easier.

That said, Microsoft has a software renderer they use as a standard. But it takes a special debug version of the game to render frame by frame and do a pixel diff of each pixel. And reviewers just don't have that for obvious reasons.

 

[mac_angel]

Have you guys made a point about the RTX 3060ti refresh that came out this year? GDDR6X vs GDDR6

 

[DavidLejdar]

IS THE 6800XT the best bang for your buck?

I got me a RX 6700 XT several months ago (which is noticeably cheaper), and at 1440p I get to use ultra settings with more than 60 FPS in almost everything. Only when I turn on ray-tracing, it gets as low as around 30 FPS average e.g. in Watch Dogs: Legion with ultra ray-tracing - and without ray-tracing the average is 69, and tuning down the graphics settings to high, it is 111 FPS average (with the in-game benchmark). Or e.g. in Cyberpunk 2077 I get 56 average without FSR and without ray-tracing, and 77 with FSR 2.1.

And for me that is plenty good, and made most sense for me performance-price-wise. If these numbers are not good enough, then a higher tier may certainly make more sense, or if one plays only e.g. adventure games at 1080p, then a lower tier may make more sense in terms of price for performance expected.

 

[aalkjsdflkj]

This article has been incorrectly listing the lowest price on the 6700 (non-XT) for a while. It shows the XFX Speedster as the lowest priced option at $369, but I've been tracking prices since January 14 and the cheapest 6700s have been between $299-$329 the entire time. Right now the Sapphire Pulse is $299 at Newegg, and the XFX Speedster is $319.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

This article has been incorrectly listing the lowest price on the 6700 (non-XT) for a while. It shows the XFX Speedster as the lowest priced option at $369, but I've been tracking prices since January 14 and the cheapest 6700s have been between $299-$329 the entire time. Right now the Sapphire Pulse is $299 at Newegg, and the XFX Speedster is $319.

Sorry, I'm not the one generally updating this, but I've noticed your comment and have just put in correct prices and text for this. I also removed most of the RTX 30-series, as they're basically not worth considering at this stage.

 

[aalkjsdflkj]

Thanks Jarred!

For anyone looking today, MSI has the 6750XT on sale for $329 with a $20 rebate. The sale is only good for about 13 more hours, and the rebate is only valid at Newegg. I've been waiting to replace my 1070 until I could get more than 8GB of RAM for close to $300, and the 6750XT at $309 fits the bill.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Thanks Jarred!

For anyone looking today, MSI has the 6750XT on sale for $329 with a $20 rebate. The sale is only good for about 13 more hours, and the rebate is only valid at Newegg. I've been waiting to replace my 1070 until I could get more than 8GB of RAM for close to $300, and the 6750XT at $309 fits the bill.

Worth noting is that the 6700 10GB doesn't compete as well as we might hope, so for $10 more the RX 6750 XT is an excellent choice.


And if you're upgrading from a GTX 1070...

 

[King_V]

Ok now I'm just drooling at the thought of an interactive table like this.. card A vs card B

 

[klavs]

I don´t see good prices on that list...
Maybe I am just too old.

You are not too old. The article is a waste of time. It's like yours and my comment - a waste of time for people that want to make a good deal on a GPU.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Ok now I'm just drooling at the thought of an interactive table like this.. card A vs card B

This is the sad thing: I have ALL THE DATA needed to make that happen, and I have a spreadsheet on my end that allows me to do exactly that. Well, I actually have lots of spreadsheets of various iterations, with old and new data, but that's another topic. Anyway, there's basically no option to create a data-driven page with our CMS.

And before anyone asks, no, I'm not going to put all the data that amounts to hundreds of hours of testing and retesting into the public domain in a shared Google spreadsheet. But my dream is to have a site that allows you to compare any two (recent?) GPUs and generates tables like the above, along with a bunch of other things like specs and non-gaming benchmarks. Maybe even have it deliver some text pointing out highlights of the comparison. Like the various "versus" sites that already exist, only with real damn gaming benchmarks rather than just a quick list of specs.

 

[King_V]

Well, now I feel like reality is just taunting us...

 

[Elusive Ruse]

6950 XT at $599 is just cruel, the price is great but I can't afford it

 

[thisisaname]

You could save even more not buying one

 

[Gauche Cockney]

In my country of residence,

RTX 3060 Ti $425
RX 6750 XT $450
RX 6700 XT $350

Should I wait for RTX 4060 or grab RTX 3060 Ti?

 

[qwertymac93]

Hey, your link to the Zotac 3060 is an 8GB card! Those are significantly less performant than the 12GB model and should NEVER be recommended when so close in price to the REAL 3060 models! Right now, the cheapest 3060 12GB is a mere $20 more and a MUCH better deal.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Hey, your link to the Zotac 3060 is an 8GB card! Those are significantly less performant than the 12GB model and should NEVER be recommended when so close in price to the REAL 3060 models! Right now, the cheapest 3060 12GB is a mere $20 more and a MUCH better deal.

I wasn't responsible for the latest update, but I've edited things to list both the RTX 3060 12GB and RTX 3060 8GB models now. I agree the 12GB is the better deal, though the 8GB variant is also just $5 more than the RTX 3050 and does offer better performance.

 

[abufrejoval]

Note that overall, prices here in EU are way higher than on US, even on the same brand and model GPUs.

Es porque lo meten con la IVA includio en Europa, pero como la IVA suele ser regional y de vez en cuando varios a la vez, precios en los EE.UU no incluyen ninguno de los impuestos.

Just saying that US prices don't include taxes which would be illegal in Europe...

 

[abufrejoval]

I know I’ve searched for various GPUs many, many times at Amazon and routinely get terrible matches. Maybe it’s Amazon storing cookies and trying to figure out what to show me, and certainly some of it is the terrible product descriptions some companies post. “GT 730, get this while you wait for RTX 3090!” I don’t know, but I do know Newegg is way more helpful in that it doesn’t fill my results with unrelated garbage.

Amazon search most likey is the way it is because their data scientists have proven its value to the bottom line: consumer preferences are secondary.

But yes, I value geizhals.de and its sister sites every day when all I am really trying to do is translating press announcements into real world availabilities and pricing trends. It really goes deep on selectable attributes and the fidelity is great.

For me its European focus isn't that much of a handycap: it's been decades that I've mail-ordered mainboards from the US. But I can see how the language presets might impact it usefulness somewhat more.

The base application supports quite a few languages and English among them, but it seems you can't set the language preference and the geographical searching scope quite as independently as on most other sites.

Anyhow, you can give it a try and see if it adds something useful by using its UK alias https://skinflint.co.uk/ as an entry point and then see if you can get at least EU/€ listings.

Of course prices will be with relevant regional taxes included and easly 20% above US listings even with exchange rate parity.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Just saying that US prices don't include taxes which would be illegal in Europe...

It's because US tax rates vary by state. Some states have zero sales tax, some have up to maybe 10%. And you can also get local taxes, by county or even city. Since everyone shops at the same place for internet shipping, it's best to not list tax — the people buying something will know their local tax rate, which won't be the same for most people.

State and Local Sales Tax Rates, 2024

Retail sales taxes are an essential part of most states’ revenue toolkits, responsible for 32 percent of state tax collections and 13 percent of local tax collections (24 percent of combined collections).

taxfoundation.org