I see a whole bunch of people saying to get an RTX 3060, 3070, etc. and there's a problem with that. Right now, there isn't a single current-gen card out there that's worth buying on both sides so I've been ignoring it. It doesn't even matter though because the "mainstream cards" are still previous-gen as the current-gen is taking forever to fill out. Pricing isn't really being manipulated by scalpers anymore, so at least there's that. From what I can tell, there's not a single card from the current generation from either brand that's worth buying and when it comes to the previous-gen, the only cards worth buying are Radeons.
Check out these "Sold and Shipped by Newegg" listings (that means, no scalpers):
Radeon vs. RTX 3050:
RTX 3050: $300 = 100% cost, 100% performance, 100% VRAM
RX 6600: $220 = 73% cost, 129% performance, 100% VRAM
RX 6600 XT: $275 = 92% cost, 154% performance, 100% VRAM
Radeon vs RTX 3060:
RTX 3060: $350 = 100% cost, 100% performance, 100% VRAM
RX 6700: $320 = 91% cost, 119% performance, 80% VRAM
RX 6700 XT: $350 = 100% cost, 127% performance, 100% VRAM
RX 6750 XT: $400 = 114% cost, 138% performance, 100% VRAM
(At $410,
RTX 3060 Ti loses in performance to all three Radeons priced between $320 and $400 and only has 8GB of VRAM so I'm not going to waste any time with it.)
Radeon vs RTX 3070:
RTX 3070: $545 = 100% cost, 100% performance, 100% VRAM
RX 6800: $480 = 88% cost, 110% performance, 200% VRAM
RX 6800 XT: $580 = 106% cost, 125% performance, 200% VRAM
(At $620, the RTX 3070 Ti loses in performance to both the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT so like the RTX 3060 Ti, I'm not going to waste any time with it.)
Radeon vs RTX 3080 (RTX 3080 & RX 6900 XT ONLY AVAILABLE AS OPEN-BOX):
RTX 3080 (OPEN BOX): $730 = 100% cost, 100% performance, 100% VRAM
RX 6800 XT (NEW): $580 = 79% cost, 96% performance, 160% VRAM
RX 6900 XT (OPEN BOX): $630 = 86% cost, 104% performance, 160% VRAM
RX 6950 XT (NEW): $700 = 96% cost, 112% performance, 160% VRAM
Yes, a
NEW RX 6950 XT has better performance, has 60% more VRAM and costs less than an
OPEN-BOX RTX 3080. Just insane!
Performance Numbers are from the
TechPowerUp GPU Database.
Anyone who buys an nVidia card right now is objectively making a mistake because numbers don't lie, people do. I just wanted to arm you with that knowledge before you move forward.