there's some bad news on GPU pricing right now but there's also some good deals out there and I'll also talk about what about Black Friday if you're watching this video before Black Friday uh anyway the bad news is the RTX 490 which was honestly already out of most people's budget range anyway but maybe some people were thinking about picking one up around Black Friday or for Christmas something like that uh the prices have shot up to over $2,000 on the cheapest models new right now this is likely something to do uh with the uh restrictions on GPU sales for AI related reasons to China and uh that that could be what's driving this up so I'll hope to see that these go back down but again we'll have to wait and see I should also mention there's a lot of rumors right now about Nvidia refreshing their 40 series with a super version uh with announcements coming in January but this is still in the rumor phase and the biggest question on those would would be if they do happen What do they do the pricing of the current models cuz Nvidia could just slot them in above the current model pricing and then maybe it doesn't really offer you any better value but it is possible they will will push prices down and that's going to the rumor is uh super refreshes on cards like the 4070 4070 TI and 4080 so if you're looking at that price range it is possible that holding out until like quarter one of next year uh could end up netting you better value in that uh in that range but again we don't know for sure that is just rumors now today's video I'm going to take you through every single GPU price range and explain what my uh pick would be for the best value and why showing you benchmarks and everything to back that up um but I'm going to be focusing on pricing new and honestly Sometimes the best deals are found in the used market and today's sponsor ja. is uh uh definitely something to check out look at the pinned comment or my uh the link in my video description you can sell your GPU here to help fund your upgrade a lot of people leave value on on the table when they're doing that um but you can also buy entire uh pre-built systems here and again get a lot of used value you can buy uh used gpus like I said a lot of value there right now they have Tech tuber gift guides that you could take a look at this is pretty cool uh you can go ahead and and look through their picks for uh you know best pre-built for $1,000 best pre-built for500 uh best gift uh for a gamer under 150 a lot of cool stuff to check uh take a look at here uh as well as I noticed at the top of their page they're still they're running running an $1,800 gaming PC giveaway so take a look at that if if we click it click this thing this PC looks excellent It's a 4070 TI and an ryzen 5 7600 X CPU that will crush the latest games and be on a highly upgradeable platform with that CPU and look awesome while doing it uh so again definitely follow the link in the pinned comment and video description to take a look at ja. again sell your old Hardware to fund your upgrade buy used to stretch your your budget um all sorts awesome stuff they'll also be running some great Black Friday deals now let's jump into uh our stuff and while I was talking about 4090 pricing a minute ago that's way outside of most people's budget a lot of people are going to be buying in the2 200 300 $400 price range so let's start around $200 if you have around $200 to spend I think you should buy an RX 6650 XT now uh these cost $230 right now now why am I recommending this uh well it's going to perform very similarly to cards like the RX 7600 uh but those cost $260 that's also an AMD GPU and there's not really much of a feature uh difference between the generations other than an av1 encoder which might matter if you're streaming to YouTube or doing certain kinds of content creation but if you're just playing playing games that's not going to be um you know that big of a uh of a deal uh now the RTX 4060 from Nvidia would offer you better rate tracing performance and a better upscaler with dlss uh but they cost $290 and its overall rasterized non-r race performance is not much better than that 6650 XT for $230 um now again dlss is attractive here uh that will boost performance at 1080p I'd rather try to avoid upscaling at all if you are going to be upscaling again maybe pay extra money for that Nvidia GPU but that is a lot of extra money if you're down around the $200 price range now um if you're uh struggling to hit $200 you can't go over it to get to that $230 the RX 6600 is $190 right now on the cheapest models that is below $200 and if you can't go over $200 this would be my pick um you could compare it to uh cards from Intel at this price range like the a750 uh which is $26 right now um these are going to perform fairly similarly in a lot of cases however uh Intel gpus still tend to be more inconsistent on on just having some games that just don't run well especially around launch Starfield is still in a pretty bad State on uh Intel gpus and didn't run at all at launch The Last of Us Part One uh didn't run well uh or or even boot the game at launch like these still happen their software has been getting much better uh and you could also even consider the a580 which launched recent recently from Intel uh which will be a bit weaker but around $170 there is some value to be had there but I think the more consistent experience makes sense on the RX 6600 here and that would be my pick if I had to buy under $200 uh does Nvidia have anything competing here well the RTX 3050 that's about $27 um the main attraction there would be the better upscaler uh with uh which can again boost performance at some cost to image quality but less of a cost image quality than FSR 2 upscaling uh but again um if you just have a little higher performance overall maybe you don't need that upscaling and I don't think the Nvidia Ray tracing Advantage me advantage means much at this per performanced tier because you'd be more likely to be turning off settings like Ray tracing and turning down other graphic settings uh to improve your performance rather than turning on Ray tracing uh you know for that that visual quality I think anyway that would be my recommendation at this performance tier so I'm going to go with the 6650 XT and if you can't afford that probably the 6600 now if we're going to jump up more to the $300 is price range again Nvidia sitting there with the 460 at $290 now the problem with this is that the 6700 XT can be had for $310 so that is $20 more but you get 12 GB of vram instead of8 and uh as well as just flat out more raw performance especially when you're not Ray tracing and again I think we're still at a performance tier where you'd be more likely to be turning down settings like Ray tracing to increase your frame rates rather than cranking the ray tracing settings heavily uh where yes the Nvidia card might perform better in that case but it probably just wouldn't be the recommended optimized way to play the game uh in the first place I do like the Nvidia upscaler but again the 6700 XD has so much more performance that it might you know the Nvidia card might take upscaling just to match the performance uh versus actually um you know taking a lead using it and again 12 GB of vram versus 8 how much does does that matter well the latest games are designed for current gen consoles which have 16 GB of unified memory and so often the highest Graphics settings and textures will use more than 8 GB of vram and that can affect your performance now you can simply turn down some graphic settings to stay within your vram buffer but it would be nicer not to have to do that especially for things like textures which don't generally affect your performance if you have enough vram so the 6700 XT to me is definitely worth the $20 over the 4060 um uh now what if we were going to move up to a another pricing tier from here well let's go up to around the $400 price point here I think uh AMD again and don't worry this video is not going to be entirely AMD recommendations but at these uh more value oriented price points I think there's a lot to be said for the amount of vram and performance they're offering at the same price anyway at $ 400ish the RX 6800 non-xt version uh offers you 16 GB of vram at at $39 and more performance than the closest Nvidia competitors uh the closest price competitors are the 4060 TI 8 GB and 16 GB versions the 8 GB version is currently available as low as $37 which is $20 less than the cheapest 6800 but $20 is not a massive price Gap I think somebody considering these two cards would be considering both and for that extra $20 you are doubling your vram 8 gabt of vram for for $370 just feels like a bad deal right now for the reason stated earlier uh as well is the fact that the 68 800 just is a faster GPU so again uh where that kind of takes into account that that dlss Advantage right if you'd kick on dlss well it gets you more performance at some cost to image quality uh but again is that just getting you to catch up to the performance of the 6800 without using that right and I still think we're at a performance tier where I would be using limited to no Ray tracing uh for performance reasons especially if we're trying to use these cards at 1440p now there is the 16 GB version of the 460 TI and thank goodness it is significantly better value now than when it launched at $500 it's now down to $430 so it is now4 $30 more than the RX 6800 cheapest model and it gets you the same vram which is nice but it's not any faster than the 8 gbyte version meaning it is still a slower graphics card compared to the 6800 uh for $40 more so I just don't think it makes a lot of sense at that um you know at that price so here my pick would still be the 6800 so now you're probably like this guy's just an AMD shill he's going to do nothing but recommend AMD gpus and that is not the case because if we jump up to the $500 price point I recommend you buy the RTX 470 the cheapest models available are now uh $520 when the RTX 470 launched at $600 this was a much harder sell um but with AMD offering comp competition with the 7800 XT which came in at a $500 MSRP and is available at that price uh it gener offers a little bit better performance than the RTX 4070 when you're not using Ray tracing however on average it's maybe you know five or 6% faster it's not that big of a deal they perform very similarly but when you are using heavy Ray tracing workloads the 4070 will catch up or even sometimes significantly surpass the performance of the 7800 XT and we are now at a performance tier where if you're at 1080p I think you definitely can be and probably should be using Ray tracing to boost your uh visual experience you have the head room to do it on the 4070 at 1440p if you're using dlss you might have the performance headro um to use uh some some levels of Ray tracing on the 4070 it might actually make a lot of sense especially when you're using dlss and so in other words for $20 more you're getting a lot more Ray tracing performance a much better upscaler which at 1440p I would definitely think you using dlss quality is going to be what most people would choose to do and FSR 2 quality just will look a little bit more pixelated less St temporally stable uh have just more visual quality issues with it um and again their Baseline performance without R tracing is still very similar so I would gladly pay the extra $20 to get the 470 over the 7800 XT and um you know I I think uh that just makes sense now yes the 7800 XT has four more gigb of vram we are talking 16 GB of vram versus 8 GB sorry not 8 12 GB of vram on the 470 and that 12 makes all the difference compared to the 8 gab cards we were talking about earlier 12 GB of VR is enough in almost all situations right now to Max Games out at 1440p there's some cases where you're right on that borderline and you might spill over that um that 12 GB of vram but if you turn down a setting or two or use dlss that also can reduce uh reduce that and in general I think 12 GB is a good amount for 1440p and a great amount for 1080p gaming um uh for probably the next the next several years does that mean I'm guaranteeing you will max out literally every graph set graphic setting in every single game maybe not but I think with realistic settings that you'd be playing at anyway plus dlss quality I think 12 GB is absolutely fine at this price point I wouldn't be too concerned about it so the RTX 470 is my $500 pick uh you could keep your ey on 6800 XT versions which occasionally get discounted I am seeing um uh $470 right now for a 6800 XT uh which for the most part is basically uh almost as fast as a 7800 XT they're very similar gpus a little bit less energy efficient um doesn't have the av1 encoder things like that uh but I think the 4070 um still makes the most sense in this price range but if you can't quite go to 520 maybe that 6800 XT uh might make a little bit more sense there now if we go past this point I really don't think there's very a very good value available at all that doesn't mean you can't buy there just it's just you just don't feel good about pretty much any of the purchases and I'm hoping that Black Friday deals might change that again stay tuned to my channel for both my Community page posts on deals as well as uh if there are a lot of good deals available around Black Friday I'll probably do videos on the topic as well uh if we go past this price point you go up to the 4070 TI which I am very much hoping will get replaced with the 4070 TI super or something like that that either has more vram or more performance or both or a lower price hopefully all three because the problem with the 4070 TI is that okay it launched at $800 you can find them for $770 right now it's 12 gbt of vram and like I said I'm not too concerned about 12 gbt of vram right now um uh especially if you're at if you're below 4K resolution however that doesn't mean that there aren't any issues with it and you're paying almost $800 for a graphics card it feels really bad to only get 12 GB by of vram for that price so that is a concern with this also this is a lot more money than an than a 4070 non-ti considering how how much the 470 non TI price has dropped $520 versus $770 yes you do get more performance but you don't get any more vram and you pay a lot more money to get there now the AMD competitor at this price point is the 7900 XT not the XTX uh lowest price models are about $740 right now and my main problem with these is I still think they're kind of overpriced compared to cards like the the uh 4070 and the 7800 XT now the 7900 XT at least doesn't have the vram concern because it does offer 20 GB of vram which is absolutely plenty shouldn't be any kind of issue it offers a little bit more rasterized performance for a little bit less money than the uh 47 70 TI but now we are at a performance tier where I think rat tracing can very much make sense in which case the 4070 TI will be at least as fast in light rate tracing workloads or a lot faster in heavier rate tracing workloads so it really makes me just feel not good about either of these gpus um like I said we've already seen Prime day uh bring um the 7900 XT down as low as $6.99 and so if we see pricing like that around um around Black Friday then it might be uh you know something that I I I could more comfortably recommend that being said if you have $800 budget to spend on your graphics card then you don't always just have to buy something that is good value cuz the these cards are better than the 4070 and the 7800 XT they're just not better you know performance per dollar if that makes sense so if I had to pick a card around this you know $7 to $800 price price point between the 7900 XD and the 4070 TI I think if I was gaming at 4K I might choose the 7900 XT because at 4K resolution I really would rather have more than 12 GB of vram which is 7900 XD offers also at 4K resolution it's going to be harder to use Ray tracing uh because it is just more demanding on the gpus so I might be more likely to turn off or turn down Ray tracing settings anyway diminishing one of the Nvidia advant ages and at 4K resolution FSR doesn't get beaten so as badly image quality wise when you're when you're using it because you have a higher base pixel count so if I was using like FSR 2 quality versus dlss quality um you know at 4K resolution uh I still think dlss does a better job but it's less noticeable than at the lower resolutions so I think the Nvidia advantages are diminished at that resolution and so I might lean towards the 7900 XT at that price point at 14 sorry at that resolution at this price point if I was buying for 1440p uh in that case I might be more likely to use Ray tracing and I'm less concerned about the 12 GB of vram although I'm still not real happy about it uh in which case I might lean a little more towards the 4070 TI for that Nvidia feature set the upscaling I do think looks better at that resolution and more noticeably so and again more likely to use Ray tracing now uh past this point if we we would move up to the RTX uh well actually the first GPU we would hit price-wise is the 7900 XTX uh these are the lowest models um uh $950 right now I've seen them lower so I'm hoping these ones go on sale and become a more compelling compelling value uh the closest performance performance and price competitor here is the RTX 4080 where the cheapest models are about $1,060 that means it's only about a um a$1 100ish doll price gap between the cheapest models and if you're already spending nearly $1,000 you know this is basically plus or minus 50 off of a $1,000 price point uh these gpus perform very similarly when you're not Ray tracing maybe a small advant AG to the 7900 XTX but they're really very close but when you are Ray tracing where again especially if you're at 1440p resolution I think the 480 absolutely has Ray tracing performance that you'd probably use along with you know I I just think it makes sense uh along with the better upscaler I would definitely pay the uh the extra you know if you want to call it at $1,000 $100 is only 10% price right you know what I mean um so I would definitely go with the 48 80 over the 7900 XTX if they are within $100 of each other so if you're at $1,000 plus or minus 50 I would definitely go plus 50 instead of minus 50 to get the extra feature set Ray tracing performance better upscaler um you know frame generation that's available in more games and at this point in time a little bit uh more compatible with things like variable refresh rate and things like that just makes sense now past this point you're at the RTX 490 uh which literally doubles the GPU price to $2,000 because of what I said at the beginning of the video prices on these have gone way up which means that well it used to be the case that if you're already buying a 4080 you might consider stretching to that 4090 at this point it's $22,000 it is significantly better than a 4080 and a 7900 XTX it is the best GPU on the market but with what's happened to its pricing right now I really just say look if if if your budget if like you know a lot of people's incomes are in very different places many people can comfortably spend $2,000 on a graphics card and their only question is like well if it's not really noticeably better than a 480 I'll save the $1,000 but like financially I can handle this just fine I'm not going into debt it's just like whatever I have the money I just don't want to waste it well it is noticeably better than a 4080 it's literally double the price at current pricing though so um really consider if you want that extra performance but the 4090 is a per uh impressive GPU it's just its value is much worse right now than it used to be I used to be able to find them around $1,500 to $1600 this is woo made it a little bit hard to recommend anyway again if you're buying in the higher end of all of this especially looking at cards like the 4070 TI or the 480 uh like I said quarter one of next year we the rumors point to there being super versions of those cards which which I hope offer better performance per dollar and maybe more vram on the 4070 TI super so we'll go ahead and um you know uh have to wait and see on that so to summarize today's video if you're buying at the lower price ranges uh Ray tracing is a bit less compelling and uh AMD is generally offering more performance and sometimes vram at the same price points uh where uh I think AMD makes a lot of sense at the lower performance tiers if you're buying a around $200 but you have to be under 200 I think the 6600 non XT makes a lot of sense at $190 if you can spend more than $200 the 6650 XD at $230 gets you most of the performance of a 7600 or a 4060 but for noticeably less money although you do lose out on some features like av1 encoding and and you know some envidia features with d LSS things like that we already talked about that if you go up to the $300 price range range I think the 6700 XT version makes a lot of sense because you jump up to 12 GB of vram and a lot more performance than a 4060 uh for just a little bit more money at the $400 is price point the 6,800 from AMD again it's a little under $400 uh and it offers 16 GB of vram and a lot of performance uh more performance than the 460 TI which is its Nvidia competitor uh it also performs very similarly to amd's new 7700 XT but for significantly less money and it has more vram you just lose out on the av1 encoder so the 6800 is my $400 pick my $500 pick we're finally getting into some Nvidia recommendations my $500 pick is the RTX 470 because it performs very similarly to a 7800 XT but with more performance uh in Ray tracing and similar performance when you're not Ray tracing a better upscaler a better and better and more implemented frame generator um you know better power efficiency all sorts of reasons why I would pay the extra 20 bucks for the 4070 uh past this point I don't really recommend anything from a value perspective but if you have to choose an $800 is GPU um I think the 7900 XTX uh sorry XT might make the most sense at 4K resolution uh for the extra vram and you're being less likely to use tracing but at uh 1440p I might still buy the 4070 TI because I'm less concerned about the 12 GB vram issue and I am more likely to be using Ray tracing and dlss at lower resolutions does look more noticeably uh you know better uh that brings us to the 4080 uh which is my next recommendation if you're buying around $1,000 the 4080 is a better graphics card than the 7900 XTX uh and again you're you're talking plus or minus 50 off of a $1,000 uh budget range and I would definitely pay pay that uh it does end up being $100 more but I would pay that for the 480 at that price point past this you could buy a $490 for $2,000 it's a really good graphics card and there's nothing else is good uh but that's a lot of money uh anyway I don't know why I'm suddenly on $88,000 graphics cards right now but uh anyway there's always the uh professional gpus if you just want to spend more money for some reason anyway that's today's round up definitely stay tuned for the uh to the channel for Black Friday updates and again take a look at the used Market uh ja. offering some great deals and I hope all of you have an excellent day
