the newest GPU released this month was the Intel a580 and I'll tell you right now why you shouldn't buy it right now you could get an RX 6650 XT for $220 so if you're buying the $200 is price point the a580 comes in at $180 the 6650 XT is currently available at $220 and that is going to be a much better deal now in this video we're going to go through every price point and what the best value GPU is in that price range based on current pricing if I was buying new right now let's dive into this I don't have an Intel Arc a580 uh they don't send me review samples and this GPU just came out I'll buy one and do my own testing eventually but if I pull up a review like for example from techpowerup.com where they reviewed the uh Challenger a azrock challenger a580 they showed that it performs similarly to an RX 6600 although at 1080p it often loses to it it's better than an RTX 3050 but if we scroll up to the 6650 XT um well they don't actually have one on their test list here however the 6650 XT is just a RX 6600 XT with slightly faster memory speeds meaning that it's uh likely at least 20 if not more per faster than the uh a580 it's actually very close in performance to amd's newer RX 7600 uh and also is priced very uh very much lower than that and also in uh nvidia's RTX 4060 is coming in a very similar uh performance level as well to the uh 6650 XT right now uh at $220 if you want to check new pricing on some of those other gpus you also need to be extremely careful right now uh I usually sort prices low to high on PC part picker when I'm looking at new pricing because they survey a lot of retailers including Amazon Newegg uh Best Buy a whole bunch of places buying new uh and right now there's a bunch of gpus from Sapphire specifically um that are are scams they're they're actually scams right now and uh let me show you this CU right now it's showing an RX 7600 uh from AMD for only $188 that price seemed too good to be true and I've been seeing people posting other deals from Sapphire on my uh on my page and every time I check them they're coming from an absolute nonsense seller on Amazon it's not shipped and sold by Amazon on and I guarantee you that these deals from these nonsense sellers are some sort of scam uh there have been other ones posted where it's like 7900 XTX which usually cost 900 or more dollars for like4 or $500 it's a scam those aren't those deals aren't aren't closing they're they're getting your info or something like Anyway so be careful right now um the RX 7600 from reputable sellers is coming in at $250 or more and again performs extremely similarly to this $220 6650 XT and again uh it's not much slower than the RTX 460 from uh Nvidia if you're not using Ray tracing and that card is $280 so that is a big price Gap it uh destroys the RTX 3050 which is coming in at about the same price around $216 to $220 and again the a580 from Intel um is yeah $80 but you're getting so much more money for the uh sorry so much more performance for this additional $40 I'm saying if you're buying at around $200 yes you could save $20 and get an a580 or you could spend $20 more you know compared to that $200 Baseline I get it I'm kind of stretching it but like there's so much more value available on that 6650 XT in fact I think it beats everything below $300 in terms of price to Performance right now uh now if you can't stretch your budget much higher than this you need to make sure you're factoring and selling your old GPU to fund your upgrade and for a lot of people I know I have friends that they have a closet full of old gpus because they just didn't want to deal with the hassle of trying to find a buyer either locally and they're scared of that or dealing with shipping all of that well the simplest and fastest way to sell your GPU is from today's sponsor ja. follow the the link in the pinned comment or video description and click the get an instant offer button and it's as simple as this here's how it works if you're scared of selling your own GPU it doesn't need to be complicated you tell them about your GPU model and condition and they give you an instant offer step two you ship it and you will get a free shipping label that's factored in as part of the offer that they give you then they get the GPU and they inspect it to make sure everything checks out as described and it's as simple as that you get paid most sellers get paid within one business day after the part is received extremely quick and easy and then that helps you get just additional money to put towards your GPU upgrade and if the new gpus that we're talking about in today's video are too expensive check out what Jawa has listed used and you know what $10 off your first purchase on Jawa if you use code 0 and10 again follow the link in the video description or pinned comment and click get an instant offer now let's go ahead and talk about some other price points like I said under $300 the 6650 XT is really the price to Performance Champion here like I said the 7600 from AMD uh costing $250 you could consider that but there's not a lot of per price or performance difference between them other than an av1 encoder if you're interested in um in uh like streaming to YouTube or something like that the RTX 4060 from Nvidia similar performance when you're not Ray tracing and it's $280 on the absolute cheapest model um and many of them are to 290 or 300 and has a $300 MSR RP again you do get access to better Ray tracing performance but let's talk about that right now when I get to the higher end products I'm going to factor in Ray tracing more into my decision-making in the lower-end products both AMD and Nvidia lose performance when you turn on Ray tracing Nvidia loses less performance as compared to the Baseline before you activate it AMD loses more however if you're at a performance tier where you need all the performance you can get I think most people would be better served by turning down settings to high or medium rather than going Beyond ultra settings to include Ray tracing so I think realistically to hit High refresh rate gaming I think uh at this performance level Ray tracing is not going to be worth the extra what is it $60 to get the 460 over the 6650 XT right now now Nvidia does have better power efficiency on their 4,000 series that's another thing to consider uh but these cards aren't super power hungry anyway in this p uh in this pricing tier um and then also there is the better upscaler from Nvidia and that is something that is more worth factoring in this lower performance tier I believe uh again dlss versus FSR they both boost performance a similar amount however uh dlss will look better while doing it especially at lower base resolutions like 1080p FSR can tend to look very pixelated in motion at 1080p resolution uh dlss holds things together a little bit better in motion and so if you are going to be upscaling that is worth more but again this is a $60 price Gap uh compared to the $220 6650 XT and so I really think that's one's going to get my value proposition anyway so under $300 I think buy a 6650 XD if you can spend about $300 or maybe even a little bit more I actually think the 6700 XT from AMD becomes the next value proposition GPU why is that well you're now actually getting significantly more performance than an RTX 4060 granted this does cost more the 6700 XT is at $320 but you're also jumping up in vram capacity because the latest generation of consoles uh uses more than 8 GB of vram it means the maximum settings in many of the most recent games which are designed with just uh you know PlayStation 5 and Xbox series X in mind can have ultra settings that use more than 8 GB of vram they're usually staying within 12 though especially at 10 when you're staying uh you know at lower resolutions like 1080p 1440p can sometimes go over 12 but 12 is still usually good at this point uh with that in mind getting that extra vram along with a lot a lot more performance makes the 6700 XT a good buy now uh nvidia's 3060 Ti from the uh previous generation uh is available for um uh I think a similar price although it looks like $340 so that is $20 more than the 6700 XD for very similar performance usually a little bit less but similar when you're not Ray tracing uh how you do get dlss but that's back to an 8 gigabyte card and spending that much money for 8 gabt kind of feels bad when we're already having games and we're getting further into this console generation where this I think will become more and more common that want more than 8 gbt of vram for their highest texture settings and things like that so I would give the 6700 XD my 300ish price point recommendation don't worry this video is not going to be all AMD recommendations but at this lower performance tier where I think Ray tracing is less of a selling point um a and AMD offers higher vram capacities at a lower price there's a lot to be said for it now what if you can spend more what if you can go up to the $400 price point uh let me check if if if the deal I saw around Prime big deal day is still in stock it looks like it is the RX 6800 is a 16 GB graphics card from amd's previous generation it has a lot of performance and it is currently discounted to $399.99 I first saw this and posted about it on my Community page for um the Amazon Prime big deal days and it looks like this one is still available in stock on Amazon at that price and at $400 I think this if that's the most you can spend on a GPU I think this is the best GPU you can buy um so uh what what are the competition that this is up against uh nvidia's 4060 TI has both an 8 GB model and a 16 GB model this 8 GB model originally launched at this price $400 however it has been discounted a bit where the cheapest models are now available for $370 or $380 so but still we're in a pretty similar price class and you are d doubling your vram on the 6800 but it's not just about vram because okay what if you had the 16 GB uh 4060 TI well unfortunately that one costs $450 $450 uh okay but at least you get the 16 gbt of vram but its overall performance is still the same as the 8 GB 460 TI when you're not spilling over vram capacity and in general the RX 6800 is just faster than the 4060 TI period regardless of the vram amount now the heaviest Ray tracing workloads might push the 4060 TI ahead but they also push the 4060 Titi down to Performance levels that aren't wonderful um so I think overall these 6800 lot of power $400 price point 16 GB of vram which should be good enough for the foreseeable future um I I think the 6800 is going to be get my recommendation it also beats out cards like the 7700 XD from AMD which launched at $450 only about a month ago and is uh currently the cheapest ones are available at $440 the 7700 XT performs about the same as an RX 6800 but has four less gigabyt of vram it's a 12 GB card versus the 16 on the 6800 and there uh other than the av1 encoder if you happen to care about that for streaming the 7700 XT doesn't really offer much in the way of a generational upgrade um uh maybe uh the a the uh sorry anti-le plus is currently exclusive to AMD 7000 series but it's also making headlines for currently being incompatible and getting people banned on some competitive games so right now I'm not going to really consider that as a um as a reason to buy the 7,000 series over a a cheaper product for the same performance and more vram with the 6800 now if you can go up to the $500 price point uh we have the 7800 XT from AMD last month they launched at this price and then sold out and for a while the cheapest models were around $530 but now they are back in stock at F at $499.99 so you can get 7,800 XTS at that price now and the 6800 XT from the previous generation is also currently available at exactly the same price um if they're priced exactly the same I do not think there's any reason at all to buy the 6800 XT over the 7800 XT the 00 XD they they both have 16 GB of vram they both perform very similarly in my testing though there's more examples including important examples like Unreal Engine 5 where the newer generation product shows a uh actually noticeable performance advantage over the previous generation 6800 XT but in some other games the 6000 series does have an advantage or perform about the same but on average in both my testing as well as a lot of other people's testing the 7800 XT comes out a small lead and if they price the same with the same vram also you get the av1 encoder slightly better Energy Efficiency although not enough to really make that big of a difference um the 7800 XT uh is the choice here but the question then becomes does Nvidia have anything worth considering at the $500 price point well the 4060 TI is down at$ 450 and is not worth buying over this the 470 comes in at $550 so we've got this this thing where this this kind of um the 470 was originally a $600 graphics card and when the 7800 XD came in at $500 it uh the 470 just made absolutely no sense at $600 and Nvidia realized that and lowered the price they've lowered it to $550 though not 500 so now they're they're they're relying on their feature set advantage to make people buy the 4070 over the 7800 XT and you know what well I would love to see them both coming in at $500 even um I do think Nvidia can make an like people could make an argument for the the extra $50 being worth it on the 4070 I'm going to give a bit of a split recommendation here so my split recommendation at near $500 is the 7800 XD and the 4070 if you can spend the extra uh $50 now let's get into Nvidia feature set versus AMD feature set a bit more now we're at a higher performance tier where the ray tracing performance on the 4070 absolutely Mak sense to use in a lot of games and will give it a performance advantage in those Ray tracing situations um also especially for gaming at 1440p dlss quality looks very good and I think that the majority of people gaming at 1440p will turn on dlss quality if they have an RTX 470 whereas amd's FSR upscaling at the Quality setting does look more pixelated in motion and because of that I think it's a uh it it's still very good and I think a lot of people would still turn it on but it is a more noticeable loss to image quality when you're doing so uh and so that is an advantage for the 4070 you're more likely to get that performance boo boost off of dlss or uh if you're both going to get that performance boost you'll get a little bit better image quality while it happens now the 7800 XD does have some things going for it it does have 16 GB of vram versus 12 GB on the 4070 however in my testing so far at 1440p and below 12 GB is fine many games don't even come close to it the games that are pushing right up to 12 are generally those like PS5 exclusive type console games and right now 12 GB is fine but as we push further into the console generation maybe there'll be a PS5 Pro you see what I'm saying it's possible we'll have games start to Target more than 12 GB however using DLS s does rein in some of that uh vram capacity but in other words I think the 7800 XT 16 GB of vram if you hold on to the GPU for a long time the 16 GB may help you play at maximum texture settings for more years but at least right now I don't have a huge problem with 12 GB as a 1440p or less card at around the $500 price point uh the 470 also has massive uh Energy Efficiency advantages uh which is always nice to have although I don't think think is a major selling point we also have the frame generation feature for the 4,000 series gpus is currently implemented in more games than FSR 3 frame generation is which is currently only in two games that not a lot of people want to play so right now there's a uh Advantage there for the 4070 and just 4000 series gpus in general now frame generation in general is a situational feature uh you're going to want to use it in single player games since it doesn't give you a uh latent a a responsiveness Advantage it's really a smoothing out the frame rate on a high High refresh rate display if it works best when you're going from 60-ish frames per second and then you generate more frames in between uh which Smooths out the performance on a high refresh rate display uh and by performance I really mean it Smooths out the image during camera panning and fast motion on a high refresh rate display so uh it's a nice to have feature AMD now does have a competing technology but it's not implemented in as many games and the 4,000 series gpus can actually use the FSR 3 frame generation in any game that has it anyway so um anyway feature set Advantage for the 4070 I think for a lot of people it it adds up to a reason to spend $50 more um the 7800 XD can be faster in some games uh when a lot of games get tested it averages out pretty similarly uh performance-wise overall um anyway I I'll give a split recommendation here decide what makes the most sense to you uh I think if it was me personally I actually would buy the 4070 for the feature set now past this point I think we're just done with good value gpus good value is gone sorry it's gone we briefly had a good deal on Prime day so on Prime day uh Prime big deal day whatever the heck they called it a week or so ago we did have the 7900 XT from AMD hit the price of $699.99 $700 so at $700 the 7900 XT a lot of performance 20 gigabyt of vram $700 that actually made sense however after the prime big deal days ended we jumped back up on price let me double check 7900 XT and uh the the lowest model I'm seeing is $760 once again I'm seeing a scam seller on Amazon listing Sapphire cards at way below their normal price this is even the XTX model at$ 455 this is a a scam guys that is not going to actually ship you a real 7900 xdx at that price um it's just not happening anyway so actual 7900 XDS are currently $760 and back up to $760 makes me less excited about this product also that puts it up into direct competition with the 4070 TI which launched at $800 and now has in uh has the cheapest models available at $770 I'm also seeing $7 90 and then a lot at 800 so basically they're the same price here the 4070 TI has only 12 GB of vram which I already said I don't hate at 1440p or below when we were talking about $500 graphics cards if you're spending $800 on a graphics card that has 12 GB of vram at a time when games are already pushing right up to 12 GB at 1440p sometimes Beyond it at 4K and the latest console generation we're we're pushing further into that and games generally tend to use more vram over time spending $800 for 12 gabes feels bad and I won't recommend the 470 TI as a good value product for that reason if you have to buy around $800 or not maybe you don't have to buy at $800 but if you can spend $800 and you're not that worried about saving money and buying a worse card it's like I have $800 which GPU should I buy okay the 40 70 TI again we're at a performance tier where Ray tracing does mean something to a lot of people and is very usable and so I think if you're buying at 1440p or even ex targeting High refresh rate 1080p with $800 gpus um maybe the 4070 TI makes some sense there if you're staying below for if you're staying 1440p or below um uh because you can take advantage of the uh the ray tracing and upscaling at those resolutions a lot more easily that being said if you were going to buy for 4K resolution that's where I think the 7900 XT uh might start to make more sense because at 4K I think we'll push Beyond 12 GB a lot sooner in which case the 20 GB of vram plus it is just a faster GPU when you're not Ray tracing when you're not rat tracing the 7900 XD is faster and at 4K resolution I think both of these gpus will be it'll be harder to justify turning on heavy Ray tracing workloads and in like Ray tracing workloads they're actually not that far apart um so at 4K resolution I think you're less likely to be doing heavy Ray tracing and you're more likely to be going over 12 GB of vram which makes the 7900 XD probably the better 4K GPU also FSR upscaling at the Quality setting at 4K resolution looks pretty good and the pixelation in motion is much less noticeable at 4K resolution at 4K quality cuz you just have a lot higher base resolution uh to use when you're at that so so basically if you had to pick an $800 GPU right now for 4K I'd probably pick the 7900 XT and at 1440p or below um maybe the 470 TI if you're attracted to rate tracing um but honestly neither of them is good value at these prices and I would say you know Black Friday will be coming up next month and so uh I usually if we see a sale price it comes back so if we've already seen the 7900 XT hit $700 I have a feeling we'll see that again or hey hopefully even better but at least see this again hopefully around Black Friday but nobody can for sure predict the future but my my main advice would just be don't buy at at $800 right now if you could maybe wait for Black Friday and see what happens past this point 7900 XTX well 7900 XTX I promise you is not actually available at $455 that is a scam seller on Amazon they're actually available at at $900 new at $900 I don't think the 7900 XTX offers exciting value um that being said its closest performance competitor is the RTX 480 which offers even worse value at about $1,100 I did see the 480 drop as low as well not really that low but it did go slightly below $1,000 on on the prime big deal day so again hopefully around um around Black Friday we could maybe see deals like this as well uh or maybe even better so basically neither of these are that exciting from a value perspective now if you could afford either one if you're just like look I have around $1,000 which one should I buy the 4080 or uh the um or the 7900 xdx the 480 is a better graphics card it draws less power offers similar rasterized performance noticeably better rate tracing performance in in uh the heaviest rate tracing workload loads and then um you know dlss is uh the better upscaler of the two so it has 16 gbt of vram which is certainly less than the 24 that the 7900 xdx has to offer but honestly with vram if you have enough it doesn't really matter if you have more and right now 16 gbt is enough and while we're pushing up against 12 gbt a lot right now I I don't foresee 16 GB being a major problem for several years down the road in which case uh you're probably going to be turning down settings or upgrading your GPU anyway so I think 16 GB is absolutely nothing to worry about here so in general the 480 is better than the 7900 XTX better features better Energy Efficiency similar performance better Ray tracing performance that being said it does cost $200 more right now so is that extra $200 worth it for you question mark so I'm going to give the $900 GPU recommendation to the 7900 xdx and the $1,200 GPU recommendation sorry $1,100 GPU recommendation to the RTX 480 uh if you have even more money to spend uh then buy yourself a$ 490 is it worth it well it's certainly more powerful than the 480 and the 7900 XTX it also cost $1,650 if you're gaming at 4K resolution it it really is like honestly don't go into debt to get a 4090 but like I game at 4K quite a bit and the 490 is the only GPU that does it really comfortably and even in some of the games it still needs upscaling like I was just testing out some Unreal Engine 5 games like Lords of the Fallen the 4090 does not Max the game out at 4K 60fps without dipping below it um kick on dls's quality and now it's great but like you can really use the 490s horsepower at 4K and even at 1440p if you're going to be trying to do things like cyberpunk Phantom Liberty with path tracing enabled um you really will want the 4090 even at 1440p so yes it's worth it in the sense that it's the only GPU that can do certain things uh at comfortable frame rates uh but it's a lot of money and just but for some people 1,650 bucks really isn't a lot in the grand scheme of their their favorite hobby they have good income they're not going into debt and it's just like yeah but I just don't want to be stupid with my money like last generation 380 versus 390 3090 didn't offer that much more performance and it was double the price here 480 ver ver 490 you get a much bigger performance bump uh and it's actually less of a price Gap cuz the 4080 is so stupidly expensive all right that's what I've got for you guys this month uh overall my recommendations were if you're buying around $200 buy yourself a 6650 XT um it offers the best price uh price to Performance value under $300 if you're buying around $300 get yourself a 6700 XT which I can't seem to type in right now uh which is $320 it's the first GPU to jump up to 12 GB of vram and it is a big performance jump over cards like the 460 and 7600 if you're buying around the $400 price point the RX 6800 non-xt comes in at that price point it jumps up to 16 GB of vram and has more performance than the 4060 TI the 4060 TI cost a 16 GB model costing more than this does at $500 get yourself a 7800 XT if you can afford $550 the 470 is also very reasonable to consider spending the extra $50 on for the increased rate tracing performance and Nvidia feature set Advantage uh what what that comes down to for you question mark per for me I'd probably slightly prefer the 4070 for the feature set because I mostly play graphically demanding single player games and it's fun for me to kick on Ray tracing with some dlss quality and get some good performance out of that past this point I don't really recommend anything um so uh watch those parts of the video If you really want my detailed thoughts on that and I do one of these every month so stay tuned and again to help fund your upgrade take a look at the link to Jawa to get an instant offer on your old Hardware to fund your upgrade and I hope all of you have an excellent day
