So I've been looking at PC parts recently, and - holy smokes, graphics card prices are actually reasonable again! At least in the entry to mid range performance level. Looking at Microcenter (a great computer store chain in the US that I'm fortunate enough to live near), here are some prices:
Multiple Radeon RX 6600s are at $200
The cheapest Radeon RX 6650 XT, the ASRock Challenger D model, is $250.
The cheapest Radeon RX 6700 XT, also an ASRock Challenger D, is $340. The next real jump in performance from AMD is pretty steep, with a PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT at $530.
The closest competition from Nvidia are an Asus TUF Gaming GeForce GTX 1660 Ti for $230, an MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 3050 for $280, and a Zotac Twin Edge RTX 3060 for $330. The next real jump in performance from Nvidia doesn't come until the price point of $410, with an Asus Geforce RTX 3060 Ti. But I would argue it's not worth buying due to low VRAM. In fact, I don't think it's worth buying an Nvidia card right now until you get to the brand new Geforce RTX 4070 at $600, but I'll get to that.
(The following is just some general budget PC building advice)
The 1660 Ti is an older gen card with only 6GB of VRAM, and the 3050 loses to the 6600, let alone the 6650 XT. Neither are worth buying versus the less expensive AMD cards.
The 3060 also trails far behind the 6700 XT in most games with traditional rendering. It pulls ahead in games with heavy ray tracing effects, but in such a case both would struggle to have smooth framerates even at 1080p. At least this 3060 model has 12 GB of VRAM, but still, the 6700 XT seems like the much better value for just $10 more.
The 3060 Ti at $410 still can't cleanly beat the 6700 XT, but even worse, it's actually an 8 GB model. In fact, all the 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3070 Ti models in stock at Microcenter only have 8 GB of VRAM. Recent games have been increasingly hitting a performance wall on 8 GB cards. It even can hamper Nvidia's advantage in ray tracing performance. You don't get more VRAM until the brand new RTX 4070.
So, AMD dominates the low to mid range of the market, up to the $350 price point. The price to performance curve isn't completely back to where it was before the chip shortage apocalypse - I feel like 10 years ago, cards with 128 bit memory buses like the RX 6600/6650 XT would have launched at $150 or less. Still, it's a damn sight better than it's been for the last couple years. You can actually build a PC with current gen console-level performance for less than twice the cost of a console. (More on that in a bit).
Between $350-$500 is a bit of a no man's land at the moment. There's almost a $200 gap between the cheapest 6700 XT and the cheapest 6800 XT, and Nvidia's cards in that price range are really not worth it right now due to the limited VRAM. If someone is looking to buy with that budget, it's probably better to wait for AMD and Nvidia to fill out that price range with new Radeon 7000 and Geforce 4000 series cards.
Above that price, all I have to say is, man... Does anyone remember when AMD launched the Radeon HD 7970 as their flagship card at $550 in 2012, and people at the time thought that was kind of overpriced?
And below the $200 price point, there is the Radeon RX 6500 XT, but... Don't bother. It continues the storied tradition of low end junk graphics chips that aren't worth even being considered by gamers.
Anyways, one way to look at building a gaming PC on a budget is what level of hardware you need to reach parity with consoles. It's kind of easy to compare with AMD components, thanks to consoles using AMD Ryzen 2 CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs. I'll compare using the count of the "compute units" (CUs) in each chip.
Xbox Series S: 20 CUs.
PlayStation 5: 36 CUs
Xbox Series X: 52 CUs
Radeon RX 6600: 28 CUs
Radeon RX 6650 XT: 32 CUs
Radeon RX 6700 XT: 40 CUs
Radeon RX 6800 XT: 72 CUs
So, arguably, the RX 6600 is the minimum you need to keep up with this console generation. It has a comfortable margin of CUs over the Series S. As long as games are made to run on the Series S, the 6600 should be able to play them as well.
The 6650 XT gives a little more wiggle room in this regard, but doesn't quite match the PS5. The 6700 XT though jumps past the PS5. With 4 more CUs than the PS5 (and higher clock speeds), it should be able to match or surpass PS5 level visuals. It's still behind the Xbox Series X in CU count, but still, I think the 6700 XT is the closest thing to the "sweet spot" for console level performance.
The 6800 XT leapfrogs past the Xbox Series X, but definitely at a premium. It costs more than the Xbox on its own! So the 6800 XT may still be worth it, but it's well past the sweet spot.
