300 DOLLAR GAMING PC UPDATE
300 DOLLAR GAMING PC UPGRADE

And as for generational leaps, both Nvidia and AMD just launched new mainstream GPUs under $300 in the form of the RTX 4060 (June 2023) and RX 7600 (May 2023). In the middle of 2023, the situation is different – most graphics cards are in stock and prices are down substantially. In the past year and a half, we have nevertheless recommended waiting due to poor availability and extremely inflated prices.

Under normal circumstances, the most common reason to postpone a GPU purchase is to time one of the major generational releases. Or when the latest AAA titles start to feel sluggish.

300 DOLLAR GAMING PC UPGRADE

But even early adopters rarely upgrade more often than once every 1–2 generations (not counting annual ‘refresh’ cycles, which are usually just minor updates to existing architectures), i.e.

Upgrading your graphics card is practically always the most cost-effective way to revive your existing gaming PC. The 3DMark Port Royal benchmark scores even understate Nvidia’s advantage in ray tracing compared to actual games, and AMD has yet to catch up even with its latest RDNA 3 GPUs. When you enable ray tracing, all Nvidia cards are clearly ahead: Intel’s Arc A750 is rarely as fast as this benchmark score implies, however. The RTX 4060 and RX 7600 are evenly matched in Futuremark’s Time Spy benchmark, which mostly reflects their average performance in actual games. To put the current mid-range cards into perspective, here is an indication of how they perform (no ray tracing enabled): It’s still a bit slower than its AMD and Nvidia competitors, but the price/performance ratio is excellent. It is slightly faster than AMD’s (also brand new) Radeon RX 7600 in terms of raw performance and significantly better at ray tracing.Īs for the Intel alternative, the reference Arc A750 was recently lowered to $250 and was greatly helped by improved drivers. Out of the current crop of graphics cards under $300, the GeForce RTX 4060 is the most recent, launched in June 2023.

300 DOLLAR GAMING PC UPDATE

Last update on / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 also just arrived and several models are available at the $299 MSRP. It’s not all bad news, however.ĪMD lowered the MSRP of its brand new Radeon RX 7600 right after launching it, and Intel’s recent price cut on the Arc A750 made it much more interesting. Graphics card prices have had a rocky ride for a few years but are starting to stabilize – though mostly at a higher level than before. Alternative #3-4: GeForce GTX 1660 Ti/Super.Best AMD GPU Under $300: Radeon RX 7600.

300 dollar gaming pc