Nvidia, AMD, and Intel GPUs ranked by bang for the buck — Prime Day offers allow you to break 60 fps for $280
If you happen to’re in search of a brand new graphics card, Prime Day tech offers are a good time to improve. We’re seeing a number of the lowest costs ever throughout the gamut of GPUs, from Nvidia’s base mannequin RTX 4060 Ada card up by means of AMD’s RX 7900 XTX and the whole lot in between. These are a number of the greatest graphics playing cards obtainable, with restricted time gross sales dropping them to ranges we’re not prone to match till Black Friday rolls round this fall.
How do the assorted GPUs stack up by way of total worth, although? We have gathered the bottom costs from our GPU value index and sorted the whole lot by FPS per greenback at 1080p. We chosen that decision as a number of the playing cards merely do not make sense at 1440p and particularly 4K, just like the Arc A380. However we do have the FPS values at these greater resolutions in our efficiency desk, for those who’re extra enthusiastic about selecting up a extra performant card.
It is also price contemplating that 1080p represents the approximate base decision for each 1440p with High quality mode upscaling and 4K with Efficiency mode upscaling. Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR 2/3, and Intel XeSS every have their very own methods of doing issues, however we have discovered High quality mode not less than would not compromise picture constancy a lot if in any respect. This is how the playing cards stack up.
Provided that it is Prime Day — although lots of the greatest offers are from Newegg’s competing Fantastech initiative somewhat than from Amazon — it’s best to anticipate most of those costs to be comparatively short-lived, and we have already seen loads of fluctuations and out of inventory playing cards. If you happen to’re available in the market for a brand new GPU, saving $20 to $50 proper now could be sufficient to get you to fork over your pennies.
Whereas FPS/$ is not an ideal measure of worth, Intel’s Arc A580 and Arc A750 take the highest two spots. Each include 8GB of GDDR6 reminiscence, sufficient for operating most video games at 1080p and maxed out settings, although there are nonetheless the occasional driver hiccups on newly launched titles. You may get round 0.3 FPS per greenback with these playing cards, or alternatively, you’d must spend about $200 to common 60 fps at our check settings.
Besides, the drop off from the A750 to the following GPU, Nvidia’s RTX 4060, is kind of steep, with the 4060 solely providing just below 0.236 FPS/$. It does common 60 fps in our 19 sport suite not less than, however it’s additionally $100 greater than the Arc A750. Nvidia drew a great deal of criticism for equipping the 4060 with simply 8GB — the earlier technology RTX 3060 supplied 12GB — and it is principally the minimal you will want for operating many trendy video games at maxed out settings. Some video games will even exceed 8GB of VRAM use, like Horizon Forbidden West, although dropping to excessive settings ought to look almost pretty much as good with out exceeding your card’s VRAM.
Check Notes
All efficiency outcomes come from our 19-game check suite that features eight video games with ray tracing enabled and 11 video games that solely use rasterization rendering. Our check PC is that very same one utilized in our GPU critiques of the previous 12 months and a half, a Core i9-13900K.
Total rating do change based mostly on the video games and settings used for testing. For instance, eradicating ray tracing from the equation typically improves the rating of AMD GPUs in addition to the general common FPS. Verify our particular person GPU critiques for added particulars on efficiency with and with out ray tracing if that is one thing you wish to see.
AMD takes fourth place total with its RX 7700 XT, coming in simply behind the 4060 at 0.233 FPS/$. It is also the primary card in our rankings to present you greater than 8GB VRAM. We did not love the cardboard when it launched, however dropping from $450 down to only $360 drastically modifications the image. It is a superb possibility proper now at this value, although additionally an $80 bounce from the 4060’s value. It is also absolutely able to operating video games at 1440p extremely, the least costly card to common greater than 60 fps at that decision.
If you need a 16GB card, the least costly possibility in our checklist goes again to Intel with its Arc A770 16GB. Initially launched with a aggressive $349 MSRP, over 20 months later it is now routinely sitting at $270–$280. Sadly, whereas it presents twice as a lot VRAM because the RTX 4060, generally the Nvidia card nonetheless presents greater efficiency — and that is with out factoring in DLSS assist, which is in much more video games than XeSS or FSR 2.
You possibly can see how the remainder of the GPUs stack up, and it ought to come as little shock that the dearer playing cards fall to the underside of the checklist. A few of that might be because of CPU bottlenecks that turn into extra of an element on high-end GPUs at 1080p, however the rankings do not change a lot if we use the 1440p outcomes. The 4060 drops behind the 7700 XT and A770 in that case, however the A580 and A750 preserve their high spots and nonetheless ship almost twice the FPS/$ as GPUs just like the 7900 XTX and 4080 Tremendous.
Sorting by 4K FPS/$ eliminates just a few playing cards from consideration, as we did not benchmark them at 4K. Of people who stay, the A750 nonetheless sits on the high, however it’s sub-20 FPS consequence means it isn’t playable in lots of the video games we examined. The 7700 XT and 7800 XT take the following two spots, adopted by the 4070 Tremendous, however getting as much as 60 fps common on our sport suite would require spending not less than $965 on an RTX 4080 Tremendous, with AMD’s 7900 XTX arising simply wanting that mark.
We do anticipate to see a few new GPUs launch this fall, however these might be excessive elements from the Nvidia Blackwell RTX 50-series lineup, doubtless simply the RTX 5090 and 5080 (or no matter they find yourself being referred to as). AMD’s RDNA 4 GPUs aren’t anticipated till subsequent 12 months, whereas Intel’s Battlemage GPUs might nonetheless arrive in late 2024, however we’re much less sure about what to anticipate from both of these if and once they arrive. So for those who’re not planning on shopping for a top-tier card, this can be a good time to choose up a price range to mainstream GPU.