hey nerds! the offspring is looking for a new graphics card for their gaming rig so they can play latest shiny stuff!

with GPU shitcoin mining having been condemned to hell where it belongs, i understand that prices are in the realm of sanity now.

nvidia or amd is fine, just as long as it's the good stuff. a generation behind the latest is fine.

so what's good in the UK for a windows 10 gaming rig this week?

(plz boost, the more suggestions the better. think of the gamer children.)

UPDATE: we're probably going for a 3060, there's some damn fine deals and it should be able to deal with the hipness for a few years yet.

@davidgerard
What's the budget like? And what resolution are your kids usually gaming at.

@sequentialsnep current monitor is 1920x1080 but we've been eyeing up 2k so let's look to the future

current card is a geforce 1050TI, not very hip at all in 2022

box has 4 cores/8 threads and 16GB RAM with room for 32GB, and when the 500W PSU died we replaced it with 650W in preparation for upgrade day

we can go a few hundred quid. prices haven't quite recovered from the extreme bingo enthusiasts, but they're less worse than they were.

@davidgerard
I was going to suggest a 3080 but it may be over your budget plus your PSU may not be enough to drive it. Can I suggest putting in your specs into pcpartpicker - that'd give you a great overview on what could work for you. Even a 2080 still works great today. My laptop has a 2070 and runs games at HD resolution perfectly fine.
@davidgerard Something from the 3000 series is where the good prices are at now. 3060 Ti, or 3070 Ti, would be my recommendation for good performance without breaking the bank
@davidgerard don't know about UK pricing specifically, but the Radeon 6800XT is amazing value right now, IF you don't require top ray tracing performance.
You can currently get cards from the better AMD partners with good and silent coolers for ~600 € here in mainland Europe as they're trying to sell off the 6000 series cards.

@davidgerard

How much internal space and power is available? The new Nvidia cards are the best, but also take up an insane amount of space and 450W

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGARjRBJRX8

Absolutely Absurd RTX 40 Video Cards: Every 4080 & 4090 Announced So Far

YouTube
@TradingPlacesResearch yuh. loved one's rig is an ex-workstation whose name is "monolith" and could probably fit it. a delight to work on of course. kid's box was a nice rig for a kid but doesn't have as much space inside, and e.g. finding a power supply that would fit was somewhat fraught (though we managed to find the next model of the same thing).

@davidgerard Maybe look for an RTX 3090 Ti? It’s a pretty killer card, and maybe discounted now

Nvidia is stagnating a bit, but still with a big lead over AMD imo

Also, do not buy used right now. Too many mining rigs decommissioned lately, probably with much of the useful life already sapped.

@TradingPlacesResearch oh god no lol, i'm the one telling people not to buy a second hand card made after 2015
@davidgerard budget?
@Sberfield few hundred quid. we found a 3090 that's probably bigger than the PC that was a snip at ~£1300 last night, but ah no kid that's not a happener
@davidgerard whatever you do, do dont repurchase a GPU card that was used for crypto mining
Bitcoin mining in the crypto crash — the mining companies’ creative accounting

Amy Castor
@davidgerard I upgraded my gtx 1070 to an rtx 3060. Whatever your budget is in the rtx 30x0 family should be fine and a significant improvement over your gtx 1050.
Intel Arc GPUs should be great value
@michael still finding it hard to believe intel finally worked out how to make an acceptable gaming gpu
Yeah, it’s a bit of a gamble. All reviews say it’s good hardware with subpar but workable drivers at a genuinely great price. If you need higher end, I’d wait for the new AMDs, though.
@davidgerard i know thats what neither you nor the offspring wants to hear but theres literally 0 value in gpus right now. The germs liked the 6700 though so if theres absolutely no way around it i would have a look at that https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Grafikkarten-Grafikkarte-97980/Tests/Radeon-RX-6700-10GB-Test-Benchmarks-1406485/ other than that get a series x, its better on nearly every front for the money.
Radeon RX 6700 im Test: Der Grafikkarten-Geheimtipp mit 10 GiByte Speicher

Im Test der Radeon RX 6700 verrät PCGH, was die 400-Euro-Grafikkarte zur optimalen Lösung für Full HD und WQHD macht.

PC Games Hardware