If you're a gamer, getting even a passable graphics card over the past year has been really tough. You can use all sorts of tricks to try to buy one of the new generation graphics cards at retail, but unless you're fast, lucky, or live neat a Micro Center, you're mostly out of luck. Whether you need the best of the best graphics cards you can buy right now or something to hold you over until inventory stabilizes, you need to be a little creative with both your shopping and expectations.
The RX 6600 is a good card, but there are better options for the money.
ANTONY LEATHER
All graphics cards—whether they're new, old or second-hand—are overpriced right now, but some graphics card deals are better than others. Whether you just need something to get your PC up and running, something to tide you over until the GPU pricing crisis finally subsides, or you want to just pay a little over the odds for something powerful right now, here are the best GPUs you can buy in 2021.
This product is also available at Newegg for $585.
The RTX 3070 was a major milestone for Nvidia with its new RTX 3000 series GPUs, as it showcased the sheer power of the underlying Ampere architecture by eclipsing the performance of the last-generation king, the RTX 2080 Ti. With its mix of a huge number of CUDA cores and high clock speed, it achieves excellent gaming performance at 1440p and 4K, whether you're playing esports games or one of the latest AAA releases.
It also comes with second generation RT cores, which makes this an excellent card for ray tracing in games that support it. The third-generation Tensor cores also let it make the most of Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) in supporting games, helping to boost frame rates at higher resolutions, or claw back some of the ones lost by enabling ray tracing.
It's supposed to be around half the price of this, which makes the $1,000+ price tag hard to swallow. However, its offers much better value for money than some of the $700+ lower-tier models, and offers the ability to play games at 4K at high resolutions without worrying about major frame rate dips.
Best Budget Graphics Card
The Cheapest Card That Can Actually Game
Asus
Asus GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
The GTX 1050 Ti was one of the least powerful of its generation and that generation is now five years old, but for the money, it's about as good as it gets if you want a graphics card that can actually play games at decent frame rates at 1080p. It has enough power to make esports games look good and play at high FPS, so you aren't missing out on smooth gameplay or lower input lag, and if you keep the settings low, it'll let you play some AAA games. Older ones, like The Witcher III, can even be enjoyed on relatively high settings if you stick to around 30 FPS.
Although there are a number of much cheaper 1050 Ti's doing the rounds, don't be fooled by them. They often come equipped with just 1GB or 2GB of GDDR5, which alone wouldn't be enough to make them particularly capable. It's still hard to recommend a card like this in 2021, but if you need the cheapest GPU that will let you play games at 1080p at a respectable frame rate, this is the best card for the job.
The top-tier graphics cards of this generation have been massively overpriced since they first launched, making them unicorns of the hardware market. However, sometimes you can find a model that's at least not double what it should cost. This RX 6900XT is one such example, and though it's still at least 50% over what it should retail at, if you're spending over $1,000 on a GPU anyway, a little more might not be quite such an ask. Especially since this graphics card will let you play anything at the highest possible frame rates for many years to come.
The RX 6900 XT is the fastest GPU AMD has ever made, featuring a huge number of shaders, a high clock speed, and 16GB of high-speed memory, giving it equivalent performance to Nvidia's fastest graphics cards—most of which are currently priced up to and beyond $2,000 thanks to the general shortage. The 6900 XT is also AMD's most capable card at ray tracing, and though it's only about as powerful on that front as an RTX 3070, it still does a good job of it, making this one of the best graphics cards you can buy today.
This card does ship from Hong Kong, so you might have a bit of a wait for it to arrive, but there are plenty of verified purchases suggesting it will get to you in due time. If you want to order a 6900 XT from a little closer to home, the PowerColor Red Devil 6900 XT is available in the U.S. for $1,800.
Best Budget Esports GPU
Entry-Level Performance
Biostar
Biostar Gaming Radeon RX 550
If you just need a graphics card to run Windows or play some older, low-level esports games like League of Legends, Overwatch or CS:GO, then the RX 550 is a reasonable choice. It's really underpowered for modern gaming and will even struggle to play older AAA games like The Witcher III at less than 1080p with all the settings on low. But it will get your PC running and it will let you play some games for well under $200.
That's a low bar, but in 2021, this is the best cheapest graphics card you can buy tha’s actually still useful. It supports DirectX12 too, which is more than can be said for a lot of older integrated graphics, which means that modern indie games should still run well enough on this card. It has HDMI, DisplayPort and DVI-D ports, so it can connect to new and older monitors with a straight cable without an adapter.
Best Mid-Range Graphics Card
Good Power For A Reasonable Price
Sapphire
Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon 6600 XT
At any other time in the graphics card industry's history, the RX 6600 XT would be a bit of a disappointment. It's recommended price is too high, and it's only moderately competitive with the RTX 3060 Ti, which should cost around the same. But it's 2021, and none of that matters when every card's pricing is so overblown, that the RX 6600 XT is actually a pretty decent buy for 1080p and 1440p gaming.
The 6600 XT has enough grunt to play esports games at super high frame rates and modern AAA games at 60 FPS at up to 1440p with most of the settings at their highest. It won't do 4K very well, if at all, and its ray tracing capabilities are lackluster, but it is far more affordable than Nvidia's GPUs at the same kind of performance.
Like the RX 6900 XT above, this card does ship from Hong Kong, so may take a few weeks to arrive, but the seller has a good number of reviews, so you needn't fear it not showing up. The cooler is good, keeping this card cool and quiet, and it has an attractive backplate making this one of the best GPUs you can buy today.
Should you buy a new graphics card now?
When to buy a new graphics card is always difficult, never mind when stock levels of all the top cards are almost non-existent. There is always something new and exciting just over the horizon, and now there's the hope that prices might actually fall—even if some executives at AMD and Nvidia see the problems continuing well into 2022.
That said, the performance leap from the new-generation AMD and Nvidia graphics cards is huge, and the prices of some of the older GPUs during the overall component shortage are simply ridiculous for what they offer. If what you have right now lets you play what and how you want, then waiting a few more months to see if the new generation cards become more readily available and affordable is the smarter plan.
That said, if you have a new game you want to play and waiting just isn't an option, then there are cards available—you will just need to pay way more than they're worth, and likely settle for lower GPU settings than you should.
Which GPU should you buy?
Good graphics cards range in cost from $100 at the very low end, to over $1,000 at the top end and with so many little steps along the way, it's easy to get drawn in to paying just $50 more for that next jump up the performance scale. There are times that's recommendable, but the returns do diminish the higher you go and not all GPUs are worth their price tag, especially with the recent supply issues which have seen the general price of even mid-tier graphics cards rise dramatically.
When it comes to picking the best graphics card for you, buy one that's within your budget, a good value for the cost, and lets you do what you want with the hardware you have. Don't buy a 4K graphics card if you have a 1080p monitor.
On the contrary, if you have a 4K monitor, it’s tempting to buy something for a couple hundred dollars, but it likely won’t handle the load of whatever you’re playing. The best thing you can do is make a list of the games you plan on playing the most now and in the distant future, and do some research to see which graphics cards can handle them at your preferred resolution and level of detail.
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