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Echoing others just to say that if you plan on switching to Linux (and you should, gaming on Linux is a breeze and better than ever) you should definitely lean towards an AMD GPU for ease and convenience. It just works™

Voodoo2

FWIW i feel like the $250 i spent on a 6600XT SWFT has been the best $250 ive ever spent on a PC component.

But if the 7700 is in your budget i guess go ahead, the 6600 doesnt run any fancy raytracing and that sort of stuff.

If you do upgrade, I would recommend an AMD card just because AMD GPUs are known to work flawlessly on Linux and Wayland especially. NVIDIA works ok on X11, but has a lot of issues on Wayland. If you don't know what those are, those are essentially your two options for getting graphics on Linux; Wayland is the more modern one which most people, and most Linux distros, are moving towards.

Even if you are a Windows user, I imagine a lot of people will realise they want to switch to Linux in the coming years as Windows continues to enshittify, and you don't want to end up reinstalling Windows purely because of poor hardware support.

If you're wondering, gaming on Linux is nearly on par with Windows at this point thanks to Valve's Proton, allowing Windows games to be run on Linux. I get great performance on popular Windows games by running them through Proton on Linux.

the 6600xt is still 260 usd? wtf in any case AMD is going to release new cards at CES this weekend so it might be a good idea to hold for any last gen price drops or a new gen card if the performance boost and bang for buck is there

don't buy nvidia or intel, they're both BDS targets. The 6600/6650 are great choices and are more than enough for modern games. even for vr, amd's whole lineup will do you good enough. I have a 1660 super i bought from a reseller and it runs overwatch, helldivers, dota, league, valorant, counterstrike, and no man's sky really well at 1080p. As for VR, half life: alyx ran great on it as well as blade and sorcery and some other assortment as well. and in comparison to the amd lineup my card is on the lower end, so you can't go wrong.

If you want my opinion, go for the 6600 as it's plenty for your dollar unless you're on 4k, in which case it might be worth it to get the 6650 or one of the 7000 series. good luck shopping and happy computing!

Easy powerful upgrade would be a 5700x3D cpu and a 7700XT gpu for gaming.

This would be an extremely balanced build for 1080/1440 and you should get away with 650w psu pretty easily.

You just might need to update the bios on the motherboard before you swap in the new cpu.

Don’t buy anything yet. Nvidia is probably going to announce the 5000 series soon (within the next 3 months). Even if you aren’t planning to get an overpriced Nvidia card, wait until they announce the release dates and then see if you can hold off on a purchase till then because retailers might lower prices on the previous generation of cards in response.

I watched this paradoxically titled video "Don't Upgrade" a couple of weeks back. It actually has some good advice on where to aim at for value for money as far as the current/last gen cards go given that the incoming generation will not net you any noticeable benefits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5oG9xk79Vw

It's a pretty good video in general and covers more than video cards, but IIRC there was some useful advice in there for what to do if you DO need to upgrade objectively old stuff. One caveat may be that "you should wait" until this that or the other happens as far as announcements for new shit comes out so the price drops on existing stock. That was definitely what I got from his talk on CPUs n shit.

tbh I can't keep up either at the moment (or ever,) it's like, at least a week of research for me personally when I'm deciding on a decision like that. I used to build crazy overclocked beasts of machines but it's all so tiresome.

I don't have a recent AMD card and am not informed enough to make declarative opinions on individual cards, but I do want to discuss a more philosophical side of the decision. Spoilering because it's mildly ranty and not fully thought out.

Idk, I guess the whole point i was trying to make is that regardless of what you choose, you're gonna buyers remorse or confirmation bias yourself one way or the other about the purchase afterward. Any thoughts on which way you're more likely to head?

Confirmation bias Buyers remorse

I have a 6650XT in a very old Intel system (4790k) over a year ago now and there has been nothing that it can’t run at 1080p/60fps. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend a 7600xt that should be a little bit faster.

I'd also love to know. Nvidia is so expensive these days I can't imagine buying one of their cards. Best value seems to be Intel but there is a lot of potential pitfalls there. It's tough right now

I got a used RTX 3060 12GB around a year ago for 230 bucks, which seemed like the best deal I could get at the time.

just go to https://www.logicalincrements.com/ and get whatever it recommends for your budget

I see some people suggesting a 7800 XT might be better value. It looks like you'd be getting somewhere in the neighborhood of NVIDIA 4070 performance which isn't too bad, it'll be good for a few years. You might need to upgrade your power supply though I see AMD recommends 700W as a minimum. You might also find other components like your CPU or HD become bottlenecks once you upgrade your GPU.

What kind of power supply do you have? Some of these new cards chew ridiculous amounts of power.

As long as you aren't invested in doing ray tracing then AMD gpus are the way to go. Have a 7900xt and tbh it's overkill for what I use it for. If you just want to run games at 1080p then an RX 7700xt will do just fine, or throw an extra $100 and snag a 7800xt for the 16gbs of vram (I'd wait for after or during CES to see if there's any additional discounts or deals as old inventory gets cleared out) and not have to worry about upgrading within the next 6-7 years as long as you'll game within the 1080p-1440p resolution.

I just got a 7700 XT and have been very pleased

Do you play on Windows or Linux? I think Nvidia kind of sucks in general, but they especially suck if you're on Linux. They're fine if you need them for DLSS (AMD has FSR, but it's not as good) or some AI stuff. Things have improved dramatically and I don't really have problems day-to-day with my 3070, but I would go AMD 100% if I knew I was going to make this switch to Linux a few years ago. NVIDIA sucks at fixing issues related to their Linux drivers, whereas AMD drivers are built into the kernel and just update and receive fixes with the rest of your system.

Old ATI cards had really bad drivers, but the two have flip flopped back and forth during different time periods, so in Windows, they're relatively the same now. AMD is a more consumer friendly company and generally cheaper.

8GB of VRAM is not great in 2024, despite what NVIDIA says, so if you plan to play relatively modern games, I'd go with something that has more.

A good way I've found to compare is to search YouTube for benchmarks comparing a few cards you're thinking of and just watch the footage for the games you're interested in playing. If it keeps a stable 60 FPS or whatever your target is, then you know you'll be fine for now, but probably become obsolete a little quicker if that's your minimum.

I would absolutely not get an Intel card unless you're willing to be a beta tester or really enthusiastic about adopting new technology/supporting a 3rd competitor in the GPU space. They frequently need to release driver fixes for games that don't work and older games are still iffy since it doesn't support anything below DirectX 9(?) and uses software translation layers to run anything older.

For that kind of money you could just get a Playstation

I've been enjoying my 6600 non-XT on my rig. I also have AMD (a Ryzen 5600G) and it's been able to play basically any game on medium to high settings. I play Cyberpunk on medium settings with a couple of the less intensive raytracing options and it runs at about 40-60 fps. With raytracing off its able to run at a consistent 60. It also runs Mirrors Edge Catalyst on ultra settings quite handily, about 50-60 FPS I also use this rig for VR, and I have to use medium to low settings, but it runs those games smoothly too! Hope this helps!

An actual big question you really have to ask these days is: do you give a shit about 4k gaming?

If you don't and you're fine with 1080p then I would wait a few more weeks when the rtx 5 series is announced and get a discounted 3060 or even 4060.

You could probably get a used 3070 or something for a good deal when new stuff drops.

The 7700 XT looks like a pretty great option right now for $400, it would hold up for 5+ years for sure. For reference, I bought the 6700 XT two years ago to replace my 1060 3GB and it has held up really well playing modern games on high settings at 1440p, and the 7700 XT is substantially better all around than the 6700 XT so new games should run super smoothly.

I built a new rig last year with a newer gen r5 cpu and a Radeon 7800xt. It's more than I'll ever need, just pretty neat to be able to max out settings. But honestly, I can hardly tell a difference. I would have probably been fine with a 7700xt. I was running a gtx960 for like 7 years or so without issue, you really don't need the latest and greatest.