Nvidia started throttling its cards for crypto mining when it launched the RTX 3060 as a deterrent to having them snapped up by miners (and announced an alternate GPU line specifically for that purpose, the CMP). But you can't get one - or anything, really - because cryptocurrency mining and bots have once again bogarted the entire available stock, creating shortages and driving up prices. We expect the same from Nvidia's workstation versions of the 3000 series, the A4000, A5000 and A6000. Read more: Radeon restock alert: Where can you find the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT?Īnd you do want one: Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070 and 3080, and AMD's Radeon RX 6600 XT, RX 6700 XT, RX 6800, 6800 XT and 6900 XT perform noticeably better than the previous generations. While they're not nearly as high as they were six months ago, they remain substantially higher than the manufacturers' fantasy target prices at launch and are slowly starting to rise again. The now-current generation of flagship cards from Nvidia and AMD launched in October 2020, with new models rolling out regularly since then, but they all continue to be in the LOL-try-to-get-one stage.Īnd prices for anything you can find remain out of control.

They're more elusive than a PS5 or Xbox Series X Halo Infinite Edition. As with the RTX 3060, there's no AMD-branded version of the GPU.īut let's be frank: This is a horrible time to shop for a new video card. With a Thunderbolt 3-equipped laptop or iMac, you can even upgrade the graphics using an external graphics processing unit (an eGPU with its own power supply) or a dedicated graphics card. Meanwhile, games and software used for applications like 3D tools and video editors have only become more demanding.Įven if you just need the basics for streaming video or surfing the web, a good graphics card can make your system feel snappier by improving the acceleration of video decoding or redrawing your screens faster, especially if you had previously used a budget GPU. A lot has changed in the past few years, so chances are you're no longer using the best graphics card available for taking advantage of modern technologies like smart resolution upscaling and ray-tracing acceleration. And with PC gaming, video editing, animation and other graphics-intensive activities, that few years is forever in performance. If you're like most people, you're probably using a graphics card that's several years old.

Best graphics card for the money