At the beginning of January, Nvidia introduced an updated model line of RTX 40 Super graphics cards. We’ll see how it mixed with the market situation and which graphics card models are advantageous and which you should avoid.
Current price/performance ratio
It remains to look at the current price/performance ratio. The performance is the average performance from graphics card tests tested using the current methodology on the current test set. If possible, I took cards with reference clocks or minimal overclocking, rather exceptionally it can be overclocked models, so the performance can be two or three percent higher than the basic models. Specifically, these are the following models, which you may know from reviews:
- MSI GF RTX 3050 Ventus 2X, 8 GB
- Asus Dual GF RTX 3060 OC, 8GB
- MSI GF RTX 3060 Ventus, 12 GB
- MSI GF RTX 4060 Ventus 2X OC, 8GB
- Nvidia GF RTX 4060 Ti, 8 GB
- Nvidia GF RTX 4070 FE, 12 GB
- Nvidia GF RTX 4070 Super FE, 12 GB
- Gigabyte GF RTX 4070 Ti Aero, 12 GB
- MSI GF RTX 4070 Ti Super Vent. 3X, 16 GB
- Nvidia GF RTX 4080 FE, 16 GB
- Nvidia GF RTX 4080 Super FE, 16 GB
- Nvidia GF RTX 4090 FE, 24 GB
- Sapphire RX 6600 Pulse, 8GB
- PowerColoRX 6700 XT OC HellHound, 12 GB
- AMD RX 6800, 16GB
- AMD RX 6800 XT, 16 GB
- Sapphire Pulse RX 7600 OC, 8GB
- Gigabyte RX 7600 XT Gaming OC, 16 GB
- Sapphire Pure RX 7700 XT, 12 GB
- Gigabyte RX 7800 XT, Gaming OC
- Gigabyte RX 7900 GRE Gam. OC, 16 GB
- Sapphire RX 7900 XT, 20 GB
- Sapphire Pulse RX 7900 XTX, 24 GB
- Intel Arc A750 Lim. Ed., 8 GB
- Acer Predator BiFrost Intel Arc A770, 16 GB
It is a compromise between basic full HD and 4K – average performance at a resolution of 2560 × 1440, where powerful cards in the tests do not slow down the processor as much as in 1920 × 1080.
The averages are calculated by taking the results of all cards for each of the tested games and calculating the relative performance of each card to the highest result measured in that game. So if the RTX 4090 is the most powerful, it gets 100%, and the RTX 4070 then achieves maybe 52% of its performance. This is how I gradually calculate the performance of all cards in each game and then average them again.
100% is achieved by the card if it is the most powerful across all tests, for others the performance is calculated in relation to it.
Another important caveat: With a different composition of games, the average performance of the cards can vary by a few percent. I also remind you that it is about average values without ray tracing and use of DLSS, if you don’t turn off ray tracing in games and use supersampling, it makes more sense to buy a GeForce, even if you pay an extra thousand for it.
What is more convenient now?
If you are one of those who do not recognize supersampling technologies such as DLSS or FSR and basically play in native resolution with ray tracing turned off, Radeons may be a better choice for you than GeForce in terms of price/performance ratio. However, if the difference is only a few hundred crowns, you should also take into account that Radeons have a higher consumption. Over the course of the card’s lifetime, together with operating costs, the cheaper Radeon can end up being more expensive than the more expensive GeForce – to what extent it is advantageous or disadvantageous depends on how many hours you spend on the card in games and intensive workloads.
It’s more complicated with the memory capacity, Radeons usually have more memory than GeForce at a similar price, but at least with current drivers, it is not true that 8 GB of memory on a Radeon is the same as 8 GB of memory on a GeForce. This is especially true for the 8GB Radeon RX 7600 and 16GB RX 7600 XT, which can see a performance increase due to the larger memory capacity in more titles than when comparing the 8GB and 16GB GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. However, if you don’t need more memory for a specific game that you play often, even the 1,500 crown surcharge doesn’t make much sense in terms of the price/performance ratio at the moment. In such a case, it is better to pay extra for the 8GB RX 7700 XT, which will not experience performance drops due to lack of memory as often as the RX 7600 and will offer higher performance across all games. And the 8GB RTX 4060 Ti is also more advantageous.
The following chart lists the cards (from bottom to top) in order from best to worst. Perhaps only for the Intel Arc A770 I will point out that the results are quite old and today it will probably be better thanks to the drivers that are continuously improving, this happens only sporadically with GeForce and Radeons.
In the graph sorted by price, you can see roughly three local minimums, the areas where the cards are the most advantageous – the first is in the lower class for the Radeon RX 7600, the second for the RTX 4060 and the third for cards with a price tag of around ten thousand – RX 6700 XT, RTX 4060 Those, RX 6800 and RX 7700 XT.
Again, I’ll emphasize that these are raw raster performance results and there are other things to consider – if you’re using higher quality supersampling technologies (be it FSR, DLSS or DLAA), Nvidia’s proprietary technologies are supported in more games than AMD’s . Doubly so for DLSS 3.x and FSR 3.x image generation. And take into account other technologies – in MMO FPS, especially at higher resolutions and with higher details, Nvidia reflex can be a significant advantage for shortening the response. GeForce also has significantly wider support for acceleration of calculations via GPU in applications.
Even when deciding between RX 6000 and RX 7000, it is also good to take into account that in terms of ray tracing performance, the new Radeons are better, they are more efficient, and when it comes to game optimizations and driver updates, it is likely that the older Radeons RX 6000 will already be on the second track at AMD. And maybe in about half a year the RX 8000 will come and the cards will not be just one, but two generations older than the RX 6000. So even if you’re going to buy a Radeon RX 6000, consider whether it’s better to pay extra for the RX 7000.
And practically the same goes for the old RTX 3000 series GeForces, which are no longer very profitable in themselves – if the usual production cycle is repeated, the mid-range RTX 50s will hit the market in the first half of next year.
Tags: Overview graphics card prices advantageous worth Chapter
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