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As of April 2025, the fastest GPUs under $500 are:
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB
- AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT
The RTX 5060 Ti was released on April 16th 2025 with an MSRP of $429, but at the time of writing, it’s out of stock everywhere. Finding a Radeon RX 7800 XT card at its original $499 MRSP is also difficult ā and it’s better to wait for the RX 9600 XT (or the rumored 9700 GRE) instead.
AMD Vs. Nvidia (Vs. Intel) GPUs Under $500
Nvidia has officially rolled out the mid-range RTX 5060 Ti, which is about 14% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti. This is by no means a remarkable gen-over-gen improvement, but DLSS 4 frame generation will boost performance in supported titles. It’s easily the best GPU under $500 for now, if you manage to get your hands on one.
AMD has yet to release its latest RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9600 XT or potential RX 9700 GRE, and cards from the previous generation are currently overpriced.
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Some GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB AIB (board partner) cards were supposed to be available at the $429 MSRP on launch. However, availability is currently very limited, regardless of price tier.
On the AMD side, the Radeon RX 7800 XT from 2023 has a theoretical $499 starting price. This card is not recommended, mostly due to the fact that next-generation cards are due to drop in Q2 2025.
Intel’s Arc B580 is included here for comparison purposes. This GPU is significantly cheaper and offers about the same performance as an RTX 3060 Ti.
Relative Performance of Mid-Range Graphics Cards in 2025
Here’s how the currently best graphics cards under $500 perform in UL’s 3DMark Time Spy benchmark compared to a range of other GPUs.
Time Spy scores have been fairly good at predicting average gaming performance (without ray tracing) over the years. Note that this is an early average score for the RTX 5060 Ti and it can be expected to drop somewhat with a larger sample size.
Looking at ray-tracing scores from Futuremark’s Port Royal benchmark, it is evident that Nvidia mostly ahead of AMD. The new RDNA 4 cards (RX 9070) however much better, which bodes well for the upcoming mid-range cards in the series.
Buy Now or Wait?
A graphics card upgrade is practically always the most cost-effective way to improve your PC’s gaming performance. But you probably want to consider release cycle timing.
Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti is brand new as of April 2025. The only issue is limited availability. You may also want to wait for AMD’s launch of the next-gen Radeon RX 9060 XT and possibly the rumored RX 9070 GRE. It is unclear whether the latter will be available outside of China, however.
If you are willing to compromise on performance and get a much more affordable card, the Intel Arc B580 (Battlemage generation) was released in late 2024 and is quite a bargain at current prices.
Best GPU under $500: GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB
As for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, this card was something of a disappointment due to the cut-down memory bus and bandwidth. Both the 8 GB and 16 GB versions use a 128-bit bus and the bandwidth is 288 GB/s, compared to its predecessor’s 256-bit bus and 448 GB/s bandwidth.
The card is still faster than the RTX 3060 Ti at 1080p, but the lead is much less impressive (or non-existent) when increasing the resolution and maxing out the quality settings.
It’s not all bad news, of course. In terms of energy efficiency, the RTX 4060 Ti is a lot better. This also means lower temperatures and effortless cooling, resulting in low noise levels. You also get better upscaling thanks to DLSS 3 as well as much improved ray-tracing performance compared to what AMD offers at the same price point.
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Best GPU under $500: GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB
Nvidia’s brand new GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is not a massive improvement over the RTX 4060 Ti. Rasterization performance is ahead by less than 15% on average, and it’s only around 30% faster than the old RTX 3060 Ti.
That’s still enough (for now) to make it the best option under $500. Nvidia uses numbers based on DLSS 4 frame generation to claim that the RTX 5060 Ti is several times faster than its predecessor, but this is misleading. While it is a useful feature, the gaming experience with 4x frame generation is not necessarily great in fast-paced titles.
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Fastest AMD GPU Under $500 (MSRP): Radeon RX 7800 XT
AMD unveiled the new Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT on September 6, 2023, at the Gamescom trade show. With launch prices of $499 and $449, respectively, the RX 7800 XT offers the best value as it’s about 20% faster than the 7700 XT but only 11% more expensive.
On the downside, the card is only slightly faster than the Radeon RX 6800 XT that it replaces. There are some generational improvements, but mostly in terms of ray tracing performance. It is substantially faster than the RTX 4060 Ti, but this card (the 8 GB model) is also $100 less.
The best part is that the RX 7800 XT is reasonably priced, which hasn’t been the case with most other graphics cards from this generation. Its launch MSRP is $150 below that of the 6800 XT.
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Flexible Budget? What You Get for Less Or Slightly More
It’s useful to be aware of GPUs in the neighboring price brackets. Not least because some of these cards may offer better value.
More Expensive Alternative #1: Radeon RX 9070
The Radeon RX 7000 series didn’t impress anyone in terms of generational improvement, as it was practically non-existent. It came with one advantage, namely that the cards were cheaper than their predecessors while offering roughly the same performance.
This is not the case with the Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070. Both GPUs offer significant performance improvements in both rasterization and ray tracing.
The RX 9070 is slightly ahead of the RTX 5070 and RTX 4070 Ti, making it a great buy at the $549 MSRP. Unfortunately, it has been very hard to find one at that price (or anything close to it).
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More Affordable Alternative: Intel Arc B580
Intel’s new Arc Battlemage GPU lineup has fared far better than the original Arc 700-series models in tech media.
Intel has worked hard on improving the drivers and have been quite successful. As opposed the A770, the B580 lives up to the performance promises and the card offers great value at the current price point.
It will not be able to compete with the previously mentioned Nvidia and AMD cards, but offers 12 GB of VRAM and a level of performance largely on par with the RTX 3060 Ti.
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Used Graphics Cards Under $500
Buying a used GPU is always a viable option if you are willing to take the risk of having no long-term warranty versus getting more gaming performance for the money. It’s often possible to save 10-20% or more over current-gen models when buying used. Some graphics cards under $500 to consider include:
- AMD Radeon RX 6800 ā The non-XT Radeon RX 6800 is similar to the RX 6800 XT but comes with fewer shading units or stream processors. Its gaming performance is right in the middle between the RX 6750 XT and the RX 6800 XT, with the former being about 15% slower and the latter 15% faster.
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 10GB ā The original RTX 3080 GPU with 10 GB of GDDR6X can sometimes be found for less than $500 on the used market. It is a bit faster than the AMD RX 6800 XT on average and also offers better ray-tracing performance.
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti ā A slightly larger variant of the RTX 3070 with a minor increase in shading units and faster GDDR6X VRAM. It is 5-10% faster than the original RTX 3070 but still around 20% slower than the RTX 3080.
Wrapping Up
For now, the brand-new GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB is the best GPU under $500 by a rather large margin. The main challenge is finding one.
This might change later in 2025, when AMD launches the mainstream GPUs in the Radeon 9000 series. There are no reliable performance estimates for the likely Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU yet, but might be promising if you go by the performance uplift with the 9070 cards
Any news on when / if there will be a 4060 Ti Super? At any rate the original 4060 Ti should get a prioce cut to match its performance in the new RTX lineup…
No news on any RTX 4060S or 4060 Ti Super yet that I know of. But something of that nature is likely to arrive eventually. The Ti is a slightly cut version of the AD106 GPU so there’s room for improvement.