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The current-gen GPUs competing for your $300 budget in early 2025 are the following:
- Nvidia: GeForce RTX 5060 (8 GB)
- AMD: Radeon RX 9600 XT (8 GB)
- Intel: Arc B580 (12 GB)
Picking the right one is a bit harder and depends on your preferences. The Radeon RX 9600 XT is slightly faster than the RTX 5060 on average, but it differs between individual games. Intel’s most recent Battlemage GPU is around 20% slower but also substantially cheaper (if you can find one).
Keep reading for a full rundown of the pros and cons of each, and other important considerations.
NVIDIA Vs. AMD Under $300
Nvidia and AMD launched their mainstream RTX 5060 and RX 9060 XT GPUs in May and June 2025, respectively. Both are reasonably priced, and the RX 9060 XT in particular offers a substantial performance boost over its predecessor.
Last update on 2025-06-18 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
The main downside (in both cases) is that you only get 8 GB of VRAM at the $300 price point. In some of the latest games, such as Doom: The Dark Ages, 8 GB will hamper performance compared to cards with more VRAM – even with upscaling tech enabled. At the very least, this is something to be aware of when buying an 8 GB card in 2025.
Relative Gaming Performance with Current $300 GPUs
To put the current mainstream cards into perspective, here is an indication of how they perform in terms of rasterization, i.e., with no ray tracing or upscaling:
The RX 9060 XT 8GB and 16GB get roughly the same result in this benchmark. It is ahead of the RTX 5060, but as previously mentioned, it differs from game to game. Check out this excellent comparison by TechPowerup for more detail.
Relative Ray-Tracing Performance
Once you enable ray tracing in titles that support it, the chart used to be shuffled in favor of Nvidia cards. However, AMD’s latest RDNA 4 RX 9000 series comes with massive improvements for Team Red.
What About DLSS & FSR Resolution Scaling?
Frame rates at native resolutions are still a determining factor, but upscaling features like Nvidia’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AMD’s FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) are also incredibly useful and important. Intel also offers a similar solution known as XeSS (Xe Super Sampling).
Nvidia only offers DLSS with its RTX GPU lineup, whereas AMD and Intel’s alternatives work with all graphics cards. Older Nvidia GTX cards can instead benefit from NIS upscaling, a similar but less sophisticated alternative. Frame generation is also available with the latest versions of DLSS and FSR, but needs game-specific support to work.
Buy Now or Wait?
Upgrading your graphics card is nearly always the most cost-effective way to revive your existing gaming PC. But even early adopters rarely upgrade more often than once every one or two generations. That translates to about once every 2–4 years (or when the latest AAA titles start to feel sluggish).
Another valid reason to postpone a GPU purchase is to time one of the major generational releases.
Both of the best GPUs under $300 – RTX 5060 and RX 9060 XT – were released in May and June 2025, so there’s no need to worry about any new releases around the corner for the time being.
The Best GPU Under $300: Radeon RX 9060 XT
Again, whether the RX 9060 XT or RTX 5060 is the best GPU for you will boil down to personal preferences and performance in individual games. However, AMD’s contender is slightly faster on average. FSR 4, along with much better ray-tracing performance, has evened out the differences between the red and green teams.
What you will want to keep in mind (as with any card today) is that 8 GB of VRAM is on the low side. There’s also a variant of the RX 9060 XT with 16 GB of VRAM, which might be a better option if reasonably priced.
Shopping links:
Best Nvidia: GeForce RTX 5060
The GeForce RTX 5060 uses the same GPU as the RTX 5060 Ti (GB206) but with some parts disabled. As a result, it offers about the same performance as last generation’s RTX 4060 Ti. In addition, you get access to Nvidia’s proprietary frame generation technology with DLSS 4 in games that support it.
It comes with the same drawback as its AMD competitor in the form of just 8 GB of VRAM. If you want a 16 GB Nvidia card from the current generation, the next alternative in line is the significantly more expensive RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB.
Shopping links:
The Intel Alternative: Arc B580
Intel’s first Arc A-series cards were launched in mid-2022 to high expectations that they mostly failed to meet. Not only were the cards slower than expected with the launch drivers – they were practically nowhere to be found across North America or Europe. And if you managed to locate an Arc graphics card, it would not be priced competitively compared to the tried-and-tested alternatives from AMD and Nvidia.
Things have changed in 2025 thanks to the all-new Battlemage generation. The Arc B580 in particular is very competitively priced at its starting MSRP of $250, which makes it a price/performance leader. Intel has also made great strides in terms of timely releases of game-ready drivers.
Note that Resizable BAR (ReBAR) support is critical for the Intel Arc GPUs to perform well. This feature is normally available in systems based on 10th-gen Intel Core/AMD Ryzen 3000-series or later. Read more here.
Previous-Gen/Used Graphics Cards
If you are on a tight budget, it’s often worth checking out the used market. Note that there were no 8000-series desktop GPUs from AMD, meaning that it went straight from 7000 to 9000.
GeForce RTX 4060
Graphics cards based on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 GPU were released on 29 June 2023 – about a month after its main AMD competitor, the Radeon RX 7600. There is no Founders Edition reference model of the RTX 4060.
In average gaming performance, the RTX 4060 is about 20-25% slower than the RTX 5060, and sits between the RX 7600 and RX 7600 XT. Nvidia’s arguably superior software stack gives it an edge compared to the competition.
Radeon RX 7600 (XT)
AMD released the Radeon RX 7600 GPU on May 25, 2023, and immediately reduced its MSRP from an original $299 to $269, which is also reflected in most third-party cards from AMD’s board partners. The XT variant of GPU has more shading units enabled and offers about 15% better performance.
Note that the generational jump is considerable this time: The RX 9060 XT is about 40-45% faster than the RX 7600 and 30% faster than the RX 7600 XT.
Wrapping Up
In mid-2025, the $300 price point offers a couple of brand-new GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD. The Radeon RX 9600 XT, in particular, offers substantial performance advantages compared to last generation – not least in the ray-tracing department. Unfortunately, both cards are limited to 8 GB of VRAM, which will limit their effective life span as an increasing number of games prefer more.
CPU Pairing and PSU Requirements
To get the most out of your new mid-range GPU, the rest of your PC build should correspond reasonably well to your choice of video card.
The best gaming CPUs are currently AMD’s X3D lineup, although the latest Ryzen 9000 series is quite expensive relative to a $300 video card. There are alternatives like the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, however, which offer an affordable entry point in combination with a B650 motherboard. You may also want to consider Intel’s 14000-series Intel Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs.
As for the power supply (PSU), the latest mainstream GPUs are relatively frugal and an 80 Plus-rated 500 W PSU should be enough in most cases. Any such power supply on the market will provide you with the single 8-pin PCIe power connector that you need to hook up your GPU.
For smaller or larger budgets, check out our guides to the best GPUs under $200 or under $500.
Hi, I was thinking on buying the Arc A770 or the RTX 4060 my main use is going to be for ML which would you recomend more? Also would you reconed paring it with a Ryzen 7 5800x or Ryzen 5 7600x? If im buying a dedicated GPU does having an iGPU matter?
Hi Massimiliano, that’s a hugely interesting question. When just looking at compute performance, the A770 should be faster. But thanks to the Tensor cores (and possibly other factors), Nvidia GPUs perform way better in e.g. Stable Diffusion (https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/stable-diffusion-benchmarks). Developer preference and optimizations for Nvidia also makes it easier in general to get up and running with RTX cards.
Unless I had a highly specific use case where Intel is known to perform well, I would personally go with Nvidia even if it has 50% less VRAM. The choice of CPU (or iGPU) should have little to no effect on these types of GPU workloads.
I made the mistake of buying a 3050 in a laptop. I now see my mistake as the lifespan is shortened a lot by this limiting GPU. Since you cannot upgrade a laptop in any significant way you’re stuck with an earlier end of life. Even mid-range gaming is not affordable in my opinion. But if you go that route don’t get caught up in buying a laptop. Go with an affordable desktop you can at least upgrade and extend out its life better than a laptop. I certainly won’t buy a laptop for gaming again. You need some deep pockets to keep upgrading to next gen laptop hardware.
As someone looking to spend £200 max (the actual price most people spend on a GPU), I find the vast majority of cards which would have been released at that price a year ago are now priced at double this.
So we end up with the only new “mid-range” card the 6600xt being released pretending its a “high-end” card, so it can justify a ludicrous mark up. Its not worth MSRP, let alone the “because its 2021 lets add another 50%” issue.
So what is there for folks to buy at £200? Because I’m quite simply refusing to spend that on a second hand 3-4 year old card that’ll be outdated within 12 months.
Finding a mid-range card at a normal mid-range price is still nearly impossible, unfortunately. The miner-created shortage a few years ago was nothing compared to today’s market.
Availability has improved, but as you mentioned, prices are still extremely inflated. And there is so much pent-up demand now that this could go on for quite some time.
I’ve managed to buy a couple of cards in the past year at somewhat reasonable prices (but still far from normal) by pre-ordering. Had to wait for 2-3 months each time though…
Need a new vid card but prices are out of hand dam bitcoin miners
Hey thx in advance Mr Jesper Berg
the guide is good , anyway do you have any relation with håkan berg the king of birds ?
Hey Pand, thanks! Haha, no I hadn’t even heard of this King of birds, so I had to look him up. A fun guy. His comedic use of Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit makes me wish I was related 🙂
Could someone tell me the best build on a say 900-1000$ budget for a pc, monitor, keyboard, mouse thanks would be helpful
Thank you for this great article! I haven’t been able to locate the EVGA 2060 KO in Canada for my new build, so all the info here has been a huge help on figuring out a replacement. Thanks!!!
Hey Japser. I’m currently building my first gaming pc and having an issue with finding correctly advertised GPUs. The prices in your article was updated 12 days ago, but none of prices listed here reflect the actual prices. Some of the links you’ve shared take us to either site where the item is $150 to almost 2x the MSRP price you gave us. My question is, why are computer parts or accessories price points so unstable?
this is exactly the article I was looking for! Well put-together and extremely helpful, I’ll definitely be looking at a 5600xt for my current build. Your other article on choosing a 5600xt is also great
Thanks a lot! Glad that it helped 🙂
Hi Jesper!
I’m currently trying to figure out which graphics card is the best fit for my build for 200-300$. I was thinking about the gtx 1660 super but not sure if it’s too much or too little, I’m not really an expert 🙂
My current build has:
gtx1050 2 or 3 gb
ryzen7 1800x
asus b350-plus
16gb crucial ram
not sure about the power suply
I mostly play cs:go and want a card that can give me at least 200fps in every map at relatively low resolution but I’m buying mafia and also play gtaV sometimes so was wondering what was the best fit for me.
I also have 2 monitors (the one I play is 144hz) not sure if that makes any difference in the matter.
Thought you had great advice for the other people so maybe you can help me out.
Hey Seb!
The 1660S is my personal favorite from the current crop of mid-range cards. It’s almost as fast as the 1660 Ti, but usually much cheaper. By itself, this GPU will be able to give you a 200+ fps average in CS:GO, but CS:GO is also one of the older and less demanding games where your CPUs single-core performance (1st-gen Ryzen’s main weakness) might become a bottleneck, particularly at low resolutions.
I still have no doubts whatsoever that you can go above a 144fps average at 1080p to match your monitor. Mafia Definitive and GTA V will also run well. Not at such high frame rates but at least 60+ fps (more at lower settings, of course).
Thanks for the feedback and I will probably buy the 1660s when I can find one in sale. I also asked the same thing in the under 200$ guide so you can just ignore it :).
Also would you recommend any particular 1660s or are they all pretty much the same? Don’t really get why they have such difference in prices if they are the same model.
Sounds like a great plan, best of luck!
My personal preference when choosing a card (any GPU) is to go with a larger cooler if it fits and the price difference is minimal. They usually run cool and with less noise (though the 1660S TDP is only 125W, so no cooler will be taxed too hard). All 1660S cards use the manufacturers’ standard coolers, so there should be few surprises.
And I agree with you in questioning the large price differences. A small premium might be fine in my view if you get better cooling. But just a slight factory overclock, as is often the case, has never been much of a selling point.
Hi Jesper,
I consider myself to be the typical 60fps 1080p gamer when time allows, so these mid range cards are obviously the sweet spot. I don’t follow hardware or gfx card price movements as I generally just upgrade and forget about it.
I’m looking to upgrade and only recently became aware that Nvidia is soon to release the RTX 3000 series and AMD are doing something similar with their Big Navi cards. Historically do such releases have any downward pressure on mid range cards like those discussed in the above article, or is it more like a two speed economy with the impact largely resigned to those who want to game at 1440 or 4K?
tldr; should everyone be holding off from buying a new graphics card right now?
Grant,
From, what I have seen, yes, 4k and 1440 it is like a Corvette vs a Ferrari. Both are greater, just that one is greaterer.
Hi Grant,
That is a very good question. High-end releases typically don’t affect current mid-range card prices by much or at all in the short term. But the RTX 3060 is also likely to arrive soon (sooner than RTX 2060 did by comparison). It could also be aggressively priced if needed to undercut what AMD releases in the same performance bracket (Navi 22).
In that case, this should definitely put some downward pressure on the current mid-range cards in the relatively near future. But those are many ifs and buts, of course.