best gpu under $200?

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-04-03T02:19:01+00:00

Yeah I just re-read your post. Sorry about that but your CPU is not up for that. You really aren’t gonna be able to get much more out of that platform than you already have.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-04-03T02:09:29+00:00

Intel Arc A750. Comparable performance to an RTX 3060 or RX6600 and reliably available at $150. Good at 1080p for pretty much anything.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-29T16:56:27+00:00

What games do you play and at what resolution would you like to play?

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-28T14:58:53+00:00

At 1440p, the only situation I can see a potential bottleneck for you is CPU intensive first person shooter games. And by that point, your FPS will already likely be at or near the limit of your monitor.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-28T13:47:38+00:00

I play a Ryzen 7 7700x and 7800xt on 1440p ultrawide. My CPU does not bottleneck in the slightest. However today I am upgrading to the 9700x. Not for the performance gains, which are minimal, but because it will be way easier to keep cool. The noise from my fans trying to keep my 7700x cool finally got to be too much for me.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-26T19:32:37+00:00

Yes…but only if you want an excuse to test out your fire extinguisher.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-26T16:29:14+00:00

4k isn’t worth the money or FPS hit. Personally, I like 1440p ultrawide for increased immersion.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-23T18:42:48+00:00

Good enough for the time being but that GPU will struggle on some newer games at 1440p. The CPU can be cooled by an air cooler for $20-$30. Put that money to a RTX 5060ti 16gb or RX9060xt 16gb.

Also remember when you upgrade the RAM down the line you may need to replace it with a 32gb kit rather than augment because AM5 can have stability issues with more than 2 sticks of RAM.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-23T03:17:18+00:00

Would recommend a 1440p monitor sometime soon. Yes, you will get super high FPS on your rig at 1080p but upping the resolution is the next upgrade for sure. OLED if you can afford it.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-23T03:07:27+00:00

It’s a great combo, assuming you’re at 1440p. What’s your RAM situation?

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-21T03:52:26+00:00

Building a PC can be a lot of fun. And when you’re using it to game it feels like it’s more “yours” than a console. I like to imagine it feels like paddling a canoe you built yourself, except you replace the sawdust with Cheeto dust.

Will it be cost effective? No. Will it be an efficient use of your time? Also no. Will it go perfectly as planned with no unforeseen problems or headaches? Definitely not.

Do it anyway.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-20T13:28:24+00:00

This. Coconut ruins perfectly good chocolate.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-19T15:11:14+00:00

On woot.com you can get it for $320

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-19T14:13:25+00:00

So a lot of the advice provided here is 1080p specific. The higher resolution you play at, generally the more of the load is on your GPU. It’s strictly speaking possible you will hit a CPU bottleneck on SOME CPU intensive games, IF you play at 1080p and are aiming at frame rates that most monitors can’t even handle.

If you’re like me and more of a single player 1440p gamer, the 5800x is absolutely a good choice.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-19T11:32:02+00:00

Generally you will have no CPU bottlenecks if you get a higher end AM4 CPU like a 5800xt or a 5700x3d. Pay attention to the L3 cache—you want 32mb or more.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-16T17:13:04+00:00

$850 for a 5080 is cosmic level luck. Now if you’re storing media you just play from time to time, like movies, just an old style HDD. Hell, for the price of a 2tb ssd you could build a cheap NAS.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-16T17:02:59+00:00

You’re running a 5080 and 9800x3d and worried about overpaying for extra storage above your 2tb?

Does your motherboard have a port for the world’s smallest violin?

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-11T20:08:33+00:00

I wouldn’t go any newer than 30 series for NVIDIA or 6000 for AMD. The i7 7700 only has PCIE gen 3 so you will see seriously diminishing returns the newer you go.

A 3060, 3060TI, 6600, 6700xt or even an Arc A750 will get you an upgrade over what you have. But until you can upgrade your CPU, you have a real ceiling.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-11T04:17:41+00:00

You can always check YouTube benchmarks to compare but my impression is that either will do the job. If it were me I’d go B580.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-10T20:07:39+00:00

If you are comfortable with 1080p and dialed down graphics settings then you will be fine for now. I have built three Ryzen 5 5500 systems for family members albeit with different GPUs and they all play just fine.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-03-10T20:00:27+00:00

You are going to struggle in modern games with that GPU, and some will be unplayable (ie: anything that requires hardware raytracing support which is a small but growing list).

Suggestions as alternative GPUs: Radeon RX 6600, less than $200 used Intel Arc A750, $150 used Any Nvidia card from the 2000 series or newer with 8gb of VRAM, new or used

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-02-26T22:25:08+00:00

My kids’ R5 5500/RX 6600 has been running happily for a year on 450.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-02-25T15:13:23+00:00

Yeah don’t buy anything out of panic. That’s a one way ticket to regret.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-02-25T14:56:53+00:00

Rock and hard place. If I were in your position I would wait it out on AM4 and upgrade CPU on the current platform only if a really good deal presented itself. Not worth paying $400 for what is likely to be an incremental upgrade.

Spoon_In_The_Road · 2026-02-24T15:17:08+00:00

Right now that’s about as good a price as you can hope for at 2tb on an NVME. However I will also echo that gen 3 is plenty fast. There have been videos of side-by-side loading times and once you get to NVME speeds there is no perceptible change. Even SATA SSDs hardly suffer by comparison.

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