1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best Nvidia
4. Best last-gen AMD
5. Best Intel
6. Best last-gen Nvidia
7. Best non-RT
8. How we test
9. Today's best cheap graphics card deals
The hunt for the best cheap graphics card in 2023 can be a complex task, given the kind of price inflation we've seen in recent years, not to mention the overwhelming array of options. With many promising the ideal mix of affordability and performance, it's crucial to navigate this landscape wisely.
However, the notion that a lower price means compromised quality doesn't hold true in today's market. Budget-friendly cards now boast impressive performance, especially at lower resolutions, but discerning the outdated models from the best graphics cards for those with a tight budget remains a nuanced challenge.
The key to making a smart purchase lies in understanding your gaming needs. For a significant number of gamers, the best 1080p graphics card provides more than enough firepower, as full HD gaming still holds sway according to the Steam Hardware Survey. On the other end of the spectrum, the best 4K graphics card may be excessive for casual gamers or streamers. Many will find the ideal solution with the best 1440p graphics cards, which offer a balance of high-resolution gaming without straining your wallet.
Fear not, you're not alone in this quest. We've rigorously evaluated the best cheap graphics cards on the market, focusing on the requirements of budget-conscious gamers and streamers. This guide brings together the best cheap GPUs from industry giants like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, so you can find the right card for your needs and budget.
John has been working with computers since he was a teenager, long before he ever started writing about computer hardware or working on his Master's degree in Computer Science. Needless to say, he knows computers inside and out, and he has personally tested (and retested) all of the graphics cards on this page, regardless of whether he wrote our original review, and has validated the results you'll find here.
The quick list
The best cheap graphics card overall
If you're looking for the best cheap graphics card by price, then this is the one you want, matching stellar 1080p performance with value.
The best cheap Nvidia graphics card
The RTX 4060 is a fantastic card that's easy to find under $300/£300, which is less than some Nvidia RTX 3060 cards still sell for.
The best last-gen cheap AMD graphics card
The RX 6600 isn't that far behind the RX 6600 XT in performance, but it is a more appealing option for a dedicated capital-B Budget Build.
The best cheap Intel graphics card
The Intel Arc A750 has come a long way since launch, and it's performance for the price make it a great option for budget builders.
The best cheap Nvidia graphics card of the last generation
The Nvidia RTX 3050 isn't the best graphics card around, but it has a lot of the best features of Nvidia Ampere for a relatively low price.
The best cheap non-ray-tracing graphics card
Not everyone loves or even cares about ray tracing in their games, and the GTX 1660 Super is still the best cheap graphics card without RT.
The best cheap graphics cards of 2023
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The best cheap graphics card overall
The AMD Radeon RX 7600 is here to bring AMD RDNA 3 to the under-$300/£300 segment, and it's got plenty of performance despite its lower price tag.
It's 1080p performance is absolutely fantastic for the price, even giving the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti 12GB a run for its money. It's 1440p performance is also pretty decent considering that the card only has 8GB VRAM and a 128-bit memory bus.
In terms of gaming performance, you can easily get 60 fps on all of the best PC games at 1080p, with most of those running on the highest graphics settings. For more demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077, there might need to be some settings tweaks, but it's still definitely doable, especially with AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution.
Its ray tracing performance is still behind Nvidia's last-gen midrange cards, but RDNA 3 has definitely closed much of the gap between the two, so you don't have to sacrifice ray tracing completely just by going with a cheaper AMD card.
Read the full AMD Radeon RX 7600 review
The best cheap Nvidia graphics card
The Nvidia RTX 4060 has frustrated some folks out there who were looking for the kind of gen-on-gen performance uplift we saw with more expensive Nvidia Lovelace offerings like the RTX 4070, but these demands are misplaced.
The RTX 4060 is a fantastic midrange graphics card that's easy to find under $300/£300 right now, which is less than some Nvidia RTX 3060 cards still on the market. It's not the kind of card that will blow you away if you already have an RTX 3060 or better, but if you're coming from older Nvidia or AMD hardware (as most gamers will be), this card will be nothing short of a revelation, all for less than the launch price of the RTX 3060 it replaces.
It's not a perfect card, obviously. It's biggest misfire is the 8GB VRAM and 128-bit memory bus, which pretty much limits how much performance you'll be able to squeeze out at 1440p, but it's still doable, especially with the advances that DLSS 3 brings to the table.
Read the full Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 review
The best last-gen cheap AMD graphics card
The AMD Radeon RX 6600 isn't that far behind the RX 6600 XT when it comes to performance, but this slimmed down version of the Navi 23 GPU is a much more appealing option for a dedicated capital-B Budget Build.
Featuring some very respectable 1080p performance and support for features like AMD Radeon Super Resolution, this card can easily play the best PC games at 1080p with frame rates north of 30 fps, if not closer to 60 fps on some medium-lift games, on high or maximum settings.
All the while, this graphics card is a good bit cheaper than AMD's XT variant, so if you're looking to get the best performance at the lowest price, with an emphasis on price, than this is the card you need to be considering.
Read the full AMD Radeon RX 6600 review
The best cheap Intel graphics card
Intel has come a long way with its Arc graphics cards since they launched, and the Arc A750 offers solid 1080p — and even 1440p — performance at a very attractive price tag.
And, thanks to Intel's fairly extensive history with AI-powering hardware, its Intel XeSS super sampling technology fares shockingly well against Nvidia's much more mature DLSS technology, even if it ultimately has to take second place to the likes of the RTX 3060.
What's more, its ray tracing hardware is also surprisingly solid for a first-generation discrete graphics card, and it can play some games like Returnal like a dream. Other games though might not fare as well (especially older DX9 and DX10 titles, but Intel is regularly updating its drivers, so a lot of these issues will likely get straightened out in time. If you're ok with some growing pains, there's a lot to like about Intel's A750.
Read the full Intel Arc A750 review
The best last-gen cheap Nvidia graphics card
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 is one of the few Nvidia graphics cards from the Ampere era that is anything close to being considered a budget graphics card, and for what it is, it's a solid choice for 1080p gaming.
It also comes with a lot of features that AMD cards simply don't have, like machine learning-enabled Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, and tensor cores to not just play games at fast frame rates, but also to handle creative workloads that even the best AMD graphics cards will stumble over.
Still, it's expensive for an Nvidia xx50-series card, with the GTX 1050 and GTX 1650 launching for nearly half the price of the RTX 3050. Such is the state of the industry though, and with graphics card price inflation being what it is, this is probably the lowest price you'll pay for a graphics card with this kind of performance and advanced features.
Read the full Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 review
The best cheap non-ray tracing graphics card
Replacing the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is absolutely one of the best cheap graphics cards on the market right now. It is able to crank out nearly 80 FPS on Middle Earth: Shadow of War on Ultra graphics settings at 1080p and even managing a decent 54 FPS at 1440p. This is incredible considering it comes in at under $250 (£200, AU$400).
Still, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super does have its drawbacks. It still goes with a DVI port in lieu of a second HDMI port (or even a USB-C) and while it does have a DisplayPort, you won't be running several displays with this card. It also lacks ray tracing cores, but you're going to be hard-pressed to find another graphics card that's as good as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super for the price.
Read the full Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super review
How we test cheap graphics cards
When it comes to chosing the best cheap graphics cards, it's not enough to look at benchmark scores and just pick whichever is the highest scorer.
If you're looking to buy a new graphics card that is more affordable than the obscenely expensive high-end cards or even their midrange siblings, you really need to look at its price-to-performance. You're really looking for how much performance can you squeeze out of every dollar or pound spent of that graphics card, and so we apply a pretty simply formula.
After we've collected all of our benchmark scores for all of the different graphics cards that we test, we simply divide those scores by the card's MSRP, and it gives us exactly how many points or frames per second each card puts out relative to its cost. These scores are then comparable across the entire range of graphics cards we test, giving us a very clear indicator for which cards are a great value and which cards are not, even if the latter are the most powerful graphics cards on the planet.
We also go off of subjective experience. Having tested the cards ourselves, we can get a real sense of where the cards fit into the budget market. And looking at cards in a target range of under $400 / £350 / AU$600 MSRP, we can see which cards offer the best performance per dollar/pound spent.
While we don't strictly choose based on that metric, it can serve as a helpful guide to picking which cards you should look at more closely versus which ones are clearly not worth further consideration.
How to choose the best cheap graphics card for you
How to choose the best cheap graphics card for you
So how do you find the best cheap graphics card, exactly, when you might not have a whole lot to go on? To help you narrow things down a bit, there are a couple of things to consider that will help making your search a good deal easier.
First and foremost, understand that it's very likely that you'll need to keep things to 1080p, with only occasional dips into 1440p territory, if you want anything near 60 fps. If all you're looking for is above 30 fps, than you might be able to get some games to play at 1440p.
Second, ray tracing is going to be very hard to pull off at this price point, at least effectively. AMD FSR will help, but not on the same scale as Nvidia's DLSS, and even DLSS is not going to ray trace high quality scenes very well. In a lot of ways, you will have to make a choice between ray tracing on the one hand and quality textures and models on the other, since you won't be able to have both in the price range that we're talking about.
That said, look at your system and honestly assess its capabilities, because if you've got 8GB RAM, a processor that's a little older, and a slow SSD (or even an HDD), then you're definitely better off looking at not just last-gen graphics cards but last-last-gen graphics cards, since even the most advanced GPU you can fit into your case and effectively power won't be able to run at full tilt if it is being bottlenecked by a slow CPU or slow RAM with insufficient capacity.
Fortunately, there are graphics cards out there that will greatly help the performance of that kind of system, but its likely that it won't be an AMD RX 6000-series or Nvidia RTX -3000 series card.
How much should I spend on a cheap graphics card?
For the most part, there are very few graphics cards that you can get under $200/£200/AU$300 that are worth upgrading your rig with, but we are tossing aside the definition of "cheap" if we suggest spending anything more than $400 / £400 / AU$600 on a budget graphics card.
With that price range, you have a number of options that are worth the price, and so you should let your budget determine what card it right for you in that range.
How long do cheap graphics cards last?
If you purchase a new graphics card, then even a cheap one will continue to run very well for several years, if not longer, depending on how hard you run it.
If you're talking about how long will it be before the minimum requirement for the best PC games no longer include your graphics card, it will likely be about as long as your card will actually operate before it is so obsolete that developers no longer support it.
All in all, you can expect to get at least three to four years of useful gaming life off the best cheap graphics cards on the market today.