Building a PC from scratch can be a lot of fun, and with the upcoming Black Friday on November 29, it’s a perfect time for you to pick up hardware. One of the most fun bits of any build is picking the parts, and for that, graphics cards are probably the most fun to pick between. That said, GPUs also tend to be the most expensive pieces of hardware that go into a desktop, especially if you’re trying to aim for something in the mid-to-high-end range that can easily reach $500 or even $1,000. That’s why we’ve gone out and collected some of our favorite early Black Friday GPU deals for you below.
GIGABYTE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 — $290 $350 17% off
This RTX 3060 is a great starter card for those who want to be on a budget and will handle most slightly older games pretty well at 1080p and 60Hz, potentially up to 100. It may struggle a bit with newer titles without compromises, but that’s fine given the reduced $290 price point.
ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4060 — $300 $320 6% off
While this Zotax RTX 4060 doesn’t have as much cooling, it’s a bit more powerful than the RTX 3060; plus, it’s a lot smaller, so it can fit more cases, and with the $20 discount, it’s well worth picking up. Plus, you get access to the newest DLS 3.0 that is exclusive to the RTX 40-series.
XFX Speedster SWFT319 AMD Radeon RX 6800 — $370 $430 14% off
If you’re interested in 2K gaming, then this RX6800 is a good entry-level option, and much like the RTX 3060, it may struggle a little with newer titles but should handle older titles just fine. It also has a massive 16GB of RAM making it a lot more future-proof, all for just $370 instead of the usual $430.
XFX Speedster MERC310 AMD Radeon RX 7900XT — $670 $750 11% off
PNY GeForce RTX 4080 Super — $1,000 $1,050 5% off
Another great option for 4K and higher-end 2K gaming is the RTX 4080 Super, which our lead reporter, Jacob Roach, said that it “offers a great balance of price and performance.” You get access to the newer DLSS 3.0 with this card, and the card comes with a tidy 5% discount.
How to Choose a GPU on Black Friday
When it comes to picking a GPU, the thing you’re really looking at is high-end performance and upscaling. Both Nvidia and AMD have upscalers in the form of DLSS and FSR, with Nvidia’s DLSS being a bit more advanced and mature. That said, FSR has been catching up recently, and more importantly, not all games out there use this tech, so if you don’t run any of them, then it’s not really worth worrying over which of the two to pick. If you’re still not sure, you should absolutely take a look at our breakdown between FSR vs. DLSS.
As for performance, if you’re truly looking for the best in terms of pure power, then there’s nothing that can beat the RTX 4090 on the market. That said, the RTX 4090 is very, very expensive, and it may not be worth it if you don’t plan to run 4K at around 100FPS, which also brings it’s own costs since gaming monitors that can handle that are very expensive too. On the other hand, AMD offers very strong performance in the low-to-mid range for a significantly lower price than Nvidia, so if you don’t care about DLSS, then AMD is usually the way to go at those tiers.
How We Chose These GPU Black Friday Deals
Because the market is mostly dominated by AMD and Nvidia, and there is a pretty solid understanding of where each card lies in terms of performance, the majority of the work is trying to find the best deal from various brands. After all, everybody from Gigabyte to MSI makes their own versions of these GPUs with minor variations here and there. So, ultimately, we rely on our experience as reviewers and deal hunters to not only find you the deals that will offer you the best bang for your buck, but also to give you a great selection of cards for you to pick from.
