Black Friday graphics card deals 2022: pixel pushers in stock and discounted

04.11.2022 19:02

Pcgamer.com

In a marked difference to previous years, there will actually be Black Friday GPU deals. And in fact, there already are.

Black Friday GPU deals

Jump straight to the deals you want...
1. US graphics card deals
2. UK graphics card deals
3. GPU hierarchy
4. MSRP comparison

It's a complete shift from last year, because there will actually be Black Friday graphics card deals in 2022. This wasn't the case last year, or even the year before, where the combined arms of the pandemic-constrained chip supply and a resurgent cryptocurrency market meant it was all but impossible to bag a new GPU at MSRP let alone with a healthy discount.

But we've already seen from both the main and October Amazon Prime Day events that graphics card deals are most definitely back on the menu. That's because of a sudden oversupply of GPUs when the bottom dropped out of the crypto mining world and imminent launches of new generations of both AMD and Nvidia cards took the impetus out of the graphics market.

This is great news on the one hand. It's now possible, should you want to upgrade your graphics card today, that not only do you have your pick of RTX 30-series or RX 6000-series cards to choose from, but you will actually find them discounted, too. But on the other hand, you have both the RTX 4090 released and the RTX 4080 coming very soon, and the newly announced RX 7900 XT/X cards landing in December.

We're curating all the best Black Friday PC gaming deals right here.

Sure, these are all expensive cards, all above the $899 mark, and some considerably so. Looking at you Miss. RTX 4090. But they are also offering higher performance over cards similarly priced from the previous generation, which means if you're looking at anything from an RTX 3080 and up, they need to be heavily discounted to make them worthwhile.

An RTX 3090 Ti listed with some $700 discount is still going to be around $1,300, and absolutely not worth the money at that price. The $1,200 RTX 4080 will perform the same, or better even without the technical beauty of DLSS 3. So, basically, beware hefty discounts on high-end cards—they may still not make for a great Black Friday GPU deal.

Down at the more mainstream end of the GPU market, however, it's much easier to deal. There is currently no indication how far into 2023 we're going to get before either the red or green teams launch their affordable new graphics cards. Which means you can be pretty confident in a mainstream GPU purchase this deals season.

And there will be some seriously healthy deals, too. Though it's important not to get blinded by needless tribalism when you're after the fastest graphics card for your gaming PC. You may have always bought Nvidia graphics cards, but right now you're far better off spending your cash on an RX 6700 XT than an RTX 3060 Ti. They will deliver equivalent gaming performance, but the AMD card is regularly over $100 cheaper. If you're unsure of where a card might stack up in the GPU performance league, our benchmark guide below should give you a rough idea of how they line up.

When is Black Friday 2022?

Black Friday 2022 is on November 25 this year and will effectively last through until Cyber Monday on November 28.

Though, in reality, Black Friday is now a month-long event running pretty much throughout the entirety of November. Indeed, since Amazon kicked things off with its Prime Early Access event in October, the deals have been rolling along since then.

Where are the best Black Friday graphics card deals?

In the US:

Amazon - save up to $200 on current-gen Nvidia & AMD graphics cards
Best Buy - the only place to buy Founders Edition cards in the US
Walmart - RTX 3070 discounts up to $200
B&H Photo - discounts of up to $500 on select GPUs
Newegg - save over 20% on the list price of AMD graphics cards

In the UK:

Amazon UK - great deals on last-gen GPUs
Scan - up to £50 off Nvidia graphics cards
Box - save up to £400 on high-end GPUs
Ebuyer - AMD cards with over £300 discounts
Overclockers - over 40% discounts on last-gen AMD and Nvidia GPUs
Currys - some genuinely heavy discounts on GeForce GPUs
Laptops Direct - some great GPU deals, but you have to search...

US Black Friday graphics card deals

Gigabyte Eagle Radeon RX 6600 | 8GB GDDR6 | 1,792 stream processors | 2,391MHz Boost | ~~£399.99~~ $249.99 at Best Buy (save $150)
The Radeon RX 6600 makes a lot more sense at this price point than it did at its peak. You'll enjoy smooth 1080p gaming with the settings cranked up pretty high, and the triple fan cooler will ensure the card runs cool and quiet too. There are more powerful cards out there, but this offers impressive value for money all the same.View Deal

MSI Mech RX 6600 XT | 8GB GDDR6 | 2,048 shaders | 2,602MHz | ~~$349.99~~ $259.99 at Newegg (save $90 after rebate)
Again, the smart money is buying AMD graphics cards at the low end of the GPU market. The RX 6600 XT is both cheaper and faster than the RTX 3060, despite losing out on the memory front. Don't be fooled by that 12GB vs. 8GB thing.View Deal

Gigabyte Eagle Radeon RX 6650 XT | 8GB GDDR6 | 2,048 stream processors | 2,635MHz boost | ~~$299.99~~ $264.99 at Newegg (save $15)
This doesn't sound like such a crazy price from the Newegg listing, but trust me, it's one the best we've seen in, literally, years. The original version of this card launched for $379, competing with the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3060. Today, the slightly faster RX 6650 XT version is less than the price of most RTX 3050s. Let that sink in for a moment. And it's a triple-fan cooler from a trusted manufacturer.View Deal

XFX RX 6700 XT Speedster SWFT309 | 12GB GDDR6 | 2,560 shaders | 2,581MHz Boost | ~~$519.99~~ $419.99 at Amazon (save $100)
I am so over XFX's naming scheme for its graphics cards but suffice to say that this is almost identical to the one below, but with a slightly lower Boost clock. Though how much difference that will make in gaming will be negligible. This one's cheaper though, which is always important.View Deal

Gigabyte RX 6700 XT Eagle | 12GB GDDR6 | 2,560 shaders | 2,581MHz Boost | ~~$549.99~~ $419.99 at Newegg (save $130)
This RX 6700 XT is cheaper than the lowest cost RTX 3060 Ti we've found, and delivers the same rasterized gaming performance. Ray tracing, it's admittedly slower, but honestly, you're probably not going to want to turn RT on with the Nvidia card, either. This is a quality mid-range card, with a serious triple-fan cooler to boot. View Deal

XFX RX 6700 XT Speedster Qick | 12GB GDDR6 | 2,560 shaders | 2,622MHz Boost | ~~$549.99~~ $429.99 at B&H Photo (save $120)
The Radeon RX 6700 XT is a great mid-range offering that can take the fight to the RTX 3060 Ti and win, or be close enough as to not matter, excluding ray tracing at any rate. Given this tends to be cheaper than Nvidia's card, this is where the sensible money is. Not a huge saving here, but it all helps.View Deal

Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti Eagle | 8GB GDDR6 | 4,864 shaders | 1,695MHz Boost | ~~$549.99~~ $449.99 at Newegg (save $50)
This is as cheap as we've found the RTX 3060 Ti anywhere this Prime Day, but with the highest boost clock of any. The price is still frustratingly above MSRP, but this is still a great graphics card right now, and won't let you down even up to top 1440p settings.View Deal

ASRock RX 6800 XT Phantom | 16GB GDDR6 | 4,608 shaders | 2,310MHz Boost | ~~$639.99~~ $534.99 at Newegg (save $105)
When they first launched, the RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT went head-to-head and could barely be separated. That means, so long as ray tracing isn't right at the top of your must-have list (it really shouldn't be) then opting for the cheaper AMD card is possibly the smarter choice.View Deal

Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC | 10GB GDDR6X | 8,704 Shaders | 1,800MHz Boost | ~~$839.99~~ $759.99 at Newegg (save $80)
This is the original take on the RTX 3080, which means you get 10GB of GDDR6X and 8,704 CUDA Cores—256 less than you get with the slightly newer 12GB version of the GPU. Importantly, you can max everything out with this card, even at 4K, and enjoy some serious high-end gaming. View Deal

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UK Black Friday graphics card deals

MSI RX 6650 XT | 8GB GDDR6 | 2,048 shaders | 2,694MHz Boost | ~~£454.99~~ £359.98 at Amazon (save £95.01)
With performance well ahead of the RTX 3060 the AMD mainstream cards are the outstanding deals of this year. In fact, these cards aren't far shy of an RTX 3060 Ti, and those cards are still north of the £500 mark.View Deal

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Graphics card hierarchy

Every new GPU generation offers new features and possibilities. But rasterized rendering is still the most important metric for general gaming performance across the PC gaming world. Sure, Nvidia GPUs might well be better at the ray tracing benchmarks they more or less instigated, but when it comes to standard gaming performance AMD's latest line up can certainly keep pace.

It's also worth noting that the previous generation of graphics cards do still have something to offer, with something like the GTX 1650 Super able to outpace a more modern RTX 3050 in most benchmarks.

We're not saying you should buy an older card in 2022, but it's worth knowing where your current GPU stacks up, or just knowing the lie of the land. But there is also the fact there will be gaming rigs on sale with older graphics cards over the next few days, and if they're cheap enough they may still be worth a punt as a cheap entry into PC gaming.

We've benchmarked all the latest GPUs of this generation, and have tracked their performance against the previous generation in terms of 3DMark Time Spy Extreme scores. Where we don't have the referential numbers for an older card we have used the average index score from the UL database. These figures track alongside an aggregated 1440p frame rate score from across our suite of benchmarks.

Graphics card benchmarks — (Image credit: Future)

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MSRP comparison

Here's a list of the manufacturer set retail prices (MSRP), or recommended retail price (RRP), for most the latest graphics cards. For the most part, these are the set prices for the stock or reference versions of these cards, if applicable, and not representative of overclocked or third-party graphics cards, which may well be priced higher.

Nvidia