Sometimes I pity the rich. They miss out on the first phase of Black Friday shopping, the dreaming part where you pick out all that you would like to get if you had the money. Then you get real and remove the dream products from your list and start getting real and the chore/fun of picking what to will actually buy comes. Comparing graphics cards is not so hard compared to comparing mice or laptops or monitors.

I guess I seriously need to look for a new GPU (graphics card) and just as seriously NOT look at anything else, but but.... how about this or that or a new or a bigger or smaller or faster or more power efficient or or... Fun times!

Dream GPU: RTX 4070 (Fast, good at RT, enough VRAM, power efficient aaand expensive)
What I will actually buy: Something for under €500 for sure, preferrably far far under but must be enough of an upgrade or not worth it.

What gaming related hardware will you buy? What is tempting you but you will, probably, not buy?

Eww, Nvidia.

But unless people are still making single slot video cards that don't require advanced connections, I'm going to stick with this stuff I have until it dies.

It's certainly not cheap, but the prices have dropped a bit recently... I know because I recently got one myself (for around $600-ish) :P. Single slot cards are a big ask in this day and age. Rather compact and powerful ITX-compatible dual slots, not that much to be honest. Thermals will obviously be worse than on dual/triple fan cards, but you can get some rather potent single fan GPUs these days.

In no way have I decided on Nvidia, Intel or AMD yet.

It seems very few shops started yet so do I wait or do I strike now on the only decent deal so far. I think I will wait and see.

I see good prices on some monitors as long as you stay under 4K. Cheapest here is €620 including VAT and P&P (€500 without taxes = U$D540)

Urgh, that doesn't sound like a good deal at all... the discounts haven't reached you yet, looks like.

I'll be happy with a better cpu cooler (having recently got a bargain 5600xt from an old goglodyte) at a cheaper price than now. Maybe some more / better ram too.

You can get an RX 6400 from Sapphire with a single slot width and no power connectors required. That's roughly GTX 1650 levels of performance, which isn't great in 2023, but assuming you are currently running a single slot card it might be faster than what you have.

Yeah, that's probably a mild upgrade over my WX 3100/Lexa class.

EDIT: Added amount of VRAM

Hmm... What to choose or should I wait and see... My crystal ball just looks like a glass ball to me and tells me nothing.

These are some GPU models for under €400 in Finland today I have looked at. All prices include 24% VAT (value added tax). To get prices in U$D, multiply by 0.80645 to remove the tax then multiply by the latest exchange rate $1.09 for €1

AMD
RX 6700 XT (12GB) for €330 -- Powerful and nice but I had hoped for a tenner or three cheaper.
RX 7600 (8GB) for €269 -- Clearly weaker than the above but also much cheaper.

Intel
A770 (16GB) for €300 -- Lots of VRAM.
A750 (8GB) for €230 -- Has to be considered at that price.

Nvidia
RTX 4060 (8GB) for €305 -- Hmm
RTX 3060 12GB for €300 -- Eh, 50% more VRAM than the above model. (The 8 & 6GB models are a no no)

The above list chosen due to decent performance for the money.

I had a quick look at some prices in Germany and several GPUs can be found cheaper there, more so than their lower VAT. Miff!

Can you not easily / freely import from germany (free in the sense of border duty tax etc)?

I upgraded from a 1080 Ti and decided against the 4070 specifically because of the lacking VRAM. 1080 Ti had 11 gigs. That would have been a whopping 1 GB upgrade. So no dice. The most demanding games can easily take 10+ gigs these days. If the 4070 had at least 14 gigs, I would probably have taken it for much cheaper than the 4080 I ended up getting. But eh.. an extra year or two without an upgrade was probably worth it.

Many shops do not send abroad anymore, not even within the union. Also, there are a lot of more GPU offers incoming next week and I have high hopes for especially two shops.

Personally I play on 1080p only so 8GB minimum and 10GB+ preferred should suffice. I really would prefer more than 8GB but I also need to have money for food.

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Even if this is of little interest to anyone else, it helps me clear my thoughts.

Might pull the plug on a Rx6600, saw it around 180€ a couple of times, kind of a decent priced card finally. That is probably a very nice upgrade over the old Rx550 performance, if I had to guess close to 3x 3d performance.
That said, the Rx6400 is a weird card, it's a laptop part adapted to desktop if memory isn't failing me. It lacks some video decoders and encoders as it's made to work in tandem with integrated graphics.

It's not that expensive, saw the non-low profile version at 125€ a couple of times but wouldn't touch it for a "normal" desktop build even if it was free.

It is times like this when I wish graphics cards were like cars; having identifiable names, instead of a worthless string of numbers; an actual model name to associate with like back in the 90s; the Matrox Millennium, the Diamond Stealth, so on.

Readily, easily identified to a line of specification.

If you're looking for a bargain, the 3060 is also quite a capable card for 1080p (and currently no.1 in the, ehmn... hot water vapor hardware survey). If performance is not satisfactory, worst case scenario you can resort to DLSS in the future, which looks arguable better than FSR (even 2.0)... or you could always switch to AMD if so inclined.

Agreed the situation was a lot better in those days, but the only real indication of a GPU tier these days is its power draw. Don't let marketing fool you.