Black Friday graphics card deals 2022: pixel pushers in stock and discounted
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 in 2021, or even when most of today’s high-end graphics cards launched back in 2020, 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 (opens in new tab) released and the RTX 4080 (opens in new tab) coming very soon, and the newly announced RX 7900 XT/X (opens in new tab) cards landing in December.
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 (opens in new tab) 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 (opens in new tab) than an RTX 3060 Ti (opens in new tab). 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:
In the UK:
US Black Friday graphics card deals
UK Black Friday graphics card deals
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.
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
- RTX 4090 – $1,599 | £1,699
- RTX 4080 16GB – $1,199 | £1,269
- RTX 3090 Ti – $1,999 | ~£1,999
- RTX 3090 – $1,499 | £1,399
- RTX 3080 Ti – $1,199 | £1,049
- RTX 3080 – $699 | £649
- RTX 3070 Ti – $599 | £529
- RTX 3070 – $499 | £469
- RTX 3060 Ti – $399 | £349
- RTX 3060 – $329 | £299
- RTX 3050 – $249 | £239
AMD
- RX 6950 XT – $1,099 | ~£1,060
- RX 6900 XT – $999 | ~£770
- RX 6800 XT – $649 | ~£600
- RX 6800 – $579 | ~£530
- RX 6750 XT – $549 | ~£530
- RX 6700 XT – $479 | ~£420
- RX 6650 XT – $399 | ~£389
- RX 6600 XT – $379 | ~£320
- RX 6600 – $329 | ~£299
- RX 6500 XT – $199 | ~£180
