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1. US GPU deals
2. UK GPU deals
3. GPU benchmarks
Amazon Prime Early Access graphics card deals are here and several are clocking in with pretty decent discounts. It feels like an age since we've been able to buy graphics cards for less than the recommended retail price, but at least some normality has returned to proceedings. The death of Ethereum GPU mining, and new graphics cards from Intel and Nvidia, with AMD's RDNA 3 not far behind, have led to some healthy reductions. Particularly when it comes to AMD's Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs.
The fact that there are new graphics cards coming does have us recommending some caution when it comes to the more expensive cards. There may be some serious reductions on the likes of the RTX 3090 Ti and Radeon RX 6900 XT, but if you're looking at prices that are still over $1,000, you may be better served waiting for the newer cards. They simply promise far better performance for your money than an expensive 30 Series Nvidia GPU or its equivalent.
The only potential problem with holding out for the new cards is that supply always tends to be very tight for a new generation of cards. You may have to wait a while to get your hands on the newest, shiniest thing. And as we saw with the current generation, other factors could mean that you could be asked to overpay as well. Hopefully retailers have learned some tricks to discourage unscrupulous resellers this time around, though.
If you're not an Amazon Prime subscriber already, you can join Amazon Prime to get access to the Prime Early Access deals. Amazon Prime costs $139 for a one-year membership or $14.99 per month. Amazon offers a 30-day free trial, so you can try it out before fully committing.
It's worth noting that the rest of the industry seems to want a slice of Amazon's sales action, so there are discounts from lots of other usual hardware retailers too.
If you're after a full machine, the Amazon Prime Early Access gaming PC and Prime Early Access gaming monitor deals will give make life less stressful. There's also a page with our top picks, and the full selection of Amazon Prime Early access PC gaming deals around today, from TVs to peripherals, and more.
Where are the best Prime Day graphics card deals?
Amazon Prime Early Access graphics card deals
Amazon Prime Early Access UK Graphics Card deals
GPU benchmarks
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.
When is Amazon Prime Early Access 2022?
Amazon Prime Early Access began at 12 am PT, Tuesday October 11, and will run all the way through to 11.59 pm on Wednesday October 12. Expect 48 hours of potential PC gaming deals, before we get into the meatier discounts expected to drop on Black Friday—that's November 25 for anyone willing to wait that long. Truly, Amazon isn't messing around when it says Early Access. In fact, let's just have a deal event every month.
