Beware, some of the Memorial Day graphics card deals aren't as good as they seem

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition graphics card at various angles

(Image credit: Future)

We're already finding loads of Memorial Day PC gaming deals (opens in new tab), and loads that are genuinely worth your time, surprisingly even on graphics cards. However, I have spotted a few that have really riled me up: Here's a PNY GeForce RTX 3060 with $220 off (opens in new tab), for example. Sounds great, right, that's bound to be cheap? In reality it's still demanding $430 of your hard-earned cash—$101 over Nvidia's launch price—because its MSRP is set to an insulting $650.

Look, it's not actually the worst deal in the world for an RTX 3060 right now, simply because the RTX 3060 still hasn't dropped in price enough since the GPU shortage to be worth picking up yet. It's just not as good a deal as it sounds.

There are a bunch of Memorial Day gaming PC deals (opens in new tab) with RTX 3060 GPUs for decent prices, but discrete 3060 cards? Not so much. I found an MSI Ventus RTX 3060 going for $410 (opens in new tab), which is a saving of $60 from that card's original $470 price tag. Not bad, but still nowhere close to Nvidia's launch price. That sort of money should get you the much improved RTX 3060 Ti, really.

A PC gamer can dream.

Here's a reminder of the prices that today's GPUs launched at:

Nvidia

RTX 3090 Ti - $1,999
RTX 3090 FE - $1,499
RTX 3080 Ti FE - $1,199
RTX 3080 FE - $699
RTX 3070 Ti - $599
RTX 3070 - $499
RTX 3060 Ti - $399
RTX 3060 - $329
RTX 3050 - $249

AMD

RX 6950 XT - $1,099
RX 6900 XT - $999
RX 6800 XT - $649
RX 6800 - $579
RX 6750 XT - $549
RX 6700 XT - $479
RX 6650 XT - $399
RX 6600 XT - $379
RX 6600 - $329
RX 6500 XT - $199

Sadly, we rarely find graphics cards selling around these launch prices, but don't count yourself out of that GPU upgrade yet. There is clearly a ton of GPU stock about at retailers right now, and some cards are dipping near, or even below, their launch prices.

Take this AMD RX 6600, which at $300 is suddenly a great option when you're looking at RTX 3060 prices like those mentioned above. Or these two EVGA graphics cards, if you're looking to spend a little (lot) more.

My point is: you shouldn't always take these discounts at face value, whether on a graphics card, headset, gaming PC, or anything else. Some are just fine—even this PNY RTX 3060 isn't dreadful if you're comparing to its price the past 12 months—but some are not as great as they may appear on the surface.

One of the best ways we know to look past sneaky sales tactics is to use price trackers, such as CamelCamelCamel (opens in new tab). That's a tool that tracks Amazon prices, but can be useful even if you're not purchasing on Amazon. Search any product on there and you'll get a decent idea of the going price and past discounts for whatever it is you'd like to buy.

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog from his hometown in Wales in 2017. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things as hardware writer at PCGamesN, where he would later win command of the kit cupboard as hardware editor. Nowadays, as senior hardware editor at PC Gamer, he spends his days reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industry. When he's not writing about GPUs and CPUs, however, you'll find him trying to get as far away from the modern world as possible by wild camping.

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