I might review and build a lot of PCs with very expensive parts, but when it comes to my own build at home, I'm much more frugal. I'm more comfortable with the idea of spending $500 on a capable graphics card than $1,200 on something extraordinary, and if that means turning down my graphics settings, so be it. And you can forget about the RTX 5090—I could travel half the globe for less.
So when it comes to the Cyber Monday graphics card deals, there's really only one option I have my eyes on. It's this, a PowerColor RX 9070 Reaper for $520—at its lowest-ever price on Amazon.
- We're curating all the Cyber Monday PC gaming deals right here
Here's why I'm into this card. Firstly, you don't have to worry about running out of VRAM mid-game and seeing your frame rate dip. This has 16 GB of GDDR6 to play with. Similarly, it's a bit of peace of mind to score lots of VRAM when the memory market is generally, um, bad. This isn't the fastest graphics memory on the planet, but a 256-bit memory bus and a reasonable speed of 20 Gbps keep the GPU well fed, nevertheless.
Using the same silicon as the XT version, the RX 9070 has eight fewer Compute Units (CUs). That makes for a core count reduction of 12.5%. Now compare that with the reduction in price while this sale is active, 13.3%, and the cheaper RX 9070 is actually pretty good value for once. At MSRP, the RX 9070 is only 8% cheaper than the XT—hence why you sorta need a deal like this to make it worthwhile.
That slight reduction in core counts is felt throughout performance testing, with the RX 9070 always falling a bit short of its bigger sibling. Though it's often ahead of the RTX 5070 with 12 GB of VRAM, and often a step above the previous generation cards of a similar ilk. Generally, you can expect great 1440p performance and workable performance at 4K, especially with FSR upscaling or tweaking graphics presets.
This PowerColor Reaper card requires two 8-pin power connectors, which should be easy enough to sort from any capable power supply. You only need a 650 W PSU to keep it powered on, though you might want to go a little higher, as PSU prices are pretty good right now and you'll leave yourself a little extra headroom. I'd recommend this $110 ASRock 1000 W for a slightly overkill option.
That said, you can also undervolt AMD cards pretty easily, so you might not need loads of headroom from the power supply.
Altogether, I'd be pretty happy with this card powering my rig for the next half-decade. You can't tell what games will demand in future, or if any card will be truly ready for them, but this RX 9070 is about as prepared as one can get for a little over $500.
👉View all of Amazon's graphics card deals👈
1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070
2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB
3. Best budget: Intel Arc B570
4. Best mid-range: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
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