Price to performance of used graphics cards - July 2019

With the release of new graphics cards some may opt to upgrade to a new one while many others could see an opportunity to hit a bargain on a used graphics card. I've decided to check what are the local prices for used graphics cards and how they relate with price/performance to current new cards.

I used local Polish auction site Allegro.pl (like ebay, just country specific and large amount of goods, should represent EU prices too). I picked only buy now listings for non-faulty graphics cards. I've tried to get 10-20 listings if possible starting from the cheapest - so that the average price is representative yet doesn't include the most expensive offers for given model. Some cards like GTX 1080 Ti do have a large spread where more high-end models are much more expensive than the cheapest like Zotac Mini.

For new card prices I used lowest prices from two local shops - X-Kom and Morele. Do note that some cards have active discounts on them (like an Vega 56 at 1227 zł next to 2311 zł one). The prices are in Polish zloty (PLN, zł).

1 PLN to other currencies EUR 0,23 USD 0,26 GBP 0,21 CAD 0,34 AUD 0,37 ZAR 3,75

For performance metrics I used gpucheck.com average FPS. For RX 400 and 500 models there is no separate score based on VRAM size so I used the same score for both variants - which isn't perfect. For prices I merged matching 400 and 500 models (so RX 470 + RX 570 and alike).

Price comparison of new and used graphics cards

RX 550 has only few listings, mostly for single 2GB cards and one listing for 4GB OEM card. This isn't very popular nor performing GPU so the popularity is low. It wasn't widely used in pre-build systems so OEM parts count is low (or the PCs aren't being dismantled just yet).

RX 460 and RX 560 are more popular. Around 10 listings for 4GB and bit less for 2GB. Some of the offers have more than one GPU available. Medion OEM 2GB card is still available - seen it before in larger quantities.

RX 470 and RX 570 are currently a hot value option and there is a lot of cards available second hand. Some offers have like 10-20 cards in stock. Most of which are made by Sapphire but there are also MSI, Gigabyte, XFX or PowerColor products as well.

For RX 480 and RX 580 it looks similar, although there is bit less offers. Some do however have large (20-50) stock of RX 480 cards so value market should keep on going for quite some time.

RX 590 is relatively new and not so popular GPU. I could find only one listing for a used card. It's not particularity valuable in terms of price/performance.

Vega 56 seems to be in demand and in clearance mode - all listed cards are marked as new and with a big discount (similar price on one of cards at Morele.net). There are no used cards listed. Vega 64 is also in short supply and only few offers, some already get the discount.

GT 1030 is often used in pre-build PCs and some OEM or consumer models can be found on the second hand market, which isn't that big for this model. Only few Zotac, Gainward and MSI models listed below the new cards prices. Do note that some GT 1030 either have older memory or some weird cut down GPU. It's an office card, not really a gaming one... performance similar to AMD Ryzen APUs.

GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti are more popular, although mostly it's one-card offers. Performance isn't great but there are passive or low profile models that do not need additional power connectors. So if you have such requirements - go check those cards out. From what I can see it's mostly MSI and Gigabyte although there are Palit, Asus, Zotac or Inno3D cards too.

GTX 1060 is available in 3GB and 6GB variants and the 3GB variant is often put against RX 570. There is bit more offers than for 1050/Ti and some do have more than one card available. If you are for a budget card - check RX 570 / GTX 1060 3GB comparisons for your games as it may differ.

GTX 1070 is a performance jump, while priced closely to 6GB GTX 1060. The GTX 1070 Ti is more expensive, 250zł or more and not so popular although available offers tend to have multiple cards available (mining usage?) - like Zotac Mini or blower OEM cards.

GTX 1080 can be priced closely to GTX 1070 Ti which is likely due to bigger popularity of this card. There are offers for 10-20 Zotac Mini or 14 x Palit Dual OC cards so those are no personal use offers.

GTX 1080 Ti was the king of performance of the previous Nvidia generation. There is a quite large set of offers. The cheapest ones include larger quantities of Zotac Mini or Inno3D blower cards.

RX 5700, RX 5700 XT and RTX 2060 Super alongside RTX 2070 Super are new cards so only new cards are available and are competing against used cards. Used GTX 1080 is below RX 5700 while used GTX 1080 Ti is bit more expensive and bit better performer than RX 5700 XT. The RTX 2070 Super is bit more expensive, has warranty and new features. If you don't need that and your games work better with GTX 1080 Ti then the used card could be a better value. People that bought Radeon VII for gaming only may feel disappointed with their investment right now. Radeon VII doesn't seems to be very popular and there are no offers for used cards.

Other Turing cards show up in the used cards category but due to young age the price difference is small. There is even an offer for RTX 2080 Ti but it's an HP blower style card - also high end Turing second hand should ring some alarm bells - be sure who, why and what is offering. What's the condition and warranty.

Below you will find a price to performance chart with all used and new cards. You can see which card offers best performance for given budget or what's the cheapest option for given level of performance.

The goal is to have high FPS (high on the Y scale) with low price (left on the X scale). New cards are marked with (N).

RX 460/560, 470/570 and 480/580 use the same FPS data for both VRAM size options as there was no data for each of them. Before purchasing check real world benchmarks, especially for your games of choice. As the FPS data from gpucheck.com is an average from various results it's double the important to check benchmarks and reviews before you make a decision.

And for 1440p:

In the budget category RX 570 is battling GTX 1060 3GB and those cards do land close to each other. However a cheap RX 480/580 4GB could come into play in the same price range while offering better performance. After that the next optimal pick would be GTX 1070 followed by GTX 1080. The GTX 1070 Ti is priced to close to 1080 to be that interesting. As mentioned before GTX 1080 Ti can still be treated as an high end card. It's cheaper than RTX 2070 Super and still wins in some but not every game (will it age faster with the introduction of DX12 games?), has more VRAM but comes with no warranty, no new codecs and no features like tensor cores or ray tracing.

Prices may be different in your country. Check the offers, compare it to some metrics and check which card is a better value.

RkBlog