It's been too long since I've last written an article about building a budget gaming PC. As summer approaches though and with Steam's summer sales just around the corner, some new people will be wanting to get into PC gaming.
With that being said, I wanted to throw together a list of the five best used graphics cards that you can get for a great budget gaming build. This prices shown here don't include shipping costs or taxes as that can vary depending on where you live.
Let's get into it!
RX 580 4GB
The RX 580 4GB is one of the absolute best graphics cards that you can find used for under $100. If you have the extra money, getting the 8GB variant is highly preferred but you'll almost never see those going for less than $100 on the used marketplace. The RX 580 is great budget card and with this you should expect to be able to play most games at high/ultra settings at 1080p 60fps. Some newer games will have to be set down to medium to achieve 60fps, but this card is more than capable for any budget gaming PC.
RX 480 4GB
The RX 480 holds a special place in my heart because it's the graphics card that I personally have in my budget gaming PC. It's as close as you can get performance wise to an RX 580 while not actually being an RX 580. It's built on a slightly older architecture, but can still hold it's own when it comes to modern games. If you can find them for a great price like this one here, it'll serve you well for modern games.
RX 570 4GB
The RX 570 is by far one of the most popular budget gaming graphics cards out there. They're highly praised among gamers for their price to performance ratio. The RX 570 performs slightly worse than it's big brother, the RX 580, but with a savings of around $20-$30 on average over the RX 580. If you're fine with sticking to medium/high settings for most newer games, you'll be quite pleased with the RX 570.
GTX 970 4GB
The GTX 970 4GB is the best Nvidia graphics card that you can find for less than $100. Plus if I didn't include at least one Nvidia graphics card on this list, someone would probably be upset lol. For all intents and purposes, it has equal performance to the RX 570. It's better than the RX 570 in some games but worse than it in others. It costs a bit more than the RX 570, but if you're wanting to go the Nvidia route and are on a budget, it definitely comes recommended.
RX 560 4GB
Last up is the RX 560. The RX 560 is much more of a step down from the RX 570 performance wise than the RX 570 was from the RX 580. The reason I'm including it on this list is because it has one benefit here that the other cards on this list don't have, it doesn't need external power. The RX 560 only uses 75W of power meaning that it can draw all of it's power directly from the motherboard. If you're building a budget Optiplex gaming build like I did, it'll mean that you don't have to throw down $30-$50 extra for a decent power supply. The downside is of course performance. This card just really isn't capable of playing the hardest to run games like Red Dead Redemption 2 very well, but works beautifully for older AAA titles like GTA V. If you're wanting to play modern games that have come out in the last 2-3 years then you might be disappointed. If you're wanting to play games that are older than that, it might just be what you're looking for. I'd recommend watching benchmark videos of the games you're wanting to play with this card to see if it's right for you.
So that's it! If you have any other suggestions for great graphics cards under $100, feel free to leave them in the comments down below! :)