Best Used Graphics Cards: Value Picks for Every Budget

Graphics cards are still very expensive, and one of the best ways to get a low-cost yet capable GPU is by turning to the second-hand market. Thousands of used graphics cards are changing hands every day, and in many cases, it's the only way to get a decent GPU for under $180. Today, we'll be looking extensively at the used market and breaking down the best options for buyers.

There are many places to buy a used GPU, but one of the best for gathering data is eBay, which has extensive price history for completed sales. In this article, we've taken the average price for the last 100 completed sales of each used graphics card model on eBay to determine the "typical" price.

Naturally, on the used market, depending on your luck, you might find cheaper or more expensive models, but these prices are generally accurate. We've also removed listings for special edition GPUs, which are usually priced well above normal, broken GPUs sold for parts, and any scam-like massive outliers.

There are tons of products on the used market, too, so our focus will be on the last three generations of GPUs spanning about 5 years of releases: For Nvidia, that's the GeForce GTX 16, RTX 20, 30, and 40 series, and for AMD, it's the Radeon 5000, 6000, and 7000 series.

High-end GPUs used? Not a great deal

You can currently buy premium current-generation graphics cards on the used market. Models like the GeForce RTX 4090 and Radeon RX 7900 XTX are available, but they just aren't amazing value. For example, the RTX 4090's current average used price is $1,578, which is actually above the MSRP.

Of course, to buy a new 4090, you're looking at spending over $1,800 at the moment, but going used is hardly a "deal."

The same can be said for most products that are over $700 second-hand, like the RTX 4080 at $860 or even the RTX 3090, which is a little over $700. Unless you need the VRAM of the RTX 3090 for some form of workstation application, used RTX 3090s just don't make sense compared to the 4070 Super or 4070 Ti.

Used graphics cards around $500 to $600

If you're looking to spend about $600 used, there's the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and the Radeon RX 7900 XT, both right around $600, with the Radeon card about $15 more on average at $616.

This is $80 to $120 savings compared to buying new, so you could make the case that it probably isn't worth it.

A new graphics card in the $600 range gets you an RTX 4070 Super, and the 4070 Ti is less than 10% faster. The 7900 XT is ~15% faster for rasterization, but the 4070 Super is ~15% faster at ray tracing on average. So, in the $600 range, we don't think the value on the used market is good enough to consider.

Where things start to improve is around $500, where more options become available. In this tier, there are five GPUs: the RTX 4070 Super at $516, the RTX 4070 at $479, the RTX 3080 Ti at $487, the RX 7900 GRE for $484, and the RX 6950 XT for $461.

If we're purely focused on rasterization, the Radeon RX 6950 XT is the standout deal. It's a little faster than the GeForce options and a little cheaper, usually resulting in at least a 10% cost-per-frame advantage, while also packing more VRAM at 16GB. If you're not overly interested in ray tracing, that's what we'd get.

But with all three GeForce models delivering more ray tracing performance and additional features like DLSS, we'd probably go with the RTX 3080 Ti. It has the same VRAM as the RTX 4070 but typically comes in faster, though being from a previous generation, these models will be more used than you'd see from a 40 series card.

Again, just be careful that you don't spend too much on either of these options. The RTX 4070 is $550 new, so with the 3080 Ti at $487 used, it is over 20% cheaper per frame, which is a nice position. But we saw several models in that $530-$550 range, at which point you may as well consider a new GPU. On the flip side, there was the occasional model priced below $400.

Used graphics cards around $400

At a little over $400 used, there are three main choices: the RTX 3080 12GB at $416, the RX 7800 XT at $432, and the RX 6900 XT at $422. In this price range new, we have the RTX 4060 Ti and RX 7700 XT, so the used market is generally providing at least 20% better cost per frame.

The best option here is the RTX 3080 12GB, which in our benchmarks came in at a similar level of performance to the RX 6900 XT, but it's a little cheaper used, putting it in a better position for value when you also factor in ray tracing and DLSS. However, if you're considering the 3080 12GB, you may as well also consider the models available around $350, which we'll get to now...

So if you have about $350 to spend, there are four choices: the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB at $377, the RTX 3080 10GB at $360, the RX 7700 XT at $345, and the RX 6800 XT at $355. It makes little to no sense to buy the current generation models used, especially the 4060 Ti 16GB, given you could buy one new for about $430 at the moment, just a 15% premium to get a new one with a proper warranty.

If you were considering the RTX 3080 12GB, the 3080 10GB is the better value card in terms of cost per frame. The 12GB card is ~5% faster on average, but is priced 15% higher on the used market, generally speaking.

These days, though, you'll also have to factor in VRAM to some extent. 12GB is a more comfortable position, and in this performance class, there are usable settings that will utilize additional VRAM. Is 2GB more VRAM and 5% more performance worth an extra $56? We think that's a difficult sell, so on the Nvidia side, we'd be leaning towards the 3080 10GB.

Now there's also the 6800 XT, which offers about the same level of rasterization performance as the 3080 10GB at a similar price. If you don't care about ray tracing, it's a toss-up between the 16GB VRAM buffer on the 6800 XT versus access to DLSS upscaling on the 3080.

Factoring in ray tracing performance, the 3080 is about 30% faster in our latest testing, though over time it will get harder to fit ray-traced titles into the 10GB VRAM buffer. We could go either way here – there's a balance of pros and cons between the 3080 10GB and 6800 XT.

Used graphics cards around $250 to $300

At around $300, we have the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB at $306, the RTX 3070 Ti at $311, and the RX 6800 at $312. The Radeon card is a clear standout, offering a small increase in rasterization performance over the 3070 Ti and double the VRAM at the same price.

The GeForce model is faster at ray tracing and supports DLSS, but 8GB of RAM is becoming too small for ray tracing in many modern titles. It's hard to see the 3070 Ti as a strong option for ray tracing – and just like we say with new GPUs, anything priced over $300 should have more than 8GB – so it's even less acceptable on the used market. The Radeon RX 6800 is one of the cheapest 16GB GPUs you can get and will allow you to run at max texture quality for years to come.

Around $250 is where we start to see more competition on the used market. Available for $265 is the RTX 2080 Ti or the Radeon 6750 XT, there's also the $258 Radeon 7600 XT, the $251 RTX 4060, and both the Radeon 6700 XT and RTX 3070 at around $243.

Once again, the latest generation models command quite a price premium, so if you're a used shopper focused on performance and don't mind taking the risk on a card that's probably been used longer, it's hard to justify the 4060 or 7600 XT at roughly a $50 discount below new pricing.

What we also see in this price range is the premium shoppers place on the additional VRAM of the RTX 2080 Ti. Both this GPU and the RTX 3070 offer similar performance, but the 2080 Ti packs 11GB compared to just 8GB on the 3070. That difference will set you back about $20, and if you want to go with GeForce, we'd say that small premium is worth it given what we're seeing with 8GB cards these days.

On the Radeon side, the 6750 XT and 6700 XT are similar in cost per frame, so the $20 premium to go with the 6750 XT roughly corresponds to the extra performance you get. But generally, these cards offer about the same performance as the 2080 Ti, and VRAM is similar as well, with 12GB vs 11GB, so the cost per frame differences between them are negligible.

If we had $265 to spend, we'd probably go with the RTX 2080 Ti as it supports DLSS, the main differentiating factor in this segment right now.

Used graphics cards around $200

Between $170 and $230, there are 10 GPU options, but many of them aren't worth considering. The worst cost-per-frame choices include the RTX 3060, both the 12GB and 8GB variants, as well as the RTX 2080 Super, RX 7600, and RTX 3060 Ti. Of this bunch, the 3060 12GB probably has the most going for it with its VRAM capacity, but it's hard to make a case for any of the others.

There are five better models to consider instead: the GeForce RTX 2080 at $192, the Radeon RX 6700 at $203, the RTX 2070 Super at $182, the RX 6650 XT at $178, and the RX 6600 XT at $167.

On the Nvidia side, the RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 Super are priced to match their performance right now. The 2080 is $10 more expensive, or about 5% more, and in our benchmarks, it is 5-10% faster. We also see a similar pattern with the Radeon 6600 XT and 6650 XT: the 6650 XT is $10 more, or a 7% premium for 7% more performance. The RX 6700 has a similar cost per frame but isn't widely available, with just a handful of used units sold this month.

There isn't much separating these. The RTX 2080 is the oldest card, but it usually has the best cost per frame by a few percent, though the margins aren't significant enough to make it a standout. The main GeForce and Radeon models feature 8GB of VRAM, so there's no difference there, and ray tracing in this performance class is a no-go. The GeForce cards do support DLSS. We'd probably lean towards the RTX 2080 in this price class, though the 6600 XT is also a good choice if you'd rather spend $20 less.

And the good news is that around $200, with so many options available, we're getting about 30% more performance at the same price compared to new GPUs. A couple of tiers higher, and we're only looking at about a 20% advantage, so the lower we go in price, the better the used market becomes.

Used graphics cards around $150

By far, the best value choice here from a performance standpoint is the Radeon RX 5700 XT. In our benchmarks earlier this year, we found the 5700 XT was 8% faster than the RTX 2070 for 1440p gaming.

There are many other choices around $120 to $160 – you can pretty much rule out the RTX 3050 in both its 8GB and 6GB variants immediately. These are poor-performing cards that just aren't worth the asking price used – you'll get much better value from other models. The remaining options are the GeForce RTX 2070 at $155, the 2060 Super at $146, and the RTX 2060 at $127. On the Radeon side, we have the RX 6600 at $148, the RX 5700 XT at $130, and the RX 5700 at $120, all average prices used.

On the used market, 5700 XTs are 17% cheaper, making them 23% better in terms of cost per frame – and generally, the 2070 and 2060 Super have a similar cost per frame. So the clear standout is the 5700 XT in value.

However, 5700 XTs were some of the most popular mining cards during the crypto mining boom a few years ago, and many of these used cards could be heavily worn relative to some of the models that were better for pure gaming workloads. We think this has been factored into the price, so how great of a deal it is depends on how much risk you want to take on a heavily used model.

If you're not willing to take the risk, a used RTX 2060 Super is probably the next best choice, with a small edge over the RX 6600 in value and the benefit of DLSS support. We probably wouldn't consider the (non-Super) RTX 2060. It has just 6GB of VRAM and it's also about 15-20% slower than the 2060 Super – and again, both are far better than the RTX 3050, which is always a bad choice.

Used graphics cards around $100 or below

In this price range there are six options, five of which are from three generations ago: the GTX 1660 Ti at $102, the GTX 1660 Super at $95, the GTX 1660 at $85, as well as the RX 5600 XT at $95, the RX 5500 XT 8GB at $90, and the RX 6400 at $97.

The Radeon 6400 is an awful deal considering it's much slower than the others, but it's typically sold at a premium used as most cards are low profile, and some buyers desire that for compact builds that need a basic GPU.

The fastest card below $100 by far is the Radeon RX 5600 XT, which is the same price as the GTX 1660 Super but performs ~25% better, generally trading blows with the tier-above RTX 2060 that goes for $30 more. But it faces the same drawbacks as the RX 5700 XT, where a significant number of these models were likely used for mining. We're not saying that every card will have suffered that fate, but it's more likely to be heavily used than the other models. But if you are willing to risk it, the performance on offer is undeniably stronger than the GTX 16 series.

All three GTX 1660 models are currently priced at a cadence that matches their performance differences. The 1660 Ti is 5-10% faster than the 1660 Super, and it costs 10% more right now. The 1660 Super is 10% better than the GTX 1660 and costs 10% more. So if you'd rather not risk a 5600 XT, in the 16 series, it's mostly about picking how much you want to spend. All variants pack 6GB of VRAM, the same as the 5600 XT.

The Radeon 5500 XT 8GB is also in the mix at $90, but it's much slower than the 5600 XT (at least 30% slower) for just a $5 saving. What you gain is an additional 2GB of VRAM, which could come in handy in some modern games that look bad or don't run well on 6GB cards – but that's a large performance trade-off. If you're worried about VRAM and can stretch your budget to $120, the RX 5700 is a much better buy. It's over 50% faster for a 30% premium while maintaining 8GB of VRAM.

A discrete GPU for $70? Here are your options.

At the bottom of the market, we have the 4GB GPUs: the GTX 1650 Super at $77, the GTX 1650 at $72, the RX 6500 XT 4GB at $75, and the RX 5500 XT 4GB at $69 – nice. Buyers are pretty much saying at this point that 4GB of VRAM is not enough outside of basic titles and aren't willing to spend much more than $80 for that level of capability.

The best value choices here are either the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB or the GeForce GTX 1650 Super for entry-level gaming, with the Radeon card offering somewhat better value. While these cards are lacking modern features, you're still much better off buying a used model than attempting to grab a new card. Anything below $180 on the new market is generally pretty bad, and you can't even really get something for $70, so as always, going second-hand is king if you're on a tight budget.

What We Learned

Overall, the used market remains a vibrant and healthy place to purchase a graphics card, with many options available at sensible prices. Generally, models are priced according to their performance and obvious features like VRAM capacity. However, as always, there are some outliers that should be avoided.

As you might expect, models from several generations ago are cheaper, while newer models are a bit more expensive. But if you're willing to take the risk on GPUs from a few generations ago, you might find great value.

We found that the used market is especially strong in the lower price ranges, where there's more competition and greater discounts compared to new GPUs at the same performance level. Around $250 or lower is the sweet spot, where you can often get a card that's upwards of 30% faster for the same price as a new GPU.

Even at $150, you can find graphics cards that are quite capable in today's games, albeit with reduced quality settings. And at around $100, there's no point in even considering a new GPU – the second-hand market is simply that much better.

Where we wouldn't recommend buying used is if you're planning to spend more than $400. Most of the higher-end segments are stocked with current-generation models, and at best, you might get an extra tier of performance by going used. But you'd be sacrificing a warranty and gambling on a card in unknown condition. The higher the price, the smaller the gap between new and used becomes.