Budget GPU battle: GeForce RTX 3050 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT vs Arc A770

It’s the showdown you’ve been waiting for: All three players in the desktop GPU market, going head-to-head in the contentious affordable category. PCWorld contributor Keith May has gathered graphics cards from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel in the sub-$280 price range and placed them in a battle royale for your budget bucks. If you want to see them face off, check out the latest PCWorld video on our YouTube channel.

This head-to-head fight is made possible because the 8GB Asrock Arc A770 recently hit a super-low price on sale, making Intel’s top-of-the-line card comparable with the GeForce RTX 3050 and Radeon RX 6650 XT from Nvidia and AMD, respectively. So while you might not be able to find these specific cards at a price below $280, there should be something in that price range that’s along the same lines whenever you’re deal-hunting. The exact cards Keith tested are as follows:

• Intel – Asrock Arc A770 Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC
• AMD – MSI Radeon RX 6650 XT MECH 2X 8G OC
• Nvidia – Zotac GAMING GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC 8GB

As it happens, all three cards are at or below the $280 price at the links above, as of the time of publishing this article.

The full video has breakdowns of the test rig and our benchmark games, which are: Cyberpunk 2077, Horizon Zero Dawn, Borderlands: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Forspoken, Returnal, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Rainbow Six Siege, Hitman 2, and Watch Dogs Legion. If you absolutely can’t spare ten minutes, here’s the general conclusion. All three cards performed shockingly well given the price points we’re looking at, but the AMD RX 6650 XT is the overall winner, even with weaker performance on VRAM-heavy titles. There’s nuance involved depending on the game and screen resolution, however, so watch the full video if you can.

For more consumer-friendly dives into the graphics card market, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube!