CHEAP does NOT mean GOOD VALUE - Budget GPUs Explained

Budget GPUs might look cheap, but they’re more expensive than you think for such low-end cards. When is it okay to buy one, and how can you tell if you’re overpaying for yesteryear’s cards?

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:04 Good reasons to buy a bottom-tier GPU
1:30 But they're not a good VALUE
2:42 AMD and Nvidia choose deceptive names
4:59 How to determine performance from benchmarks
7:56 Bottom-tier GPUs are not VALUE GPUs
8:30 Alternative solutions you should try first
10:35 My favourite alternative - Buy USED
12:10 Why do these cards exist then?
13:50 Conclusion

[JarrodsTech]

This applies to gaming laptops too, people often tell me that $500 is too much for a gaming laptop, but this is just how much entry level hardware currently costs. If you go any lower, you're just going to have a bad time trying to run games.

[brandondvorak]

Great content as always LTT! You forgot option 4: Get a job at LTT and get the $5000 Intel extreme upgrade.

[brianwelter]

6:17 Love that Anthony's framerate dropped as he said "consistent from frame to frame"...nice touch!

[alligatorscrublord]

Also consider a 1650 Super, which is a $30-50 price gap from the 1630 for a significant performance boost even from the 1650.

[MarkusPalmHD]

This has been the case for far too long... Informing consumers is an important step towards eliminating this anti-consumer tactic. Great video LTT.

[kpandey]

6:20 is why I love the small touches the LTT team makes to make the video more enjoyable 😂

[karanaugustine]

Now THIS is the kind of video I desperately need to show a friend who is just beginning his journey of building a gaming PC himself. Sometimes there is just so many numbers and letters thrown at a consumer that it becomes difficult for someone who is new to this to understand what they are paying for. Very very helpful! Love the work you and your team does!

[earthling_parth]

This was an awesome video LTT team! Linus, please do one of these videos every year or two around black friday and or school year start. I've been planning to make a secondary rig from my uncle's old Optiplex for a long time but was always delaying it due to the amount of research and effort involved as I don't follow CPU/GPU reviews regularly. Please do more videos like these for people on budget ❤️

[Frey_]

As a budget gamer who built my first pc ever with R5 2600 and Rx580 8gb yesterday, I dived into this information for couple of months to fully understand the art of building your own unit. And I can say I am really satisfied with my research and results based on my budget considering pc parts are 2-3 times more expensive here in our country.

[freddiejohnson]

When I first started PC gaming I always thought cheaper new graphics cards would be better than a slightly older one that's used. Obviously I didn't have much of a clue. But because the lower end market gets so saturated with similar priced cards that are in production for 3 or 4 years it can be very hard for new consumers to tell what's good or not.

[RHYS]

You know a really solid idea for LMG would be to make a YT channel dedicated to Scrapyard Wars and hire a specific team to do it all, along with having regular LTT crew like Linus, Luke, Jake etc be special guests or hosts for the specific Episodes. I bet EVERYONE would want it to come back and I know you've said in the past it's too costly in time & money, this way each team member would have an easier time of obtaining parts with out the pitfall of getting recognised as well generating revenue from an entirely new channel should easily subsidize the cost of doing it. I for one would absolutely love it to come back and have an episode every 2 weeks or so! :)

[figmo]

This is one of the best videos made by LTT ever. More like this please, I regularly use these videos to inform friends/family as the "enthusiast" among them.

[anseljohnson]

I was terrified of buying used hardware for a long time, but that $180 went a lot further as a 1080ti than as a 1650. Especially now that new cards have dropped in price the used is hitting new lows. I have found 1080s for as low as $100 which is just mind boggling.

[Evie]

THANK YOU, people bashing you for telling them to avoid the cheapest stuff are kinda annoying. They just don't get the fact that the cheapest or the lowest end stuff like GPUs are horrible value, and you really are better off going with an older card that's better and often times cheaper.

[arts]

A tip I have for those who are new and are not wanting to go through reviews of GPU’s, there are a lot of performance test videos out there for different CPU and GPU combos. So say for example you are going to get an i5-11400 paired with a 3070, well you could probably find a video of someone using the same combo and testing it in game. Now it’s not gonna be perfect because factors like model of GPU or kind of cooling they have for both GPU and CPU. But it will give you a general idea on how a similar system would perform.

[mangoalias]

i'd love to see more videos in this niche - i've been wanting to build a pc for years but the prospect of massive amounts of research and shortages and spending so much money makes it a daunting challenge for a beginner. this walked through the steps so clearly and it really makes the whole concept approachable. thank you

[shinseitaizen]

Price-to-performance and actual needs, folks. It's all there is.

Great educational video, guys.

[jacobmenchaca]

Would labs be able to make a calculator, where you put the price you pay for a card, and then it will spit out the FPS per dollar? I feel like that would be a good way to compare new/old GPU's that already have been tested by LTT and then consumers can put in prices they find a year or two later.

[matrxzeno]

I went 5 years with a budget single fan, 3GB gtx 1060 and it held up pretty well for what it was. It was my first build so I didn't know very much, but I'm grateful for that card and now I have a much nicer 3060ti!

[DaSyEnTisT]

I miss good old days where mid range GPU made more sense and you could actually save money or have an upgrade path by buying a second one (7600gt was awesome in SLI)