I'm putting together my first gaming PC with a budget of around £800 and plan to pair it with a Ryzen 5 5600X. Most of the parts are already decided, but I'm stuck choosing between a used RTX 3060 12GB for about £200 and an RX 6700 XT 12GB costing roughly £250–£300.
I currently use a 1080p 25-inch LG ultrawide monitor that I'm happy with and don't plan to replace. The RX 6700 XT appears to deliver noticeably higher frame rates and may offer better longevity, but I'm also interested in ray tracing and improved visual features, where I understand the RTX 3060 may have an advantage.
Since frame rate is important to me, would the RX 6700 XT still be the better choice at 1080p, or does the RTX 3060 make more sense for my preferences? I'm willing to spend up to around £330, but not more than that. Are there any other factors I should consider as someone building their first PC?
3 Answers
Your 1080p monitor doesn’t change the recommendation very much. Both GPUs can handle 1080p well, but the 6700 XT will provide better frame rates and more longevity. The RTX 3060’s advantages are ray tracing, DLSS, and Nvidia-specific software support, while the 6700 XT offers stronger traditional gaming performance and excellent value if the price difference stays within your budget.
The RX 6700 XT is the better choice if you can find one for around £250–£275. It’s roughly 15% faster in normal gaming and should hold up better as newer games become more demanding. At 1080p it may be more performance than you strictly need, but it will give you higher frame rates and more headroom.
The RTX 3060 is worth considering if it’s more than about £100 cheaper or if ray tracing and Nvidia features are especially important to you. However, neither card is ideal for ray tracing in demanding games without lowering settings, and the 6700 XT can use ray tracing too—it just generally performs worse at it than the 3060. For standard rasterized gaming, the 6700 XT is clearly faster.
That makes sense. I’m mainly concerned that choosing the cheaper card now could leave me wanting to upgrade sooner.