There is no doubt that, for various reasons, the PC hardware price The price of graphics cards has risen quite a bit in recent years, and if there is one component whose price has skyrocketed, it is the graphics card. However, within the price range at which they are sold, it depends a lot on the manufacturer whether a graphics card is more expensive or cheaper, so for this article we have investigated to find out which manufacturer of graphics cards is the most expensive. graphics cards usually sells them cheaper.
A decade ago, you could buy a top-of-the-range graphics card for around 300 Euros, and today you can barely afford an entry-level graphics card with that kind of money. Inflation, the cost of raw materials, investment in R&D and above all the greed of manufacturers have resulted in top-of-the-range graphics cards of the current generation costing over 2,000 Euros. But despite this, assemblers have a certain freedom when it comes to putting a price tag on their custom models, and there are always those who sell them for less than others.
At NVIDIA, the cheapest graphics cards are from Zotac
You already know that both NVIDIA and AMD announce their basic models of each generation of graphics cards, but then the assemblers customize them with their own heatsinks and even apply some factory overclocking to squeeze out a little more performance. Obviously, this means that a model of the same family can be very different between one manufacturer and another, making it have more or less performance, better cooling or less noise.
When we talk about NVIDIA graphics cards, the one that stands out for putting the cheapest models in stores is usually ZotacTheir custom graphics cards tend to have fairly simple designs, without much fanfare, and although they generally work quite well and do not usually cause problems, it must be said that they may be a bit lacking in terms of the quality of materials, at least when compared to other manufacturers that sell the same model but more expensively.
Generally speaking, Zotac graphics cards are usually released at the recommended price from NVIDIA, although depending on the model they may have a small premium. For example, an RTX 4060 has an official price of €335 according to NVIDIA, and currently you can buy Zotac models (specifically the Twin Edge that you see in the image above) for €310.
This same family of graphics cards can be found starting at around €330 from manufacturers such as MSI, PNY or Inno3D, €340 from Gigabyte, €345 from ASUS and, curiously, starting at around €360 from Palit and AORUS. Again, it depends on the specific model because they all tend to have more “advanced” models, with better heatsinks or more factory overclocking that adds to the final price, but in general, Zotac is usually the NVIDIA graphics card manufacturer that sells them the cheapest.
For AMD, Sapphire and XFX tie
When we talk about AMD graphics cards, more or less the same thing happens, except that Lisa Su’s company does not usually sell its own models but, except for a few (few) exceptions, we will only see the custom models from its assemblers in stores.
In this case, and always based on the prices that we usually find in Spanish stores such as Amazon, PcComponentes, Coolmod or VSGamers, Sapphire and XFX are usually the ones that have the cheapest graphics cards, always depending on the family and the specific model (in general what we mean by this is that if you want, for example, an RX 7600 XT, the cheapest model is usually from XFX and Sapphire).
Interestingly, Sapphire graphics cards are usually of very good quality and do not usually cause problems, not in vain is it AMD’s longest-standing and “premium” partner for this segment of the market. However, with XFX it happens a bit like what we told you before about Zotac, although they are decent graphics cards that do not usually cause problems, the quality is usually inferior to that of the others.
Let’s take an example, the same one we mentioned before: you want to buy a Radeon RX 7600 XT. In this case, you can find both the Pulse model from Sapphire and the Speedster from XFX for around 380 euros. From there you have models from PowerColor and Gigabyte for around 390 euros, ASRock and ASUS for around 390€, and so on up.
So there you have it: if you want a cheap graphics card, for NVIDIA you should look for Zotac and for AMD, either Sapphire or XFX.