Best Prime Day Graphics Card Deals: Upgrade Your GPU and Save With These Discounts

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Amazon's October Prime Day event starts tomorrow, but hundreds of major deals are already live across a variety of categories, including deals on many of our favorite graphics cards. These early Prime Day GPU deals are available to shop now at Amazon, as well as through other retailers offering rival sales like Best Buy and Walmart.

Graphics cards, also known as GPUs or graphics processing units, are a must-have if you want to use your PC for graphics-heavy activities like design, video editing and playing games. They don't come cheap, so sales events like these are key to finding an affordable graphics card. Want to save even more this Prime Day? You could earn a $150 Amazon gift card instantly on approval of the Prime Visa card.

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Our team of experts has combed through all the deals to find several that could last until Prime Day. These offers could also end at any time though, so act fast if you see something you want.

Best Prime Day graphics card deals

This RTX 4070 Ti is an incredibly powerful graphics card with a decent overclock and great output. It's not the best on the market, but it is up there, and this discount's not bad at all.

The RTX 3060 is a last-gen graphics card, and at the weaker end of the pool to boot, but it's still capable of impressive performance. As long as you're not looking for 4K on something like Call of Duty, this thing will do the job.

This is a great graphics card for anyone looking for a more budget option. It's from the last generation of GPUs from Nvidia, but it's at a great price, and will let you enjoy decent visuals, especially on older and indie games.

This is an excellent and fairly recent graphics card that'll see you gaming on high settings for years to come, and far longer than that if you don't mind dipping down to medium.

What is the best GPU?

The best graphics cards offer added speed for graphics-heavy computer activity like photo and video editing or gaming. What graphics card is right for you will depend a little on your specific needs. For example, if you do professional video editing, you may want to invest in a higher-end graphics card designed to handle the pro level of graphics. If you're looking for something that can just improve gaming and photo editing, a budget option may work fine for you. Most importantly, as CNET's Lori Grunin put it, "The most powerful GPU on the planet won't make a difference if your CPU is the bottleneck (and vice versa) -- think overkill."

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What makes a good graphics card deal?

The price range for graphics cards can vary wildly, from $90 to closer to $2,000 or sometimes more. There will also be a lot of price variation on cards that use the same GPU. This fluctuation in price points is influenced by features like cooling systems and design as well as function. Because these tend to be pricey units, finding any amount of discount can sometimes feel like a good deal, but pay attention to what you actually get for that price.

Where are the best Amazon Prime Day graphics card deals in the US?

Right now we're seeing a modest number of graphics card discounted on Amazon itself. We've found the best deals over at the anti-Prime Day offerings at Best Buy and Walmart.

How we choose the best Prime Day graphics card deals

Many of us here at CNET have covered shopping events for several years, including Black Friday, Prime Day, Memorial Day and countless other sales. In that time, we've learned how to spot the best deals among a sea of thousands of superficial offers and scams, and we surface only the best offers from trusted retailers. When choosing graphics card deals to show you, we look for real discounts, quality reviews and remaining sale time. 

• Real discounts mean genuine savings. We check pricing history for products listed as on sale, so we know when it's a case of an inflated list price rather than an actual discount. 
• Quality reviews and testing are super important for any product. A discount isn't worthwhile if it results in a subpar product experience, no matter how much you saved. 
• Remaining sale time is important, too. Some deals are around for only a short time or may be limited in supply. If that's the case, we'll let you know upfront so you don't come back to the deal later only to be disappointed. 

Read more: 50 Unique Gifts for People Who Have Everything

Are there graphics card deals before Prime Day? 

Absolutely. A lot of the graphics card deals that occur during Prime Day aren't tied to the members-only event specifically. That means that they can start before the event and end after the event finishes, although we expect there to be more variety on sale from Oct. 8 when the event officially starts. So, you can nab one at a discount right now or wait for the main event.