Nvidia’s 2014 GTX 970 Proves To Be Best Value GPU on eBay During Shortage

TomsHardwre GPU pricing index shows how overpriced are the latest graphics cards in this inflated market, even if you manage to find one at good price, due to many scams going on you could fall into one of those.

Based on their GPU benchmarks hierarchy, and combined with current (the past week) eBay prices, an FPS-to-dollar metric was generated to see which cards might provide good value. The winner was Nvidia’s much older GPU dated back in late 2014, the Geforce GTX 970.

The GTX 970 sports the Maxwell architecture, with 5.2 billion transistors fabricated on TSMC’s 28nm high-performance node.The chip also measures nearly 400mm square, and by way of comparison, the latest Ampere GA104 chip used in the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti is only a touch smaller (393mm square compared to 398mm square) but has over triple the number of transistors. =In terms of performence the 3060 Ti is over three times as fast as the much older GTX 970.

Currently, you can find a GTX 970 card for just under $200. That might not be a good deal normally, but it does represent the best FPS/$ in the current scenario. And if you get lucky, you might even snag one for closer to $125. The card may still last long or you might need to replace thermal paste and perhaps old fans but it is a risk indeed to invest in an very old GPU even if it’s not a big chance that it will fail. In terms of performance, it’s actually slightly faster than Nvidia’s GTX 1650.

If you simply have to have something and you don’t want to spend a lot of money, it’s one of the better options right now. It can also manage over 60 fps at 1080p medium settings in most modern games, though obviously there are exceptions. There are other old GPUs to consider, like the GTX 980 and R9 390, but prices on the latter are back above $300. AMD’s RX 570 4GB ranks as the second-best GPU using the same metrics, with a median price of $225. And those cards are likely much newer — but possibly used for 24/7 mining, so fan failures can be more common and also depends on how carefully they were used.

Here’s the full list of graphics cards with their accompanying performance that we’ve sorted by FPS/$. You can see the relative performance rank in the far right column as well.

otGraphics Card Value Based on Current eBay Pricing