What a terrible time the last few years have been for graphics cards. I'm trying to remember which was the worst: was it when people were smuggling graphics cards into the country like bricks of illegal drugs, or was it when retailers couldn't even keep up with demand despite doubling, maybe even tripling, the original suggested retail price?

It all sucked, unless you were looking to buy an RTX 4080 (opens in new tab) or RTX 4090 (opens in new tab). No, today we're talking about cheap graphics cards (opens in new tab), $2,000 is outrageous.

In fact, there's one graphics card in particular to look out for on Black Friday (opens in new tab). This MSI Mech RX 6600 is $190 at Newegg (opens in new tab). This is about $90 off the price listed on Amazon, which is already great, but considering that the RX 6600 actually went on sale for $329, it really is an incredible savings.

This new price essentially makes AMD's RX 6500 XT (open in new tab) almost not worth considering; the RX 6600 (open in new tab) generally beats the RTX 3060 12GB in our tests, and sometimes lags behind, but the RTX 3050 safely outperforms it.

In fact, at this new price, the RX 6600 fools both the RTX 3050 and the RX 6500 XT.

However, this stock price won't last forever; AMD's RDNA 2 architecture will be replaced by RDNA 3 cards coming next month. However, we don't expect to see anything close to a budget GPU from RDNA 3 for a while yet, with only the high-end RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT coming soon. These GPUs start at $899, which leaves little room for consideration for inexpensive 1080p gaming.

And that's what you get with the RX 6600, a great 1080p card that delivers 60Hz or even better in the latest games. For compatible games, you can get even more when paired with AMD's upscaling technology, FidelityFX Super Resolution.

This exact model uses MSI's rather by-the-book shroud and has two chunky fans to cool it; MSI is a reliable manufacturer and has a high-performance cooler. The card also comes with Dead Island 2 (opens in a new tab) and The Callisto Protocol (opens in a new tab), which is a must for zombie game lovers.

At the very least, it's encouraging to see such GPU deals emerge from the Black Friday maelstrom. At the risk of sounding old, it wasn't really that long ago that AMD completely dominated the entry-level market with great cards like the RX 580, RX 570, and similar 400 series. Over the last few years we have been missing these kinds of choices, so we are glad to see them back in force. Let's hope these kinds of deals don't die out too soon.