Skip to main content

The best 1080p gaming card is on sale for just $180 right now

MSI Radeon RX 580 Gaming X+ 8G
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

The AMD Radeon RX 580 is our favorite graphics card as it offers fantastic value for money and great performance at both 1080p and 1440p. In a steal of a deal before Christmas, Newegg is selling the PowerColor Red Dragon version of the card at the ludicrously low price of $180 with a $40 discount code. Buyers can also take advantage of AMD’s Raise the Game promotion to get two free games with their purchase, too.

Although the RX 580 is a relatively old card at this point (it originally launched in April 2017), due to last year’s pricing problems and the lack of midrange solutions in Nvidia’s new RTX range of GPUs, the RX 580 remains a fantastically capable card for midrange gaming. With 8GB of GDDR5 it can handle high-resolution textures and deliver high frame rates at both 1080p and 1440p with middling to high detail levels. It easily beats Nvidia’s GTX 1060 in most titles.

Following the release of the RX 590 — a slightly overclocked and die-shrunk RX 580 in itself — the RX 580’s price dropped down into the low 200s, making it better value than ever before. Newegg’s deal brings it down to $180 if you use the promo code. The card is the Red Dragon RX 580 from PowerColor, which has a boost clock of 1,350MHz — a minor bump over the stock frequency.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

Still, with a dual-fan cooler aboard you should be able to overclock this card even further, delivering greater performance for your money.

Reviews for the card are relatively strong, although recent buyers do note that it is a little on the loud side. The fans can be noisy when spun up to high speed and there is some coil whine. Alternative RX 580s shouldn’t suffer from these issues, but then they are tens of dollars more, so you will need to weigh whether it’s worth risking a noisy card to get great performance for much less than usual.

If the RX 580 isn’t quite what you’re looking for, the fantastically powerful Vega 64 can be had for just over $400 at the time of writing, while Nvidia’s RTX series is a little cheaper than when it launched thanks to growing competition and holiday sales.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…
You shouldn’t buy these Nvidia GPUs right now
RTX 4060 Ti sitting on a pink background.

Buying a new GPU in this generation is a bit of a tricky minefield of graphics cards to steer clear of. Sometimes, the performance is there, but the value is not; other times, you could get something much more capable for the same amount of money.

While Nvidia makes some of the best GPUs, it's certainly no stranger to that performance vs. value dilemma. Below, I'll show you three Nvidia graphics cards you're better off avoiding right now and tell you their much better alternatives.
RTX 4060 Ti

Read more
The Nvidia RTX 4080 Super just trounced AMD
The Nvidia RTX 4080 Super on a pink background.

Whether you pick the RTX 4080 Super or the RX 7900 XTX, you're getting a powerful GPU that's capable of seamless gaming at 4K. But which one is better for the money? There used to be a clear answer to that question when we were only dealing with the RTX 4080, but the release of its Super successor made it a lot less straightforward.

Both the RTX 4080 Super and the RX 7900 XTX are among the best graphics cards that money can buy. While they're close in performance, they're not exactly the same, and the scales might now be tipping in an unexpected direction.
Pricing and availability

Read more
The best GPUs of all time, from 1996 to now
Three graphics cards on a gray background.

When we think of the best graphics cards in this day and age, GPUs like the RTX 4090 or the RX 7900 XTX come to mind. However, for these beastly cards to be able to run, some much older GPUs had to crawl, and then walk, to get us to where we are today.

Looking back, the history of graphics cards shows us a few landmark GPUs that redefined graphics technology. Let's take a trip back to 1996 and subsequent years to explore the graphics cards that made a difference, had an impact, and were smash hits with enthusiasts all around the globe.
3dfx Voodoo

Read more