That entirely depends on what you want in your gaming experience. If you don't care about low-medium graphics in 3 years from now, you can easily move to anything last-gen midrange. If you care a little bit more about it, get a 6700-6800(XT). If you really care about it, get a 4070, 7900XT or better, where I would strongly lean towards a 7900XT - at double your budget...
The thing with GPUs really is that future proofing works. If you buy bigger, two years from now you will be on that fork in the road where new stuff comes out and you can choose to resell your GPU at a very good price (if you buy higher end, well endowed with VRAM GPUs!) and buy current gen in a lower tier
from that money; or just hold on to it longer because >reasons< and gaming is still more than fine anyway on it. You're not forced into any upgrade paths that way. After 4-5 years you might think hm... feeling upgrade itch... still no real necessity... but let's go on the prowl for great deals and take my time...
That's how I roll anyway. My total bill over the last 6,5; ánd the coming 5-6 years of gaming is going to be ~$500,- for a GTX 1080, resale for $150,- (just achieved this a few weeks back), buy 7900XT for $850,- = $1200,-. That's 12 years of gaming at roughly 100 bucks a year = $8,30 a month and that's without even selling that 7900XT yet. The real price of high end with well timed upgrades
Yes, the GTX 1080 lasted me 6 years - even on 3440x1440 go figure. I played Cyberpunk and Darktide on it too and I could ride the entire crypto and pandemic madness on it.
The alternative is making your midrange GPU last 3 years, coming up short, forced to upgrade for 60 FPS, and then buying another 400 dollar GPU to get another 3 years out of it. You might break even, but your resale price is going to be much worse; and the overall experience is going to be much less comfortable, both settings and FPS wise. The reason this story matters today is because the current high end has arguably a BETTER price/perf metric than the midrange. I literally waited for Nvidia's midrange to release before deciding on a 7900XT. I don't like paying over $ 500-600,-, but if you count your beans, paying 500-600 now on a new GPU would give you a lot less ROI - although it must be said the 6800XT is in a great place at its price, and if you can snag a 6950XT at $650,-, you're a winner, provided you've got a PSU to keep it going.
Nvidia's offerings at this point and especially at the midrange right now, are largely uninteresting. 4060~4060ti are complete and utter duds against their competition (6800~XT). The 4070 is a bit too expensive for its 12GB. The 4070ti is brutally unbalanced with 12GB and therefore even more too expensive. The 4080 is too weak for its 1200 dollar tag. The 4090 is in a good place, but at 1500+ way out of reach for most - and that's NOT a good resale when a new gen shatters its halo performance. Second hand or lastgen Nvidia? Ampere is complete shit, combining high power usage with low VRAM relative to core power.
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That PSU is a problem for any real semblance of gaming.
