I've been looking at the current state of the GPU market since my RX 580 4GB is gonna be faced with 1440p soon and, while prices are still pretty bad, there's a few value options.
This was to suit my own preference but I thought it might be useful for others with similar needs. No preference towards Nvidia and I only care about rasterization so not looking at extra functionality/features making the shortlist basically just the AMD 6000 series midrange.
The standouts being the RX 6650 being the best overall value at ~$290 if you're fine with 8GB of VRAM and 6750 XT (or 6700 XT) for 12GB at ~$420 (these needing a good sale to reach that price).
The relative performance is from benchmarks at 1440p Ultra settings where 4090 performance is the baseline of 100% which should be representative of the average usecase for these (1440p and mostly not CPU bound).
There's nothing that offers 12GB under $380 (3060 12GB sacrifices some performance for 2GB of VRAM over the RX 6700) which is a shame in my opinion as 8GB is slowly becoming obsolete and has a good chance of shortening an otherwise serviceable card's lifespan.
I included the RX 7700 on there because there have been leaks about it and while they say it will be above 500USD, there's always the chance that AMD stops giving up free market share and puts it out at a reasonable price instead of slashing its price significantly 2 weeks after launch like it did with the higher end model recently. It makes sense for it to release around the release of Starfield (which they're giving away with their current GPUs) so might be worth holding out for that if nothing else comes up.
Otherwise, a sale on the 6750 XT seems like the best choice if you're willing to spend $420+tax on a GPU in terms of longevity and performance at 1440p.
I'd love to see a similar showdown, but for 'bus power' (<100w?) cards with no supplemental power connection.
It's a niche market (low-power means low heat which means low noise with simpler air-cooled rigs) but I think it's got great potential. With the mini+tower refurbs selling like hotcakes, an add-on card for casual gaming is a good pairing with a GOG account. ;-)
I don't think there's been much of anything for that tier unfortunately. From what I can see the only recent release is the RX 6400 which is better value than the older 1650 option which performs roughly the same.