Newegg has launched what it's calling its Bonanza Sale event, sort of the opposite of the much detested Newegg Shuffle of last year. After putting expensive GPUs behind a lottery system, often requiring people to buy bundles with other likely unwanted items, the Bonanza sale looks like Newegg is trying to clear out excess inventory of GPUs — and doing so as quickly as possible in the wake of continuing GPU price cuts. The sale is said to be a "spontaneous" shopping event, and the focus of the sale is in providing "significant discounts" on GPUs, motherboards, and monitors.
There are in fact some pretty hot deals, like the almost top-of-the-range AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT at $720 after $100 rebate card and $180 instant promo code discounts. Picking through the sale items, there are also what we consider to be good deals on a Radeon RX 6700 XT at $450, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at $480, and an RTX 3060 at $380.
The particular Radeon RX 6900 XT on offer is the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming OC, pictured up top. Newegg must be getting a good deal on these from Gigabyte, as it was on sale last month at a "great for its time" $949, then later $899. Needless to say, the new deal at $720 is a significant and welcome cut, especially when you consider the MSRP of a reference design card is $999. Just please remember to claim the $100 rebate, and apply the VGAGBET249 code for an additional $180 off, to get to that magic $720 price.
The Radeon RX 6900 XT delivers performance about 6% lower than the RX 6950 XT, and also about 6% faster than the RX 6800 XT. The Gigabyte Gaming OC looks like a decent pick, with its triple fan Windforce 3X cooler, metal backplate, RGB Fusion 2.0 lighting, dual-BIOS, and a modest factory overclock.
Next up in our picks is a close quarters battle between the Gigabyte Eagle OC GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at $480 (reference MSRP $400) and the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming OC at $450 (reference MSRP $480). Again, you need to input a special discount code to get the prices we are quoting. The codes are written just above the Newegg 'eggs' rating for each model.
Those cards are at similar prices, and your choice will likely come down to your general feelings and experience in AMD vs Nvidia graphics cards. For example, the RX 6700 XT is generally faster at traditional 3D rasterization, beating the RTX 3060 Ti by 6% at 1080p ultra and 3% at 1440p ultra. However, DLSS can more than make up the difference (typically it gives 15–25% more performance in its highest "Quality" mode), and in our ray tracing test suite the RX 6700 XT was around 30% slower than the RTX 3060 Ti (without DLSS).
Still, the AMD RX 6700 XT has more VRAM, and a higher grade cooling solution from Gigabyte. The Windforce 3 should be quieter and cooler under duress compared to the more budget oriented Eagle model with twin fans. They both still offer a splash or RGB lighting though.
Our last pick from the Bonanza Sale might be a little bit controversial as it is still selling for a sizable percentage above Nvidia's $330 MSRP, and it's not a very high-end model. Still, Nvidia's mainstream GPUs are still sticking above MSRP, and this MSI RTX 3060 for $380 might still be the best budget choice as we run up to the end of June 2022.
The MSI Ventus uses Twin Torx fans with Zero Frozr technology from MSI. It's not very large at just 235mm in length, so it can fit in more compact builds. Its plastic backplate shows it is built to a budget, but it still affords handling protection when installing the card. If you don't like the MSI card, there's also an EVGA RTX 3060 XC Gaming for $375.
If none of the above graphics cards grabbed your interest, it is worth a browse around the Bonanza Sale event, as there are other decent deals and some other models from both AMD and Nvidia. Don't forget to nose through the motherboards and monitors on offer too, if you are pondering over upgrades.
Newegg hasn't mentioned an ending date for its Bonanza Sale, so it might depend on stocks. If you have your eye on any GPUs there, don't forget to cross reference our GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy 2022 so you can have a good idea of the performance you can expect.
