So Ive been running my current build for way too long now and its finally time to upgrade my gpu because my poor old card is literally struggling to maintain 60fps on medium settings in newer games and Im honestly getting tired of it. My main monitor is a 1440p ultrawide that I picked up last Black Friday in Chicago and I really want to take full advantage of those pixels without having to sell a kidney. My absolute hard limit is $500 max out the door including taxes if possible though I wouldnt mind spending a bit less if the performance drop isnt massive.

Ive been spending way too much time down Reddit and YouTube rabbit holes trying to figure this out. I kept seeing people recommend the RX 7700 XT because of the VRAM buffer and how well it handles modern titles at 1440p but then I read a bunch of threads claiming the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is better for productivity work and DLSS features even though its wider memory bus is kinda gimped. And honestly Im just more confused now than when I started researching. Some folks say VRAM is everything these days while others swear that Nvidia ray tracing and frame generation are total game changers that make the lower raw performance worth it. I mostly just play single player RPGs and the occasional shooter like Apex with my friends so I dont even know if ray tracing matters that much to me anyway.

Basically Im trying to figure out which card actually gives me the best value for strictly 1440p gaming right now without becoming obsolete in two years. What are you guys actually buying if you have a 500 dollar budget today...