I’m in Canada, if that makes any difference on payment/options.
Looking for the best bang for buck GPU to play some games, want something decent, not going to be pounding the table if I drop some frames.
I’m a programmer so slightly sad if I got AMD as I’d miss out on CUDA, but if it’s clearly better value for money to buy AMD then I could live with that.
Looking to get in at under say $600 USD if I can, could go up if someone tells me it’s worth it.
I can also wait if the advice is to buy after newer GPUs come out.
My internet connection is pretty bad, ADSL, so most games will be single player I expect.
The games you’re planning to play will be the deciding factor.
The best thing to do would be to check benchmarks for the games you’re planning to play, at your monitors resolution. From the results, find a performance lever you’re comfortable with and check the price of the GPU on ebay or your preferred third party market.
I wouldn’t advice buying new right now unless you want maximum performance, which it sounds like you don’t. This will also let you stick with nvidia by going with an older card that’s still a bit cheaper.
If you did want new, you might be able to find a 9070/XT for around $600 still, but I’m not sure what availability and pricing is like in Canada. That means sacrificing CUDA, though these cards are supposed to have pretty good AI performance, but you will gain better compatibility with linux vs nvidia which based on the other post may be relevant.
thanks, good advice, I’m also going to buy a new monitor, sat here with some old LG 1080 really crappy thing with burn in on the top!
haha been there, 1440 is a nice upgrade, but 1080 is definitely still useable on a decent monitor
yeah I think I’m going with 1440 as it’s not that expensive
Looking at the Canadian market this is where things stand, roughly (in Canada Dollars, 600 USD is roughly 850-900 CAD). The relative performance is how much stronger that card is, compared to the 7800 XT, I use Hardware Unboxed 9070 XT review numbers at 1440p Raster and Raytracing averages as my benchmarker but feel free to do your own research, Nvidia is stronger in CUDA and Raytracing for sure. 9070 XT price is based on MSRP and is quite volatile right now, but, market is something like this:
Based on this my default advice is the 7800 XT, but if you can get a good price on the 9070 XT go for it. 
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Hey I moved to the USA dude - goodbye poverty!!
Did your opinion change in this time?
Well, for 1440p you really should have 12GB of VRAM minimum, preferably 16GB.
The 5070 is a thing now and can be had new for ~$600. Decent card, but loses in performance to 9070, and only has 12GB of VRAM (the 9070 non-XT has 16GB). So what you really want to have a look at is the 5070 Ti, which is $800.
You could also consider the 5060 Ti if Nvidia is a must. Otherwise, the sweet spot is still the 9070 XT in my opinion, which can be had for $700. The 9060 XT is not a bad purchase either for 1440p.
For other cards, you are either paying too much for what you get, or you are not getting enough performance for what you want to do. The 7800 XT is still a pretty solid buy and performs around 5% less than the 9070 (non-XT).
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