My current GPU is an RX580, once the 6700XT, or 6800 are available, and not costing an arm and a leg, I will upgrade 
Last time I checked (close to a year ago) there wasn’t any games that used mesh shaders. I don’t doubt mesh shaders will be a feature we’ll all expect to have but I haven’t seen any big titles using it so far. I don’t think its very wise to buy a GPU today for a feature you might use tomorrow when a made tomorrow GPU can probably do all that and everything else better.
I think I might have said the exact same thing about anti aliasing more than 20 years ago. 
if your waiting on a specific game then wait till you know the release is firm, its in beta, then buy.
assuming what you have will tide you over.
if not then get what ever you can get your hands on within your budget and hope when the game drops it doesnt crumple your card.
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As far as I’m concerned:
If you need CUDA → NVidia
For pretty much everything else → AMD
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On the flip-side, if you have a choice between cards of roughly equal performance, secondhand high tier vs. low-mid current(ish) card with the additional features, it may be worth a small premium for the features.
Buying things like RX580 or a Pascal card like a 1070 instead of say, RX6500 because the RX580 is roughly same performance but a teeny bit cheaper (without warranty, mesh shaders, variable rate shading, etc.) is misguided imho.
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Don’t forget drivers. Something like Polaris or even Pascal are very likely to enter its end of life driver support soon. I’ve been dealing with a couple of APU’s that have Spectre (Hawaii based GCN2) and Kalindi (cut down version of Spectre) based GPU’s and the lack of proper drivers is annoying. I’m seeing issues with the drivers on Windows breaking stuff like the full screen optimizations. Plus the final driver release disabled a shed load of useful features like VCE.
I have to use select drivers for each system to get everything to work as it should. If I could just convince Windows 10 to not change the display driver and break the AMD Radeon Software once every week or so I’d be happy but its a never ending cycle of just having older hardware with less and less support.
All that said and I’d still like to have a 580, 1060, 1070, 1080 over a RX6500 especially because of the VRAM and PCI-E lane issues. There’s just too big of a performance gap to ignore when thats a factor and that gap won’t be closed by a handful of modern features. I just don’t think that features like mesh shaders or even variable rate shaders are deal makers or breakers.
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Personally I think that the PCIe issue is overblown. If you’re on a recent Ryzen platform and looking for a GPU chances are its a new build and you should make sure to have PCIe4 (at which point its not an issue for this class of GPU). Its been out for 2+ years now.
if you have an existing GPU (i.e., its an older build machine), hold out until this craziness dies off.
If you’re trying to build a new to you box out of old parts… well go an old GPU I guess.
It is and it isn’t an issue, its a technique reviewers use to tell a story by making it look way more interesting than it really is. Just off the top of my head over the last few years its been things like tessellation, frametimes, heat and power, peak framerates, 0.1 lows, DirectX12 / Vulkan vs DX11, ray shading, mesh shading, variable rate shading. Find the gap, tell a story, pretend something trivial is a deal breaker.
The reality is if you had any of these gpu’s you’d use them in a way that avoids these things being a problem. You’d use vsync to deal with frametimes, heat and power issues. You’d use less OTT tessellation, ignore the 0.1 lows because those are system specific and be way more concerned with averages. Ray Shading, mesh shading, variable rate shading are so new and so wide open for generation to generation improvements I don’t think they are even factors worth considering right now.
With 4GB of VRAM and 4 PCI-E 4.0 lanes you’ll do your best to avoid hitting the VRAM cap, you’d just use lower / default settings but theres no way around it, that card has had its potential permanently capped off precisely for the people that card is meant to be aimed at. People who have a tight budget and maybe can’t afford a new system.
My long term plan is to get a GPU, that is somewhat “Future Proof” 
My current system with the i7-9700k, is a bridge system until I buy & build a new AMD system, I think we are into 2023 before that happens. At work we get an annual bonus in May, so depending on the size, I can set aside some money for a new system. 
Depending of course on price and availability I see 2 paths
Either go for an AMD AM5 system with DDR5 memory. (More longevity).
Or go for an AM4 system, which probably will be cheaper for a High-end system, but with shorter lifespan.
Unless S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is delayed any further, it will be released December 8, 2022. So I have no hurry in getting a new card.
As I have done before i might go for a second hand high-end card.
If the crazy wild west GPU market is back to normal, I should be able to get an 6900XT for a “reasonable” price.
And since I will in the future build an AMD system it will be an AMD GPU, to get most out of the combined hardware.
In the current market, that is either a 6700 XT or 3060 - or above. Are you planning on 1080p gaming for the next few years, or are you interested in upgrading to 1440p?
The 3060 is a 12 GB VRAM card that has a lot of features available. If you care about Nvidia features (DLSS, NVEnc, G-Sync and so on), this is the card to get… For 1080p gaming. Only $750-$800.
The 6700 XT, meanwhile, also has 12 GB of VRAM but is capable of great 1440p gaming - at $900-$950.
Now, that is the current market. If you are willing to wait until Raptor Lake comes out, then the advice above is moot in either case.
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only? 
3 years ago when the card was on the to do list it was a $400 or less card.
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Yes, the market is what it is. These are the current tiers from PC Part Picker for each tier, cheapest card for each tier:
| AMD | Price | Nvidia | Price | Nvidia tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6500 XT | $259 | 3050 | $634 | $375 |
| 6600 | $459 | 3060 | $729 | $270 |
| 6600 XT | $599 | 3060 ti | $886 | $375 |
| — | — | 3070 | $979 | ($90 for tier above) |
| 6700 XT | $889 | 3070 ti | $1179 | $290 |
| 6800 | $1259 | 3080 | $1749 | $490 |
| 6800 XT | $1349 | 3080 ti | $1889 | $540 |
| 6900 XT | $1599 | 3090 | $2799 | $1200 |
Nvidia does not really have compelling GPU deals at the moment. When you can buy a 6900 XT for the same amount of money as the 3080, the 3080 becomes stupid.
I do recommend holding out if you can, but AMD is actually starting to look decent again and 6600 + 6600 XT are a great deal right now. Nvidia is just waaaaay too expensive when you can buy the next tier of AMD for the same money basically.
Too many Nvidia Fanbois… -_-
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Unless my RX580 dies in a fiery ball of fire I will hold out over this year, and monitor the prices, both new, and used
Even f I “only” game on 1080p, I will go for a high end AMD card 6800, 6800xt, in that ballpark. With enough overhead, I can crank up the details, and not overheat the card.
I always like to have some overhead in my systems.
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