speedmaster Loc: Kendall, FL

Newegg is a very reputable place to buy. Before Amazon existed it was one of the "places to go" (former Egghead)
They have deals as you are looking for prices from 399 to 469. It is a must to go for the deals which they rotate every week.
Cheers
Speed

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=rtx+3060

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

But those are 3060s, not 3060 TIs. Here’s their deal on the 3060 TI: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=NVidia+GTX+3060+TI

speedmaster Loc: Kendall, FL

Sorry, I missed that you were looking for a TI board. BTW performance gain is very small with the TI (around 6 to 8%) mostly as per the hardware sites. If you will not game with it you may keep some cash and go for the normal board.

Cheers

Speed

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

PassMark on the 3060 is 17,011 vs 20,294 on the 3060 TI, so maybe closer to 20%, (which is about the % difference in price), but I agree either will be adequate for photo work. I was actually just pointing out that we are not quite down list prices yet - maybe if bitcoin continues to tank, the pressure on graphics cards due to cryptocurrency mining will decrease

speedmaster Loc: Kendall, FL

Sure if you are into gaming where some parameters like ray tracing, shading, and some others are very used. It also depends on the resolution you are playing. I can't remember where I did find an interesting test from a guy who run a batch of a pre-defined workflow of editing to a directory with 100 pictures, 16Mpixels each and in the end, the difference was about 5.2 percent. This was during the pandemic and I can't find it anymore online.

But as I said in the first reply the best GPU you can get is the best your money can buy since as software evolves it will find a way to max the resources available. Having a better GPU will allow you to hold an upgrade for more time (kind of the same that happens with a notebook).

Cheers

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Completely agree that it depends on the type of processing you do. If you do lots of stacking, panoramas, batching processing, etc, then the extra performance may be worth the $. I’m actually using an older EVGA 1060 6GB card running Capture One and Topaz AI products, and I almost never wait on the computer. At worst, maybe a couple of seconds for some serious Topaz processing, but if I were building a new machine, I’d likely buy something similar to a 3060.

speedmaster Loc: Kendall, FL