I need some help choosing a GPU (with a thank you giveaway as an incentive)

When in doubt, trust Gamernexus: https://youtu.be/MCxYfXe1DAA?feature=shared&t=474

someone beat me to finding a clip with performance charts from a trusted techtuber (GamersNexus, LTT, etc..)
I would just use their videos and the performance charts

Here's a review from Hardware Unboxed. They test a bunch of games and then show 15 game averages for 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. The opinions on price to performance that you will see in reviews is based on the launch price and doesn't really matter anymore if the products have been discounted. You basically just need to look at the performance of each card to see how they compare and then decide based on the current price which is better. It looks like the 7600 is slightly faster, but the 12 GB of VRAM might be more worth it if you think you will play any games in the next few years that may benefit from it. They may offer other features that can affect the decision as well. I wouldn't worry about ray tracing because a 3060 isn't really powerful enough to want to use it. It will cause your frame rate to drop too low for the small visual benefit that is often hard to tell if it is even enabled. I haven't done a lot of research on DLSS vs FSR, but that might affect the decision for some people.

IMHO, stay with Nvidia!, but don't buy 3060!
Buy used RTX2070 / 3070!

This is a good site to check?
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

I personally am team green solely because I like DLSS. But for background information, I have a 3070 with a 5120x1440 monitor AND i like having 100+ fps so I really need a good upscaler. AMD's FSR is so bad in comparison to DLSS - digital foundry demo. I would usually put DLSS's "balanced" comparable to AMD's "quality" mode so technically, NVIDIA would have more fps than AMD if without upscaling, both cards perform equally. But not only that, there are more games (warning: opinion, i don't have an actual survey of popular games to know if this is fact) that are dlss exclusive than there are games with dlss+fsr or just fsr. That means you have more than twice the number of games that you can have better performance in as you can use an upscaler.

These are just my opinions as a man that loves them upscalers. If you don't want to use upscaling or run at a resolution where it's not as useful, then disregard everything I wrote.

edit: Oh wow the 3060 is destroying in the polls. I definitely did not expect it to look so one-sided. Maybe at the 4070/4080 area is where it gets more blurry.

I like to compare CPU / GPU using user benchmarks https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-3060-vs-AMD-RX-7600/4105vsm2114669
And combine that with reviews from trusted sources as mentioned above

It depends what you want to play, but the CPU/Mobo/RAM combination is incredibly old. Most of the GPU power will be left untouched, and trying to run any newer and more demanding titles will likely result in stutter.

Of course if this is just one step in the process of upgrading, and you'd prefer to do it in steps, then GPU is as good a place to start as any I guess.

I'd stick with NVIDIA if I were you. The 7600 is the faster card, but that won't matter taking your PC specs into account. The extra 4gb of VRAM with the 3060 might come in handy for you later on too.

Also, I know popular doesn't always equal better, but the 3060 is the #1 used GPU on Steam, which says something. The 15 most used GPU's on Steam are all NVIDIA too, which really says something.

Increasing VRAM demand is trending. Architecturally the AMD card may be better and faster but 8 GB is barely enough today and I guess you don't want to play at 720p in the future.
Besides, Nvidia has more positive mindshare which shows in higher re-sale value.

If you want to do any AI image generation using your own pc, just get NVIDIA. It's probably slightly better on AMD right now, but it's exponentially slower vs nvidia and the installation process lacking would be kind to say, dogs*** would be the proper way to describe it. I've tried it and 2 years later they still don't have a proper, proper install for it as they do on nvidia. Thankfully I got multiple systems so I just use my AMD one for VR.

If you don't care about img generation, either is good, amd probably if you don't plan to upgrade it too soon.

Personally I've recently decided to go with a 2-hand ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP 8 GB for just 100 Euro, from a computer refurbishing store giving 12 month guarantee. If you are willing to take a slight risk with a 2-hand card, I would scan the local market for GTX 1070-2080 cards.

The comparison

But your hardware will slow both them down.

For a long term upgrade rtx 3060 is a better choice. More VRAM and DLSS stuff.(But FSR might catch on by the time when gpu will start to struggle)
I'm more worried about your cpu and ram. Some new games are really CPU demanding (like Dragon's Dogma 2) and low speed of DDR3 ram will hurt your performance, especially in newer games that are optimized for work with SSD and really fast ram RAM o load all those textures on the fly.
But if you are indie games connoisseur and not playing new AAA titles often or don't care about ultra quality graphics, then it will be more or less fine whatever gpu you choose.

I have a system similar to yours, which is about 10 years old, and I purchased the predecessor RX 6600 around two years ago.

These two are quite close in terms of capabilities, so it's not really crucial. Since you tend to keep your hardware until it falls apart, I would recommend going for the newer option, as it will receive driver support for a longer period.

The additional VRAM on the 3060 might seem appealing, but I bet that by the time 12GB becomes necessary for a game, the card will already be outdated and too slow.

Your CPU won't be able to keep up with the demands of the RTX. You MOBO might not even be compatible.
GTX970 is a great card, so unless you're going to do a CPU/MOBO/RAM upgrade at the same time as your GPU, you're probably wasting your time.

Two questions to consider:

Question 1: Windows or Linux? I know Nvidia doesn't have the best past with Linux' drivers (apparently improved lately, but I didn't really dug into that), so if you're planning to check the penguin you should check how it works.

Question 2: What's the desired resolution/quality/FPS, especially for the future when you upgrade the rest of the PC? 8GB already wasn't enough for some games, and that's even without ray-tracing, so grabbing 12GB might be more future-proof. But if you're going to play 1080p everything low, then I don't think it will really matter.

Of the suggested options, the best choice would be 3060. However, Nvidia is winding down support for its GPUs faster.
I'm sorry for my English, I use an auto-translator.

Sounds like my previous PC. I used a i5 4670, 16GB ram, and a Geforce 1060 6GB (which is basically a 970 with more vram) for a long time. Upgraded to a Geforce 3060 12GB during the GPU shortage because it was the only card I could get for a somewhat reasonable price, and while it was an 'OK' upgrade, it definitely didn't impress me as much as I was hoping it would. The card ended up being good for 1080p, but performance tanked at higher resolutions despite other settings (not enough memory bandwidth?). So if you're OK sticking to 1080p then it's not a bad choice, but I'd continue to save up and buy something better if you want higher resolutions then that.

I would suggest you the RX 7600. Specs-like, and with multiple games, it just seems superior. The Nvidia one only wins because brand recognition, I think

check here
IMO you'd better add a bit and take RTX 4060. It's slightly better than 7600 (but lacks DVI ports)

The 7600 is slightly better but I would prefer the 12GB card.

I'd probably choose neither and wait for great deal with RX 6700 10 GB/XT 12 GB. However if you have PCi 3.0 only, then maybe RTX 3060 would be slightly better than RX 7600.

Basically what other people said. 8Gb is fine for FHD, for QHD it's still usually sufficient but some newer titles may already have issues, so if you're interested in QHD, or maybe even 4k in the future, RTX looks better (still neither of those cards has enough power to give good results in such resolution), yet if you want something for FHD for now and plan a major upgrade later Radeon seems a better choice (currently either way the remaining components will be the bottleneck)

check the prices of the 6700xt and 6750xt, they could be in the same region as the 7600, if you want the raster performance in gaming take the 7600, if you want anything done for work with cuda, take the 3060. got a 3080 and let me tell you, rtx is a meme and the performance hit is never worth it. dlss is nice as a backup. tbh i am dissapointed with "low end" gpu prices, if you want a decent gpu you have atleast 200€/$ to not get fleeced with crippled hardware like the A310, 1630 or the RX6300-6500. i've sent you a link for a quick comparison: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-3060-12-gb.c3682