The Ryzen 5 3600 was the most selling Ryzen 3000 series processor when it came out in 2019. This processor promised rock-solid performance while at the same time costing less than US$ 200. It was better than what Intel had to offer at that price range, the Core i5-9400F. This set the ground for the 3600 to become a market dominator. Even today, three years from its release, this processor is insanely popular. So, if you manage to pick one up for gaming, what graphics card should you realistically pair with it to get the most out of your gaming system? Let us find out.
What is the Best Budget Graphics Card to Pair With a Ryzen 5 3600?
With graphics card prices plummeting, AMD is in a clear advantage as their cards are selling at and even below MSRP. This brings us to recommend the Radeon RX 6600 8GB as the best budget contender with the Ryzen 5 3600. Its Nvidia equivalent, the RTX 3060, is slightly weaker but sells for almost over $500. Thus, we cannot recommend that card at all. The RX 6600 XT starts from around $450, and thus, its value proposition is not as good as the RX 6600 non-XT.
The most value for money RX 6600 models to choose from include the XFX Speedster SWFT 210 RX 6600 CORE and the Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle 8G models.
What is the Best Graphics Card to Play Competitive Games With a Ryzen 5 3600?
Competitive gaming is a very unique niche. We cannot sacrifice the visual quality, but a high frame rate is mandatory. Until today, the GTX 1080 Ti was a great recommendation for competitive gaming. It could easily be found for around US$ 600, and its performance was pretty solid too. However, the 1080 Ti is starting to age at this point. Also, it does not have support for features like ray tracing. Almost 4 years from its introduction in 2018, every major competitive game like Warzone and Fortnite has implemented it.
This brings us to our new value for money recommendation, the Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB. It can easily be found for around $570 and manages to beat the GTX 1080 Ti by a huge margin while supporting all modern features one could ask for. At 1080p resolutions, this card can easily max out the potential of very high refresh rate panels.
The XFX Speedster SWFT309 cards are available for around US$ 570, making them a great choice.
What is the Most Performing Graphics Card to Pair With a Ryzen 5 3600?
The Ryzen 5 3600 has its limits. You cannot pair the most powerful graphics card on the market with it and call it a day. Looking at the performance metrics, you can pair up to an RTX 3070 Ti without bottlenecking the graphics card. The RTX 3070 Ti is currently selling way above its MSRP, so we are not comfortable recommending it.
