Retailers seem to be gearing up for Prime Day with these gaming PC deals for around $1,500, though I'm not sure which I'd pick

Oh boy, is that the time already? Yep, it is: we’re approaching another Amazon Prime Day. It’ll be running from June 23 through June 26, but we always see some good deals sneaking in ahead of the official dates. And it looks like retailers might have started the deal cogs churning especially early this year because two PCs I’ve found around the $1,500 mark have *sniffs* something of that special Prime Day air about them.

Admittedly, they’re not quite as impressive as some of the deals on gaming PC we saw last year, but it’s unfortunately difficult to expect anything quite so grand this year, given the global memory shortage and other supply issues. Whether you’re looking at the Nvidia or AMD rig here, they’re pretty stellar value in the current market—though both are limited to just 16 GB of RAM.

The AMD rig is technically more powerful and is only $50 more. But you’re getting a much more well-rounded and well-utilized feature set with Nvidia, and a better CPU, so it’s a tough call.

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There are two very reasonable, err, reasons for opting for this $1449 RTX 5070 prebuilt rather than the technically more powerful RX 9070 XT one below. First and foremost, you’re getting much wider upscaling and frame gen support. FSR has technically—there’s that word, again—kept up with DLSS in a lot of ways, but the latest iterations of the tech simply haven’t been adopted in anywhere near as many games.

Secondly, this build has a better CPU. Yes, it’s older, but if you look to the end of that SKU name you’ll notice an ‘X3D’, which means this chip has 3D V-Cache. That means a bunch of cache, which games love to chew through. This will be doubly important if you’re planning on playing CPU-intensive games, or just not playing very graphically intensive ones.

Compared to the previous RTX 5070 one, this build has the beefier GPU—by a not-insignificant margin in some games, according to our testing—and you’re only paying $50 more for the privilege. If you’re happy foregoing widespread multi frame gen support and don’t play lots of CPU-intensive titles then I’d say it’s a good shout.

It’s also worth noting that it will make more sense to upgrade to a next-gen X3D chip from this CPU than from a 7800X3D, meaning there’ll be a more reasonable CPU upgrade path here. AMD has recently confirmed the AM5 socket will be sticking around until 2029, too, so no worries on that front.