Here are some ideas to get you started. These aren't necessarily the "best" cards; instead, think of this as a list of cards that fulfil specific needs at lower prices than similar cards.
These categories will remain updated with the best deals we find.
If you're low on cash, this one will get you by. Decent for light gaming, productivity, and any situation where you don't want the graphics card to take over the budget. Light gaming should be fine. Just don't expect to do anything related to ray tracing or AI.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060A solid card for when you have a few extra bucks to spend, and don't need the bare minimum. This card offers good gaming performance, but in most cases you won't be enabling ray traced effects - and don't even try to generate AI images with it. That said, conventional gaming on this thing is surprisingly great, especially considering the price.
AMD Radeon RX 7700 XTIf you want to play around with AI image generation, in addition to gaming - but you don't want to pay the big premium for top-tier AI power - this one is a solid choice.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070If the shiniest shinies are your bag, you want a card that can push frames with lots of ray tracing features enabled. This one fits the bill. (Note that this pick will often be the same as the All-Rounder. That's because ray tracing champions are always great at pushing standard frames, as well.)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090If you're in the market for a burly card that does everything well (and you're willing to pay for it), this is it. There are cheaper cards if you don't care about AI features or ray tracing - but this one covers all the bases. It's expensive, but it offers very good value for what it does.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 TiGenerating AI images with programs like Stable Diffusion really drives a wedge between cards. Many are slow enough that you'll give up immediately. NVIDIA has the edge in this category, by a long shot; even its budget cards can handle AI work pretty well. And at the higher tiers, it runs circles around AMD's and Intel's offerings.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090This card is not a value. Nope. Not even close. But it's a champion at everything: standard graphics, ray tracing, AI image generation... it's a winner. If price is no object, go with this one. Just bear in mind that unless you plan to crank up the ray tracing in your games, or do lots of work generating AI images, this is probably overkill.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090