TL;DR Come back and ask around Black Friday time, you have two paths to take for either $300 (AMD )or $500 (Nvidia/AMD) when deals pop out.
GPU market has been very weird in the last couple of years, with prices creeping up and budget cards being nerfed in specs (relative to what we expected). Essentially both AMD and Nvidia sell underpowered budget cards in some way or another, pushing consumer towards their x70 cards, so towards the $500 bracket.
- On the Nvidia side the only "value" GPUs worth looking at are those starting with "4070" in their name, after which every few letters add more performance and even VRAM. Normally you would be looking at 4070 SUPER first, but a 4070 with GDDR6 might also be a decent option if it comes out.
- On the AMD side you have a lot more names for viable cards because we have two groups with relatively decent value.
- 7800XT with the alternatives of 6800XT and 7900GRE. All of them are good cards, the 6800XT is last gen but when priced right it should be a good option still. Ideally though I would try to aim for the 7900GRE if priced very close to the 7800XT, since it will be easier to maximize efficiency on the GRE. In terms of performance they are relatively close, in the sense that someone with the slower 6800XT would not consider upgrading to 7800XT or 7900GRE since the generational uplift isn't big enough to be worth the expense.
- 7700XT with the alternatives 6800 and 6750X. Another pack of relatively close cards, with the 6800 standing out because of the 16GB VRAM and potential for discounts, the 7700XT being a newer gen card, and the 6750XT having the best potential for a great price.
My advice for you would be to consider 2 scenarios, the one where you target a $300 purchase and the one with a $500 purchase.
- in the first case, look for 6750XT on the cheap (under $300 by BF/winter time) but keep an eye on deals for the 6800 in particular, maybe even the 7700XT.
- in the second case look for 4070 SUPER or 7900GRE, keep an eye on 7800XT and 4070 /w GDDR6 if it comes out.
The Nvidia cards will have better upscaling tech and RT performance, the AMD cards will have price/performance ratio meaning they will either be much cheaper or offer higher raster performance for the same price. Upscaling in particular will matter to you, since it will enable "bigger windowed mode" on your 4k screen (even fullscreen in some cases) and will keep the card relevant for longer. Normally in your case I would recommend the 4070 SUPER for DLSS and extra RT resilience, but Nvidia has this way of leaving their customers out in the cold in the long run when talking about proprietary tech, so in a few years you might end up using an open upscaler anyway. Personally I own a 6800XT and I'm very happy with it, FSR is usable when needed... though I'm currently having a blast in Roguetech, which you know is CPU bound like a nightmare.
It's hard to recommend a budget path for you, because you seem to vary a lot from build to build. The 7800XD choice for a CPU is really asking for a $500 GPU, but then again you can always stay low with a $250-300 GPU and upgrade a bit sooner next time. The 6750XT is still a massive upgrade from the 1050Ti. You should know there is a trend for more intensive compute in newer games/engines, since the push for Ray Tracing has also encouraged developers to include more compute taxing lighting even when RT is turned off.