I ended up with a 7900 XT during one of the big sales a while back. way more than i wanted to spend (~720$ + starfield), but also didn't want to upgrade for a few years. Originally my ideal budget was around 400-500$, but I wanted to be able to do some 4k. I'm happy with it, it's quiet and runs games well. My 1070 was struggling to pull 40 fps in several areas of elden ring on 1080p, so it didn't take much.
In hindsight, I probably should've just bought a used 30x0 or 6XX0 and hoped for a gen with better price/perf, but I didn't wanna spend 200-300$ on what turned out to be a mining card. Right now the signs don't look good that better prife/perf is going to happen for the next gen, though so I just sucked it up. At the end of the time, time is money, and I was in a position i could splurge and just stop thinking about it.