Rob Schultz/IDG
Most people in the market for a new graphics card have one major question on their mind: which graphics card will give me the most bang for my buck? Obviously, the answer will vary depending on your budget. Beyond that, there are many factors to consider: raw performance is important, but so are factors such as noise, driver experience and supplemental software. Are you willing to pay extra to get on the cutting edge of real-time ray tracing?
Let us make it easier for you. We’ve tested nearly every major GPU that’s hit the market in the past few years, from $100 budget cards to $1,800 luxury models. Our knowledge has been distilled into this article – a buying guide with advice on which graphics card to buy, no matter what experience you’re looking for.
Yes, you can finally
Buy another GPU. After more than two years of insane graphics card crunch sparked by chip shortages and an insane cryptocurrency surge, the dam has finally burst. Final result? GPU prices have finally plummeted across the board, with sales of high-end graphics cards particularly soaring. While you can buy a used GPU for less cash, the purchase comes with a full warranty and along with the price Ultimately close to sanity, no risk is more attractive.
Rumors abound of next-generation Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000-series graphics cards, and AMD has publicly stated that its new RDNA 3-based Radeon GPUs will be available later this year. A new contender, Intel, also appears to be gearing up to release its first Arc GPU later this summer, with an RTX 3060 (at least in newer games) and the world’s first game-changing AV1 GPU encoder for the RTX 3060. Streaming fight. But if you need a new graphics card today
, here is your best choose. Street pricing for these cards still fluctuates wildly, and these rankings take into account real cost — which currently gives AMD’s Radeon GPUs an edge.
Note:
There are custom builds for each graphics card from numerous vendors. For example, you can buy different GeForce GTX 3080 models from companies like EVGA, Asus, MSI, and Zotac.
We’ve linked to our full review of each recommendation, but the buy link results in a model closely related to each graphics card’s MSRP. Spending extra can get you plenty of out-of-the-box overclocks, a more powerful cooling system, and more. Check out the “What to look for in a custom card” section below for tips on how to choose a custom card that’s right for you.
PC games Best Graphics Card
AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT – Best Budget Graphics Card 
Prices may ease, but for now, the much-maligned Radeon RX 6500 XT remains the only semi-reasonable option under $250. If you can find it at a reasonable price, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 is a more powerful modern graphics card, but it’s often inflated to around $300. The Radeon RX 6500 XT is less appealing thanks to its weakened memory, PCIe lanes, and limited ports, not to mention lower performance, but you’ll often find them on the street these days for around $200. These hardware limitations mean you’ll need to stick to medium or high graphics settings at 1080p resolution in modern games to get playable frame rates, but if you do, you’ll enjoy the experience.
Read our full Radeon RX 6500 XT review
AMD Radeon RX 6600 – Best 1080p Graphics Card
AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 and Nvidia’s rival GeForce RTX 3060 ostensibly come with There’s the same $329 MSRP, but on the street, there’s a wider gap. You’ll find the 6600 starts at around $300, while the cheapest RTX 3060 starts at $400. Those are high entry costs for 1080p gaming – at least compared to GPUs of the past – but with 8GB of fast GDDR6 memory, very good power efficiency, and AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution, the Radeon RX 6600 is A great graphics card People want to game at 1080p at 60fps or higher without compromising visual fidelity. (Or bust.)
Read our full Radeon RX 6600 Swft 210 review
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 – Best for Ray Tracing 1080p Graphics Card
Nvidia comes in second – producing dedicated ray tracing hardware, whose killer DLSS upsampling has been restored in hundreds of games to make up for the performance lost by turning on ray tracing (which has a huge performance hit) . At over $330, it’s not cheap, but if enabling these cutting-edge lighting effects is a priority, you’ll want to go with the GeForce. The RTX 3060 is another solid option, but at $400 on the street, it offers comparable performance to the $300 Radeon RX 6600 in games that don’t use ray tracing.
Read our full GeForce RTX 3050 review
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT – Best 1440p Graphics Card 
In a sane world Here, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti will dominate 1440p gaming at an MSRP of $400. Great, it delivers superior ray tracing performance to AMD’s Radeon rivals. But we still don’t live in a sane world where the RTX 3060 Ti sells for $500+ on the street, usually $550-$600. Nvidia’s RTX 3070, which ostensibly costs $500, sells for $650 to $700 online. Switch to AMD’s Radeon RX 6700 XT. It’s fast enough for 1440p gaming at 60fps+, while its beefy 12GB of GDDR6 memory provides plenty of room to flip through all the most powerful graphics. A downside? AMD’s graphics cards can only play ray-traced games at 1080p unless you activate Radeon Super Resolution or FSR 1 or 2 in games that support it. On the other hand, if you’re running a modern Ryzen system that supports it, the Radeon RX 6700 XT can take advantage of AMD’s impressive performance-boosting Smart Access Memory feature.
Read our full Radeon RX 6700 XT review
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti – Best 1440p Graphics Card for Ray Tracing
Yes, the RTX 3060 Ti is still on the high side at $500+ compared to MSRP, not $400 more than expected – but that’s because it’s too good. If you want top-notch 1440p gaming with top-notch ray tracing at its core, this card is worth buying, even if it’s overpriced. The step-down GeForce RTX 3060 is also worth considering, although you may need to dial down some graphics settings when ray tracing is enabled, and the step-up RTX 3070 doesn’t offer enough of a performance boost to justify spending more.
Read our full GeForce RTX 3060 Ti review
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition – Best 4K Graphics Card
If you have a 4K monitor and want all those pixels to work, the RTX 3070, 3070 Ti, and AMD’s Radeon RX 6750 XT and RX 6800 are all good cheap options. However, if you want the best experience without compromising any visuals, drop by for $800 for the 10GB version of the RTX 3080. (The $1,000 12GB model, while more future-proof, isn’t worth the price increase.) With a killer combination of Nvidia’s second-generation ray tracing hardware and DLSS, the GeForce RTX 3080 has plenty of power to play even at 4K resolutions games, including ray traced games.
question? It’s a very popular GPU, and it’s still hard to find models near the 3080’s $800 MSRP (though they’re sure to come). AMD’s rival, the Radeon RX 6800 XT, is easier to find, just as fast, and comes with up to 16GB of GDDR6 memory, but if you can find one around the MSRP, Nvidia’s superb ray tracing and DLSS chips will win that price point
Having said that, the new generation of GPUs from Nvidia and AMD are expected to be available before the end of the year, and when these are launched, payment will be made for products from two years ago The MSRP of the RTX 3080 or any of its competitors can sting, as the new graphics lineup often wrecks the performance of previous-generation high-end GPUs at similar prices. Consider whether you want to join now, or risk waiting a few months to see what’s brewing.
Read our full GeForce RTX 3080 review
AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT – Best High-End 4K Graphics Card
$1,000 graphics cards didn’t exist before, but now they’re common, $1,000 12GB RTX 3080 , the $1,000 Radeon RX 6900 XT, the $1,100 Radeon RX 6950 XT, the $1,200 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, the $1,500 GeForce RTX 3090, and the $2,000 RTX 3090 Ti are all in this price range.
Compared to the more affordable RTX 3080 or Radeon RX 6800 XT, their huge price hike doesn’t translate into a lot of extra performance, so we’d recommend sticking with it for most people they. But high-end prices are dropping rapidly, and if you want to splurge, we recommend the Radeon RX 6950 XT for most people.
The Radeon RX 6950 XT is $400 faster than the RTX 3090 and comes with plenty of 16GB of RAM. Heck, it even outperforms the $2,000 RTX 3090 Ti in some games. If you’re just looking to play some games with speed and fidelity, the 6950 XT is a great value option and offers a killer experience — especially if you use AMD’s features like Radeon Super Resolution, Smart access memory and FSR. (The same goes for the Radeon RX 6900 XT, now that the GPU crunch is easing, and we’re seeing it for under $900.) However, it’s not as good as Nvidia’s GPUs for ray tracing, so choose if you Gamers who want to flip all those cutting-edge lighting effects can go for the RTX 3080 Ti. Note that the Sapphire Nitro+ Pure model we reviewed is an ultra-luxury enthusiast-grade version that is pricier and well-deserved, although you can find MSRPs for other RX 6950 XTs.
Read our full Nitro+ Pure Radeon RX 6950 XT review
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 – The best graphics card for high-end 4K content creation and ray tracing
If you want some of the best gaming performance on the planet, including ray tracing, and also want to do some work on the side , then the $1,500 RTX 3090 graphics card is the buy. This card works hard thanks to the large 24GB ultra-fast GDDR6 memory, which is great for both content creation and Machine learning tasks, especially high-resolution video rendering. It hangs game frames with the best game frames. The newer RTX 3090 Ti offers slightly faster GPU and memory performance, but costs $500 more, making the non-Ti 3090 a more (somewhat) practical option. However, you’re paying for the privilege, and the Radeon RX 6950 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti offer similar gaming performance for a much lower price.
Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 review
How we test the graphics card
We tested the graphics card on a dedicated test system for this purpose only, with minimal extra software involved. This ensures that any performance changes we see are entirely due to the graphics card and new GPU driver being tested, with no variability from other hardware or software changes. This is the configuration of our current testbed:
AMD Ryzen 5900X, stock settings
AMD Wraith Max Cooler
MSI Godlike X570 motherboard
32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3800 RAM
EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 Power Supply 
2x 1TB SK Hynix Gold S31 SSD
As far as the game is concerned, we Use a fixed set of games to test every graphics card that appears in a given generation, and update the kit as newer generations of GPUs are introduced. We tested a wide variety of games covering most major game genres (tactics, racing, FPS, etc.), engines (Unreal Engine, Unity, Anvil, etc.) and underlying graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, Vulkan). We use the built-in benchmarks for each game, but only after verifying the accuracy of the results by running the benchmarks and comparing the results to the performance witnessed by third-party GPU measurement tools such as OCAT. Each game was tested at least 3 times at each resolution, an average was generated from these runs, and additional tests were run if we ran into any issues. We may also perform additional testing using tools such as OCAT if any performance anomalies are found. Power consumption is measured on a system-wide basis, listing idle and fully stressed states as measured by Watts Up meters plugged into the system.
What to look for in a custom graphics card
If you want to shop outside of our picks, Just know that finding the right graphics card can be tricky. Different vendors offer customized versions of each GPU. For example, you can buy different Radeon RX 6700 XT models from Sapphire, XFX, Asus, MSI, and PowerColor.
To help narrow down your choices and find the right graphics card for you, you should consider the following as you do your research:
Overclocking: Higher priced custom models are often overclocked to varying degrees out of the box , which can lead to higher performance. However, most modern custom cards offer the same basic level of performance.
Cooling solution: Many graphics cards come with custom coolers to reduce temperature and fan noise. The vast majority performed well. Liquid-cooled graphics cards run cooler, but require extra space inside the case for piping and heatsinks. If you can, avoid graphics cards with a single-fan, blower-style cooling system unless you have a small PC or plan to use a custom water block.
size: Many graphics cards are similar in size but longer and there are many shorter models of GPUs. High-end graphics cards are starting to employ especially massive custom cooling solutions to tame their enthusiast GPUs. Please double check that the graphics card you choose is suitable for your case before purchasing.
Compatibility:
Not all hardware supports a wide range of connectivity options. High-end graphics cards may lack DVI ports, while lower-end monitors may lack DisplayPort. Only the most modern Radeon and GeForce graphics cards support HDMI 2.1 output. Make sure your graphics card and monitor can connect to each other. Again, make sure your power supply matches the recommended wattage for the graphics card you choose.
Real-Time Ray Tracing, FSR and DLSS: AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards and all Nvidia’s RTX products can play real-time ray-traced games with active effects. Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs have a huge advantage over everything else, with dedicated tensor cores pushing the envelope further for processing machine learning tasks such as deep learning supersampling, which uses AI to accelerate performance in games with minimal impact on visual fidelity Spend. GeForce RTX 20-series GPUs also support DLSS, while AMD’s rival FSR 2.0 and Radeon Super Resolution technology are gaining traction.
By Brad Chacos, Executive Editor
Brad Chakos spends his days digging on his desktop and tweeting too much. He specializes in graphics cards and gaming, but covers everything from security to Windows tips and various PC hardware.
AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT – Best Budget Graphics Card
Prices may ease, but for now, the much-maligned Radeon RX 6500 XT remains the only semi-reasonable option under $250. If you can find it at a reasonable price, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 is a more powerful modern graphics card, but it’s often inflated to around $300. The Radeon RX 6500 XT is less appealing thanks to its weakened memory, PCIe lanes, and limited ports, not to mention lower performance, but you’ll often find them on the street these days for around $200. These hardware limitations mean you’ll need to stick to medium or high graphics settings at 1080p resolution in modern games to get playable frame rates, but if you do, you’ll enjoy the experience.
Read our full Radeon RX 6500 XT review
AMD Radeon RX 6600 – Best 1080p Graphics Card
AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 and Nvidia’s rival GeForce RTX 3060 ostensibly come with There’s the same $329 MSRP, but on the street, there’s a wider gap. You’ll find the 6600 starts at around $300, while the cheapest RTX 3060 starts at $400. Those are high entry costs for 1080p gaming – at least compared to GPUs of the past – but with 8GB of fast GDDR6 memory, very good power efficiency, and AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution, the Radeon RX 6600 is A great graphics card People want to game at 1080p at 60fps or higher without compromising visual fidelity. (Or bust.)
Read our full Radeon RX 6600 Swft 210 review
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 – Best for Ray Tracing 1080p Graphics Card
Nvidia comes in second – producing dedicated ray tracing hardware, whose killer DLSS upsampling has been restored in hundreds of games to make up for the performance lost by turning on ray tracing (which has a huge performance hit) . At over $330, it’s not cheap, but if enabling these cutting-edge lighting effects is a priority, you’ll want to go with the GeForce. The RTX 3060 is another solid option, but at $400 on the street, it offers comparable performance to the $300 Radeon RX 6600 in games that don’t use ray tracing.
Read our full GeForce RTX 3050 review
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT – Best 1440p Graphics Card
In a sane world Here, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti will dominate 1440p gaming at an MSRP of $400. Great, it delivers superior ray tracing performance to AMD’s Radeon rivals. But we still don’t live in a sane world where the RTX 3060 Ti sells for $500+ on the street, usually $550-$600. Nvidia’s RTX 3070, which ostensibly costs $500, sells for $650 to $700 online. Switch to AMD’s Radeon RX 6700 XT. It’s fast enough for 1440p gaming at 60fps+, while its beefy 12GB of GDDR6 memory provides plenty of room to flip through all the most powerful graphics. A downside? AMD’s graphics cards can only play ray-traced games at 1080p unless you activate Radeon Super Resolution or FSR 1 or 2 in games that support it. On the other hand, if you’re running a modern Ryzen system that supports it, the Radeon RX 6700 XT can take advantage of AMD’s impressive performance-boosting Smart Access Memory feature.
Read our full Radeon RX 6700 XT review
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti – Best 1440p Graphics Card for Ray Tracing
Yes, the RTX 3060 Ti is still on the high side at $500+ compared to MSRP, not $400 more than expected – but that’s because it’s too good. If you want top-notch 1440p gaming with top-notch ray tracing at its core, this card is worth buying, even if it’s overpriced. The step-down GeForce RTX 3060 is also worth considering, although you may need to dial down some graphics settings when ray tracing is enabled, and the step-up RTX 3070 doesn’t offer enough of a performance boost to justify spending more.
Read our full GeForce RTX 3060 Ti review
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition – Best 4K Graphics Card
If you have a 4K monitor and want all those pixels to work, the RTX 3070, 3070 Ti, and AMD’s Radeon RX 6750 XT and RX 6800 are all good cheap options. However, if you want the best experience without compromising any visuals, drop by for $800 for the 10GB version of the RTX 3080. (The $1,000 12GB model, while more future-proof, isn’t worth the price increase.) With a killer combination of Nvidia’s second-generation ray tracing hardware and DLSS, the GeForce RTX 3080 has plenty of power to play even at 4K resolutions games, including ray traced games.
question? It’s a very popular GPU, and it’s still hard to find models near the 3080’s $800 MSRP (though they’re sure to come). AMD’s rival, the Radeon RX 6800 XT, is easier to find, just as fast, and comes with up to 16GB of GDDR6 memory, but if you can find one around the MSRP, Nvidia’s superb ray tracing and DLSS chips will win that price point
Having said that, the new generation of GPUs from Nvidia and AMD are expected to be available before the end of the year, and when these are launched, payment will be made for products from two years ago The MSRP of the RTX 3080 or any of its competitors can sting, as the new graphics lineup often wrecks the performance of previous-generation high-end GPUs at similar prices. Consider whether you want to join now, or risk waiting a few months to see what’s brewing.
Read our full GeForce RTX 3080 review
AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT – Best High-End 4K Graphics Card
$1,000 graphics cards didn’t exist before, but now they’re common, $1,000 12GB RTX 3080 , the $1,000 Radeon RX 6900 XT, the $1,100 Radeon RX 6950 XT, the $1,200 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, the $1,500 GeForce RTX 3090, and the $2,000 RTX 3090 Ti are all in this price range.
Compared to the more affordable RTX 3080 or Radeon RX 6800 XT, their huge price hike doesn’t translate into a lot of extra performance, so we’d recommend sticking with it for most people they. But high-end prices are dropping rapidly, and if you want to splurge, we recommend the Radeon RX 6950 XT for most people.
The Radeon RX 6950 XT is $400 faster than the RTX 3090 and comes with plenty of 16GB of RAM. Heck, it even outperforms the $2,000 RTX 3090 Ti in some games. If you’re just looking to play some games with speed and fidelity, the 6950 XT is a great value option and offers a killer experience — especially if you use AMD’s features like Radeon Super Resolution, Smart access memory and FSR. (The same goes for the Radeon RX 6900 XT, now that the GPU crunch is easing, and we’re seeing it for under $900.) However, it’s not as good as Nvidia’s GPUs for ray tracing, so choose if you Gamers who want to flip all those cutting-edge lighting effects can go for the RTX 3080 Ti. Note that the Sapphire Nitro+ Pure model we reviewed is an ultra-luxury enthusiast-grade version that is pricier and well-deserved, although you can find MSRPs for other RX 6950 XTs.
Read our full Nitro+ Pure Radeon RX 6950 XT review
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 – The best graphics card for high-end 4K content creation and ray tracing
If you want some of the best gaming performance on the planet, including ray tracing, and also want to do some work on the side , then the $1,500 RTX 3090 graphics card is the buy. This card works hard thanks to the large 24GB ultra-fast GDDR6 memory, which is great for both content creation and Machine learning tasks, especially high-resolution video rendering. It hangs game frames with the best game frames. The newer RTX 3090 Ti offers slightly faster GPU and memory performance, but costs $500 more, making the non-Ti 3090 a more (somewhat) practical option. However, you’re paying for the privilege, and the Radeon RX 6950 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti offer similar gaming performance for a much lower price.
Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 review
How we test the graphics card
We tested the graphics card on a dedicated test system for this purpose only, with minimal extra software involved. This ensures that any performance changes we see are entirely due to the graphics card and new GPU driver being tested, with no variability from other hardware or software changes. This is the configuration of our current testbed:
AMD Ryzen 5900X, stock settings
AMD Wraith Max Cooler
MSI Godlike X570 motherboard
32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3800 RAM
EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 Power Supply 2x 1TB SK Hynix Gold S31 SSD
As far as the game is concerned, we Use a fixed set of games to test every graphics card that appears in a given generation, and update the kit as newer generations of GPUs are introduced. We tested a wide variety of games covering most major game genres (tactics, racing, FPS, etc.), engines (Unreal Engine, Unity, Anvil, etc.) and underlying graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, Vulkan). We use the built-in benchmarks for each game, but only after verifying the accuracy of the results by running the benchmarks and comparing the results to the performance witnessed by third-party GPU measurement tools such as OCAT. Each game was tested at least 3 times at each resolution, an average was generated from these runs, and additional tests were run if we ran into any issues. We may also perform additional testing using tools such as OCAT if any performance anomalies are found. Power consumption is measured on a system-wide basis, listing idle and fully stressed states as measured by Watts Up meters plugged into the system.
What to look for in a custom graphics card
If you want to shop outside of our picks, Just know that finding the right graphics card can be tricky. Different vendors offer customized versions of each GPU. For example, you can buy different Radeon RX 6700 XT models from Sapphire, XFX, Asus, MSI, and PowerColor.
To help narrow down your choices and find the right graphics card for you, you should consider the following as you do your research:
Overclocking: Higher priced custom models are often overclocked to varying degrees out of the box , which can lead to higher performance. However, most modern custom cards offer the same basic level of performance.
Cooling solution: Many graphics cards come with custom coolers to reduce temperature and fan noise. The vast majority performed well. Liquid-cooled graphics cards run cooler, but require extra space inside the case for piping and heatsinks. If you can, avoid graphics cards with a single-fan, blower-style cooling system unless you have a small PC or plan to use a custom water block.
size: Many graphics cards are similar in size but longer and there are many shorter models of GPUs. High-end graphics cards are starting to employ especially massive custom cooling solutions to tame their enthusiast GPUs. Please double check that the graphics card you choose is suitable for your case before purchasing.
Compatibility:
Not all hardware supports a wide range of connectivity options. High-end graphics cards may lack DVI ports, while lower-end monitors may lack DisplayPort. Only the most modern Radeon and GeForce graphics cards support HDMI 2.1 output. Make sure your graphics card and monitor can connect to each other. Again, make sure your power supply matches the recommended wattage for the graphics card you choose.
Real-Time Ray Tracing, FSR and DLSS: AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards and all Nvidia’s RTX products can play real-time ray-traced games with active effects. Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs have a huge advantage over everything else, with dedicated tensor cores pushing the envelope further for processing machine learning tasks such as deep learning supersampling, which uses AI to accelerate performance in games with minimal impact on visual fidelity Spend. GeForce RTX 20-series GPUs also support DLSS, while AMD’s rival FSR 2.0 and Radeon Super Resolution technology are gaining traction.
32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3800 RAM
2x 1TB SK Hynix Gold S31 SSDAs far as the game is concerned, we Use a fixed set of games to test every graphics card that appears in a given generation, and update the kit as newer generations of GPUs are introduced. We tested a wide variety of games covering most major game genres (tactics, racing, FPS, etc.), engines (Unreal Engine, Unity, Anvil, etc.) and underlying graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, Vulkan). We use the built-in benchmarks for each game, but only after verifying the accuracy of the results by running the benchmarks and comparing the results to the performance witnessed by third-party GPU measurement tools such as OCAT. Each game was tested at least 3 times at each resolution, an average was generated from these runs, and additional tests were run if we ran into any issues. We may also perform additional testing using tools such as OCAT if any performance anomalies are found. Power consumption is measured on a system-wide basis, listing idle and fully stressed states as measured by Watts Up meters plugged into the system.
What to look for in a custom graphics card
If you want to shop outside of our picks, Just know that finding the right graphics card can be tricky. Different vendors offer customized versions of each GPU. For example, you can buy different Radeon RX 6700 XT models from Sapphire, XFX, Asus, MSI, and PowerColor.
To help narrow down your choices and find the right graphics card for you, you should consider the following as you do your research:
Overclocking: Higher priced custom models are often overclocked to varying degrees out of the box , which can lead to higher performance. However, most modern custom cards offer the same basic level of performance.
Cooling solution: Many graphics cards come with custom coolers to reduce temperature and fan noise. The vast majority performed well. Liquid-cooled graphics cards run cooler, but require extra space inside the case for piping and heatsinks. If you can, avoid graphics cards with a single-fan, blower-style cooling system unless you have a small PC or plan to use a custom water block.
size: Many graphics cards are similar in size but longer and there are many shorter models of GPUs. High-end graphics cards are starting to employ especially massive custom cooling solutions to tame their enthusiast GPUs. Please double check that the graphics card you choose is suitable for your case before purchasing.
Compatibility:
Not all hardware supports a wide range of connectivity options. High-end graphics cards may lack DVI ports, while lower-end monitors may lack DisplayPort. Only the most modern Radeon and GeForce graphics cards support HDMI 2.1 output. Make sure your graphics card and monitor can connect to each other. Again, make sure your power supply matches the recommended wattage for the graphics card you choose.
Real-Time Ray Tracing, FSR and DLSS: AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards and all Nvidia’s RTX products can play real-time ray-traced games with active effects. Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs have a huge advantage over everything else, with dedicated tensor cores pushing the envelope further for processing machine learning tasks such as deep learning supersampling, which uses AI to accelerate performance in games with minimal impact on visual fidelity Spend. GeForce RTX 20-series GPUs also support DLSS, while AMD’s rival FSR 2.0 and Radeon Super Resolution technology are gaining traction.
By Brad Chacos, Executive Editor
Brad Chakos spends his days digging on his desktop and tweeting too much. He specializes in graphics cards and gaming, but covers everything from security to Windows tips and various PC hardware.
Brad Chakos spends his days digging on his desktop and tweeting too much. He specializes in graphics cards and gaming, but covers everything from security to Windows tips and various PC hardware.
