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Getting the best graphics card is key if you're looking to buy the best gaming PC or looking to build a PC on your own. The graphics card is even more important than the CPU. Unfortunately, the process of figuring out how to buy a GPU can be intimidating. There's so much to consider, from the type of monitor you're using (for recommendations, see our Best Gaming Monitors (opens in new tab) page) to the size of your PC case to the game settings you plan to play at. Below are the things you need to keep in mind when shopping for your next GPU. For specific recommendations, see our best graphics cards list of the current options, as well as the GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy to see how today's cards compare to older cards that you might be looking to upgrade and replace. Thankfully, the supply and GPU prices on Nvidia's RTX 30-series cards as well as AMD's RX 6000 cards continues to improve. After 18 months of extreme prices, most cards can now be found online for only 20–30% over MSRP, sometimes less. However, note that next-generation GPUs are around the corner, like the Nvidia 'Ada' RTX 40-series and AMD's RDNA3, so keep that in mind. Quick tipsWhy you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
AMD or Nvidia?There are hundreds of graphics cards from dozens of manufacturers, but only two companies actually make the GPUs that power these components: Nvidia and AMD — though Intel's Xe Graphics has started to ship for laptops and should also come to desktops in the next few months. With its RX 6000 cards, AMD is more competitive than it has been in years with Nvidia and its current-gen Ampere cards, like the GeForce RTX 3080, in general performance. That said, the realistically lit elephant in the room that we've been ignoring thus-far is real-time ray tracing. Introduced as a major new feature with Nvidia's now previous-generation RTX 20-series cards, "Team Green" is now on its second generation RTX with 30-series GPUs. AMD ("Team Red") stepped into this game in a big way in 2020 with its RX 6000 cards, but it's still on its first go-round with real-time ray tracing, and so lags behind Nvidia on this front. Still, the rollout of games that make use of (and specifically good use of) ray tracing has been slow. There's no doubt that more games are adding RT support — and many more will in the future as ray tracing is also supported by the Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Series S|X consoles. At present, the list of games with what we would categorize as impressive use of ray tracing remains relatively limited.
Our Ray Tracing GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy breaks things down using six demanding RT games. Games that only use a single RT effect, like reflections, tend to be less demanding and less impressive overall. So weigh the importance of ray tracing performance with how interested you are in these games, how important the best possible visuals are to your enjoyment, and how much future-proofing you want baked into your GPU. Also, don't forget DLSS, Nvidia's AI-assisted resolution upscaling. It can deliver improved performance with less of a hit on frame rates than is typical from maxing out your monitor's resolution the traditional way. Support for this feature is limited to a subset of games, admittedly a growing one — many of the complete ray tracing games support DLSS. AMD has its own open source alternative to DLSS, called Fidelity FX Super Resolution (AMD FSR), and FSR 2.0 should further improve things, but DLSS is more widely supported in games that really need upscaling. For more on these subjects as well as screen-smoothing variable refresh technologies, see our AMD vs Nvidia: Who Makes the Best GPUs? and FreeSync vs. G-Sync: Which Variable Refresh Tech Is Best Today? features. How Much Can You Spend?The price of video cards varies greatly, with super low-end cards starting under $100 and high-end models going for $2,000 or more in the case of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. As is often the case, top-end cards aren't worth the money unless for some reason you absolutely have to have the best performance possible, or if you do professional work where 10% more performance will pay for itself over time. Dropping a tier or two down will greatly improve the bang for the buck. Currently, for example, an RTX 3080 12GB can be had for about $1,000. That's half as much as the RTX 3090 Ti, for about 15% less performance on average. The same goes for the AMD side. The RX 6900 XT (opens in new tab) costs about $1,050 while the RX 6700 XT (opens in new tab) can be had for half that much. There's no question about the 6900 being faster, but is it worth paying double the price? Only you can decide. Here's the short list of current generation cards and the best prices we're tracking right now:
Which GPUs are budget, mid-range and high-end?Here's a breakdown of the major current GPUs and where they stand, grouped roughly by price and performance. (For example, note that the GTX 1070 is with the 'mid-range' now, since it's about as fast as a 1660 Super.) Remember that not all cards with a given GPU will perform exactly the same. For more detail, check out the GPU Benchmarks page. Swipe to scroll horizontally
How to buy a GPU: Which specs matter and which don't?
Can it support VR?If you want to use your GPU with a PC VR HMD, you need at least a mid-range card, with optimal performance coming from a card like the Nvidia RTX 2060 Super/AMD RX 5700 or higher. The lowest-end cards you can use with these headsets are the AMD Radeon RX 570 and Nvidia GTX 1060. And the card requirements of course increase with newer, higher-resolution headsets. Obviously, this isn't a critical factory if you have no interest in VR. What about ray tracing and AI?We discussed this above, but to briefly recap, Nvidia's latest RTX 30-series GPUs are the best solution for ray tracing and DLSS. AMD's RX 6000-series GPUs have similar ray tracing performance to Nvidia's RTX 20-series, but they lack support for DLSS and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution isn't quite the same thing. Intel for its part will support RT in hardware and has a competing XeSS upscaling solution that uses Xe Matrix cores, basically the same idea as Nvidia's Tensor cores. From what we know, Intel's RT performance will be very low, given even the fastest Arc A770 only has 32 ray tracing units — though we don't yet know how fast the RTUs are in comparison to Nvidia's RT cores. Game support for DXR (DirectX Raytracing) and DLSS/FSR continues to improve, but there are tons of games where it's simply not an important consideration. If you like to turn on all the bells and whistles, placebo effect increases in image quality be damned, that's fine. We expect RT performance to become increasingly important in the coming years, but it could be two or three more GPU architectures before it's a make or break deal. Reference Card or Third Party Design?Even after you decide what GPU you're after (say, for example, an RTX 3060 Ti), you'll usually be faced with plenty of options in terms of cooler design and brand or manufacturer. Nvidia makes and sells its own cards under the Founders Edition moniker for higher-end models, while AMD licenses its reference design to other manufacturers. Both companies' GPUs appear in third-party cards from several different vendors. More expensive third-party cards will have elaborate coolers, extra fans, lots of RGB lighting, and often higher clock speeds, but they can also be more expensive than the reference card. Overclocking gains are often minimal, with gains of just a few FPS, so don't feel bad if you're not running a blinged-out card. That said, beefier cooling can often translate to cooler, quieter operation, which can be important given that high-end graphics cards are usually the noisiest, most heat-generating parts in a PC build. We've also noticed that Nvidia's RTX 3080 and 3090 Founders Edition cards (along with several custom models) can get particularly hot on their GDDR6X, so it pays to do some research. For much more on this discussion, see our Graphics Card Face-Off: Founders Edition or Reference GPUs vs 3rd-Party Design feature. Card Recommendations by Resolution / Use CaseOnce you've considered all the above and are ready to narrow down your choices, you can head to our GPU Benchmarks and our Best Graphics Cards to help finalize your buying decision. Here we include a condensed version of our current favorite cards for common resolutions and gaming scenarios below. Keep in mind that there are third-party options for all of these cards, so you may want to use these picks as a jumping-off point to finding, say, the best AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT model for your particular gaming build. Best Budget PickBest Mainstream PickBest Mainstream Nvidia PickBest Card for 1440pBest High-End CardMORE: Best Graphics Cards MORE: GPU Benchmarks MORE: How to Stress-Test Graphics Cards (Like We Do) MORE: All Graphics Content MORE: How to Sell Your Used PC Components After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends. How do I know which graphics card is compatible?Fortunately, any prebuilt PC or case will have readily-available compatibility information like this online- all you need to do is identify the model of your prebuilt or case and head to the manufacturer's website. On that site, you'll want to look for something along the lines of “GPU Length” or “VGA Length”.
How do I know if a graphics card is compatible with my CPU?Just find out if the card/motherboard is supporting either PCIe x8 or x16 interface. In your case, it is more likely compatibility between motherboard and GPU compatibility, not CPU. If you go higher end, with large number of GPU, then it is more like Xeon as better than i7 or AMD.
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