Best graphics card
What's the best graphics card? Simple, it’s that hyper-expensive Nvidia GTX Titan X, right? It’s got all the transistors, all the shaders, all the ROPs and all the FLOPs, so it’s the best. Job done. We can all go on to live rich, full lives safe in the knowledge the big questions are all taken care of.
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Except that’s not really how it works. It may be an incredibly powerful slice of graphical silicon, but performance alone does not make one great, young padawan. The new GTX Titan X is almost entirely irrelevant, as graphics cards go, for pretty much anyone with a penchant for PC gaming and the need to ask exactly how much something costs. Few will have been made, the cost is insanely prohibitive and I bet there are only a handful of gamers who've bought a Titan and thought ‘I’m glad I dropped a grand on that’ a year down the line.
To us, what makes the best graphics card for you to buy right now is that heady mix of architectural elegance, impeccable gaming performance and excellent value. An expensive card isn’t necessarily bad value, nor is a cheap GPU inherently good value - as with all things PC gaming the best graphics card is all about striking the perfect balance.
Want some help figuring out what to consider when buying a new graphics card, or need to know what the best GPU is for different performance levels? Check out the quick links below.
Best graphics card
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
Approx. $280 / £230. Check Amazon live prices.
This is where the nexus point of price and performance lies: in the sub-$300 graphics card. And the best of those right now is Nvidia’s GTX 1060. It’s the direct replacement for the card I’ve long been recommending as the go-to GPU of the last generation: the GTX 970. Nvidia has jigged about its graphics stack this year, shifting each level of GPU up one rung on the performance ladder. As such the 1080 has stepped into the 980 Ti gap, the GTX 1070 into the 980 price point and subsequently the GTX 1060 finds itself in the rarified position the GTX 970 once occupied.
But while the GTX 1060 is effectively replacing the GTX 970 in Nvidia’s GPU stack, in terms of actual gaming performance it’s much closer to the last-generation GTX 980. The reference-clocked Founders Edition card is only ever a handful of frames per second on average slower than our seriously overclocked version of the GTX 980. That’s an impressive showing considering the 980 was the top Maxwell card for a long time, and a $550 GPU at launch.
Not only is it quicker, the GTX 1060 is also one of the most energy efficient cards around too. The TDP of just 120W is fantastic - lower than any of AMD’s competing Polaris 10-based cards - and delivers peak platform power draw of 204W in the PCGamesN test rig. The GTX 1060 is also a pretty epic overclocker too; even our reference card with Nvidia’s basic blower has a wealth of headroom in it, leading to some seriously speedy factory-overclocked versions like the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X. That impressively low TDP is also the reason the latest 16nm architecture is being dropped directly into Nvidia's Pascal-based gaming laptops too.
The GTX 1060 doesn’t have everything its own way, however. The competing AMD Radeon RX 480 is generally a little off the pace by comparison, except when you start to throw new graphics APIs down its ample pipes. In the Hitman DX12 benchmark even the RX 470 is able to deliver gaming performance on par with the GTX 1060, while the RX 480 leaves it trailing in its volumetric dust. The same thing happens in Doom when using the Vulkan build, where the RX 480 is over 50% quicker than the GTX 1060.
On the whole though Nvidia’s GTX 1060 is a good-value card which will deliver fantastic performance in current-gen games even if its DirectX 12 and Vulkan performance could do with a little work.
Read the full Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 review.
Best graphics card runner-up
AMD Radeon RX 480
Approx. $310 / £219. Check Amazon live prices.
Something weird is going on with stock levels for the RX 480, in fact for most of AMD’s latest Radeon cards, despite AMD's assurance at launch that stock was not going to be an issue. In the UK it’s not too bad - there’s a relatively healthy number of cards available around AMD’s original suggested retail price - but in the US they’re seemingly rare as dog eggs. And if you do find someone with stock you can expect to be paying well over $300 for the privilege. Which is a shame as the 8GB RX 480 should be a great-value GPU at its original, suggested ~$200 price tag, especially if you’re really into Doom and Hitman or just want to play Vulkan or DX12-based games at high frame rates. If you can find the RX 480 for significantly less than a GTX 1060 then we'd be sorely tempted to opt for the Radeon instead.
Read the full AMD Radeon RX 480 review.
Best 4K graphics card
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
Approx. $679 / £602. Check Amazon live prices.
If you want to be playing games at this Ultra HD 4K resolution then you’re going to need some serious graphics power to cope with the 8.3 million pixels you’ll be throwing around your screen. The step up from the 2 million pixels of 1080p, or even from the 3.7 million of 1440p, is massive, so you’re going to need something with the GPU juice of the GTX 1080 to smooth out the jagged edges of 4K gaming.
Nvidia’s inaugural Pascal-powered GPU was built to tackle gaming at 3840 x 2160 and is the first GeForce card to really be able to deliver on that promise. The Maxwell-powered GTX Titan X, and subsequent GTX 980 Ti, got close to delivering 4K gaming, but the GTX 1080 takes that just a little further. Though we’re still not talking about nailing 60fps in every modern game at the top settings here - that’s the purview of the new GTX Titan X in all it’s (stupidly expensive) glory, and then the GTX 1080 Ti which must surely follow.
Across our testing suite the GTX 1080 is mostly operating in the range between 40fps and 60fps on average. Serious frame rate compulsives may baulk at such ‘low’ performance, but those results are with the post-processing and texture settings pushed pretty much as high as they’ll go in-game. When you’re paying this much for your graphics card the idea of compromising on image quality might be a painful one, but with some smart cuts here and there you’ll definitely be able to nail a solid 60fps.
Gaming on a 4K monitor at native resolutions, especially on a sub 30-inch panel, means you can be a little more relaxed on such niceties as anti-aliasing. The tight pixel pitch of a 4K display means you shouldn’t experience too many obtrusive jaggies when running at 2x MSAA, as opposed to x4 or x8, for example.
Until the GTX 1080 Ti appears, rocking the same GP102 GPU as the latest Titan X, then this is the go-to 4K graphics card of today. And even when the Ti does tip up it’s going to command an even more egregious price premium than the GTX 1080. Though I guess it all depends on how much you’re willing to spend in the pursuit of smooth Ultra HD gaming.
Best 4K graphics card runner-up
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
Approx. $430 / £390. Check Amazon live prices.
The GTX 1070’s more reasonable cost makes it a much more wallet-friendly option for 4K gaming, though it still occupies the sort of price point the top end of graphics cards of yesterday used to call their own. Bemoaning Nvidia’s super-high pricing gets us nowhere though, so when this cheaper card is so close to the 4K performance of the GTX 1080 the GTX 1070 begins to look like the best Ultra HD value proposition. You still get very playable 4K frame rates from the GTX 1070 though you’ll have to be more aggressive about the fidelity cuts when it comes to dialling back the graphics settings in-game to hit 60fps.
Best budget graphics card
AMD Radeon RX 460 2GB
Approx. $110 / £108. Check Amazon live prices.
While the 4GB, overclocked version of the AMD RX 460 didn’t get a glowing recommendation from us, you can pick up different versions of AMD’s latest Polaris-based GPU for only a little over a ton. These cheaper versions are operating with half the memory capacity, but everything else is identical to the strangely-pricey 4GB cards.
That means they’re using the same Polaris 11 GPU, with 896 GCN cores and a 128-bit memory bus. Which in turn means the performance of the cheaper cards shouldn’t be masssively different when running at 1080p. Okay, you’re not going to be running at the highest Full HD settings with the 2GB RX 460, but dialing back the most GPU-intensive graphics settings will still net you great gaming experience without breaking the bank.
I’m also hoping that, as supply increases in the channel, the prices will even out a little more and the 4GB versions won’t command such a high price premium. That should make them a far more intriguing option for the budget gamer. At the moment though there are scant few RX 460 cards actually available for a decent price, so it will definitely pay to shop carefully.
Nvidia have still to bring the Pascal GPU architecture down to a lower level - there have been no announcements about a GP106 with a cut-down core count that could get close to the pricing of the RX 460. Right now the GTX 950 is the closest rival and costs a touch more than the base 2GB RX 460, without delivering any tangible performance boost to speak of.
Best budget graphics card runner-up
AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB
Approx. $200 / £165. Check Amazon live prices.
AMD have released a slew of 400-series cards recently, but despite their mostly impressive performance the range seems to be in a little bit of a mess at the moment with pricing and stock. This second-tier Polaris-based card was released as an opportunity for the board partners to show off, which meant the first card we tested was an overclocked Sapphire RX 470 which cost around the same amount as a 4GB RX 480. Again, once supply is increased, prices will settle down and when they’re priced closer to AMD’s SRP of $179 (£159) then the RX 470 will be a genuinely tantalising option. It’s almost twice as quick as the RX 460 and will nail top 1080p performance comfortably. It may be stretching the definition of 'budget' a little, but at its SRP the RX 470 is fantastic value GPU.
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How to buy a graphics card
As a PC gamer your graphics card is probably the single most important purchase you will make, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore all the other components in your rig and expect to get the most out of your new card. I’ve said it before, and I’ll no doubt say pretty much the same thing again: balance is absolutely key to getting the best possible performance from your gaming PC.
There’s no point picking up a GTX 1080 if you’re only ever going to run it on a 1080p monitor and a ropey AMD APU. Sure, you’ll still be able to nail 60fps, but you will have hobbled your expensive new GPU by saddling it with a poor processor and bottlenecking it at a low resolution. At 1080p your processor choice becomes very important - we’re at a time now where certain games are becoming CPU-limited at that resolution, and sometimes even at 1440p.
Multiplayer Battlefield 4 is one such game and so is Total War: Attila - even with our test rig’s Core i7 6700K there is no difference in performance between a GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 because it’s the CPU holding things back. Switching to an 8-core 5960X though and frame rates push on much further. Intel processors are though still currently your best bet for getting the most out of your card. AMD’s CPUs and APUs cannot deliver enough single-threaded performance to keep your GPU fed and significantly hold back a graphics card’s frame rate capability. Though fingers crossed that will change once AMD's new Zen CPUs arrive in our rigs.
Your chosen display - or your next panel purchase - is also an important factor too. You’re not going to want to run your games on a 1080p monitor if you’ve just spent the best part of a grand on a new GPU. If you do only have a 1080p screen there’s little point spending more than £250 on a GPU unless you’re also looking to upgrade your monitor in the next 12 months.
AMD or Nvidia graphics card?
That’s the age old question: do you buy from the red team or the green team? There are positives and negatives to each, but in general terms if you want the outright best gaming performance then you go for an Nvidia graphics card, but if it’s more about pricing and value, then AMD’s Radeons are normally a better bet.
Each have their own technologies, with Nvidia leading the way in terms of frame synchronising. AMD though have FreeSync which is almost as effective as Nvidia’s G-Sync, but has the benefit of being an open standard and therefore cheaper when it comes to buying a compatible monitor. Both though are capable of creating an incredibly smooth, tearing-free gaming experience.
Nvidia also has the edge in terms of software. Their GeForce Experience program is incredibly useful and Shadowplay’s an impressively simple game-capture app. That said, AMD's new Radeon Settings software is greatly improved over the old Catalyst Control Centre and includes a powerful overclocking application, WattMan, as standard.
AMD and Nvidia have also made great strides in the efficiency stakes in their latest generations, with AMD making up for their poor showing of the last few years. Though with a bit of a head-start Nvidia are still rocking the performance per Watt game.
Last-gen cards
You'll notice we've only covered the latest graphics cards in this guide, while there are still many last-gen cards from both AMD and Nvidia available out there. We've approached this roundup as products we'd recommend for people to buy as a brand new card, or for their next PC build/purchase. For the sort of money we're talking about spending we'd always recommend going for the latest technology to give you at least a little bit of a chance at future-proofing your purchase. It also doesn't necessarily follow that last-gen cards will suddenly be super-cheap the moment a new generation gets released - as stock gets run down the availability drops, but so does demand and all that means prices generally stay unattractively high. There is going to be a quick drop in GTX 9-series prices, for example, but do you want to buy a GTX 980 Ti for the same price as a GTX 1070? You will though find ebay filled with older cards, but the second-hand market in components can be a bit of a minefield depending on how they've been treated previously.
That said, if you're already sitting on a GTX 970 - my pick of the last-gen cards - then picking up a second one, for a little less than the money you might drop on a new GTX 1060, could be a good way of boosting your gaming performance. Recommending an SLI setup isn't something I'm that comfortable with however. The vagaries of multi-GPU gaming mean that, while you ought to be treated to a significant performance uplift with a second card, sometimes you'll hit a new release which steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the existence of subsequent GPUs leaving one card twiddling its thumbs. There are also games which never get SLI or CrossFire support in their lifetimes. In short: multi-GPU gaming can be a gamble.
Video memory
How much VRAM do you need to have attached to your graphics card? It used to be a way for manufacturers to pretend their budget cards were better than they were, but these days having a hefty amount of video memory is becoming more and more important. As texture quality improves and resolutions creep ever higher more VRAM is a definite bonus.
In the mid-range the GTX 1060 and RX 480 are sporting 6GB and 8GB respectively. There are RX 480's with half the video memory incoming, though I’ve yet to see just how much difference there is between a 4GB and 8GB version. At the top you’ve got the GTX Titan X with a full 12GB of video memory, and for super high-resolution gaming that will come in handy, especially a little way down the line.
Lower down the order though it becomes a mite trickier choosing between 2GB and 4GB versions of a card. When it comes to a $100 (£100) budget GPU you can arguably get away with 2GB, especially considering the price premium that we've seen attached to the 4GB options.
Factory-overclocked cards
These are my current bete noire, especially when it comes to lower order graphics cards. Factory-overclocked GPUs come with an out-of-the-box boost to their clockspeeds, sometimes as little as 10MHz, or as potentially high as 100MHz, but if you’re paying the price premium attached to such cards just for an immediate performance boost you might well be disappointed. Often factory-overclocked cards won’t deliver that much better performance than you'd get with a stock-clocked model.
What they do offer though is the option for an enthusiast to take the GPU further. If you’ve got a manufacturer boosted card then the likelihood is they will have picked the best chips for those pricier versions, the chips with the most overclocking headroom available. That means you’re potentially able to push them further than a reference-clocked version could go.
But they still only really make sense if you’re serious about getting elbow deep in voltage tweaks and fan-profiles. If you’re more of a casual overclocker then you’ll probably get the little performance boost you crave from a standard version of a GPU. Overclocking is genuinely easier than it’s ever been and as close to risk-free as modifying a PC component could possibly be.
Factory-overclocked cards though quickly lose relevance the further down the price ladder you go. A budget GPU is unlikely to have a huge amount of overclocking headroom anyways, not that will make a tangible performance difference anyway, so their extra expense pushes them towards pointlessness. The latest RX 460 is a prime example. The extra 30% price premium for the overclocked version I’ve tested pushes it incredibly close to the cost of a 4GB RX 470, a GPU which is around twice as fast in-game, making it a tough card to love.
Check Amazon for the latest deals and specs on graphics cards.
