Best Graphics Cards

The GP108-powered GeForce GT 1030 earns a position on our list by serving up solid frame rates in older DirectX 9/11-based games, many of which are fast-paced e-sports titles.

In addition to commendable performance, we’re also fans of Nvidia’s 30W TDP. Low power consumption translates to smaller form factors and conservative fan profiles. Indeed, the Gigabyte card we reviewed includes a half-height bracket, only requires a single expansion slot, and doesn’t need an auxiliary power connector. HTPC builders, rejoice!

As inventory of AMD’s Radeon RX 460 dries up, the Radeon RX 560 slides into its position as a compelling replacement for HD gaming. Unfortunately, this card’s price is creeping higher. You can now expect to spend ~$140 for the most basic models.

On the bright side, at least this translates to quantifiable performance gains. Whereas Radeon RX 460 included 896 Stream processors, 56 texture units, and a 1090 MHz base clock rate, RX 560 wields 1024 shaders, 64 texture units, and a 1175 MHz base frequency.

Power consumption does increase a little, but you’re still looking at dual-slot boards with a single six-pin auxiliary connector.

Although we’re calling the RX 560 your best option for 720p and e-sports gaming, benchmarks from our review show that AMD’s beefed-up board delivers playable performance at 1920x1080, too.

The GP107-powered GeForce GTX 1050 wields a modest 640 CUDA cores and texture units, but it spins them up to almost 1.5 GHz under most gaming workloads. As a result, the GTX 1050 readily competes with AMD’s Radeon RX 560 across our benchmark suite.

A mere 2GB of GDDR5 might be worrying to some enthusiasts. However, in the 10 games we tested, Nvidia’s card behaved well, even at 1920x1080 using medium-quality settings. Discounted $10 versus the comparable Radeon, we think GTX 1050 is worth considering.

It took us a while to warm to the 1050 Ti. After all, it costs quite a bit more than Nvidia’s vanilla 1050 and isn’t a whole lot faster. But this next step up over the RX 560 opens the door to a better-looking experience using high or medium quality settings at 1920x1080. Beating it with an AMD product means shopping for a Radeon RX 570 and paying a lot more money – prices on Polaris-based cards are all over the place, if you can even find one in stock.

This is one of two cards based on Nvidia’s GP107 processor. The other one, GeForce GTX 1050, takes the full 768-core GPU and loses two SMs, ending up with 640 CUDA cores. So, paying a little extra for the Ti gets you more compute resources, plus an additional 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

Nvidia seemed determined to get us review samples that didn’t need auxiliary power. Exercise caution as you shop though, particularly if you’re upgrading an older PC or building a compact HTPC, as some models do come equipped with six-pin connectors.

In light of the fact that Radeon RX 570 and 580 cards are almost wholly unavailable, we're back to recommending Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB as our choice for great 1080p and good 1440p performance. The caveat is that you'll have to buy one direct from a company like EVGA or Nvidia to get reasonable pricing. And be ready to pull the trigger quickly when you see cards in stock.

You’ll find two versions of the GTX 1060, both based on the GP106 GPU. Make sure you’re shopping for the 6GB model, which features 1280 CUDA cores, 80 texture units, and 48 ROPs. We specifically recommend against the 3GB implementation; its memory subsystem struggles in some popular games at 1080p and 1440p alike.

The GeForce GTX 1070 is armed with 1920 CUDA cores, 120 texture units, and 8GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus. What’s more, a 150W TDP keeps the 1070’s power requirements conservative: Nvidia recommends a 500W PSU with one eight-pin connector.

But performance is what makes this card special. If you really want to max out quality at 2560x1440, the GTX 1070 is compelling. It’s significantly faster than the Radeon R9 Fury X in DirectX 11 games, and it holds its own against AMD’s Fiji-based GPUs in newer DirectX 12/Vulkan titles. The GTX 1070 does succumb to Radeon RX Vega 56 in many performance benchmarks. However, we still haven’t seen Vega 56 priced competitively.

We're also sticking with the GeForce GTX 1070 as our recommendation for playable performance on Oculus’ Rift and HTC’s Vive. While you could still get away with previous-gen GPUs, Nvidia’s Pascal architecture includes a lot of optimization for VR. The GTX 1060 isn’t quite fast enough for our liking in fast-paced VR games, so the 1070 earns recognition instead.

The GP104-based GTX 1080 wields 2560 CUDA cores, 160 texture units, and 8GB of GDDR5X on a 256-bit bus. Its performance is rivaled by AMD’s 220W Radeon RX Vega 64 and eclipsed by Nvidia's 250W GP102-based boards. And yet, the relatively efficient 1080 is rated for just 180W.

The Titan X (Pascal) introduced gamers to brutal speed, but at an equally devastating $1200 price tag. GeForce GTX 1080 Ti brings roughly the same frame rates down to ~$750, if you can catch one in stock. Thus, it secures our recommendation for the best 4K performance available from a single-GPU solution.

This card’s GP102 processor is the same one found on Titan X. You get the same 3584 CUDA cores and 224 texture units. But Nvidia shaves off one 32-bit memory controller, eight ROPs, and 256KB of L2 cache. To compensate, the chip’s base clock rate is set to 1480 MHz. And the use of 11 Gb/s GDDR5X actually lends 1080 Ti more theoretical memory bandwidth than Titan X with its 10 Gb/s modules.