GPU Performance Hierarchy 2020: Video Cards Ranked

Our GPU hierarchy ranks all the current and previous generation graphics cards in terms of performance, using a suite of gaming tests. Whether it's playing games or doing high-end creative work like 4K video editing, your graphics card typically plays the biggest role in determining performance.

A good GPU will let you play recent games at smooth frame rates; get one of the best GPUs for gaming and you can enjoy those games at very high high resolutions or frame rates, with the special effects turned all the way up.

To help you decide which graphics card you need, we've developed the GPU hierarchy below, which ranks all the current chips from fastest to slowest. We've assigned each a score for comparison purposes, where the fastest card gets normalized to 100 percent, and all others are graded relative to it, based on our testing.

Test System Configuration

• Intel Core i9-9900K
• Corsair H150i Pro RGB
• MSI MEG Z390 Ace
• Corsair 32GB DDR4-3200 (2x 16GB)
• XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB
• Windows 10 Pro (1909)

For this update, we're completely overhauling our rankings to include more games at more settings. Our new results are based on the geometric mean frames per second (fps) of our testing of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Borderlands 3, The Division 2, Far Cry 5, Forza Horizon 4, Hitman 2, Metro Exodus, The Outer Worlds, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Strange Brigade and Total War: Warhammer II. We test at 1080p medium, 1080p ultra, 1440p ultra and 4K ultra. All testing was done with a Core i9-9900K test system (see above for more test system details).

That's 12 games, four settings and over 40 cards from the current and previous generations. We have a solid mix of game genres and APIs, plus AMD and Nvidia promoted titles, making this the definitive GPU hierarchy for gaming performance. The new mix of games and settings make for much larger differences between some of the GPUs, where previously the CPU and lower settings made things look much closer.

Note that while some of the games in our test suite support DirectX Raytracing (DXR) and Nvidia's RTX 20-series GPUs, we have not tested with DXR enabled. That's because none of AMD's current cards can run DXR, and while Nvidia does support DXR on certain GTX models, ray tracing performance on Pascal cards isn't great. For now, only Nvidia RTX GPUs are worth using for ray tracing games; we'll look at ray tracing on AMD once the company releases its Navi 20 GPU.

Here is our latest GPU hierarchy:

Topping the charts is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Technically the Titan RTX is about 3% faster overall, for more than twice the price. It might be worth shelling out for the Titan if you're doing AI research and software development, but for gaming, the sage advice is to always skip the Titan cards. The 2080 Ti is your best option if you're after 4K high to ultra quality gaming at 60 fps, or even higher framerates on a 1440p monitor.

Ignoring the Titan cards, the next four positions on the charts are also from Nvidia: RTX 2080 Super, RTX 2080, RTX 2070 Super and the GTX 1080 Ti says hello from 2017. The drop from 2080 Ti to 2080 Super is 10%, while the gap between the next three RTX cards is a modest 3-5% step down in performance. AMD doesn't even rank on the charts until the Radeon VII in sixth (sans Titans), basically tied with the 1080 Ti and coming in just barely ahead of the RX 5700 XT. The newer RDNA architecture in the RX 5700 XT makes it the far better choice, at about half the price, unless you really need 16GB of HBM2.

Following close behind the 5700 XT are the RTX 2070, RTX 2060 Super, RX 5700, GTX 1080 and RX 5600 XT. That last one deserves a disclaimer, however: Our current test data uses a Sapphire RX 5600 XT Pulse, with an updated BIOS that boosts the GPU clocks and runs the GDDR6 at 14 Gbps. Other models with 12 Gbps GDDR6 like the Asus ROG Strix RX 5600 XT can perform about 5% slower. Rounding out the top half of the hierarchy are AMD's Vega 64 and Vega 56, bracketing the reference model RTX 2060, followed by the GTX 1070 Ti.

If you want ray tracing support, obviously the RTX cards are the winners in the high-end category, and they're plenty fast in non-ray tracing games. All of the above cards are generally capable of 1440p 60 fps gaming at high to ultra settings, with more ultra settings within reach the further up the charts you go. If you're willing to tinker a bit and drop some settings to medium, 1440p at 60 fps is also within reach of other cards. These cards are also good for extreme 240 fps performance at 1080p in esports games, if you have a 240 Hz display, and soon 360 Hz monitors will hit the market. The cards in the top half of our GPU hierarchy are also great options if you're looking to drive a VR headset.

Even though we're now at GPUs that are half the performance of the RTX 2080 Ti, the midrange and budget GPUs are still plenty capable of playing games. The GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 Super effectively match the older GTX 1070, and land just ahead of the now "ancient" GTX 980 Ti from 2015. If you shelled out $700 five years ago for the then-fastest GPU, it's now matched by $230 cards. Such is the price of progress.

Once we hit the GTX 1660, RX 590, RX 5500 XT 8GB and RX 580 8GB, it's best to leave thoughts of 1440p gaming behind, but 1080p and 60 fps or more at high to ultra settings is still possible in most games. Only the most demanding (we're looking at you, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Borderlands 3, The Division 2 and Metro Exodus) may need to drop a few settings even further.

There are a couple interesting points to note here. First, older 4GB cards like the R9 Fury X and GTX 980, along with newer cards like the GTX 1650 Super and RX 5500 XT 4GB, all perform reasonably well and can still beat Nvidia's GTX 1060 6GB. If you're willing to drop texture and shadow resolution a notch, 4GB cards are still viable at 1080p, though that will become less true as future games continue to push VRAM use.

The second item to consider: These $150-$250 cards are generally equal or superior to the current generation console GPUs (PS4 Pro and Xbox One X). Drop your settings to medium/high, run at 1440p with resolution scaling up to 4K, and you too can get the 30-60 fps console gaming experience on your PC! If you think current consoles "can do 4K" but only extremely expensive PC hardware will suffice, it's mostly a subjective view of what makes for adequate frame rates and image quality.

Wrapping up the charts, the bottom third is home of the true budget GPUs like the RX 570 4GB and GTX 1650, which give up a lot of performance in order to keep pricing as close to $100 as possible. There are multiple 570 cards in the $120-$130 range still, compared to only a single GTX 1650 card for $130 (after $20 mail-in rebate). AMD's power use is higher, but performance is basically tied. Either card can do 1080p medium to high settings (and sometimes ultra) in most games and still break 60 fps (Metro Exodus being the sole exception in our test suite).

Going below the GTX 1650 isn't recommended, unless you're more interested in a card for home theater PC (HTPC) use. Yes, the GTX 1050 and RX 560 can still play nearly any game at more than 30 fps at 1080p medium, but that's about it. The RX 550 and GT 1030 meanwhile exist mostly for OEMs that simply wanted any dedicated graphics card for marketing purposes, or for specialized half-height PC builds. They can do 60 fps in popular eports games like League of Legends or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but then even Intel's latest integrated graphics solutions can manage that.

Legacy GPU Hierarchy

Below is our legacy desktop GPU hierarchy with historical comparisons dating back to the 1990s. We have not tested most of these cards in many years, driver support has ended on lots of models, and relative rankings are relatively coarse. We group cards into performance tiers, pairing disparate generations where overlap occurs.

For even more information, check out our Graphics Card Buyer's Guide.

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