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Best graphics cards: the top gaming GPUs

Our top graphics card picks for 1080p, 1440p, and 4K

Several gaming GPUs, including a couple of the best graphics cards (the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 3070) on a table.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

I don’t want to alarm anyone – if a list of the best graphics cards isn’t supposed to be a happy place, what is – but the launch of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs has sent some worrying signals that a dark stretch of PC component history may be repeating itself. Stock shortages? Hideously overinflated resale values? Waiting lists longer than those of an NHS hip operation? Sweet lord, this is the RTX 30 series all over again.

Hopefully it won’t get that bad – hopefully – and the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 are just off to a wobbly start. Besides, only one of them is actually worth the money (hint: it isn’t the one that costs two grand at RRP). Many of the current best GPUs are still RTX 40 models, which have actually benefitted from the RTX 50 launch as it included DLSS 4: the latest, significantly upgraded version of Nvidia’s performance-boosting upscaler. Only RTX 50 series cards can take advantage of its Multi Frame Generation (MFG) feature, but DLSS 4 also includes improvements for visual quality and DLSS 3-spec frame gen performance that should stretch out these older cards’ effective lifespans. And help ease ease the performance pain of ray tracing, to boot.

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Read on the full list of recommended GPUs, all of which have made the cut via extensive testing in both fixed game benchmarks and general play. It’s definitely worth doing your reading when picking a new graphics card, as no other component – not the SSD, not the motherboard, and not even the CPU – has as grand an impact on games performance as these things, especially when playing at higher monitor resolutions like 1440p, 4K, and ultrawide. Make sure your PSU is capable of supplying it without enough juice, too.

The best graphics cards for gaming


Intel Arc B580

The best 1080p graphics card

The Intel Arc B580 graphics card on a table.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

I had to deliberate for a while whether the RTX 4060 should remain our top 1080p pick, or whether Intel Arc B580 was a deserving replacement. The RTX 4060, after all, offers DLSS 3 – a far more widely-supported upscaler/frame generation tool than the B580’s XeSS 2. When I tested on an older CPU, they also performed nearly identically, perhaps with a slight advantage to the 4060.

However, when paired with a more up-to-date processor, the Arc B580 made better use, outrunning the RTX 4060 with much more regularity and sometimes by 10fps or more. 1080p might be the least demanding of the common gaming monitor resolutions, but provided your CPU is fairly recent, the Arc B580 does seem readier to handle max-quality gaming. Don’t be put off by the Intel card’s higher power requirements either: in practice, I found it usually draws within the 110-115W range, same as the RTX 4060.

The Arc B580’s Battlemage architecture also seems like a general improvement over Alchemist, the basis of cards like the Arc A750. Besides being more stable (i.e. less crash-prone), it also manages these performance feats straight out the box – not after months of driver updates, like Alchemist needed.

Read more in our Intel Arc B580 review


Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti

The best 1440p graphics card

The  MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio graphics card on top of a desk.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

For a Quad HD-tuned PC, there’s a tough call to make between the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT and this, the 8GB version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. The Radeon is faster in non-ray-traced, native rez games, and offers more VRAM, packing 12GB.

I’d still go for the RTX 4060 Ti, though, because it overturns its performance disadvantage once you start making use of all its toys. DLSS upscaling looks nicer than FSR’s, but there’s also the RTX 4060 Ti’s drastically superior ray tracing performance, and the possibility of enabling DLSS 3 to send framerates soaring.

Even standard DLSS upscaling can be enough to spin things in the RTX 4060 Ti’s favour. In Cyberpunk 2077, it could average 46fps at 1440p with maxed settings, Psycho ray tracing, and DLSS on Quality; the RX 7700 XT could only manage 38fps using Quality FSR.

Read more in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti review


Nvidia RTX 4070 Super

The best graphics card for ultrawide gaming monitors

tHE Gigabye GeForce RTX 4070 Super Aero OC graphics card on a table.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super is a surprisingly potent upgrade on the original RTX 4070, gaining a marked performance uplift (especially at higher resolutions) without raising the price. You could even use it for some decent 4K, but it’s excellent for ultrawide resolutions as well. With ray tracing or upscaling, it’s either level with or slightly faster than the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT on speed, and beats it outright whenever RT effects or DLSS upscaling are in play.

That alone is enough to take the 7800 XT’s spot in this list, but the RTX 4070 Super also supports DLSS 3, which enjoys compatibility with a much wider selection of games than AMD’s FSR 3. And even if it didn’t, FSR 3 works on Nvidia cards anyway, so the RTX 4070 Super loses out on nothing.

Read more in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super review


Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080

The best graphics card for 4K

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition on a table.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Don’t bother with the fancifully expensive, more power-hungry RTX 5090; the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 can dish out most of the performance at half of the price. It’s still expensive, true, and at the time of writing is difficult to find in stock at reputable retailers. Still, nothing else makes as much sense for slick 4K specifically, so it’s worth holding out for if max-rez, max-quality luxury is what you seek.

Even without any upscaling, the RTX 5080 can handle most rasterised 4K games at frightfully fast framerates, and with some help from DLSS, you can safely go full Ultra Quality with ray tracing and path tracing effects. As one of Nvidia’s newest GPUs, it also enables MFG in DLSS 4, which – in exchange for a bit of extra input latency – can triple or nearly quadruple your initial framerate using interpolated frames.

Read more in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 review


Frequently asked questions

Why are some graphics cards so expensive?

Remember how in 2020-21, it was basically impossible to buy a new graphics card before some bot-wielding scalper cretin pinched all the stock? And how all that demand led to retailers jacking their prices up severalfold? All of that has largely calmed down now, but graphics card still trend more expensively they did before that miserable period. Manufacturers attribute this to higher research and manufacturing costs, though considering the likes of the RTX 30 series sold out instantly despite massive inflation, it’s very possible that sellers saw how much people are willing to pay for new GPUs and simply continue to take advantage.

It also doesn't help that the RTX 50 series has launched with, according to the retailers themselves, extremely small stock supplies.

Which graphics cards have ray tracing?

Ray tracing can be a huge upgrade to how your games handle lighting, shadows and reflections, but you need compatible GPU to take advantage of it. Right now, that includes all of Nvidia's RTX GPUs, from the 20 series to the 50 series, as well as of AMD's desktop-grade Radeon GPUs from the RX 6000 series onwards. Intel's Arc graphics cards support ray tracing as well.

Which is better, AMD or Nvidia?

An age old question, the answer to which seemingly used to change with every generation of new GPUs. Recently, however, Nvidia have dominated, despite AMD Radeon GPUs sometimes matching them on rasterised performance and often beating them on price. Nonetheless, the RTX range’s vastly superior ray tracing capabilities, as well as their support for DLSS (and more recently, DLSS 3 frame generation) typically makes the investment easier to justify.

AMD have produced their own versions of these features, such as frame gen-capable FSR 3, but they’re seldom as impressive as the Nvidia equivalents. Besides, FSR is available to all GPUs, not just AMD’s, so it never feels like you’re missing out on features by buying an Nvidia model.

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