If you’re looking to upgrade your PC’s graphics card, there’s a lot that you’re going to need to consider before making your purchase.
Given the wide variety of GPUs available, from the best Nvidia graphics cards and best AMD graphics cards to more budget-friendly options and everything in between, there’s a lot to look through to find the right card. Then there are also different resolutions to consider if you’re looking to do any PC gaming, whether you want to use ray tracing in games, whether you want great creative performance or not, and more.
Honestly, it can be overwhelming even in the best of circumstances, so you’re definitely not alone in wanting some advice on how to make the right purchase for your next upgrade.
Fortunately, I’ve repeatedly tested more than 50 GPUs over hundreds of hours for the three dozen graphics card reviews I’ve done for TechRadar, and I’m here to help you navigate the various factors you’ll need to consider to find the best graphics card for your needs and budget.
Consider the target resolution you want if you’re going to game on your PC
If you’re looking for a new GPU for PC gaming, choosing the right graphics card starts with your monitor’s resolution.
Graphics cards come with dedicated video memory (Also known as VRAM) to help increase the frame rate of games, and the amount of memory available for your GPU is very closely tied to what resolutions you can effectively use when playing the latest PC games.
A general rule of thumb is that for effective 1080p gaming, you’ll need a graphics card with at least 8GB of video memory (preferably GDDR6 or better). For 1440p gaming, you’ll need at least 12GB VRAM, and 2160p (4K) gaming is going to require a minimum of 16GB VRAM to achieve consistently playable frame rates.
While getting the best gaming performance out of a graphics card at any resolution isn’t solely determined by the amount of video memory it has, when choosing a new graphics card for gaming, this needs to be the first metric to consider before you worry about anything else.
Forget about the whole Team Green vs Team Red (and even Team Blue) thing
Brand loyalty and reputation is a very real thing. Companies spend billions of dollars a year on branding and marketing to establish the best possible image for themselves in the minds of consumers.
AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are no different, and there’s no denying the fact that Nvidia has a distinct advantage in the GPU market by virtue of having been the first modern GPU maker on the scene more than two decades ago. What’s more, they’ve genuinely led the way with cutting-edge technologies like DLSS and ray tracing well before its hardware rivals have been able to offer similar technologies.
All that being said, I’ve spent hundreds of hours testing dozens of competing GPUs from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel over the last few years, and whatever advantage Nvidia once had over the market in practical terms simply no longer holds the way it used to.
AMD and Intel’s upscaling technology are very competitive with Nvidia’s DLSS, and Nvidia’s advantage in ray tracing has also shrunk considerably over the last two generations, meaning that in a lot of cases, AMD’s Radeon or Intel’s Arc graphics cards are just as good as an Nvidia GeForce GPU and can usually be found for a lot less money.
The only time I would ever tell someone to not even consider an alternative to an Nvidia GPU is if they are a 3D modeling professional, video editor, or AI researcher. In those cases, even AMD and Intel’s best graphics cards are simply not competitive to a midrange Nvidia GPU.
For everyone else, though, the long-held assumption that the more expensive Nvidia graphics card is the best option among competing cards in its class simply isn’t true anymore.
Pay for value, not raw performance
Even the best cheap graphics cards can be pricy investments for many buyers out there, especially considering the price markups over MSRP that third-party GPU makers charge for added extras like RGB lighting and factory overclocking.
To get the best value for your budget, be sure to have a firm number in mind when you go shopping and stick to it. Let a GPU’s MSRP be a guide generally for what you’ll be looking for but be prepared to ultimately land lower down the stack as GPU price inflation is a recurring and ongoing problem.
Ultimately, look for the cards you can afford first, not necessarily the card you want based on specs or raw performance found in reviews. My graphics card reviews always include a final performance average for various categories like gaming or creative performance, and I divide the final performance score by its MSRP to get an initial assessment of the card’s overall value.
Given how much prices can fluctuate, though, you should always take the final performance scores for the GPUs you’re considering and divide them by the price you would pay for a given GPU at a retailer to get a measure of the actual card’s performance-for-price-paid.
Look at different cards using this metric and lean toward those that give you the highest overall value to keep from overpaying for a graphics card.
Buying used might be the way to go…if you can trust the seller
Considering how out of sorts the prices in the GPU market can be at any given time, it might be tempting to look for used graphics cards to save money.
Generally, this is an excellent idea if you can reasonably trust the seller. On the plus side, this can get you an excellent upgrade for your PC at a much lower price than you’d pay for it new, while also helping recycle older PC components and keeping them out of landfills or otherwise contributing to the problem of e-waste.
However, graphics cards are designed to maintain a certain level of high performance throughout the GPU’s life, and when a GPU reaches the end of that lifespan, it often experiences total failure rather than a slow degradation in performance. That means just because a graphics card looks like it runs great doesn’t mean it will continue to do so for the time you expect to use it (often measured in years rather than months).
Most used cards on third-party retail and auction sites will likely be out of warranty when you buy them, so it’s always better to make sure that if you buy a used GPU, it’s from a reputable seller that you can reasonably trust (or is at least covered in some fashion for failure if the GPU runs into issues sooner than it should given the price you’re paying for it).
Buy for the long-term if you’re going to go big
If you’re going to buy a premium GPU like an RTX 4080, you’re going to be paying a lot of money for it even if you’re lucky enough to find it at MSRP, which honestly isn’t very likely.
Given that investment, you should be sure that you’ll be satisfied with that card’s performance for several years, rather than expect to buy the very best of the next generation of graphics cards has to offer in two years’ time.
High-end GPUs – and even midrange offerings like the Nvidia RTX 4070 Super – may or may not offer much better performance in the next-gen as you might expect, and currently, GPUs like the Nvidia RTX 4080 Super and AMD RX 7900 XTX already pretty much max out what most games offer in terms of visuals at 4K and will likely continue to do so for a few years.
If you’re going to go big on a graphics card, then you should plan to skip at least the next generation, if not the next two, and only consider upgrading your current high-end graphics card if you are a generation or two behind the current generation. Otherwise, you’re probably going to pay a lot of money for a smaller gain in performance than you might be expecting.
Learn more about how to choose the right products
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John.Loeffler@futurenet.com (John Loeffler)
