The CPU may be the brain of your PC, but when it comes to gaming, the graphics card is the beating heart

that pumps pixels out of your obelisk of a tower and into your monitor. A graphics card consists of dedicated video memory and a graphics processing unit (GPU) that handles all sorts of calculations, like mapping textures and rendering millions of polygons. Simply put, the graphics card is the most vital component of your gaming PC. And these are the ones worthy of your next PC, whether it's a savvy middle-of-the-road build, a budget rig, or a 4K monster. Nvidia has now launched their GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 , and we've posted our full reviews.

, and we've posted our full reviews. AMD followed suit with their launch of Polaris 10 and the RX 480. All of these cards are theoretically available at retail...except they keep going out of stock due to the high demand and insufficient supply. Things will settle down over the coming weeks, and at some point we'll actually see the cards selling at or below MSRP. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later, and the custom cards will in general be desirable over the Founders Edition and reference models, since they typically include better cooling and/or lower prices.

With all the next generation cards arriving, the result has been a freefall in GPU prices. GTX 980 Ti can now be found for as little as $420/£360 AR (after mail-in rebate), over $200/£150 lower than in April, and other cards are showing similar drops. However, AMD and Nvidia appear to be ceasing production on many of their 28nm GPUs, which means inventory of previous generation parts is likely to dry up. Short-term, we expect to see some decent sales to clear out inventory, after which prices may start to creep back up on the older parts (assuming you can find them). Whatever card you're looking at, it will definitely pay off to check prices before pulling the trigger.

The best graphics card
Excellent performance for the price New features like SMP Second fastest GPU Availability and Founders Edition pricing

Was there any question about which card would claim the top spot? AMD has a chance to dethrone the GTX 1070 with the RX 480, depending on what actual performance looks like, but until we have hardware in hand, the GTX 1070 is the card to beat. As we show in our full review, the 1070 manages to match or exceed the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti in every game at every setting we tested…and it does so at a much lower price point.

The performance boost is thanks mostly to the move from 28nm planar transistors to TSMC's current 16nm FinFET transistors, which shrinks the GPU size, reduces power leakage, and allows for higher clocks. Where the base clock of 980 Ti and Titan X is 1000MHz (stock), the 1070 runs at 1506MHz. Even with fewer CUDA cores—1920 on the 1070 vs. 2816 on the 980 Ti and 3072 on the Titan X—the added clock speed and architectural enhancements keep the 1070 in the lead.

Which isn't to say that you'd necessarily want to upgrade from a 980 Ti or Titan X to the 1070; the performance is close enough that it's really about the change in price for the same level of performance; the same goes for cards like the R9 Fury X, Fury, and Nano. Regardless of whether you're looking at a custom card or a Founders Edition model, that's a lot of money to spend on a graphics card. Our advice for gamers is to try and skip a generation or two of hardware, or more generally, only upgrade when your current hardware becomes 'too slow.' That means different things to different people, of course, so high-end gamers are likely to jump at the slightest enticement while frugally minded might get by with high or even medium/low quality.

But even though we just said skipping a generation makes sense, owners of 970 and lower hardware—or R9 390 and lower on the AMD side—will certainly be tempted to upgrade, and the older your current hardware, the bigger the performance gains. Even the single generation move from a 970 to a 1070 will get you a solid 70 percent increase in frame rates, or 45 percent more performance than an R9 390. And if you happen to be running something from the GTX 700 era, well, that's where upgrading delivers the biggest returns: the 1070 in general is more than twice as fast as a GTX 770, and in some cases (Shadow of Mordor, for instance) it's nearly three times as fast!

Overclocking of the GTX 1070 also pays dividends, though not quite as large as those on GTX 980 before it. We were able to increase the core to +200MHz over stock, and with higher power and thermal limits (and a higher fan speed), performance improved by 15 percent. Memory overclocking also went well with our sample, hitting 9.4 GT/s—a frankly staggering number for GDDR5, considering Titan X and 980 Ti previously topped out around 8.0-8.4 GT/s. But if you're looking at 'typical' overclocks, a GTX 980 Ti with a good overclock is basically going to match a 1070 OC.

Other features are likely to come into play over the coming year, however. One of the coolest is the simultaneous multi-projection (SMP) feature that allows the GPU to calculate up to 16 projections in a single pass. Why would you need multiple projections in a game? For multi-screen surround setups, it can get rid of the distortion you see with 'curved' side displays. More pertinent for most people is the potential improvements in VR performance, since each eye requires its own projection. Nvidia claims that with SMP in a VR title, Pascal (GTX 1080) is up to twice as fast and three times as efficient as the Titan X; extending that to the GTX 1070, it should be around 60-70 percent faster than the Titan X in such cases.

So what's not to like? Besides the price, where the least expensive cards are still $50/£35 more than the GTX 970 at launch, the biggest problem is going to be availability. Everywhere we've looked, on launch day the GTX 1070 is either sold out or way overpriced, and judging by the GTX 1080 it might be a few weeks or even a month or more before things settle down. And once cards are readily available at Nvidia's stated MSRP ($380/£339), people will be looking at the upcoming fall and winter and wondering what will come next. Just don't get too stressed out about finding the 'perfect' time to upgrade to a newer, faster card, because something better is always right around the corner.

Read More

The best high-end graphics card
Fastest current GPU Excellent efficiency Great new features Price and availability

If you want the fastest graphics card on the planet, it's a no-brainer: the GeForce GTX 1080 wins, hands down. In our testing, it's over 30 percent faster than the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti, and it uses almost 30 percent less power. Again, that's all thanks to the move from 28nm transistors to 16nm FinFET, allowing Nvidia to cram more parts into a smaller area, with less power leakage thanks to FinFET.

Now toss in the architectural improvements of Pascal, and long-term we could see even greater improvements in performance compared to Maxwell. Pascal has better delta color compression, resulting in higher effective memory bandwidth by about 20 percent (according to Nvidia). GDDR5X clocked at 10 GT/s means the 320GB/s of actual memory bandwidth in practice works as well as the Titan X's 384GB/s. Graphics preemption can be used to improve load balancing and time-sensitive work (e.g., asynchronous time warp in VR). And Simultaneous multi-projection (doing up to 16 projections in a single pass) means in VR workloads the GTX 1080 could actually end up being twice as fast as the Titan X.

What's not to like? The biggest drawback is easy: the price. No, we don't feel $600/£529 is necessarily too much to ask for this level of performance—after all, the GTX 980 Ti was doing well at $650/£579 since it launched last year—but it is a lot of money. Then there's the whole Founders Edition business, a reference card carrying reference clocks and using Nvidia's blower cooling setup, all for $100/£70 extra. Even at the Founders Edition price, however, the GTX 1080 is an amazingly powerful card, with the result being that inventory keeps selling out, and the only cards that are frequently in stock are currently selling at well above MSRP. Unless you have money to burn, we recommend waiting for the custom cooled cards from Nvidia's partners to begin showing up at the target $599/£529 price range.

Overclocking of the Founders Edition is possible, though our experience to date is that gains are slightly less than what we've seen on previous Nvidia cards. The GTX 980 Ti, 980, and 970 often hit 25 percent core overclocks compared to stock; we managed to add just 200MHz (about 12 percent) to the base clock, with a 750MHz (+17.5 percent) increase in VRAM speed. Other tweaks to the power target and voltage led to roughly 15 percent better performance when overclocked, but similar efforts on a 980 Ti could close the performance gap to around 20 percent.

Finally, this isn't the fastest Pascal chip we're likely to see from Nvidia. GP104 is for gaming and consumer graphics, but the GP100 boasts far higher specsin many areas. It has 3584 CUDA cores compared to the 2560 in the GTX 1080—and there are still 256 CUDA cores disabled in the Tesla P100—with 16GB of HBM2 memory providing 720GB/s. That's at least 20 percent higher core performance with more than twice the memory bandwidth; it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Nvidia will likely release an even faster card in the future, though it might be another 12 months. How much would a consumer version of GP100 even cost, though? It might end up in the same ballpark as the Broadwell-E i7-6950X ($1723/~£1400); that or Nvidia will do a GP102 or GP110 without HBM2 that they can price closer to previous Titan cards.

But for now, if you're after the best—aka fastest—graphics card, GTX 1080 holds the crown. And if you're really looking to set a performance record, you could put two of the cards in SLI. Just know that such a setup will need a lot of CPU performance to keep it happy, as even a 4.2GHz i7-5820K runs into CPU limits at 1080p Ultra with a single GTX 1080. At least Nvidia is no longer recommending 3-way or 4-way SLI as useful solutions, though it's still possible to go that route if you want.

Read More

The best graphics card value
Great price and performance Fast for 1080p Ultra / 1440p High Good efficiency and reasonable size 6-pin connector on reference model cards

Gone is the extended debate/flame war between AMD and Nvidia fans, trying to determine whether the GTX 970or the R9 390represented the better value. In its place we have a new argument: RX 480, or wait for the GTX 1060 to arrive? We can't actually say when the 1060 will arrive, but some places have shown pictures of cards, so it might not be too far off. Until then, there's a new sheriff in town for the $200-$250 price point, and his name is RX 480.

The RX 480 doesn't blow our socks off with performance, but what it does bring to the table is lower power from the AMD camp, and performance just shy of the R9 390 for about $50-$100 less. We suspected as much when AMD revealed the initial specs, and our testing has cemented this card as a great value. Even with R9 390 now selling at its lowest price ever, we wouldn't recommend picking up a last-gen Hawaii card—or Nvidia's GTX 970 for that matter, at least not unless prices drop a lot lower.

The RX 480 will come in two models, which unfortunately muddies the waters. The 4GB card has a suggested price of $200 and will likely come with 7 Gbps VRAM, while the 8GB model has a starting price of $240 and will use 8 Gbps GDDR5. There aren't a ton of games that really need more than 4GB VRAM, but that will likely change over the lifespan of the RX 480, so we'd recommend spending up for the 8GB model if possible. As for performance, there are indications DX12 gameswill continue to run better on AMD's hardware, so you get something of the best of all options at a reasonable price.

The main problem with the RX 480 right now is the same problem the GTX 1070 and 1080 are facing, namely supply and demand. At launch, inventory for the RX 480 sold out at every place we checked in a matter of hours. It's unlikely AMD and their partners are sitting on a huge pile of unsold cards with the intention of restocking on a daily basis, so the RX 480 will probably go in and out of stock for at least the next few weeks, with potential price hikes at some resellers until the supply gets sorted out. Just remember: patience is a virtue.

The RX 480 does have a few other potential concerns. For one, the single 6-pin PEG connection appears to be a bit of a bottleneck, particularly if you intend to overclock. We only met with limited success on overclock out sample card, and Tom's Hardware reports that they measured out-of-spec power draw from their sample—an 8-pin connector would have been better. Let's also not forget that while both the GTX 1070 and RX 480 are 150W TDP cards, the GTX 1070 is about 50 percent faster; it seems the efficiency gap between AMD and Nvidia remains, despite the move to 14/16nm FinFET.

As with the Founders Edition cards, we'd recommend waiting for custom RX 480 solutions. The blower fan on the RX 480 is sufficient for stock performance, but it does feel like AMD pushed clocks and power use about as high as they could in order to compete. Custom AIB cards should do better on the cooling front, so we'd suggest avoiding the reference RX 480 if you can.

Overall, though, the RX 480 is a great new addition to the world of graphics cards. It brings formerly $300 levels of performance to the $200-$240 price point, or if you prefer, $200 now gets you 40 percent more performance than it did two months ago. If you're looking for the best overall graphics card value (see charts below), the Radeon RX 480 balance performance and new features with a great price.

Read More

The best budget graphics card
'Sweet spot' on price Good for 1080p High/Ultra Polaris 10/11 coming soon Uses more power than the competition

The RX 480 has arrived, but we're still waiting on the RX 470. The other three graphics cards deliver exceptional performance, or in the case of the RX 480, great performance at an great price, but some people don't have $200-$250 to spend on a graphics card. The RX 470 seems destined to take over the $150 price point when it launches, but if you can't wait, there are some great values in AMD's and Nvidia's previous generation hardware.

The Radeon R9 380continues to be our budget pick, delivering better performance than Nvidia's GTX 950 and 960. We considered going with the the GTX 950, since that card can be found for as little as $120/£105, but ultimately the better performance on the 380 won out. Plus, you can see our performance for value charts below; the GTX 950 is a close second, but the R9 380 comes out one top in both performance as well as value metrics.

The R9 380 isn't really built for high resolution 1440p or 4K gaming, and if you get a 2GB model it's important to note that VRAM can become a pretty serious bottleneck on newer games at max settings, but we don't normally expect a budget card to handle such settings. Our overall average hovers around 50 fps at 1080p Ultra, and you can drop to 1080p High to get 60+ fps in most current games.

The days of R9 380 and GTX 950 are numbered—if AMD's upcoming GPUs don't supplant it, the inevitable GTX 1050 will eventually do so. Until such cards arrive, this is the best gaming experience you'll find at less than $150/£150. Power draw is decent, though the 190W TDP is more than double the GTX 950's 90W TDP, but under load it normally works out to about a 75W difference. Idle power? That's just splitting hairs.

If you’re hoping to go even lower on the price, we strongly advise caution. Yes, there are cards available, including the GTX 750 Tiand R7 360, but they start cutting features and performance to the point where you’re only going to end up slightly faster than a modern APU like AMD’s A10-7800 series. Maybe you have an older CPU, though, in which case you could pick up something like a GT 740 1GBor R7 240 2GB, but at that point you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Do yourself a favor and try to save up for a GTX 950 or similar.

Read More

How we test graphics cards and performance

Games are rarely bottlenecked by your CPU, but dozens of games every year will push your graphics card to its limits. It's the component you'll want to upgrade most frequently (though if you buy the right card, it should last you at least two years). For gaming systems, it's also likely the most expensive part in your build. On a practical budget, it's critical to find the graphics card with the best ratio of price to performance. That's why we've previously looked at cards in the $300/£250 range, though we've stretched that with the GTX 1070 this round.

At $450/£399), Nvidia's GTX 1070 is a killer card, outperforming older cards that initially cost twice as much, and prices will only go down from here. It's overclockable, quiet, and efficient; more importantly, it's able to run every game we've tested at more than 60 frames per second at 1080p Ultra, and most of the games are still breaking 60 fps at 1440p Ultra. You can argue about price and whether or not you really need Ultra quality settings, but right now, the GTX 1070 is the best graphics card for gaming.

While the GTX 1070 is the card we'd recommend to most—but not all—PC gamers, there are many viable alternatives. Maybe you don't care for Nvidia or their overwhelming market share, or maybe you've got cash to burn, and need a card that can run games at 4K resolution. Perhaps you're trying to build a dirt-cheap gaming PC and you need an even cheaper graphics card. Our graphics card guide includes options covering the entire market, from budget to mainstream to high-end gaming PCs.

Testing graphics cards

Our graphics card recommendations are based on our own benchmarks and testing, as well as research into the reviews and testing done by other sites. Along with Maximum PC, we have benchmark data for a range of Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, including the GTX 1000/900 series and AMD RX 400/R9 300 and R9 Fury/Nano cards. We've also looked at earlier cards like the R9 200 and GTX 700, though we've stopped testing those for our charts. Basically, subtract about 10 points from the model number for each generation, so GTX 770 is roughly equal to a GTX 960, or the still older GTX 680. (No, that's not a perfect estimate, but it's at least relatively close; some models do better than others.)

What makes the best graphics card? For PC gamers, it's a balance of price and performance. The graphics card must be able to run demanding games at high framerates and settings, with 1920x1080 being the most common resolution. However, we also test at 2560x1440 and 4K, which are becoming increasingly popular choices, particularly at the high-end. The best graphics card shouldn't cost more than other cards with comparable performance, and the card should be fast enough to still perform respectably two years later, even if it can't run everything at max settings.

Graphics performance isn't the only consideration. The quality of game drivers and other features supported by the card are important. The card's noise level, power draw and temperature matter, too. Thankfully, nearly all of the cards run fairly quiet, even under load, and temperatures are within the acceptable range as well—though Nvidia still has an advantage when it comes to power for now.

From a high level, we tested each card on a high-end PC (4.2GHz overclocked i7-5930K), at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K with Ultra settings at the lower resolutions and Ultra or High at 4K. We included results from fifteen games, some newer and some slightly older: Ashes of the Singularity (DX12), Batman: Arkham Origins, The Division, Doom (2016), Fallout 4, Far Cry Primal, GTAV, Hitman (DX12), Hitman: Absolution, Metro: Last Light, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Talos Principle, Tomb Raider 2013, and The Witcher 3. Here's how they stack up in terms of average and minimum frame rates across these games:

The Nvidia GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 are the two best graphics card, and the RX 480 delivers an impressive value even if it can't compete in raw fps. For those who can't afford to spend that much money, the middle and bottom of the chart still hold a lot of compelling options, and it's only going to get better as new parts arrive. Here's a different look at all of the cards we tested, this time rating them in terms of value—FPS for money spent:

Those charts show the rather interesting breakdown of the market right now. AMD is competing on value if not performance, and their new RX 480 along with the existing R9 380/390 cards pack a serious punch. Only the GTX 950 breaks into the top three, but you have to sacrifice some performance to get there. Once we leave the RX 480 and R9 300 behind, Nvidia dominates the middle of the chart. Some serious changes in pricing however have shifted things around, and if you want the best (GTX 1080), you need to be prepared to pay the piper his due. Note that the prices used for these charts reflect current street prices, and we used the best realistic prices we could find at the time of writing.

Looking forward, the computer graphics world is a fast-changing field, and with the 16nm and 14nm FinFET process now coming online for GPUs, things are going to be very interesting. Nvidia has aimed squarely at high-end gamers and enthusiasts with the GTX 1070 and 1080, while AMD is gunning for the mainstream market with their RX 480 targeting a starting price of just $199. Will Nvidia release a GTX 1060 to compete with the RX 480, or hold off a while longer? That remains to be seen.

While we love getting new hardware in for testing and review, the days of revolutionary upgrades mostly seem to be in the past. Even with the move from 28nm to 14/16nm FinFET, we're still not doubling performance, at least not at the same price point. If you find your current system isn't keeping up with the gaming times, however, 30-60 percent better performance will certainly help. Those who already own an R9 300 or GTX 900 series card should be safe for the time being, while R9 200 and GTX 700 series owners may be feeling the upgrade itch. Anything older than that and the latest generation hardware can easily double performance—or more. After five years stuck at 28nm manufacturing, the GPU companies have finally received their long-awaited process shrink. Thank goodness.

A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to stores like Amazon. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which helps support our work evaluating PC components.

Topics

We recommend By Zergnet