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Between the new references from NVidia and from AMD, it is difficult to navigate. In this guide, we take stock of the best graphics cards for gaming or editing. Here is our selection and our advice to make the right choice.
NVidia took advantage of the Taipei Computex to present two new graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti. The characteristics of the first CG bring it closer to the 3090. It notably has 12 GB GDDR6X (against 10 for the RTX 3080), 10,240 NVidia Cuda cores and is of course compatible with Ray Tracing. Its price: 1199 dollars. The RTX 3070 Ti when it is displayed at $ 599, but has a less muscular configuration. Its main difference from the RTX 3070 is that it uses GDDR6X memory instead of GDDR6.
If the stats from Intel, AMD, and NVidia are correct, you are probably running a system that is several years old. In terms of PC gaming hardware, that equates to forever. Much has changed in recent years, especially in graphics processing technologies and the software requirements that depend on them. Even if you only need to browse the web or watch streaming videos (our comparison between Amazon Prime and Netflix), the best graphics card can make your system more enjoyable by improving video decoding acceleration or refreshing. Your screens faster.
NVidia GeForce GT 1030: the best graphics card under $ 100
NVidia GeForce RTX 1650: the best graphics card under $ 200
NVidia GeForce 1660 Ti: the best card under € 300
NVidia GeForce 3060 Ti: the best GPU under € 500
NVidia GeForce RTX 3070: the best graphics card under 700 €
AMD RX 6800 XT: the best graphics card under $ 800
NVidia GeForce RTX 3090: the most powerful graphics card, the most expensive too
One of the big differences between current NVidia and AMD GPUs is ray tracing and how it is implemented. NVidia uses dedicated ray-tracing cores, with a proprietary programming interface that requires more work for developers. AMD takes a less hardware-dependent approach, which is easier to integrate, but arguably less efficient.
Along with the new ray-tracing acceleration, architectures come a larger set of technologies that tend to be lumped together because they also improve or speed up rendering. These include upscaling algorithms that render for a higher resolution screen using native resolution textures (while maintaining frame rate). In other words, they use 1080p textures for 1440p rendering. That is what NVidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD’s Radeon Image Sharpening do.
To know if you really need an expensive RTX card or if you can live with an old GTX, you must therefore determine whether or not your favorite games take advantage of these advanced features.
1. NVidia GeForce GT 1030: the best graphics card under $ 100
Sold for less than 90 € and for basic 720p or 1080p games or the replacement of an integrated GPU, the GeForce GT 1030 is certainly an interesting option for those who do not want to break the bank. However, one should not expect great performance from it. It adds a little boost over an integrated graphics chip, but many games will simply go from playing to a little less unplayable, depending on their graphics intensity. However, if you have an old desktop PC with a built-in graphics chip that does not support current versions of GUIs like DirectX 12 or Vulkan, or if you just want to make Windows a bit faster, a GT card 1030 can help you.
NVidia GeForce GT 1030
The GIGABYTE GeForce GT 1030 OC 2G is based on the NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 chip and has 2048 MB of memory, accessible via a large 64-bit interface. The GPU has a clock speed of 1265 MHz and the memory is at a speed of 6008 MHz.
2. NVidia GeForce RTX 1650s: the best graphics card under $ 200
It is not the fastest GPU on the market, but this NVidia GeForce RTX 1650s is fast enough to deliver 1080p with most games (except the most demanding) and is good enough for photo editing (ditto, not for the most demanding). If you need a relatively inexpensive performance boost for your old MacBook Pro, this card should suffice. It is the same GPU as some 2018 MacBook Pros, so check what you already have first to make sure the upgrade makes sense.
NVidia GeForce RTX 1650s
A low-cost GeForce GTX 1650 Super graphics card. For less than $ 250, you will have enough power to run games in HD. This is based on the NVidia Turing GPU architecture and embeds GGDDR6 VRAM (4 GB).
3. NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti: the best graphics card under € 300
While NVidia has focused all of its efforts on the new line of RTX cards, many of the benefits it could offer have yet to materialize for mainstream users. The 1660 Ti still offers all the strengths of the Turing architecture in terms of graphics performance for most of today’s games. A card cut out for high quality or fast frame rate images in basic 1080p or 1440p and photo editing.
NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics cards bring the breakthrough graphics performance of the NVIDIA Turing architecture to you. Thanks to their lightning performance, they will offer you ultra-fast graphics rendering in the best games of the moment, including the most recent.
4. NVidia GeForce 3060 Ti: the best GPU under 500 €
The new NVidia RTX 3060 Ti graphics card offers excellent value for money. It is even in our eyes much more interesting than the AMD Radeon RX 6800 when it was released, which was by the way a very good model for Mac users. On the other hand, it is still quite rare to find them under the bar of 500 €. An ideal GPU for fast games at 1080p or 1440p.
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
The GeForce RTX 3060 is the perfect ally to be able to play in 1080p under the best possible conditions, while taking advantage of ray tracing and DLSS thanks to NVidia’s Ampere architecture. It also embeds GDDR6 VRAM like the previous 20XX generation. However, you can push games to 1440p without worry. It is a very good choice if your budget is between 350 and 500 euros.
5. NVidia GeForce RTX 3070: the best graphics card under 700 €
At less than 700 €, our heart swings between the AMD Radeon RX 6800, which outperforms the NVidia GeForce RTX 3070 but… not on all points. For example, the RTX 3070 occasionally does better to display 1080p, or even 4K. The RX 6800 series are more efficient for video editing with their 16 GB of VRAM. However, the price difference between these two graphics cards leads us to say that NVidia’s solution is to be preferred. For 1080p gaming with a high refresh rate monitor or 1440p gaming, this RTX 3070 is clearly recommendable.
NVidia GeForce RTX 3070
With an RTX 3070, you will not have a problem playing your favorite games at 1440p. Of course, ray tracing and DLSS are required. A card to consider, especially since it is still compact enough to fit into medium-sized boxes.
6. AMD RX 6800 XT: the best graphics card under $ 800
If you have nearly € 800 budget to invest in a graphics card, we recommend that you go with an RX 6800 XT rather than an RTX 3080. The latter is overall less efficient and above all more expensive. However, it will satisfy you more if you use a lot of software optimized for CUDA, the programming language imagined by NVidia. AMD’s GPU is built for 1440p gaming at high quality or at high refresh rates.
AMD RX 6800 XT
The Radeon 6800 XT lets you play games up to 4K in comfort. It has 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM. It also uses 128 MB AMD Infinity Cache technology, which allows for high bandwidth performance.
7. NVidia GeForce RTX 3090: the most powerful graphics card, the most expensive too
We have not had a chance to get our hands on an RTX 3090 yet, nor an RX 6900 XT for testing. Nevertheless, we still wanted to keep NVidia at the top of the podium, because that was the place held by its predecessor, the RTX 2080 Ti. Note that the RTX 3090 would be able to run games in 8K at 30 FPS – but you would still have to have an 8K screen at home to enjoy it. This graphics monster will be ideal for 1440p high refresh rate games, 4K games or RTX compatible games but it will also (and especially) appeal to creative professionals of all kinds.
NVidia GeForce RTX 3090
The GeForce RTX 3090 is the best at NVidia. This graphics card takes full advantage of the Ampere architecture. It is able to display games up to 8K and manages to manage ray tracing and DLSS for even greater immersion in the game.
Our advice for choosing the right
Once you have narrowed your choices down to a few options, studying customer reviews about a product is essential to uncover important information:
Always check the power capacities of a card against that of your power supply. Remember to take other boards and devices in your system into account when it comes to power consumption.
When purchasing a card, make sure that not only is the card cooled sufficiently, but that the airflow from your case and the position of other cards allow for optimal heat dissipation. This may involve, for example, moving another PCI card to a different slot.
GTX models can be a bit smaller than RTX models and can generate less heat.
The most powerful GPU on the planet will not make a difference if your mainframe is the bottleneck (and vice versa).
You will see a lot of price variation between cards using the same GPU. That is for features like overclocking, better cooling systems, or flashier designs.
All NVidia GTX and RTX cards support G-Sync Ultimate and all AMD Radeon RX 400 or later cards support Free Sync Adaptive refresh technology. These technologies synchronize with your monitor to reduce artifacts caused by a mismatch between screen refresh rate and frame rate.
Do not assume that replacing an old card will automatically give you significantly better or smoother performance.
Do not assume that the newer NVidia RTX 30 series cards will be faster than the 20 series cards they replace.
If you want a map for graphics creation, gaming benchmarks are usually not representative. To research, start with “workstation GPU” or, for example “best GPU for Premiere”. Matching the GPU to the application is important because, for example, NVidia Quadro GPUs are typically more powerful than their AMD Radeon Pro or WX counter parts. However, app developers who are close to Apple, which does not support NVidia GPUs, are optimizing their apps for the AMD GPU.
Photo editing mostly related to the central processor, so a mid-range graphics card is more than enough.
