Looking to upgrade your GPU? There’s never been a better time to hunt down the best graphics card to suit your performance goals and budget. NVIDIA and AMD have both released standout options, including the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super, each offering remarkable power for gamers and content creators.
Meanwhile, the Intel Arc B580 has proven to be the best 1440p graphics card for most gamers, balancing performance and incredible affordability for a better price than even the best cheap graphics cards of the last generation.
If you’re after top-tier power, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 retains its title as the top choice for both gaming and professional tasks, though you’ll pay a premium for its high-end capabilities.
Whatever your preference, we’ve thoroughly tested and selected the top picks for 2025 so far, even as we await new potential entries on our list from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia once they are announced at CES 2025. Below, you'll find our comprehensive list to ensure you find the best graphics card to meet your needs and budget.
The Quick List
Value |★★★★☆
Features |★★★★★
Performance|★★★★★
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE surprised me earlier this year as the perfect balance of performance and affordability, making it an easy pick as the best graphics card overall.
Value |★★★★★
Features |★★★★☆
Performance|★★★★☆
The Intel Arc B580 is a stunning GPU for it's price. More than capable of high-performance 1440p gameplay, Intel's "midrange" GPU comes in at a lower price than both AMD and Nvidia's cheapest 1080p graphics cards.
Value |★★★★☆
Features |★★★★★
Performance|★★★★★
While the RTX 4070 Super doesn't pack the same performance as the best 4K cards, its 1440p performance is outstanding, and Nvidia's DLSS 3 is a true game-changer.
Value |★★★★☆
Features |★★★★★
Performance|★★★★★
The Nvidia RTX 4080 Super offers performance second only to the mighty RTX 4090, and does so at a much cheaper price than the RTX 4080 that replaces it, making it the ideal 4K card for enthusiasts.
Value |★★★★★
Features |★★★★★
Performance|★★★★☆
The RTX 4060 is a fantastic card that's easy to find under $300/£300, which is less than some RTX 3060s sell for, and with new features like DLSS 3, this is the best 1080p card going.
Value |★★★★☆
Features |★★★★★
Performance|★★★★★
The Nvidia RTX 4090 is undeniably the most powerful GPU around, but its price makes it prohibitive for most, though its performance-per-dollar makes it among the best values going.
Recent updates
This guide was updated on January 3, 2025, to add the Intel Arc B580 as the best budget graphics card on our list (as well as remove some redundant entries).
John has been working with computers since he was a teenager, long before he ever started writing about computer hardware or working on his Master's degree in Computer Science. Needless to say, he knows computers inside and out, and he has personally tested (and retested) all of the graphics cards on this page, regardless of whether he wrote our original review, and has validated the results you'll find here.
The best graphics card in 2025: in-depth
Below, you'll find detailed write ups for each of the best graphics card picks on this list. I've extensively tested each of them and have the gaming and other performance data you need to make the right choice for your needs and budget.
The best graphics card in 2025
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The best graphics card overall
✅You want fantastic overall performance: Other than 3D modeling work, this card has some of the best performance at this price I've ever seen.
✅You don't want to spend a fortune on a great graphics card: While this is still a pricier midrange offering, it's cheaper than Nvidia's rival card and sits just within range of what gamers are likely willing to spend on a new GPU.
✅You want some creative performance as well: While its 3D modeling performance is lacking, it's fantastic with photo editing, video processing, and other creative workloads.
❌ You're not looking to game at 4K: If all you plan on doing is gaming at 1440p, the RX 7800 XT or RX 7700 XT might be better options that'll save you a good bit of money.
❌ You do a lot of 3D modeling work or machine learning research: AMD isn't the best when it comes to 3D modeling, which is tied heavily to Nvidia's CUDA graphics language, and this card isn't immune to that deficit. Likewise, its AI/machine learning hardware lags behind Nvidia's tensor cores.
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE is a game-changer in the midrange GPU market, offering an unbeatable combination of performance and features that puches way above its price point. From 4K gaming to dabbling in machine learning, the RX 7900 GRE is, on balance, the best graphics card you can buy right now.
Originally launched as a China-only exclusive, the RX 7900 GRE is now available globally starting at $549, making it a direct competitor to the weaker Nvidia RTX 4070 while going toe-to-toe with the more expensive RTX 4070 Super and even coming out on top in some key areas.
My benchmarking shows that this card excels in rasterization and shows strong ray tracing performance that narrows the gap between AMD and Nvidia in this market segment. In gaming especially, it actually manages to surpass the RTX 4070 Super when upscaling is turned on, which is a real testament to how for AMD's FSR upscaling technology has come.
Additionally, it's a capable creative card, making it an excellent choice for graphic designers, photographers, and video editors, though 3D modeling is still this card's Achilles' heel when it comes to content creators.
While it may not completely outperform the RTX 4070 Super, overall it is a surprisingly powerful card that offers incredible value for its price.
Read the full AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE review
The best budget graphics card
✅ You want a great graphics card on a budget. The Intel Arc B580 is a steal at MSRP. No other card at $250 is going to be this good at 1440p gaming.
✅ You're looking for great gaming performance. Speaking of performance, the gaming chops on the Arc B580 aren't just a value proposition. You won't be sacrificing performance with this card.
❌ You're looking for a budget creative GPU. While the B580 has some promise as a video editing card, if you're looking for a GPU for creative work, Nvidia cards are the better bet.
❌ You want a cheap GPU for AI workloads. Like its creative prowess, the Intel Arc B580 is decent enough for dedicated AI workloads, but can't hold a candle to competing Nvidia cards.
The Intel Arc B580 was the GPU surprise of 2024 when it launched last December, bringing phenomenal 1440p gaming performance to gamers for under $250/£250/AU$450 at MSRP, something AMD and Nvidia have failed to do for two generations now.
What's more, any issues that Intel's previous Arc Alchemist GPUs suffered from seemed to have been ironed out with this latest release, earning a rare 5-star review from me in my review.
While the card has its drawbacks (its ray tracing performance lags behind Nvidia's and it's not the best creative GPU out there for the money, for example), this is strictly a GPU for gamers, and considering how long it's been since PC gamers have had a compelling graphics card at this price point, its simply in a class of its own.
That said, if you want the absolute best graphics card performance at 1440p or 1080p, there are better cards for that, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. But those other cards are substantially more expensive, and they just don't offer a good enough reason to buy them when the Arc B580 is right there, offering nearly equal performance on average and costing 10%-40% less than its competition.
If you're looking for the best cheap graphics card, look no further; this is it.
Read the full Intel Arc B580 review
The best Nvidia graphics card
✅You want fantastic midrange performance: Given the strength of this card in all categories, on balance, it's one of the best graphics cards you're going to find in the midrange.
✅You want very strong ray tracing performance: With the maturity of its ray tracing cores, the RTX 4070 Super is the best ray tracing GPU in the midrange, for sure.
✅You want some creative performance as well: With its strong CUDA backbone, the RTX 4070 Super is a great option for those looking to get into creative content work.
❌ You don't want to spend a fortune: Given the price of the competition, there are better graphics cards for your money than the RTX 4070 Super
❌ You don't care about ray tracing or compute performance: The strongest assets this card brings to the table are its ray tracing and tensor cores, but if you don't care about ray tracing or machine learning tasks, the RX 7900 GRE will offer a better overall gaming performance.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super meets the high expectations we had for this card when it was announced at CES 2024, offering compelling performance at the same price as its predecessor.
This newcomer outshines the RTX 4070, offering more SMs for enhanced processing and a swifter base clock speed. However, its 12GB GDDR6X VRAM limits its 4K prowess, so for optimal 4K performance, the Nvidia RTX 4080 Super is a better bet. For top-tier 1440p gaming, though, the RTX 4070 Super excels thanks to its robust specs, DLSS 3 with Frame Generation, and Nvidia Reflex technology.
And while the RTX 4070 Super generally outperforms the RX 7800 XT, particularly in ray tracing, AMD holds the edge in gaming performance with the RX 7900 GRE, especially now that AMD's frame generation tech for FSR has hit the scene.
Despite stiff competition, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super still stands out as the best Nvidia graphics card for most people, especially for midrange users seeking a balance of gaming prowess, content creation capabilities, and sheer performance.
Read the full Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super review
The best 4K graphics card
✅ You want great 1440p performance: In 1080p gaming, especially straight rasterization performance, this card is absolutely fantastic.
✅ You're on a budget: For a card with this level of performance, the overall value is its biggest selling point.
✅ You want hardware ray tracing and upscaling: Intel's hardware ray tracing and AI processors are surprisingly powerful for a first-generation graphics card.
❌ You want to play older PC games: Intel's graphics driver has gotten much better, but it still lags behind Nvidia and AMD on older titles.
❌ You want a powerful creative GPU: While Intel's hardware is great, it's not very good for creative work.
❌ You don't want to deal with Intel's growing pains: Intel is constantly improving its drivers and game support for Arc graphics cards, but there are still bumps along the way that you might not want to deal with.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super is a powerhouse of a graphics card, offering unparalleled 4K performance at its sub-$1000/£1000/AU$1,500 price point.
With a 1.4% performance gain over the RTX 4080 and a 7% advantage over the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, this card is the perfect choice for enthusiasts seeking top-notch 4K graphics. It even comes close to the RTX 4090's performance, at a 40% lower cost.
The RTX 4080 Super is, on balance, the best 4K graphics card available, making it an ideal choice for those seeking exceptional 4K performance without breaking the bank.
Its impressive performance and competitive pricing make it a standout option in the market, and its sleek design (at least for the Founders Edition from Nvidia) makes it a showpiece for those who want to flaunt their gaming setup.
While it may not be the best choice for those on a budget or seeking mid-range options, the RTX 4080 Super is a premium purchase that delivers exceptional results.
Read the full Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super review
The best 1440p graphics card
✅ You want outstanding 1440p performance: This card has serious 1440p gaming chops, especially at this price.
✅ You don't want to completely sacrifice ray tracing: AMD is finally offering both great rasterization and ray tracing performance.
✅ You're tired of Nvidia's GPU price inflation: The RX 7800 XT isn't cheap, but its price is far more reasonable than Nvidia's RTX 4070.
❌ You are looking for the best creative GPU: The introduction of AI accelerators certainly help this card, but Nvidia still dominates creative workloads.
❌ You want the best ray tracing and upscaling possible: If ray tracing and upscaling are your bag, then the RTX 4070 Super is going to be the better buy here.
❌ You're on a tight budget: While this card is much cheaper than its direct competition, it's still not close to what anyone would call 'cheap'.
The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is Team Red's midrange flagship graphics card, and it's a very powerful performer, especially for the price.
Powered by AMD's RNDA 3 GPU architecture, it boasts 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM and a wide memory bus, making it capable of handling high-res 1440p textures with ease, and can even dabble in 4K gameplay with the right settings.
Going head-to-head with the GeForce RTX 4070, the RX 7800 XT emerges with a slight 2% advantage in overall gaming performance. This is especially true in rasterization, though the RX 7800 XT offers impressive ray tracing capabilities, making it a top-notch choice.
Its lower MSRP compared to Nvidia's rival card makes it an excellent value, offering outstanding performance at a great price. Despite some limitations in gen-on-gen performance, the RX 7800 XT stands out as one of the best 1440p graphics card options on the market right now, and for the price, midrange gamers everywhere will absolutely love what AMD is offering here.
Read the full AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT review
The best graphics card for performance
✅ You want the best graphics card on the market: There really is no competition here. This is the best there is, plain and simple.
✅ You want native 4K ray-traced gaming: This is literally the only card that can consistently run full ray tracing at native 4K resolution.
✅ You are a 3D graphics professional: If you work with major 3D rendering tools like Maya, Blender, and others, this is your graphics card.
❌ You're not looking to do native, max-4K gaming: Unless you work for Pixar or Industrial Light & Magic, you probably don't need this card.
❌ You're on a budget: This card is incredibly expensive, even on sale.
❌ You're concerned about power consumption: With a TGP of 450W, this card has a near-bottomless appetite for power.
Yes, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is expensive. It also requires a 16-pin connector or adapter. And, it’s very, very big. But, the first release from Nvidia’s new 4000-series is an absolute powerhouse that can tackle anything you need it to. It is the most powerful GPU out there, and likely will be for a very long time to come.
In our testing, we found it performed significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 with two to four times the performance in synthetic benchmarks and up to 100% improved framerates with some games. What’s more, DLSS 3 is a revolution in terms of gaming frame rates, and in games that support it, the RTX 4090 with Frame Generation turned on will absolutely push even the best gaming monitors to the limit of what they can do.
That said, this is far more GPU than most people will probably ever need this decade, and at the price its selling for, you have to really, really want this card, especially at the prices it is selling for right now. If you simply have to have the most powerful graphics card there is, however, this is the card you want.
Read the full Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 review
How to choose the best graphics card for you
There are a couple of important things to consider when buying a graphics card, with the first and foremost being your monitor resolution. If you have a 1080p monitor, then a 4K graphics card is going to be far more powerful that you probably need, and since 1080p graphics cards are much cheaper, buying something more powerful than your monitor can handle is a waste of money.
For 1080p, you should look at the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT or Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti and lower. These two cards are the high end of what the best 1080p graphics card will offer you, but the AMD Radeon RX 7600 is still excellent for 1080p use.
For 1440p, you should consider the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT or Nvidia RTX 4070 Super or RTX 4070. The AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT can also hold its own at 1440p, and the Intel Arc A770 and Arc A750 are also good choices for 1440p performance on a tighter budget.
For 4K, you will need a minimum of an AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE or Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti, though realistically, you'll need an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT or Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super to get good enough 4K performance. The RX 7900 XTX and RTX 4080 Super are also fantastic choices in this category, though skip the base RTX 4080 unless you can get it for less than a grand.
For creatives, generally speaking, the Nvidia RTX lineup is going to give you better creative performance for video editing and 3D modeling, while the AMD Radeon cards are slightly better at dealing with rasterization workloads like Adobe Photoshop. Serious video or 3D creatives will need at least an Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super, as it has 16GB VRAM for chewing through creative pipeline workloads. Photographers and graphic designers can get by with much less, like an RTX 4070 or RX 7700 XT, though the RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 GRE are also both good options.
For gaming, AMD has generally been better during this generation when it comes to gaming performance, especially now that AMD FSR 3 introduced Fluid Motion Frames to compete with Nvidia's DLSS 3 Frame Generation tech. AMD's cards still lag Nvidia's when it comes to ray tracing, but that difference has considerably narrowed into a difference of a handful of frames between the two, in my experience.
For AI/Machine Learning, I don't really have to tell you that you need to get an Nvidia card. Nvidia's tensor cores are simply light-years ahead of what AMD and Intel can offer, and most ML tools expect you to be using Nvidia hardware, so you'll just have to lean into this one. If you're a more casual researcher or hobbyist, something with 12GB VRAM is good enough, but any Nvidia cards with 16GB VRAM or higher are preferred, even if they're last-gen cards like the Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti.
How we tested the best graphics cards
When it comes to the best graphics cards, it's incredibly important to make sure I'm testing everything on an equal playing field. That's why, whenever a new graphics card comes out, I test it with a suite of around 7-10 games and across several resolutions, all on current drivers.
That means that I re-test all current-generation graphics cards (as well as last-gen cards if a card is replacing an existing card in the market) in a given card's performance class or market segment for each review. I make sure that all of the cards are tested on the same hardware, which means the same processor, the same memory at the same speed, the same motherboard, and the same SSD. That way, I can be sure that I'm measuring how the graphics card itself is performing relative to other cards. I also make sure to use the best possible components for my testing to give each graphics card I benchmark the most amount of room to perform at its best without worrying about CPU, RAM, or SSD bottlenecks.
I make sure to log how much power each card is consuming as well as the temperatures it reaches under load to make sure we can recommend it to people who may be concerned about high power draw or system temperatures.
I examine any new features that a card might introduce or might be able to leverage for the first time, such as new updates to their upscaling tech, and compare these to rival cards in its class.
Finally, I gather scores across Synthetic, Creative, and Gaming categories using system tools like 3DMark, PugetBench for Creators, and built-in gaming benchmarks like Cyberpunk 2077's. In each category, I use a geometric mean formula to average scores to reduce the weight of extreme outlier test results (so averaging a score of 200,000 and 5,000 isn't as dramatically skewed) to come up with a final score for that category.
I then take the geomean of the three category scores, mitigating somewhat the outsized values of synthetic benchmarks with scores in the tens or hundreds of thousands that can overpower gaming benchmarks that report results in double or triple-digit values. This geomean gives us a card's final score, which I then divide by its US MSRP to come up with its final value score.
The best graphics card: FAQs
Which graphics card is best for gaming?
Generally speaking, the best graphics card for gaming is going to depend on several factors, but principally, your budget and monitor resolution will dictate the best card for gaming on your system.
For 4K gaming, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is as good as it gets, while the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is the best 1440p graphics card. For 1080p, the Nvidia RTX 4060 is the way to go, while the AMD Radeon RX 7600 is the best budget graphics card of this generation, though the Intel Arc A770 and Intel Arc A750 offer compelling alternatives for the budget-conscious.
What is the best brand for graphics cards?
The age-old question of whether Nvidia or AMD is the best brand for graphics cards will likely never go away, especially now that Intel is also throwing its hat into the GPU ring.
Right now, AMD and Nvidia are basically on equal footing, though AMD's cards this generation have been especially strong. Intel is on its first generation of discrete graphics cards, so there are a lot of growing pains there still to be worked out.
Generally, if you like ray tracing, Nvidia will probably have the edge for you, while AMD offers great rasterization and gaming performance while generally being cheaper.
What is the most powerful graphics card?
The most powerful graphics card for gamers and creatives on the market right now is the RTX 4090. That's because it features a staggering 24GB GDDR6X memory pool with its 384-bit memory bus. It's the only Ada card to be built on the AD102 die and it makes exceptional use of the larger silicon size.
Is a GTX or RTX graphics card better?
An RTX graphics card is much better than an older GTX model. Nvidia discontinued the GTX line when brought in the RTX 20 series a handful of years ago. RTX GPUs are capable of real-time ray tracing and can utilize the company's AI upscaling tech DLSS for increased framerates in more demanding games.
Is AMD or Nvidia better for gaming?
Generally speaking, AMD and Nvidia stand toe-to-toe with each other in the budget and mid-range market, with Team Green pulling ahead for creatives. However, while the RX 7900 XTX is an excellent high-end GPU, it is beaten out by the RTX 4090 in direct comparisons. That said, AMD tends to win favor with gamers with a more aggressive price-to-performance ratio, so things are quite balanced.
Today's best graphics card deals
