Best graphics cards in 2025: the GPUs I recommend for every budget

Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition and AMD RX 7800 XT graphics cards on a two-tone yellow background
(Image credit: Nvidia | AMD)

With the launch of the new RTX Blackwell GPUs, the absolute best graphics card is the Nvidia RTX 5090. It's objectively the most powerful consumer GPU you can buy right now. Or would be if there were stock available, as there were slim pickings at launch and it might take time for decent volume to build in the channel.

But, if you can find one, you will be the owner of a graphics card capable of deliver the sort of 4K gaming frame rates you will have previously only ever dreamed of. Granted, you need the AI chops of Multi Frame Generation to get you there, but those 'fake frames' are going to do me while we wait for the actual silicon to catch up with the triple digit 4K performance the AI alternative can offer. There is nothing now, or on the horizon from AMD that makes us feel that this top recommendation is going to change over the next few years, either.

Still, that's a $2,000+ GPU and well beyond the means of most of us PC gamers, which is why we're also listing the best graphics card across a range of different budgets; each one picked to give you a great gaming experience for you money.

For the high-end gamer, the best $600 to $800 graphics card is the RTX 4070 Ti Super and just below that price point, the best $500 to $600 graphics card is the RTX 4070 Super. They're both fast and feature-rich, with superior ray tracing performance, upscaling, and frame generation compared to the competition, though they are quite pricey.

While AMD's best graphics card is the top-end RX 7900 XTX, its lower-spec models are great value for money. The best $350 to $500 graphics card is the RX 7800 XT and in the $250 to $350 range, the RTX 4060 is where it's at now that older AMD 6000-series GPUs are hard to come by. When it comes to saving as much as you can but still getting good performance, the best budget graphics card is AMD's Radeon RX 7600.

It's worth noting that the start of the next generation of GPUs has already begun, with Intel launching its Battlemage-powered B-series of Arc graphics cards. Plus, Nvidia's now-announced RTX 50-series GPUs and AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs are just around the corner, too, with the former set to retail at the end of January and through February 2025. That being said, everything in the top spots in this guide remains a great pick for your next graphics card purchase both now and in the future. Below, I've listed the most relevant GPUs you can buy today, all in order of gaming performance, so you can make the most informed choice.

Curated by...
Jacob Ridley headshot on colour background
Curated by...
Jacob Ridley

Jacob has loads of experience with the latest and greatest graphics cards, reviewing many generations of Nvidia and AMD GPU over the years. He's au fait with the latest architectures, and makes sure to rotate through the latest cards from all three major manufacturers to get first-hand experience of what they're like to game with. Not just of their performance, but also which offer the most useful features and have the most reliable drivers.

The quick list

Recent updates

Updated January 30, 2025 to add in the new RTX Blackwell cards now that they have been released... and immediately disappeared from stock. Though surely restocks will be coming along soon for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090

The best graphics card

Specifications

Shaders: 21760
Boost clock: 2,410 MHz
TFLOPs: 104.8
Memory: 32 GB GDDR7
Memory clock: 28 GT/s
Memory bandwidth: 1,792 GB/s
TGP: 575 W

Reasons to buy

+
Stunning AI augmented performance
+
Decent gen-on-gen frame rates
+
FE card looks great
+
Huge potential for the future

Reasons to avoid

-
Lots of coil whine with one PSU
-
$400 price jump on RTX 4090
-
Transformer model feels very v1.0
Buy if...

You want the best: If you want to nail triple figure frame rates in the latest 4K games, then you're going to need the might and magic of Multi Frame Gen, and that's only available with the RTX 50-series cards. And yes, I do like alliteration.

You to get in on the ground floor of neural rendering: The RTX Blackwell GPUs are the first chips to come with a full set of shaders that will have direct access to the Tensor Cores of the card. That will enable a new world of AI-powered gaming features... when devs get around to using them in released games.

You're after a hyper-powerful SFF rig: The Founders Edition is deliciously slimline, and while it generates a lot of heat it will fit in some of the smallest small form factor PC chassis around.

Don't buy if...

You need to ask the price: With a $400 price hike over the RTX 4090, the new RTX 5090 is a whole lot of cash at its $1,999 MSRP. The kicker, however, is that you'll be lucky to find one at that price given the third-party cards are looking like $2,500+ right now.

The bottom line

🪛 The RTX 5090 is the most powerful consumer graphics card on the planet right now, and delivers gaming performance far beyond what you could manage on other GPUs, especially if you're playing something which supports Multi Frame Generation.

The RTX Blackwell generation of new GPUs has kicked off with a bang, and means that right now, the best graphics card is undoubtedly the Nvidia RTX 5090. And is likely to remain that way for the next two years at least. Given the fact that AMD isn't going to release a competitor card for the top GeForce GPU in the RDNA 4 generation, you can be confident if you pick one of these up today (or when they come back in stock) you will still be gaming on the best GPU probably until the next Nvidia generation is released.

While that might make for miserable reading for AMD fans, it should be a little more comforting for anyone hellbent on spending $2,000+ on a new graphics card. It will, at least, last the course at the top of benchmarking tree.

Sure, you are only getting some 30% extra gen-on-gen performance over the RTX 4090 at 4K, and that is the smallest performance bump over a previous generation's top card since Turing came along. But there's a magic trick up the sleeve of the RTX Blackwell cards, and that is Multi Frame Generation.

Right now, it's limited to the RTX 50-series—else it would likely cannibalise sales to a huge extent down the stack if RTX 40-series GPUs were allowed into the MFG party—and it adds in up to three more frames in between each actually rendered pair. Using a feature called Flip Metering, which utilises an enhanced bit of silicon in the RTX 50-series Display Engine, it offloads all the burden of frame pacing from the CPU, puts it all on the GPU, and allows the RTX 5090 to queue up all these extra AI-generated frames perfectly for the display.

Along with a new AI-based frame generation model, Multi Frame Generation is able to hugely increase the potential performance of the RTX 5090 in any game which supports it, and the results are frankly incredible. There are some small artifacts—though nothing that would stop me using the feature—but the really impressive thing is that it adds practically no extra latency on top of the standard 2x Frame Generation experience.

And that itself has been lowered thanks to that new FG AI model which makes it 40% quicker and 30% less VRAM hungry at the same time. The good news for RTX 40-series patrons is that model at least is coming to standard Frame Gen in the Ada generation, too.

There are also a ton of games at launch with immediate compatibility with MFG, either with it natively implemented in the game, à la Cyberpunk 2077, or via the new DLSS Override feature in the Nvidia App, as in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

It's also the most powerful consumer GPU when it comes to creator tasks, too, thanks to its hefty 32 GB of GDDR7 and its massive bandwidth, but also because it's so damned good with an AI noodling if GenAI is your thing.

In short, the RTX 5090 is the best graphics card for anyone who wants the absolute finest silicon and feature set of any consumer GPU going. You're just going to have to pay through the nose for it until stock settles down. If it ever does to an extent that MSRP versions of the card become readily available.

Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090

(Image credit: Future)
Ada's most powerful GPU still has a lot to give even in 2025.

Specifications

Shaders: 16,432
Boost clock: 2,520 MHz
TFLOPs: 82.6
Memory: 24 GB GDDR6X
Memory clock: 21 GT/s
Memory bandwidth: 1,008 GB/s
TGP: 450 W

Reasons to buy

+
Excellent gen-on-gen performance
+
DLSS Frame Generation is magic
+
Super-high clock speeds

Reasons to avoid

-
Massive
-
Ultra-enthusiast pricing
-
Non-4K performance is constrained
-
High power demands
Buy if...

You a seriously powerful card: The RTX 4090 was the most powerful GPU you could buy for your gaming PC until this year. The silicon inside it is monstrously powerful, and along with DLSS 3 and Frame Generation, it still provides a truly next-gen experience.

You want to nail 4K gaming: This is the card that makes 4K gaming buttery smooth. That 24 GB frame buffer means you're not going to run out of VRAM any time soon.

You're a creator as well as a gamer: Time is money if you do any sort of professional GPU work, and the RTX 4090 could start to pay for itself right away given its incredible rendering and compute power.

Don't buy if...

You need to ask the price: It's fair to say that it's one of the best value Ada GPUs given its relative price-performance ratio, but it's still $1,600 at best. That's far cheaper than the RTX 3090 Ti was, and the RTX 3090 if you take inflation into account.

You have a compact rig: This thing is BIG. Like, comically big. You'll struggle to fit it in some cases, so make sure you measure first.

The bottom line

🪛 The RTX 4090 is the true next-gen experience that we simply haven't seen from any of the other AMD or Nvidia cards from this new generation. And that almost makes it worth that exorbitant price tag.

The best graphics card of the past few years has been Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090, but technology waits for no human, and the RTX 5090 is here with a relatively healthy gen-on-gen performance bump plus the magic of Multi Frame Gen. Still, the RTX 4090 remains a hulking great lump of a pixel pusher, and an incredibly powerful gaming GPU.

Though compared with the new RTX 5090 Founders Edition shroud, it looks like some semi-satirical plastic model made up to skewer GPU makers for the ever-increasing size of their cards. But it's no model, and it's no moon, this was the top card of the entire RTX 40-series GPU generation, a complete beast of a gaming component that leaves all others in the dust.

On the one hand, it served as a hell of an introduction to the sort of extreme performance Ada can deliver when given a long leash, and on the other, made for a slightly tone-deaf release in light of a global economic crisis that made launching a graphics card for a small, very loaded minority of gamers feel a bit off.

But we can't ignore it for this guide to the best GPUs simply because, as it stands today, no alternative to the RTX 4090 can get anywhere close to its performance. It's unstoppable and will stay ahead of the pack given that AMD's highest-performance graphics card, the RX 7900 XTX, is more of an RTX 4080 competitor.

This is a vast GPU that packs in 170% more transistors than even the impossibly chonky GA102 chip that powered the RTX 3090 Ti. And, for the most part, it makes the previous flagship card of the Ampere generation look well off the pace. And that's even before you get into the equal mix of majesty and black magic that lies behind DLSS 3 and all its upscaling and Frame Generation trickery, boosting its performance further into the stratosphere.

Look, it's quick, okay. With everything turned on, and especially with DLSS 3 and Frame Generation joining the party, the RTX 4090 is monumentally faster than the RTX 3090 that came before it. The straight 3DMark Time Spy Extreme score is twice that of the biggest Ampere core, and before even ray tracing or DLSS come into it, the raw silicon offers twice the 4K frame rate in Cyberpunk 2077, too.

There's no denying it is an ultra-niche ultra-enthusiast card, and that almost makes the RTX 4090 little more than a reference point for most of us PC gamers. We're then left counting the days until Ada descends to the pricing realm of us mere mortals, which looks unlikely to happen until we see what the next generation of cards brings.

In itself, however, the RTX 4090 is an excellent graphics card and will satisfy the performance cravings of every person who could ever justify spending $1,600 on a new GPU. And it will deservedly sell to those who can afford it because there's no other GPU that can come even close to it right now.

Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 review.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080

The second-tier Blackwell GPU delivers a great gaming experience despite its unexciting silicon.

Specifications

Shaders: 10,752
Boost clock: 2,620 MHz
TFLOPs: 56
Memory: 16 GB GDDR6X
Memory clock: 23 GT/s
Memory bandwidth: 736 GB/s
TGP: 320 W

Reasons to buy

+
Multi Frame Gen is a marvel
+
Love the FE shroud
+
No price hike over RTX 4080 Super, at least at MSRP

Reasons to avoid

-
15% perf bump is barely iterative
-
MFG isn't universal
Buy if...

You can find one for the same price as an RTX 4080 Super: While it's only slightly more powerful than an RTX 4080 Super, it is nominally the same price. But scarcity and the newness premium might well see RTX 5080 pricing beyond the previous gen. If not, it's a good buy.

You're favourite games are already Multi Frame Gen supporting: MFG is a stunning feature for the RTX 50-series and the performance bump you can get with the RTX 5080 makes it far superior to the Ada equivalent so long as the game supports it.

Don't buy if...

You've already got yourself an RTX 4080 or above: It's going to be tough to conscience spending another $1,000+ on a new graphics card if you're already sitting on one of the top Ada GPUs, especially considering what you're really paying for is access to Multi Frame Gen.

The bottom line

🪛 The RTX 5080 is a bit of a tough graphics card to love. In a lot of ways it's little more than a slightly updated RTX 4080 Super, but with access to the mighty fine Multi Frame Gen feature. The experience you will get in supporting games, however, will genuinely give you a next-gen experience despite the relative lack of silicon advancement.

The second-tier RTX Blackwell card arrived shortly after the RTX 5090, but it's fair to say the RTX 5080 hasn't had quite the same sort of positive reaction as the top card. For one, despite the initial claims of being twice the performance of the RTX 4090, that only counts when you're talking about bringing Multi Frame Generation to bear on the old Ada king.

In terms of straight rendering performance it's still well behind the other card, giving some extra life to the RTX 4090 in the new Blackwell world. It's also only 15% ahead of the RTX 4080 Super, and carries almost the same essential spec. That makes it feel very much like some sort of pseudo RTX 4080 Ti Super.

But Nvidia has dropped this new RTX 50-series card without a fresh price hike in terms of its MSRP, though such is the launch scarcity of the GPU that it will be unlikely that you'll find a $999 RTX 5080 for a while.

The more positive news, however, is that the actual gaming experience of using the RTX 5080, most especially with Multi Frame Generation enabled, is outstanding. The card and the technology absolutely delivers on its promises when the AI models are doing their jobs in compatible games. And there turns out to be quite a few compatible games even at launch.

What there aren't right now, however, are any games which use all the new Neural Rendering features that are the other hallmark of the RTX Blackwell GPUs. When features such as RTX Neural Face, RTX Neural Skin, and RTX Neural Materials, as well as Mega Geometry, get implemented in release games we could see the RTX 5080 become a more compelling purchase over time.

Still, it is the ~$1,000 card you would want to buy right now—it may not be much more powerful than the RTX 4080 Super it is replacing, but if it's the same price it's a no-brainer about which you would want to stick into your PC. It is also the GPU that you will find in a ton of great new prebuilt gaming PCs of the next year or two.

In terms of a generational upgrade it's maybe not the most exciting graphics card we've seen from the green team, but if you found yourself with one in your gaming PC you would be in for a very fine time.

Read our full Nvidia RTX 5080 review.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super

Essentially the same RTX 4080 card, but with the $999 sticker price we wanted all along.

Specifications

Shaders: 10,240
Boost clock: 2,550 MHz
TFLOPs: 52
Memory: 16 GB GDDR7
Memory clock: 30 GT/s
Memory bandwidth: 960 GB/s
TGP: 360 W

Reasons to buy

+
Priced at a more understandable level
+
Great gaming performance
+
Super efficient GPU
+
Lovely matte black shroud

Reasons to avoid

-
Still priced too high
-
No tangible performance gains over RTX 4080
-
AMD's RX 7900 XTX remains stiff competition
Buy if...

You can find a card under MSRP: The price cut is the real strength of the Super variant, so you'll really want to find one under its $999 MSRP given the RTX 5080 has launched at that price now.

You want good 4K ray traced gaming performance: Ada is efficient and really good at dealing with the rigours of ray tracing. Add DLSS 3 and Frame Generation to the mix and the RTX 4080 Super excels at delivering solid 4K frame rates.

Don't buy if...

Ray tracing means nothing to you: In pure rasterised gaming terms, the RX 7900 XTX from AMD can often outperform the RTX 4080 Super, and that makes it a very tempting option, especially if you can find one cheaper than the Nvidia card.

The bottom line

🪛 The RTX 4080 Super is a far more tempting prospect given its $200 price cut over the standard RTX 4080. That brings it to the same price as the AMD 7900 XTX and the balance of features and ray tracing performance brings us down on the side of Nvidia. The RTX 5080 has now launched and while it's not hugely quicker, is still nominally the same price (or at least should be once stock levels normalise), but the RTX 4080 Super will still be a staple of gaming PCs for a while yet.

Less is more, right? I mean, technically the RTX 4080 Super is actually more is less when you consider you're getting a full AD103 GPU for less cash. But it's the pricing change which is the real kicker, as it's the only tangible difference between this and the original RTX 4080.

Though it's not like you'd ever need to weigh up the differences between the RTX 4080 and the RTX 4080 Super; the older version has effectively been killed. The RTX 4080 Super sits at the top of the high-end (but not ultra-high-end) throne and remains as desirable a card today as it was when it first released.

So, it's all about weighing up how much of a difference that price cut has made to the positioning of the RTX 4080 Super. Let's be honest, with a $999 MSRP, it's still nobody's idea of cheap, and arguably should still be cheaper than what we're left with here.

But we can't get too bent out of shape over what might have been; this is about the product I have in front of me, and the RTX 4080 Super is the same super-powerful graphics card it was when its predecessor launched. It's a card which makes the once top GPU of the Ampere age look utterly laggardly—and incredibly inefficient—by comparison. At $999, it looks even better when put up against the $1,500 RTX 3090 of the previous gen.

The price cut and slight performance bump also now make it tougher for AMD's best RDNA 3 card by comparison, though it is still very tight. Our two original reference RX 7900 XTX cards were beset by thermal issues and performed very badly, but third-party cards, and subsequent driver improvements, resulted in a Radeon GPU that was generally priced below the $1,200 RTX 4080 but in pure raster terms often outperformed it.

With a much more competitive $999 MSRP, the RTX 4080 Super doesn't change the game in terms of comparative performance—on average 2% slower at 4K settings—but it does make it generally cheaper than the speedy third-party OC RX 7900 XTX cards. Combine that with the weight of DLSS 3 and Frame Generation support, and that just about swings it for the RTX 4080 Super.

But it is still a close-run thing, and I certainly wouldn't begrudge anyone picking the RX 7900 XTX over the latest GeForce GPU if they could find it for less.

However, after reportedly poor RTX 4080 sales—and worse press around its launch and pricing—the RTX 4080 Super does feel like a pretty successful relaunch. It's got a prettier shroud, and the same great performance but for a lower price.

The RTX 4080 Super is a serious bit of gaming hardware, and if you've got serious cash for a majorly fast GPU and want to take advantage of Nvidia's extra goodies, all without stretching to RTX 4090 prices, here's where you probably want to be.

Read our full Nvidia RTX 4080 Super review.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080

At $999 it would have been a great high-end gaming GPU

Specifications

Shaders: 9,728
Boost clock: 2,505 MHz
TFLOPs: 48.8
Memory: 16 GB GDDR6X
Memory clock: 22.4 GT/s
Memory bandwidth: 717 GB/s
TGP: 320 W

Reasons to buy

+
Bests both the RTX 3090 and 3080 Ti
+
Has the glitzy Frame Generation magic
+
Svelte, efficient GPU

Reasons to avoid

-
Over-priced
-
Over-sized
Buy if...

You find a significant discount: At its $1,200 price or above it's a poor deal, but if you can find the RTX 4080 below $999 it might be worth a punt for the serious gaming performance it offers, although the RTX 4080 Super variant should be hovering around that price level as well.

Don't buy if...

You can find an RTX 4080 Super for less: The RTX 4080 Super is often the cheaper card, and given the incredibly similar performance makes for a much better buy due to the price difference.

The bottom line

🪛 The RTX 4080 is almost impossible to recommend at its $1,200+ price point. At $999 or under it becomes a lot more tempting owing to its seriously impressive performance and DLSS 3 support, although realistically you should be able to find the RTX 4080 Super for similar money. Oh, and it's not even being produced any more, so you'll likely only find it in pre-built PCs these days anyway.

The Nvidia RTX 4080 is a speedy graphics card, and when you take DLSS 3 into account you are getting on for twice the performance of the similarly priced RTX 3080 Ti from the last generation.

But reviewing the RTX 4080 is tougher than being Jen-Hsun's spatula wrangler. For a start, it's been pretty much entirely superseded by the RTX 4080 Super, a card that basically cuts the retail price of the original model while also delivering blink-and-you'll-miss-it performance gains.

Seriously, we found the Super version to be just 1% faster than the OG at 1440p, and around 2% faster at 4K. That's practically margin-of-error differences, but the fact that the RTX 4080 Super has a $200 cheaper MSRP means you shouldn't really pick up the RTX 4080 standard unless you can find one cheaper than the Super variant.

However, if you do manage to find a good deal, you'll also find that the RTX 4080 comfortably outperforms the similarly priced cards from the previous generation, most notably the $1,200 RTX 3080 Ti, and therefore really hit that gen-on-gen performance uplift we craved back when the card was released. But in all honesty, of neither these GeForce cards should ever have been a $1,200 GPU.

Nvidia has pared the silicon back a whole lot to create the AD103 GPU in comparison to the AD102 chip of the RTX 4090. Generalising, it's 60% the size, has 60% of the transistors, and 60% of the CUDA cores, and yet was 75% of the price of the RTX 4090. If you wanted to do some simple maths the RTX 4080 really ought to have been around $960, and if you can find one for that price over the Super, you'll have spotted a great deal indeed.

So how does the original card stack up against the Radeon RX 7900 XTX? We're looking at a very close-run thing. The AMD card performs at a roughly similar level to the RTX 3090, and for a $999 card that would have made it tempting compared to the slightly quicker $1,200 RTX 4080, especially with its improved ray tracing capabilities.

Now the RTX 4080 Super delivers roughly the same performance as the old card for a $999 price tag, I'd plump for that particular model over the AMD instead, mostly thanks to DLSS 3 and Frame Generation support.

The original is still in this guide as a reference, but once again, you should only be looking here if you can find a great deal—which will only be in pre-builts, these days, now the RTX 4080 is out of production. Otherwise, the RTX 4080 Super makes much more sense at its cheaper MSRP.

Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 review.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

The best AMD graphics card

Specifications

Shaders: 6,144
Boost clock: 2,500 MHz
TFLOPs: 61.4
Memory: 24 GB GDDR6
Memory clock: 20 GT/s
Memory bandwidth: 960 GB/s
TGP: 355 W

Reasons to buy

+
Much faster than an RX 6950 XT at 4K
+
Less power hungry too
+
$999 price tag
+
Much improved ray tracing capabilities
+
Frickin' chiplets!

Reasons to avoid

-
Not a consistent RTX 4080 competitor
-
Runs real hot
-
Consumes a lot of power
-
Low average clock speed
Buy if...

You want the best AMD can offer: This is the pinnacle of AMD's RDNA 3 technology right now, and the fact the red team has got a chiplet GPU running so well in its first generation is really impressive.

You need a lot of video memory: With a full 24 GB of GDDR6 at its disposal, for a lot less than the RTX 4090, the RX 7900 XTX has a lot to offer the creator.

Ray tracing's not for you: If you care not a jot for ray tracing, the raster performance of the Navi 31 GPU is excellent. It has improved RT skill compared with AMD's last generation, but it's still behind Nvidia on that score.

Don't buy if...

The AMD reference card is the only option: Normally we're big fans of both AMD and Nvidia's reference cards, but the RX 7900 XTX had a heat issue with the reference cooler not found on third-party versions. We experienced the problem on both the review cards AMD provided for testing.

You're looking for consistent RTX 4080 Super performance: We'd hoped for a more regularly competitive gaming experience from the RX 7900 XTX, but sometimes it's a long way behind Nvidia's second-tier card.

The bottom line...

🪛 As the finest Radeon ever made, the AMD RX 7900 XTX has a lot going for it. If it was closer to the RTX 4080 in gaming terms more regularly, we'd have no hesitation recommending this top red team GPU.

The best AMD graphics card right now is easily the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. We're used to seeing GPU generations that arrive on smaller process nodes, redesigned architectures, larger caches, reworked shaders, more memory—the list goes on. But all of that, all at once? That's what RDNA 3-powered RX 7900 XTX delivers: the whole lot in one fell swoop.

At its original $999 price tag, the RX 7900 XTX was a superb 4K graphics card, but now it can often be found around the $850 mark. The highest-tier AMD card from the previous generation, the RX 6950 XT, is nowhere near its full price today ($1099) and is usually on sale at $800 or less. The newer RDNA 3 card has enough pace to justify its higher price by comparison, as it generally outperforms the older RDNA 2 card by 20% and in some games, a whole lot more.

That's because the RX 7900 XTX has 20% more shaders, 8% higher boost clocks, twice as many FP32 units per shader, and 67% more memory bandwidth than the RX 6950 XT. The increase in memory capacity from 16 to 24 GB with the RX 7900 XTX is also a nice bonus, and the ray tracing performance on RDNA 3 is much more convincing to make me part with my money.

Yet as an RTX 4080 or RTX 4080 Super competitor, the RX 7900 XTX is less convincing. It's rarely able to match either card. The RTX 4080 is up to 28% faster in my testing, though it's more like 15% on average. For an RTX card that asks at least 20% more cash than the RX 7900 XTX, that stat is not a dealbreaker, but it does make the XTX's gains more moderate by comparison.

What helps the XTX's value proposition is that it has more memory and, on rare occasions, actually beats the RTX 4080, Super or otherwise. If you're only playing Far Cry 6 then you're laughing with an XTX, but let's be honest, you're not.

Our review RX 7900 XTX sample also suffered from an issue with GPU hotspot temperatures exceeding the normal expected range under load. We reached out to AMD and received a replacement, but unfortunately had the same issue strike again. Fun, eh?

You can check out our reviews for the Asus TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XTX OC Edition and Sapphire Nitro+ RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X, as these cards are entirely unaffected by the issue and better show what sort of performance you can expect from this card's spec. The benchmark numbers above for the top AMD card are from the excellent Sapphire Nitro+ version.

All this transpires to leave Nvidia as the top dog in the ultra-high-end segment. Make no mistake, the RX 7900 XTX is a great 4K graphics card for an ultra high-end PC build in 2024. However, the RTX 4080 Super can sit side by side with it, and often eat its lunch. That makes for a tough sell, no doubt, but it's still the best AMD GPU you can buy.

Combined with a high-end CPU and a 4K (or ultrawide) monitor, you'll net superb frame rates with the RX 7900 XTX in your build, and if you're looking for top AMD GPU performance, this is the card to go for.

Read our full AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX review.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

The second-best RDNA 3 GPU

Specifications

Shaders: 5,376
Boost clock: 2,400 MHz
TFLOPs: 51.6
Memory: 20 GB GDDR6
Memory clock: 20 GT/s
Memory bandwidth: 800 GB/s
TGP: 315 W

Reasons to buy

+
Faster than an RX 6950 XT
+
Great design and cooling
+
Lots of memory
+
Slightly cheaper than RX 7900 XTX

Reasons to avoid

-
RX 7900 XTX is too close for comfort
-
Quite power hungry
Buy if...

The price keeps dropping: At launch its $899 sticker price was too close to the superior RX 7900 XTX, but now it's creeping well below $700 it's becoming a more tempting 20 GB GPU option.

Don't buy if...

You value Nvidia's DLSS 3 and Frame Generation tech: At more or less the same price as the RTX 4070 Ti, and trading blows at standard raster frame rates, the actually tangible benefits of the complete DLSS 3 package can make a real difference.

The bottom line

🪛 The AMD RX 7900 XT makes things a little more uncomfortable for both the RTX 4070 Ti and RX 7900 XTX because it's now the same price as the former, and considerably cheaper than the latter.

AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT is a slightly slimmed-back version of the Navi 31 GPU and the company's top graphics card, the RX 7900 XTX. Starting at $899, and now occasionally available for around $700, it's therefore offering a significantly cheaper way into the RDNA 3 generation, and you could also be forgiven for thinking it's not that much cheaper than the best.

So why would you pick up the cheaper RX 7900 XT? That's a good question, and I'm not sure I have a good answer, apart from the price.

Overall, I'd say there are a few things the RX 7900 XT does well. For starters, it appears to be a good upgrade on even the RX 6950 XT, and considering the price difference between the two at launch, that's a good sign of AMD's progression with the RDNA 3 architecture. The reference cooler on this also seems pretty capable for the price, with temperatures running relatively cool considering its performance.

There are a few times when the differences between the XT and XTX are minimal, and the performance delta is practically non-existent. The XT is also the much more efficient and cooler running of the two. Generally, though, you get what you pay for with the higher-end XTX card, if not a bit more.

Is it better than an RX 6950 XT? Yes. Cheaper than an RX 6950 XT at launch? Yes. An RTX 4080 Super competitor? Nope. Is it worth saving your money on this instead of the XTX? Probably not.

It's a good 4K graphics card if you look at the frame rates in isolation, but with a generally much better card right there for the taking, you best believe I'm going to want to find the extra $100-$200 somewhere in my build and pick up the XTX or the RTX 4080 Super instead.

Read our full AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT review.

Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super

Arguably the most interesting Ada refresh GPU

Specifications

Shaders: 8,448
Boost clock: 2,610 MHz
TFLOPs: 49.83
Memory: 16 GB GDDR6X
Memory clock: 21 GT/s
Memory bandwidth: 672 GB/s
TGP: 285 W

Reasons to buy

+
A healthy performance upgrade without a price increase
+
Memory system upgrade
+
Excellent efficiency
+
Runs cool

Reasons to avoid

-
Avoid the MSI Ventus... at least in the short term
-
A few extra shaders would have been nice
Buy if...

You're upgrading from an RTX-20 series or older card: An upgrade from one of the contemporarily excellent xx70 cards of yesteryear will bring you a dramatic performance uplift, not to mention the 'free' boost that DLSS 3 and Frame Generation will deliver.

You want the security of having a card with 16 GB of VRAM: Forget the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB. This is the Nvidia card to get right now if you want that extra bit of life. With the likes of Grand Theft Auto 6 yet to come, it may be better to have too much VRAM in the years ahead than not enough.

Don't buy if...

You already have a non-Super RTX 40-series card: The Super refreshes, while welcome, aren't enough of an upgrade over non-Super counterparts to justify going out and dropping another wad of cash on one.

The RTX 4070 Super drops further in price: The RTX 4070 Super is a full $200 less than the RTX 4070 Ti Super. Should it drop to $549 or lower, it'd become hard to ignore.

The bottom line

🪛 I would have hoped for more of a performance difference with the RTX 4070 Ti Super considering it's using the bigger GPU. But even if it's only 10-15% quicker than the RTX 4070 Ti, it's still the card I'd want for the memory increase and bigger GPU on the whole.

The mid-life RTX 4070 Ti Super refresh addresses the concerns we had when the initial line-up went on sale and right now, it's the best $600-$800 graphics card. With the RTX 4070 Ti Super, any worries over weak memory specifications are put to rest. It's the RTX 4070 Ti we really wanted, and it would have most likely ended up as our pick of the initial generation assuming it had still launched at $799.

At just over half the price of the formerly mighty RTX 3090, while handily beating it, the RTX 4070 Ti Super is the perfect advertisement for an intergenerational performance improvement. If it beats out the RTX 3090, just imagine the kind of upgrade it will deliver for owners of popular cards like the GTX 1070 and RTX 2070. Add to that the benefits of DLSS 3 and Frame Generation and gamers looking for an upgrade that's a big step above the likes of the RTX 4060 Ti will be very happy.

The AMD RX 7900 XT remains a good competitor, especially after its recent price drop. However, AMD's challenger still lags on ray tracing performance, and it's now lost its VRAM advantage.

On the day before our review was due to go live, Nvidia informed us of a BIOS issue with the MSI Ventus card that we tested. This issue can lead to a loss of up to 5% of performance. An updated BIOS was provided, but even this BIOS still suffered from a reported 3% loss of performance. MSI has now released a vBIOS fix which reportedly elevates "the overall performance of the graphics card to be in line with our expectations."

But with stock sitting in warehouses, it's a struggle to recommend the MSI RTX 4070 TI Super Ventus right now when users are likely going to have to be very wary of what vBIOS version is on their board and deal with the sometimes scary (though honestly super straightforward) trial of updating the BIOS of their new GPU.

However, there's a whole range of RTX 4070 Ti Super cards—including factory overclocked models—from various manufacturers to choose from, so this little blip shouldn't put you off buying what makes for a very performant card. BIOS issues are a rarity for many GPUs, not the norm, and it's now been long enough that any early quirks with other manufacturers' cards should have been well and truly fixed.

Graphics card manufacturers have a lot of experience when it comes to taming cards with much higher power and thermal demands, so really, any of the basic RTX 4070 Ti Supers will deliver nearly identical performance. The dual fan ones might require a bit higher fan speed and hence noise levels to maintain higher boost clocks but, in the end, aesthetics and brand loyalty (if any) will be the main differentiators.

Putting all that aside, high refresh rate 1080p and 1440p gaming is a breeze with the RTX 4070 Ti Super. Throw in the benefits of excellent performance per watt, a forward-looking 16 GB of VRAM, Nvidia's AI and creative tools, plus the ability to game with lots of eye candy with DLSS 3 and Frame Generation at 4K and suddenly $799 looks a fair price. Make it $749 or a smidgen lower, and we'd be really stoked.

Read our full Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super review.

Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti