Best Graphics Cards for Gaming in 2021.
Best Graphics Cards for Gaming in 2021
Here are the best graphics cards for gaming, from high-end to budget solutions
The best graphics cards are the lifeblood of any gaming PC — they're responsible for converting all of those zeroes and ones into stunning pixels on your screen. While there's no single solution that's right for everyone, we're here to sort out the must haves from the wanna bes. Some want the fastest graphics card, others the best value, and many are looking for the best card at a given price. Balancing performance, price, features, and efficiency is important because no other component impacts your gaming experience as much as the graphics card.
The tentative good news is that, with China's crackdown on cryptocurrency mining, prices on GPUs have started to drop. Our GPU pricing index saw a 15% dip last month, hopefully with more to come. Some analysts even think we might see 'normal' pricing before the end of the year, though that's probably wishful thinking as demand from gamers remains high. The fact that Ethereum and Bitcoin prices have rebounded in the past week or two doesn't help matters.
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti have now launched, leaving us generally underwhelmed. The 3080 Ti is about 10% faster than the RTX 3080, but costs 71% more (going by MSRP, which is really all we can do for now). The 3070 Ti meanwhile is about 10% faster than the 3070 and costs 20% more, but also increases power consumption by over 30%. At least both cards provide additional options, and with Nvidia's hashrate limiter they shouldn't be as enticing to miners.
We still haven't seen desktop variants of the RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050, which are going after the laptop market first — probably because that's a lower volume market than desktop cards costing less than $300. Wafers remain in short supply, basically. Of course, performance with only 4GB VRAM may not be all that we'd like to see. From AMD, the Radeon RX 6600 XT cards based on Navi 23 are set to launch on August 11, though the specs seem a bit underwhelming given the price. We'll see how the GPU performs soon enough.
More importantly for Team Red is the recent public launch of AMD FSR, FidelityFX Super Resolution. A GPU-agnostic upscaling algorithm that competes against DLSS sounds great, and performance and image quality at the higher settings are good. Now we just need for it to get used in more games, preferrably stuff that lots of people are playing.
While GPUs are still hard to find in the US, mining profitability has dropped substantially in the past month, so maybe we'll start edging back toward normalcy. Also, Nvidia has released LHR (low hash rate) variants of the RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti now, and the non-LHR variants are being phased out, so all Nvidia Ampere GPUs other than the RTX 3090 will be even less desirable for mining purposes (assuming the limiter doesn't get cracked).
We're going to list the best graphics cards that are theoretically available right now, along with their nominal prices. The latest additions to our list are the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB and Radeon RX 6700 XT. Both sold out and are now on eBay for over $700, nearly double the suggested etail pricing. If you're desparate for a new GPU, you could maybe justify paying 25% more than the launch price, but double or triple the MSRP is simply too much. If you need to upgrade, we recommend taking a look at pre-built gaming PCs instead. Or just wait, but prices might not get back to anything close to 'normal' until some time in 2022.
We test and review all the major GPUs, and we've ranked every graphics card in our GPU Benchmarks hierarchy based purely on performance. We've also done extensive testing of graphics card power consumption, using proper hardware, and we've looked at the broader AMD vs Nvidia GPUs breakdown. More recently, our Radeon RX 6800 XT and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti launch articles have included test results for the latest GPUs running on Core i9-9900K, Core i9-10900K, and Ryzen 9 5900X. Mostly, the three CPUs are pretty close, though things vary depending on the game and settings (and motherboard firmware and RAM). Here we cut things down to a succinct list of the best graphics cards you can currently buy.
Choosing the Best Graphics Card for You
We've provided a dozen options for the best graphics cards, recognizing that there's plenty of potential overlap. The latest generation GPUs consist of Nvidia's Ampere architecture cards and AMD's RDNA2 architecture offerings. You can check our launch reviews of the GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, GeForce RTX 3080, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, GeForce RTX 3070, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and GeForce RTX 3060 12GB for Nvidia, along with AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800, and Radeon RX 6700 XT. RDNA2 brought ray tracing support to Team Red for the first time and greatly improved performance compared to the previous generation GPUs. That's eleven new GPUs in about as many months, and we'll likely see additional options using scaled down GA106 and Navi 22 GPUs in the near future.
Theoretically, cards like the RTX 3070 and RX 6800 cost less than half as much as the previous generation RTX 2080 Ti, and generally match or beat it on performance. Meanwhile, the RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 are 30 to 35% faster than the 2080 Ti for less money, and the 3090 is 10-20% faster than the 3080 (at more than twice the price). You can also see how the RTX 3080 scales with a wider range of CPUs. Hint: You'll want something made in the past few years, preferably with at least 6-cores and 12-threads.
Unfortunately, that's only in theory, as cyptocurrency mining combined with an already limited supply have caused a massive jump in GPU prices. Our advice: Don't pay more today for yesterday's hardware. If you want an RTX 30-series or RX 6000-series graphics card, be patient and you'll eventually be able to buy one at close to the official MSRP. If you already own a decent GPU, stick with it — or sell it for a premium and save the money until prices come down (assuming you have a spare you can live with in the interim).
If your main goal is gaming, you can't forget about the CPU. Getting the best possible gaming GPU won't help you much if your CPU is under-powered and/or out of date. So be sure to check out the Best Gaming CPUs page, as well as our CPU Benchmarks to make sure you have the right CPU for the level of gaming you're looking to achieve.
Our current recommendations reflect the changing GPU market, factoring in all of the above details. The GPUs are ordered mostly by performance, but price, features, and efficiency are still factors so in a few cases a slightly slower card may be ranked higher. There's been a massive shakeup at the top of the performance rankings already, and provided you can find the various cards in stock, these are the best graphics cards.
Quick Shopping Tips
When buying a graphics card, consider the following:
• Resolution: The more pixels you're pushing, the more performance you need. You don't need a top-of-the-line GPU to game at 1080p.
• PSU: Make sure that your power supply has enough juice and the right 6- and/or 8-pin connector(s). For example, Nvidia recommends a 650-watt PSU for the RTX 2070 Super, and you'll need two 8-pin and/or 6-pin PEG connectors.
• Video Memory: A 4GB card is the minimum right now, 6GB models are better, and 8GB or more is strongly recommended.
• FreeSync or G-Sync? Either variable refresh rate technology will synchronize your GPU's frame rate with your screen's refresh rate. Nvidia supports G-Sync and G-Sync Compatible displays (for recommendations, see our Best Gaming Monitors list), while AMD's FreeSync tech works with Radeon cards.
• Ray Tracing and DLSS: The latest graphics cards support ray tracing, which can be used to enhance the visuals. DLSS provides intelligent upscaling and anti-aliasing to boost performance with similar image quality, but it's only on Nvidia RTX cards.
| GPU | Performance Rank | Value Rank (fps/$) |
|---|---|---|
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 | 1 (152.7 fps) | 12 ($1,499) |
| AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT | 2 (148.1fps) | 11 ($999) |
| AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT | 3 (142.8 fps) | 9 ($649) |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 | 4 (142.1 fps) | 10 ($699) |
| AMD Radeon RX 6800 | 5 (127.3 fps) | 8 ($579) |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 | 6 (116.6 fps) | 7 ($499) |
| AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT | 7 (112.0 fps) | 6 ($479) |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | 8 (106.3 fps) | 1 ($399) |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 12GB | 9 (83.6 fps) | 4 ($329) |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super | 10 (57.9 fps) | 5 ($229) |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super | 11 (43.5 fps) | 2 ($159) |
| AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB | 12 (43.3) | 3 ($169) |
Note: Prices on most of the graphics cards are seriously messed up right now. We've listed the official MSRPs, which is what we would expect to pay under normal circumstances. You shouldn't pay significantly more than the above prices, and nearly all of the top GPUs remain out of stock.
While we sorted the above list in order of performance, we've sorted the cards below based on performance as well as our own subjective rankings. We look at performance, price, power, and features and then adjust things accordingly, though opinions naturally differ. Plus, it's very hard to know how to rank anything given the current prices.
Best Graphics Cards for Gaming 2021
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 sports the new and improved Ampere architecture. It's over 30% faster than the previous gen 2080 Ti, for $500 less. The new RTX 3080 Ti didn't manage to supplant the incumbent, thanks to its significantly higher pricing. If you're serious about maxing out all the graphics settings and you want to play at 4K or 1440p, this is the card to get — it's mostly overkill for 1080p gaming, though enabling all ray tracing effects in games that support the feature makes 1080p still reasonable.
If you skipped the first round of RTX GPUs, the RTX 30-series might finally get you you on board the ray tracing train. With potentially double the ray tracing performance of Turing, and games like Cyberpunk 2077 using even more ray tracing effects, the RTX 3080 is your best bet at playing games in all their ray traced glory without nuking the piggy bank.
Ampere also brings improved tensor cores for DLSS, a technology we're bound to see more of in future games now that it doesn't require per-game training by a supercomputer. We're seeing a lot more games with DLSS 2.0 these days, helped by the fact that it's basically a toggle and UI update to get it working in Unreal Engine. Nvidia's RT and DLSS performance are also quite a bit faster than what you get from AMD's new RX 6000 cards, which is a good thing as Nvidia sometimes falls behind in traditional rasterization performance (which is what our raw numbers are based on).
The biggest problem with RTX 3080 by far is going to be finding one in stock, at prices that aren't straight up terrible. Given the high price of the 3080 Ti, though, this remains our best pick for a fast GPU right now.
AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT is the best card for Team Red. The RX Radeon 6900 XT is technically about 5-7 percent faster, but it costs 54 percent more. That's not a great deal, at all, especially since you don't get more VRAM or any other extras. The RX 6800 XT provides a massive boost in performance and features relative to the previous generation RX 5700 XT. It adds ray tracing support (via DirectX Raytracing or VulkanRT), and is 70-90% faster across our test suite.
The GPU was affectionately dubbed 'Big Navi' prior to launch by the enthusiast community, and we got exactly what we wanted. Navi 21 is over twice the size of Navi 10, with twice the shader cores and twice the RAM. Clock speeds are also boosted into the 2.1-2.3 GHz range (depending on the card model), the highest clocks we've ever seen from a reference GPU by about 300 MHz. And AMD did all this without substantially increasing power requirements: The RX 6800 XT has a 300W TDP, slightly lower than the RTX 3080's 320W TDP.
A big part of AMD's performance comes thanks to the massive 128MB Infinity Cache. It improves the effective bandwidth by 119% (according to AMD). We're confident that few if any games in the coming years are going to need more than 16GB, so the 6800 XT is in a great position in that area.
What's not to like? Well, the ray tracing performance is a bit mediocre. Maybe it's because current games are more likely to be optimized for Nvidia's RTX GPUs, but overall the 6800 XT is just barely ahead of the RTX 3070 in ray tracing performance, and there are several games where it falls behind by up to 25%. And that's without turning on DLSS, which even in Quality mode can improve performance of RTX cards by 20-40% (sometimes more). AMD is working on FidelityFX Super Resolution to compete with DLSS, but it's not here yet and it's very much needed.
For some, the best card is the fastest card — pricing be damned! Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 caters to this category of user. At more than double the price of the RTX 3080, performance is only moderately better (10-15%) in most workloads. It's basically a replacement for the Titan RTX, at a still extreme price. Which is fine if that's what you're after — the 12GB RTX 3080 Ti doesn't reduce the price enough to shake things up.
The RTX 3090 is likely to reign as Nvidia's top GPU for a while as well. It sports nearly a complete GA102 chip, based off the Ampere architecture, so there's not really room for a new Titan card. Nvidia has said as much as well, that the 3090 brings Titan-class performance and features (specifically the 24GB VRAM) into the GeForce brand. If you simply must have the fastest graphics card available, that's the RTX 3090.
It's not just about gaming, of course. The RTX 3090 is the only GeForce Ampere with NVLink support, which is arguably more useful for professional apps and GPU compute than SLI. The 24GB of GDDR6X memory is also helpful in a variety of content creation applications. Blender for example frequently showed 30% higher performance compared to the 3080, and over twice the performance of the Titan RTX. Just watch out for lower than expected performance in some of the SPECviewperf 13 apps, where Titan RTX has additional features turned on in its drivers that aren't enabled for GeForce cards.
AMD's RX 6900 XT challenges the RTX 3090, and in traditional rasterization it's competitive. It also gets some wins in a few SPECviewperf tests. But if you want the absolute fastest graphics card right now, Nvidia wins, especially if you run games with ray tracing and DLSS enabled.
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