There’s always something, isn’t there? When it comes to getting ready to bag yourself a nice GPU upgrade over the past few years, lady luck has always managed to find some kind of spanner to throw into the works: pandemics, cryptominers, scalpers, and now it’s a global shortage of RAM.
Fortunately, as things currently stand, prices are generally very good (as long as you kind of ignore the fact that GPUs aren’t exactly cheap any more), but it won’t be long before they go back up because of the memory misery.
So which graphics card should you get? Obviously, it depends on a lot of things, and you should read Dave’s advice before you make the jump. Personally, though, I’d say that there are only two cards worth considering at the moment: one from AMD and one from Nvidia.
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Let me just start by pointing out that I’m not saying that cheaper cards aren’t worth buying. If your budget is limited to a maximum of $300, for example, then the choice is simple: You get a Radeon RX 9060 XT 8 GB for $275 at Best Buy.
That’s a speedy little GPU, and it’ll be great at 1080p gaming for many years to come. But what if you pick up a 1440p monitor next year? What happens if games suddenly start to use a lot more VRAM? The simplest solution to such problems is to use upscaling, lower quality settings, and to adjust your expectations.
I’m recommending the GeForce RTX 5070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT because, taking all things into consideration, they are the best GPUs around for the money. They’re not the absolute best when it comes to ‘bang for buck’ (at 1080p or 1440p, the Arc B580 is actually statistically better), and they’re not the outright fastest GPUs you can buy (err…that’s the GeForce RTX 5090, obviously).
They’re my top picks because they hit that complex sweet spot of price, performance, and feature set across all resolutions and gaming scenarios.
With a $120 difference between the two graphics cards, you might be wondering why I’m not just sticking with the RTX 5070. The reason for that is that while the RX 9070 XT is 25% more expensive, the performance gap over the 5070 can be just as big (i.e. 25% faster), depending on the game and settings.
That means if you’re planning on getting a higher resolution monitor in the near future, the 9070 XT will be better equipped to deal with it than the RTX 5070. Likewise, if the next generation or two of AAA games are even more demanding graphics-wise, you’ll have a better experience with the Radeon.
Of course, you’d have an even better time of things with a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, for example, but that’s an even bigger jump in price and, like the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, it’s not really good value for money. All GPUs are luxury items in the grand scheme of things, but some GPUs are more of a luxury than others.
Nvidia seems to be opening up a wedge between the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti price-wise, and that’s where it will probably shoehorn the anticipated RTX 5070 Super. I don’t think it will be worth the wait, though.
(Image credit: Future)
At $480, the RTX 5070 is a superb buy and will be able to turn its hand to almost any kind of gaming, though you will need to lean on DLSS 4 to help out at higher resolutions and settings. The RX 9070 XT is even better, and at $600, there isn’t anything else as good for the money.
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