The best graphics card can mean many things. Fastest card, best value, best card at a particular price, etc. Also, some refuse to buy an AMD card or his Nvidia card. But prices are always changing, especially as previous generations of hardware start to be phased out. I wanted to look at the current and previous generation GPUs ranked by.
This last bit is important as it means older cards (RTX 20 series and RX 5000 series) are ineligible. However, Nvidia’s Turing-generation cards are still available (at a good price) on Newegg, so some are included. All performance data is taken from the GPU benchmark hierarchy and categorized into rasterization and ray tracing rankings. If you’re only interested in how the various GPUs from one company stack up, then he’ll also post a ranking of the three GPU vendors.
Rasterization rankings are sorted by the 1080p column. This puts the fastest GPUs at a disadvantage. If you’re only interested in 4K or 1440p performance, the positions of some cards will change, but the overall standings are relatively stable.
The best value overall right now, unsurprisingly, is the AMD RX 6600. This has been the case for most of the last few months, with prices ranging from as low as $200 to the current $235. Pricing for the RX 6600 will be seen after September. AMD also claims 2nd and 3rd place with the RX 6700 XT and RX 6650 XT, both of which cost more than they did a few months ago.
Intel is eyeing the fourth spot with the Arc A750. That his GPU has an official MSRP of $290 and has been selling for $275 for a few months, but recently Newegg slashed the price of his ASRock card by another $10.
Nvidia’s best value right now is on the GTX 1660 Ti, thanks to the Peladn model that retails for just $179. The next closest is another relatively unknown Chinese brand, this time with the Mannajue RTX 2060 for $220. If you want a legacy graphics card brand (i.e. not Peladn or Mannajue) and sold and shipped from the US, Asus RTX 3060 $360 (opens in new tab)Note that the RTX 3060 sits between the RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT and just behind the A750 for rasterization games. All of these are significantly cheaper than Asus cards.
What about the new RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 4080, RTX 4090 and RX 7900 XTX/XT? In terms of value, these latest generation cards all rank further down the list. The RTX 4070 Ti takes the honor of being the ‘Best of the Worst’ new card, sitting at number 27 out of 38 GPUs, while the RX 7900 XT sits in slot 31. RTX 3080 12GB, RTX 3090, and RTX 3090 Ti Prices are near the bottom, too, as they’ve surged in price over the past two months, presumably as they’ve been phased out.
Back to the ray tracing benchmark sorted by 1080p results again. This time around, though, the test is demanding enough that his 1440p and 4K results pretty much keep the relative rankings, but the best value is his RTX 2060 from Nvidia. -Named Mannajue model, shipped “direct from the factory” in China. There’s also his Paladin card for $20, but excluding those companies, the price of the Nvidia card jumps considerably.
Intel’s Arc A750 definitely takes the top spot for 1080p RT performance, interestingly followed by the RTX 4070 Ti, which ranks high at 1440p. Intel’s A770 works well too, but the best AMD card (for value) for ray tracing is his RX 6700 XT.
At the bottom are AMD’s RX 6400 and RX 6500 XT, neither of which can handle 1080p games remotely with ray tracing enabled. Then came the 3090 Ti and 3090, followed by the 7900 XTX. Finally, the pricey 3080 12GB and RX 6800 XT also lag behind the exorbitant RTX 4090 thanks to the steep price tag.
But the point is, high-end extreme GPUs aren’t worth much right now. You would normally expect cards like the 3080 and 3070 series to sell below the MSRP, but in most cases they don’t (with the exception of the aforementioned Chinese branded cards).
GPUs by Vendor
If you don’t want to mix everything and just want to see AMD, Intel or Nvidia GPUs, these tables are below without comments. All card names link to the lowest price we are currently tracking.
| graphics card | price | 1080p FPS/$ | 1440p FPS/$ | 4K FPS/$ | RT 1080p FPS/$ | RT 1440p FPS/$ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Arc A750 (opens in new tab) | $265 | 0.3442 | 0.2085 | 0.1199 | 0.1260 | 0.0655 |
| Intel Arc A770 16GB (opens in new tab) | $349 | 0.2859 | 0.1786 | 0.1053 | 0.1176 | 0.0632 |
| Intel Arc A380 (opens in new tab) | $140 | 0.2812 | 0.1390 | 0.0814 |
