Graphics Card Buying Guide: The Best GPUs for 2024
Getting the right GPU is the key to a successful PC build or upgradeBuying Guides
The year is off to a raring start, with brand new graphics cards offering greater performance (and lower prices) to accelerate games like never before. In order to play at higher resolutions, higher detail levels, and higher frame rates, it’s a great time to treat yourself to a new GPU.
Whether you’re looking to run indie games at 1080p, esports at 1440p, AAA games at 4K resolution, or anything in-between. AMD’s RX 7000-series just keeps getting cheaper, and NVIDIA has expanded its RTX 4000 series with some amped-up Super models that raise the value of this generation.
Here are the best graphics cards you can buy in 2024, for a range of uses and prices.
Best graphics card for 1440p: NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super
One of the new kids on the block, NVIDIA’s RTX 4070 Super represents the biggest leap in specs and real-world performance over its non-Super counterpart. The RTX 4070 will continue to be sold and shipped, and still represents a great 1440p graphics card, but the RTX 4070 Super is available at a competitive price, and it is much more capable.
At 1440p resolution, it delivers around a 15% greater average frame rate than the RTX 4070. This is thanks to the increase of more than 20% to the CUDA core count, bringing the total to 7,168. Elsewhere the design remains the same, with 12GB of GDDR6X memory, which is plenty for the latest games and offers some light future-proofing against games that need more than 8GB for DirectStorage support.
The overall card does demand a little more power, with a TDP of 220W, but that’s only a 10% rise and easily handled by both the reference and aftermarket cooler options.
The 4070 Super has support for DLSS 3.0 and frame generation, supports AV1 encoding, has Tensor cores for handling NVIDIA’s new AI capabilities, and can produce high frame rates in just about anything. Ray tracing performance is excellent, and though it’s not really a card for 4K gaming, in less-demanding games it is absolutely capable of it.
Best graphics card for 1080p: Intel Arc A770
There are several great 1080p graphics cards in 2024. NVIDIA’s RTX 4060 offers awesome budget performance with solid ray tracing. AMD’s RX 7600 is also an excellent budget options for those looking to spend less. But the king of the hill at 1080p, for now, has to be Intel’s Arc A770. It has heaps of raw power to throw at any game at this resolution and can even dabble in 1440p in some games if you don’t mind playing with the in-game settings to maintain performance.
That added raw power is super-helpful in games with ray tracing, too. Combined with Intel’s ray acceleration blocks, this card is more than capable of playing even demanding games with ray tracing enabled.
The Arc A770 also supports Intel’s XeSS upscaling algorithm and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), both of which are competitive with NVIDIA’s Deep Leaning Super Sampling (DLSS). In supporting games, the A770 can leverage the former two technologies to really boost its frame rates.
Intel’s GPUs keep getting better with each driver release, too, so there’s some real fine-wine long-term potential with this card.
Best graphics card for 4K: AMD RX 7900 XTX
Gaming at 4K resolution is hard, even for powerful new graphics cards from the latest generation. To play the latest games at this resolution, you need something truly special. The AMD RX 7900 XTX is the fastest graphics card AMD has ever made, by quite some margin. It leaps over every GPU from the previous generations and only NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 can beat it in terms of raw performance. But where that card leans more towards professional environments, the RX 7900 XTX is a gaming GPU through and through.
It’s based on AMD’s latest-generation RDNA 3 architecture, featuring over 6,000 shader units, 24GB of fast GDDR6 memory, and a demanding TDP of 355W to go with it. If you’ve got the power to run this card, it is an absolute beast and able to play absolutely any game at the highest settings with high frame rates. It’s even no slouch at ray tracing, with 96 of AMD’s second-generation ray accelerators, making it the fastest ray tracing card AMD has ever made, too.
If you’re an NVIDIA fan, consider the RTX 4080 Super too. It goes toe to toe with the 7900 XTX and offers DLSS support along with incredible performance.
Fastest graphics card: NVIDIA RTX 4090
While NVIDIA’s RTX 4000 series might have some hot new upstarts in the form of the RTX 40 Supers, none of them are quite super enough to steal the crown from the true king of its generation: The RTX 4090. Although this card might be more akin to NVIDIA’s classic Titan GPUs than the top-tier gaming cards, that doesn’t stop it being amazing at both. If you work with software that can take advantage of CUDA cores for acceleration, there’s no card better than the RTX 4090. If you truly want the best gaming performance money can buy, then the RTX 4090 is the best card for the job there, too.
The card needs a lot of power, and it kicks out a lot of heat when really pushed, but the reference and aftermarket cooling solutions are excellent, so you shouldn’t have to deal with high noise levels. That even has some overclocking headroom if you want to see what more this card can do.
Just be sure your case can fit it, as it is a very, very big GPU.
Best budget graphics card: Intel Arc 750
One step below our favorite 1080p graphics card, the Intel Arc 750 is priced around $200 and represents an absolute steal for a capable 1080p gaming system on a budget. It has all the power you need for high frame rates in many games if you keep the settings outside of the High/Ultra range, and with 8GB of GDDR6 on a surprisingly broad 256-bit memory bus, it offers much more memory bandwidth than most cards of its class and price.
Its ray tracing performance isn’t going to blow you away, but it can do it, and with XeSS and FSR support, in compatible games you can really boost the frame rate. The drivers are getting better all the time, too, so expect this card to perform better again in 12 months’ time.
The AMD equivalent at this kind of price is that RX 7600, while NVIDIA’s RTX 3060 is available at a comparable price if you want DLSS support.
Best AMD Graphics Card: AMD RX 7800 XT
AMD’s most powerful graphics card is the RX 7900 XTX, but arguably its best is the RX 7800 XT. This card has excellent performance at 1440p in even the most demanding of games, with a near-guaranteed 60 FPS no matter the settings. In games with upscaling options, like FSR (and FSR 3 frame generation) or XeSS, you could even play around with 4K without being overly concerned of frame rate dips.
There’s 16GB of VRAM, which offers all the futureproofing needed for DirectStorage supporting games, and it’s one of the better candidates for overclocking in this generation. With a good cooler, you can take this card to impressive new heights without too much effort.
Along with support for FSR 3, this card also supports AMD’s range of driver features, like anti-lag, noise suppression, AMD Chill, and more.
Picking the right card for you
With three players in the graphics card game, there’s more choice today for new graphics cards than ever before. Whether you want to play at 1080p, 1440p, or 4K, there are typically a few excellent options to pick from, covering every budget. For extra help deciding, drop by a Micro Center store and our experts will be happy to assist.
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