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Best Graphics Card for Gamers and Creatives in 2024 – CNET

January 2, 2024 Admin

Updated Jan. 1, 2024 4:05 p.m. PT

Lori Grunin

Our expert, award-winning staff selects the products we cover and rigorously researches and tests our top picks. If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Reviews ethics statement

Lori Grunin Senior Editor / Advice

I’ve been reviewing hardware and software, devising testing methodology and handed out buying advice for what seems like forever; I’m currently absorbed by computers and gaming hardware, but previously spent many years concentrating on cameras. I’ve also volunteered with a cat rescue for over 15 years doing adoptions, designing marketing materials, managing volunteers and, of course, photographing cats.

Expertise Photography, PCs and laptops, gaming and gaming accessories

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The triple fan side of the RX 7900 XT lying on a marbled green surface

Good 4K gaming, pro video editing, 3D graphics ($700-$900)

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

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Fastest overall ($1,600 or more)

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090

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Most people use graphics cards that are several years old, which is a shame because there have been some big leaps in tech over the last couple of years. Whether you’re a PC gamer or streamer, a creator, or you just want a better everyday Windows experience, even a small upgrade can make your system feel like new.

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For gaming, the RTX 3050 is a fine gets-you-in-the-door GPU, providing good 720p and decent 1080p performance. Since much basic photo editing still isn’t very GPU-intensive, a fast, high-core-count CPU still gives you a lot more performance value for the money than a higher-powered graphics card. But the GPU does matter for the experience and smooth display rendering, but for smallish images and single-screen editing you shouldn’t have any issues. The GPU is being used increasingly to accelerate AI-based features, like automagic object selection, so it’s worth getting a more recent card — especially since many of the older GTX models have left the “older so it’s cheaper” phase and entered that “going out of stock so let’s jack up the prices because scarcity” phase.

For a little less, at $250 there’s also the better-performing Intel Arc A750. Despite Intel’s frequent updates to the drivers, though, I’m hesitant to make a blanket recommendation; Intel’s new to the discrete GPU market, and its cards seem to be experiencing first-generation growing pains. Also, you really want resizable BAR support on your system and it has higher power requirements than a typical entry-level card, which means it’s not necessarily suited to older or entry-level PC upgrades. But if you’re feeling adventurous, at least there aren’t a raft of third-party options to choose from — just ASRock and Intel’s own Limited Edition model.

The RTX 3050 card I tested was an EVGA model, and EVGA has since left the GPU biz.

<div content="LIST ITEM" superlative="Top choice for 1080p and midrange photo editing ($300-$500)" description="

This one’s a bit difficult to call at the moment, since the current generation of technologies from AMD and Nvidia for this class of card hasn’t been announced yet — though I think both are imminent. You can get last-gen cards that will perform perfectly well for these uses, and possibly older, but I hate making those recommendations without knowing what the prices will be on the newer cards, especially since the newer Nvidia Ada and AMD RDNA 3 architectures add quite a bit over their predecessors. 

Still the AMD RX 6700 XT is a good meat-and-potatoes card if you need to buy something now, pretty much outperforming the rest in its price class. The AMD cards tend to get complaints about audible whining, and I admit I hear it myself periodically, so if that’s a potential issue then the more expensive RTX 3060 Ti is probably a good bet as well.

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A lot of old or low-end gaming PCs, as well as compact systems, can’t handle the size or power requirements of many of the newer GPUs. The RTX 3060 is the highest-end GPU that can fit usually into dual-slot systems which only have room for short (one- or two-fan) cards and with power supplies of 500 w or less. That doesn’t necessarily account for overclocking, so if you’re planning on pushing it to the limit, make sure the card you get — when overclocked — combined with your CPU’s power draw won’t exceed the cooling or power limits of your PC.

<div content="LIST ITEM" superlative="Best option for good 1440p, top quality 1080p, entry video editing ($500-$700)" description="

The RTX 4070 is one of the most flexible performers on the market, with gaming performance that spans 1080p through entry 4K — though for decent 4K performance you (and your games) need to take advantage of Nvidia’s DLSS 3 optimization technology. DLSS 3 performs much better than the previous generation, and support for it is one of the things that makes the RTX 40- series notably better than its predecessor. 

While it’s not cheap, the price is also not at the top of the range for its competitive class either.

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The RX 7900 XT isn’t always faster than competitor RTX 4070 Ti, but it has more memory for the same money (20GB vs. 12GB), which gives it a leg up for games and applications that can take advantage of it. AMD’s RX 7000 series of GPUs also have DisplayPort 2.1 connections, while Nvidia’s are still using DP 1.4. While there aren’t a lot of DP 2.x monitors yet, the standard supports higher refresh rates at 4K than earlier specifications.

<div content="LIST ITEM" superlative="Good 4K gaming, pro video editing, 3D graphics ($700-$900)" description="

The RTX 4070 Ti isn’t excessively more expensive than the 4070 and it provides noticeably better performance. But it’s a lot bigger and draws a lot more power as well — unsurprising, since it began life as a stripped-down RTX 4080 — which makes it a little less flexible than the RTX 4070 as a card that I’d consider a general recommendation. But it’s also a lot smaller, cheaper and less power hungry than the RTX 4080 and 4090. That combination makes it my favorite overall, even though the 4070 is my top recommendation.

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The Asus TUF GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC lying fans up on a multicolor background

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For just about everything, the RTX 4090 is the fastest consumer GPU on the market, with a big enough 24GB frame buffer to handle high-res games and video editing as well as streaming.

The RTX 4080 is a cheaper alternative in the $1,200-$1,600 range, though it’s roughly the second fastest currently on the market and it’s tempting to drop to the much less expensive 4070 Ti. And the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a better choice than the 4080 for compute-intensive pro graphics and can outpace the RTX 4080 on some games, plus it supports higher-bandwidth DisplayPort 2.1 — though it still lags a lot of Nvidia cards for ray tracing. It can be found for as low as $1,000, though, which may be worth the tradeoff.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition lying on a blue couch cushion, angled

<div content="LIST ITEM" superlative description="

Power requirements: Always check the power needs of a card against your power supply’s output. Don’t forget to take the other cards and devices in your system into account concerning power usage.
The most powerful GPU on the planet won’t make a difference if your CPU is the bottleneck (and vice versa) — think overkill.
You’ll see a lot of price variation across cards using the same GPU. That’s for features such as overclocking, better cooling systems or flashy (literally) designs. 
Dual-card setups are usually more of a pain than they’re worth. Video editing is usually the exception, depending upon application support.
If you want a card for content creation, game benchmarks aren’t usually representative. To research those, start by running a search on "workstation GPUs" or, for example, "best GPU for Premiere." It’s important to match the GPU to the application, because, for instance, Nvidia RTX A-series GPUs (the workstation GPUs formerly known as Quadro) are generally more powerful than their AMD Radeon Pro or WX series equivalents, but application developers who are tight with Apple – which doesn’t support Nvidia GPUs — optimize their applications for AMD GPUs. The biggest example of this is Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve video editor.
For photo editing, it may no longer suffice to use a low-end or middling graphics card, though it depends on your software. With the latest generations of Photoshop and Lightroom, Adobe has begun to expand its use of AI-related technologies in meaningful ways. For instance, Photoshop’s Replace Sky and Neural Filters can take advantage of GPU hardware designed to accelerate AI to speed them up, such as the Tensor cores in Nvidia’s RTX cards. But if you don’t have at least 32GB of memory, graphics applications may get a bigger boost from upgrading that before the GPU, unless the graphics card is really old. 
For video editing, the amount of memory on the card can have a big impact on real-time performance as you work with higher-resolution video (4K and up). 
Running games at 4K requires significantly more video memory than 1440p or lower, at least 8GB.

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If you’re sensitive to screen artifacts caused by a disconnect between the rate at which your monitor updates and the frame rate at which you’re playing, or you’re interested in proprietary technologies like Nvidia’s Latency Analyzer to help improve your gameplay by reducing lag, then you should definitely at least look into what each of them offers. Otherwise, get the appropriate GPU for your needs and work with what you get.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider gaming test (1440p)

Note: Longer bars indicate better performance (FPS)

RTX 4070 84RTX 3080 Ti 97RX 7900 XT 99RTX 4070 Ti 103RX 7900 XTX 125RTX 4080 134RTX 4090 181

Guardians of the Galaxy (1440p at maximum quality with ray tracing)

Note: Longer bars indicate better performance (FPS)

RTX 3060 8,628A750 LE 13,018RTX 4070 18,013RX 7900 XTX 19,760RTX 4070 Ti 22,731RX 7900 XT 24,814RTX 4080 28,275RX 7900 XTX 29,413RTX 4090 35,467

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra

Note: Longer bars indicate better performance

RTX 3060 2,157A750 LE 2,366RTX 4070 4,479RX 7900 XT 4,534RTX 4070 Ti 5,429RX 7900 XTX 5,891RTX 4080 7,168RTX 4090 9,813

3DMark DXR (DirectX ray tracing)

Note: Longer bars indicate better performance (FPS)

A750 LE 7,242RTX 3060 7,342RX 7900 XT 8,259RTX 4070 8,383RTX 4070 Ti 8,479RX 7900 XTX 8,494RTX 3080 Ti 8,792RTX 4080 9,250RTX 4090 9,678

SpecViewPerf 2020 SolidWorks (4K)

Note: Longer bars indicate better performance (FPS)

Custom PC Microsoft Windows 11 Pro (22H2); 3.2GHz Intel Core i9-12900K; 32GB DDR5-4800; 2x Corsair MP600 Pro SSD; Corsair HX1200 80 Plus Platinum PSU, MSI MPG Z690 Force Wi-Fi motherboard, Corsair 4000D Airflow midtower case

Shadow of the Tomb Raider gaming test (1440p)

Guardians of the Galaxy (1440p at maximum quality with ray tracing)

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra

3DMark DXR (DirectX ray tracing)

SpecViewPerf 2020 SolidWorks (4K)

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