No other component can have as big of an impact on your
gaming experience as your graphics card. Your CPU and memory are still
important, but the GPU is the beating heart of a gaming PC, pushing pixels onto
your display at mind-boggling rates. And the good news is that prices
continue the recent trend downward, with sales on the best graphics cards now
routinely bringing prices below MSRP. That's probably because all indications
are we're just a few weeks away from Nvidia's 11-series GPUs, which could
radically alter the recommendations.
Graphics cards consist of a dedicated graphics processor (GPU) coupled to
high-speed video memory (VRAM). Most modern cards have at least 3-4GB VRAM,
with high-end models including 8GB or more. Having enough VRAM is important, as
is memory bandwidth. With GDDR5 as the primary memory type, even budget cards
provide over 100GB/s to keep your GPU fed.With cryptocurrency mining profits dropping and the hot days of summer in the northern hemisphere, it's now possible to upgrade to a good midrange card for $200-$250, and budget cards are now closer to $100 on sale. High-end buyers might want to hold off until the rumored launch of Nvidia's GTX 1180, currently pegged at August 30 with the GTX 1170 arriving a month later, with the 1160 a month after that. The latest rumors are that the 1170 will be faster than a 1080 Ti and ship with 16GB GDDR6, though take that with a grain of salt.
We've revamped our guide with a streamlined format. Detailed testing results are at the end, and we have additional options that cater to gamers of all types and budgets. These are the best graphics cards right now.
AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB
The best card for mainstream gaming right now
GPU Cores: 2,304 | Base Clock: 1,257MHz | Boost Clock: 1,340MHz | GFLOPS: 6,175 | Memory: 8GB GDDR5 | Memory Clock: 8 GT/s | Memory Bandwidth: 256GB/s