10 Of The Most Powerful Graphics Cards For Your Gaming PC

Building a capable gaming PC relies on two primary components: the CPU and GPU (or graphics card, in common parlance). While having a powerful desktop CPU in your gaming rig is important, the latter is what turns all of the CPU's number-crunching into the sweet, sweet polygons we see on screen. More powerful graphics cards get you more frames per second in games — it's a myth we can't see more than 24 FPS, so a higher frame rate is almost always better — and room to crank graphics settings to get better visuals.

Getting the right graphics card is one of the core aspects to consider when buying a gaming PC. Most of us will likely be limited by budget, having to carefully weigh up a card's price-to-performance ratio to get the most from our hard-earned cash. But some just want the fastest, most powerful products no matter what and are willing to pay to achieve the framerates their hearts desire. This list is for them.

A couple of points before we start, though. Firstly, this list uses data from three separate benchmarks — GFXBench, 3DMark, and PassMark — with a handful of cards left out of the running for various reasons; refer to our methodology section for a full rundown. Secondly, we're aware that new Nvidia and AMD GPUs are coming soon, potentially rendering this list out of date, but that's a problem for another day. For now, these are the 10 most powerful gaming graphics cards money can buy.

Nvidia's RTX 4070 Super was one of the three Super cards that Nvidia revealed at CES 2024. This was an upgraded version of the RTX 4070 that coexisted with the original, unlike the higher-end Super cards we'll discuss later. Nvidia offered mid-range buyers a noticeable bump in the core GPU specs for the 4070 Super, with more streaming multiprocessors and processing cores, as well as a larger L2 cache (48 vs. 32MB on the original 4070), although VRAM stayed at 12GB. The RTX 4070 Super debuted at the 4070's old $599 MSRP, with the older card dropping to $549.

Reviews of the time pointed out that the 4070 Super offered RTX 3090-tier performance, and the benchmark results we drew on for this list mostly echo that. The RTX 4070 Super placed above the RTX 3090 in two of the three benchmark rankings, which allowed it to sneak into the top 10 over the RTX 3090. Even in the one test where it couldn't quite outpace the RTX 3090, the RTX 4070 Super came within a stone's throw of it, recording 214.8 FPS in GFXBench's DirectX12 4K Aztec Ruins test compared to the Ampere card's 227.9 FPS.

Considering the huge gulf in retail prices between the two cards — the RTX 3090 debuted at $1,499 — you could say that the RTX 4070 Super was a bit of a value win for gamers shopping in its price bracket.

An old AMD flagship graphics card, the Navi 21-powered Radeon RX 6900 XT released in 2021 to compete with the Nvidia RTX 3090. This was a $1,000 graphics card that, despite being the priciest single-GPU AMD product to date, still came in $500 cheaper than Nvidia's $1,500 flagship. And it did so while offering generally comparable performance — at least, in non-raytraced workloads.

Despite mostly going toe-to-toe with Nvidia's flagship in most contemporary tests without managing to eke out the overall advantage, the RX 6900 XT makes it onto this list ahead of the RTX 3090 due to its surprisingly excellent performance in GFXBench's DirectX 12 testing, where it posted a median average of 283 FPS. The Nvidia card, in comparison, recorded a measly 227.9 FPS. Not that the GFXBench result was a fluke, though: The RX 6900 XT places higher than the former Nvidia flagship in 3DMark and PassMark G3D Mark too, and even manages to score higher than the RTX 4070 Super in 3DMark.

The biggest knock against the RX 6900 XT when it debuted was the poor raytracing performance and the minor performance increase over the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT despite costing around $350 more. This isn't as huge an issue now on the used market, but buying a used GPU isn't always the best idea, especially not an old flagship card. Not that this was AMD's last Navi 21 flagship, mind you... but we'll discuss that a bit later.

If AMD had stuck to its original plan, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE (short for "Golden Rabbit Edition") would not have made it onto this list, having originally been conceived as a card for the Chinese market. However, AMD brought the card to the U.S. in early 2024 to compete with Nvidia's RTX 4070 cards — meaning it was no longer an export-only card like the Nvidia RTX 4090D.

Price-wise, the RX 7900 GRE slotted in between the RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 at around $550, putting it in direct competition with Nvidia's RTX 4070 and 4070 Super. Benchmarks from the time generally saw the RX 7900 GRE posting a minor advantage over the RTX 4070 cards, with the gap widening at 4K thanks to the AMD card's extra VRAM and higher memory bandwidth. It's a differential echoed in two of the three tests that made up our data here: The RX 7900 GRE was noticeably better in GFXBench and 3DMark; for example, AMD's offering scored 22,503 points in the latter compared to the RTX 4070 Super's 20,908 points.

The one exception was PassMark, where the GRE was significantly slower than the RTX 4070 Super. That said, the advantage AMD's card had in the other two benchmarks was enough to give it eighth place here —all while possibly bringing a tear to the eyes of Radeon RX 6900 XT owners, who have to accept a $550 mid-range offering beating their $1,000 flagship.

AMD's RX 6000-series Radeon cards were relatively long-lived as graphics cards go, with the company launching a refreshed trio of cards in May 2022, nearly a year and a half after the generation's December 2020 debut. As the numbering might suggest, the RX 6950 XT was a refreshed version of the old flagship with a higher core clock and faster 18 Gbps GDDR6, up from the 16 Gbps of the RX 6900 XT. These bumps to clock speed came with a minor price increase, with the RX 6950 XT starting at $1,099.

Given the relatively minor upgrades, it's probably not a huge surprise that the RX 6950 XT didn't offer a huge performance benefit over the RX 6900 XT in games. Despite that, the updated flagship was certainly faster, as reflected in its seventh-place standing here. The RX 6950 XT placed ahead of the old flagship in all three benchmarks, although it's only in PassMark where the 6950 XT holds a noticeable advantage, with 28,138 points compared to the RX 6900 XT's 26,742 points. And even then, it's not really a massive difference in the grand scheme of things.

The RX 6950 XT was essentially AMD's answer to Nvidia's RTX 3090 Ti, which was similarly a higher-specced version of a previous flagship graphics card. The Nvidia card generally outperformed the AMD offering, especially at 4K, but cost $800 more. Speaking of which...

If you're looking at the prices of Nvidia's current-day RTX flagships and wonder where it all started, then this is most likely the answer. You see, up until the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti, Nvidia's super big-bucks flagships were mostly cards in the Titan range, like the $2,500 Nvidia Titan RTX and $1,200 Nvidia Titan X Pascal. The RTX 3090 Ti changed all that, bringing Titan-level hardware — and pricing — to the normal RTX family with an astounding $1,999 MSRP.

What did that extra $500 over the already-expensive RTX 3090 get you? Not that much, to be honest. Sure, it had more graphics cores and higher clock speeds, but even Nvidia admitted that the RTX 3090 Ti was only around 9% faster overall. Not worth the extra outlay, any way you slice it. The RTX 4090 was — and is — significantly faster than its closest Nvidia rival, somewhat justifying its price premium; the RTX 3090 Ti patently didn't do that.

However, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti performs solidly in all three benchmark tests, placing in the mid-table in all three tests. One interesting quirk is in PassMark's benchmark test, where the RTX 4070 Super sneaks ahead of it by less than 500 points (30,035 vs. 29,627). But the 3090 Ti's performance in the other two earns it its sixth-place spot, which is right where we think it belongs. It may have been the top dog at one point, but the graphics card world is fast-paced and unforgiving.

We're done with old flagships (until the next generation of cards comes out, at least) — the top five cards are all relatively new. In fifth is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super, the second of the three Super graphics cards Nvidia unleashed in 2024. This particular Super was, at least on paper, the one with the most notable upgrade, with 16GB of VRAM (up from the 12GB of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti) and 30% more memory bandwidth, alongside roughly 10% increases in other areas such as core counts.

Despite the extra 4GB of VRAM, however, the RTX 4070 Ti Super wasn't a huge leap over the RTX 4070 Ti in the real world. It was faster, but not to the point where owners of RTX 4070 Tis would feel any regret for having purchased their cards. On the plus side, Nvidia didn't charge a premium for the Super, making the minuscule nature of the performance uplift less of an issue.

As far as our data goes, the RTX 4070 Ti Super placed in the top half of the table in both 3DMark and PassMark, even managing to enter the top three in the latter (albeit only because we passed over the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti). It didn't do as well in GFXBench's DirectX12 test, but its performance in the other two tests gives it a solid result, reflecting reviewers' observations of the graphics card's gaming performance.

Nvidia's updates to the RTX 4070 Ti Super brought it closer to AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT, but the older RDNA 3 still held a minor advantage in most videogames, all while offering 20GB of VRAM compared to the Super's 16GB. Its place on our list reflects that, slotting just ahead of the Nvidia graphics card in fourth place.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT launched alongside the higher-end RX 7900 XTX in December 2022 as the first two GPUs built using AMD's then-new RDNA 3 technology. They came out hot on the heels of Nvidia's RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, which came out in October and November, respectively (the less said about the "unlaunched" RTX 4080 12GB, the better). The $900 RX 7900 XT wasn't as fast as the $1,200 RTX 4080 and lacked the latter's ray tracing capabilities and DLSS 3 frame generation, but it was closer in most workloads than the $300 price gap may have suggested, giving AMD a significant advantage in the price wars.

But the RTX 4080 wasn't the real rival: The RX 7900 XT's biggest problem was the RX 7900 XTX, which was noticeably faster for only $100 more. So even if it offered better value, than the RTX 4080 — inasmuch as a $900 product can — it lost out to its bigger brother.

In third place is the last of Nvidia's trio of Super cards from early 2024. Looking at specs alone, the RTX 4080 Super was probably the least interesting of the three, with only the most minuscule upticks in areas like memory bandwidth (736 GB/s to 716 GB/s, for instance) and core counts.

Benchmark results corroborated that impression, too, with the new card barely any faster than the card it would eventually replace. But that wasn't really the point of the Super: instead, Nvidia seems to have used this particular graphics card as a way to reset the pricing of its product stack, debuting the RTX 4080 Super at $999 compared to the $1,199 of the original 4080. It was still expensive, of course, but it made the 80-class card just that little bit more appealing for those with $1,000 to spend.

The original RTX 4080 traded blows with AMD's rival RX 7900 XTX, and that stayed much the same with the RTX 4080 Super. The two were essentially neck-and-neck in most non-raytraced workloads, and that goes for our chosen benchmark tests, too: The AMD card only takes second place by virtue of placing second in two of the three benchmarks. If you're shopping for a high-end card this late into the generation, you really can't go wrong with either.

The graphics card market has been strange over the last couple of generations, and nowhere is that more evident than when we discuss AMD's RDNA 3 flagship, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. When the RX 7900 XTX launched in December 2022, it felt like the "value" pick of the high-end cards available at the time. It offered better performance than the RX 7900 XT for a relatively minimal outlay, all while slightly outperforming its $1,200 Nvidia rival, the GeForce RTX 4080, on average.

Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super tightened the gap ever so slightly, but the two are still mostly inseparable — ray tracing workloads aside, of course, where Nvidia has traditionally maintained an advantage (although that may change with AMD's new products). They're similar enough that averaging the two card's placings in GFXBench, 3DMark, and PassMark's rankings returns the same number, with the only separator for us being the AMD card's two second-place finishes (in GFXBench and 3DMark).

The synthetic benchmarks do admittedly show a bigger gap between the two than we otherwise expected, though: the AMD card posted a median FPS result of 398.2 in GFXBench's 4K DirectX 12 bench compared to the Nvidia RTX 4080 Super's 321.2 FPS. Things are a bit closer in 3DMark, but the Radeon RX 7900 XTX still has a noticeable advantage over the RTX 4080 Super, with AMD's offering scoring 31,008 points vs. the Nvidia card's 28,310.

Finally, we come to the big dog of the current graphics card hierarchy, Nvidia's ultra-powerful and eye-wateringly pricey GeForce RTX 4090. A Titan-class card in all but name, the RTX 4090 debuted in October 2022 with a $1,599 MSRP — although real-world prices quickly climbed to around $2,000 — and more performance than most gamers knew how to utilize.

Built on the full-fat AD102 chip, the RTX 4090 was something of a revelation when it launched, leaving previous flagships like the Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti and RTX 3090 in the dust. Some reviewers saw 50% and 70% uplifts over both those cards at 4K resolution, respectively, while the old AMD RX 6950 XT flagship also trailed the new card by more than 50%. That didn't change when AMD debuted its RDNA 3 graphics cards, although the RX 7900 XTX did close the gap slightly. Not enough to be a genuine contender, of course, but that's the least you'd expect given the price premium.

As you might expect, the RTX 4090 placed first in all three benchmarks, earning it an undisputed place at the top of the graphics card pile — at least, until Nvidia's RTX 50 series cards hit store shelves. Even then, we only expect the flagship RTX 5090 to be able to take the RTX 4090's crown. Until then, though, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is easily the best graphics card money can buy.

Ranking graphics cards can be tricky. Beyond obvious an champion like the Nvidia RTX 4090, a lot of graphics cards trade blows in their respective price brackets, taking advantages in one test but losing out in another. And finding a definitive test that can accurately rank graphics card performance is nearly impossible, too. To try and compile as representative a list as possible, we decided to refer to three separate graphics card tests when assembling this list.

The tests were GFXBench's DirectX12 4K Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen test, 3DMark's graphics card test, and PassMark's G3D Mark. We created a list of the top 15 cards from each, skipping over certain products which we'll discuss in the next paragraph. We then averaged the placings of each graphics card, ranking from the highest average placing to the lowest.

The cards we skipped fell into three categories. First is export-only cards like Nvidia's RTX 4090D, a minor variant of the RTX 4090 that performed so similarly that it would have been redundant to include anyway. Workstation cards were also out because they're expensive and generally not optimized for gaming. The final category of cards we decided to leave out were products like Nvidia's RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti, which the company replaced with the RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4070 Ti Super within the same generation.