Image: Brad Chacos/IDG
When it comes to gaming PCs, nothing matters more than your graphics card. To push as many pixels as possible you’re going to want the fastest graphics card you can afford—but ever-shifting prices and product lineups make it difficult to keep track of what’s available, especially in the midst of a crippling GPU shortage.
In honor of keeping frame rates high, we decided to rank all the major available discrete GPUs from Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon, starting with the fastest graphics card available and working on down. This list focuses on each company’s most current GPU lineups, and doesn’t include significantly older graphics cards. You’ll find all GeForce RTX 20- and 30-series offerings, however, as well as AMD’s last two graphics card generations.
Price to performance is not a consideration here—just pure performance. Concrete example: The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is technically more powerful than the GeForce RTX 3070, and hence higher on this list, but it’s essentially tied in performance and the newer GeForce option is significantly cheaper at its recommended price, making it a better buy. That said, finding graphics cards anywhere near MSRP is extremely rare during the GPU shortage, so this guide can be used to help you wrap your head around the relative performance of any recent graphics cards you might manage to find, new or used.
We’ve verified this information through hours of blood, sweat, and benchmarking. Feel free to hit up the individual reviews to see our work in greater detail. Or, if you want more concrete buying advice for your specific budget or display resolution, be sure to read our guide to the best graphics cards for gaming. It provides much more information than this simple list, complete with discussion about considerations like value, various form factors, and what to look for in a customized model.
But if you just want to know if GPU A is faster than GPU B, starting with the current consumer gaming champion, read on. The higher up a graphics card is on this list, the faster and more powerful it is.
Editor’s note: This article was last updated to add the Radeon RX 6600 XT, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, and RTX 3080 Ti to the list.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

Mentioned in this article
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition

Radeon RX 6900 XT

GeForce RTX 3080

Radeon RX 6800 XT

Radeon RX 6800

Mentioned in this article
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition

GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition

GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition

Mentioned in this article
Radeon RX 6700 XT

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

GeForce RTX 2080 Super Founders Edition

GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition

GeForce RTX 2070 Super Founders Edition

Mentioned in this article
Radeon RX 6600 XT

Radeon RX 5700 XT

Mentioned in this article
GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming

GeForce RTX 2060 Super Founders Edition

Radeon RX 5700

Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT

GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti XC Ultra

Dual GeForce GTX 1660 Super EVO OC

GeForce GTX 1660 XC Ultra

Radeon RX 590 Nitro+

ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1650 Super

Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT

Radeon RX 580 Nitro+

Aorus Radeon RX 570










