Even at 4K, the best graphics cards provide fast frame rates, but the price is just as important as performance.
AMD has nearly clinched the title of the best graphics card. It would be if it weren’t for the lightning-fast RTX 4090(opens in a new tab). This isn’t due to a lack of high-quality Nvidia GPUs over the past year or more; instead, it is due to the current value of money. And it costs significantly more if you purchase an AMD GPU.
There is even a tonne of Black Friday graphics card deals available, and almost all of them are AMD graphics cards selling for a significant discount. Because of this, some cards we weren’t all that fond of at launch have now made it onto this list of the best available.
Although more expensive cards are available, these are the ones least likely to be replaced shortly by a new GPU. And they perform admirably for gaming at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.
However, the time of year when the best graphics cards might not remain the best for very long is also drawing near. In fact, despite its hefty price tag, Nvidia’s RTX 4090 has already outperformed the majority of the RTX 30-series in terms of performance, and AMD’s RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT will soon join the competition.
It’s crucial to remember that with new GPUs on the way, expect higher performance for less money. The high-end RX 6950 XT and RTX 3090 Ti are likely not your best bet right now because, in a few months, your funds should buy you more performance. However, less expensive GPUs like the RTX 3060 or RX 6600 XT aren’t likely to be instantly replaced by brand-new cards. Thus these are the cards we’re presently suggesting—at least one of them.
1. Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card is overly aggressive. While some additional bends decided to add to what might alternatively resemble a respin of the RTX 3090 shroud, it still retains that imaginative graphics card visual style. It’s a great burly lump of a pixel pusher.
It appears to be some plastic mockery designed to poke fun at GPU manufacturers for making cards that are getting bigger and bigger. However, the RTX 40-series GPU generation’s vanguard and our first look at the new Ada Lovelace architecture make it neither a model nor the moon.
On the one hand, it’s a fantastic introduction to the extreme performance Ada can produce when given a lot of freedom. On the other, it feels like a slightly tone-deaf publication, given the current state of the world economy and the small percentage of gamers it is intended for.
However, we won’t acknowledge it for this list of the top GPUs because, as of November 2022, there isn’t a single GPU that can match the performance of the RTX 4090. Given that AMD views its two new RDNA 3 cards as additional RTX 4080 16GB rivals, it is invincible and likely to remain at the head of the pack.
This enormous GPU has 170 percent more transistors than the RTX 3090 Ti’s impossible-chonk GA102 chip. Additionally, it generally makes the prior Ampere generation flagship card look far behind. And that is before you consider the new DLSS 3.0 revision, which is exclusively for Ada, and its equal amounts of excellency and dark magic.
Yes, it moves quickly. The RTX 4090 is significantly faster than the RTX 3090 it replaces when everything is turned on, and DLSS 3 and Frame Generation are working their magic. The new silicon provides twice the 4K frame rate in Cyberpunk 2077 and has a plain 3DMark Time Spy Extreme rating twice as high as the big Ampere core.
There is absolutely no disputing that it is an extremely specialized, extremely hobbyist card, which almost reduces the RTX 4090 to the status of a mere benchmark for most PC gamers. The only thing left is to start counting the minutes until Ada enters our price range.
However, the RTX 4090 is a great graphics card in and of itself and will gratify the performance needs of anyone who has ever considered spending $1,600 on a new GPU. Whether they are improbably wealthy gamers or content producers unwilling to commit to a Quadro card fully, this is the case. And it will sell because there is currently no GPU that can compete with it.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Specifications
| CUDA cores | 16,432 |
| Base clock | 2,235MHz |
| Boost clock | 2,520MHz |
| TFLOPs | 82.58 |
| Memory | 24GB GDDR6X |
| Memory clock | 21GT/s |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,008GB/s |
Why should you buy it?
- Excellent gen-on-gen performance
- DLSS Frame Generation is magic
- Super-high clock speeds
Why should you not buy it?
- Massive
- Ultra-enthusiast pricing
- Non-4K performance is constrained
- High power demands
2. AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
There haven’t been many red team alternatives to Nvidia’s top-tier graphics cards better than the RX 6800 XT. Any PC gamer aiming for 4K should seriously consider a highly competitive card that comes so close to its rival and has a negligible performance difference from the RTX 3080.
Although there have been many other cards since the AMD RX 6800 XT entered the market as the first AMD RDNA 2 GPU, it is the one that performs the best and is the most cost-effective. At least, if you consider its MSRP, which is frequently found going for much less. Nvidia’s RTX 3080, meanwhile, is rarely available for prices even remotely close to those from its initial launch.
This generation, the memory front—which addresses both bandwidth and capacity—has been a major area of conflict between Nvidia and AMD. A 256-bit bus and 16GB of GDDR6 give the RX 6800 XT a bandwidth of 512GB/s. As a result, AMD can outperform Nvidia’s 10GB RTX 3080 in terms of capabilities but trails a little in actual bandwidth due to the RTX 3080’s 760GB/s.
In terms of throughput, AMD has an advantage thanks to its Infinity Cache, which significantly increases the card’s “efficient frequency band.” According to AMD, there is a 3.25x increase in bandwidth over the RX 6800 XT, or about 1,664GB/s. Even after the various underlying technologies, it means you’re going to look at comparable performance in terms of gaming.
The RX 6800 XT and the RTX 3080 are competitors, but the latter beats AMD with the RTX-style finishing touches. That was only really something to think about if you suppose some price comparability between the two, which isn’t always the case.
Because the RX 6800 XT is frequently the cheaper card, its cheap ray tracing performance and absence of DLSS are not as significant as they once were.
Additionally gaining popularity among developers is AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution, which provides reliable transformation that is worthwhile turning on in participating in sports. As more developers roll out the updated version, the debut of FSR 2.0 in Deathloop provides an enticing preview of the future.
The RX 6800 XT puts AMD in a fantastic position in the future by delivering what is necessary to get a whole industry to take notice and having a compelling offer to make to gamers immediately at launch.
AMD improved upon RDNA, a hopeful architecture previously available, and provided it in the RX 6800 XT, a great graphics card. And not in the lowest remarkable in terms of how quickly it matched Nvidia’s performance. The green team still has some share of the market to reclaim, but RTG can confidently cross off the first item on its to-do list—build a high-end GPU—with the arrival of the RX 6800 XT.
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Specifications
| Stream Processors | 4,608 |
| Base clock | 1,825MHz |
| Boost clock | 2,250MHz |
| TFLOPs | 20.74 |
| Memory | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Memory clock | 16GT/s |
| Memory bandwidth | 512GB/s |
Why should you buy it?
- 4K excellence
- Cheaper than an RTX 3080
Why should you not buy it?
- Moderate ray tracing performance
- Slower than the 3080 at 4K
3. AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT
When AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 XT debuted, its goal was to overtake or come close to Nvidia’s RTX 3060 Ti. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite ready then, and its $379 price made it difficult to sell. The RX 6650 XT, a decently faster edition of the RX 6600 XT, was later released by AMD due to that release. What’s even better than that is that the RX 6650 XT is currently significantly less expensive than its Nvidia rivals and considerably less expensive than its MSRP. Hallelujah!
Thus, compared to everything it is up against, AMD’s RX 6650 XT is the better purchase. Reasonably priced GPUs from AMD have aged like fine wine, which is utterly typical AMD behavior.
The Navi 23 GPU, one of the second-generation Navi chips built on the remarkable RDNA 2 architecture, is found in the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT. It’s the slightest AMD GPU in the modern generation, but it’s also another TSMC N7 graphics processor. Despite its modest size, it contains more transistors than the Navi 10 chip, the brains of the RX 5700 XT, and even the most potent among the first-generation Navi cards.
We’re speaking about a processor with 32 Compute Units (CUs) at its core and 2,048 stream processors overall when it tends to come to rates of speed and feeds. Identical to the RX 6600 XT.
However, it can reach a staggering 2,635MHz maximum clock frequency, which is extremely fast by any benchmark.
It outperforms Nvidia’s most affordable Ampere GPU, the RTX 3060, on every front for that speed. This is crucial because it competes with the RTX 3060’s price and continuously outperforms it. The latest Navi GPU performs best at its 1080p target resolution. That is typically the case for AMD’s cards compared to this round’s Nvidia rivals. It’s still quite capable at 1440p, but if you want to use a 4K screen, you might need more power.
Before Black Friday and throughout the busy shopping season, keep an eye out for the RX 6650 XT. Yes, it is already being sold for a low price, but under $300 would be a complete bargain. It sells for as little as $260, so let’s hope the price drops even further.
AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT Specifications
| Stream Processors | 2,048 |
| Base clock | 2,055MHz |
| Boost clock | 2,635MHz |
| TFLOPs | 10.79 |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory clock | 17.5Gbps |
| Memory bandwidth | 280.3GB/s |
Why should you buy it?
- A great card for driving a high refresh rate 1080p screen
- Very quiet
- Excellent build quality
Why should you not buy it?
- Small gains vs the 6600 XT
- PCIe 8x limitation
4. AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
Every significant architectural transformation is accompanied by a certain amount of pomp and celebration, but perhaps we don’t give what follows enough attention. For many gamers considering an upgrade, those more affordable graphics cards that make that new technology available to the general public are just as essential, if not more so. For RDNA 2, the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT marked the start of that voyage: a GPU with the power of a next-generation console for less than $500.
Not the cheapest of chips are being discussed here. Although the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT is still considered a high-end card by most standards, its price is steadily moving toward the more reasonably priced end of the market, which we would love to see in 2022. The Radeon RX 6700 XT is more than just a straightforward halving of silicon from AMD’s top chip, the Radeon RX 6900 XT. It is a straight slicing across the center in some ways, for sure.
Exactly half of the Navi 21 GPU’s highest structure, the RX 6700 XT has 64 ROPs, and 40 compute units, which add up to 2,560 RDNA 2 cores. However, the card has more memory and an Infinity Cache than is necessary.
The RX 6700 XT continues AMD’s RDNA 2 lineup trend, which higher memory capacities characterized than competitors’ GeForce GPUs. This card contains 12GB of GDDR6 to, in our overly optimistic words, “future-proof.” This is comparable to the RTX 3060 12GB and has a higher VRAM capacity than the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070.
The Radeon was a great option, but it wasn’t my first choice for this kind of money for a significant portion of its life despite having a price tag closer to the GeForce RTX 3070 and performance more often closer to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. All of that has changed now that it is frequently less expensive than the RTX 3060 Ti.
Still believe you could buy an RTX 3060 Ti today and be satisfied with it. If only because, despite everything being out of whack, that card still comes close to being the best value of the entire RTX 30 series.
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Specifications
| Stream Processors | 2,560 |
| Base clock | 2,321MHz |
| Boost clock | 2,581MHz |
| TFLOPs | 13.21 |
| Memory | 12GB GDDR6 |
| Memory clock | 16GT/s |
| Memory bandwidth | 384GB/s |
Why should you buy it?
- Cheaper than the competition
- High framerates at 1440p
- High clock speeds
- Effective cooler
Why should you not buy it?
- Slows at 4K
- RTX 3070 is faster
- Can drop to RTX 3060 Ti performance
5. AMD Radeon RX 6600
The past few years have not been great for investing in PC gaming or building your system. But finally, things are getting better. Prices have started to return to normal, but stock is sometimes hit or miss.
That is much truer of AMD’s graphics cards than Nvidia’s, and nowhere more so than with the entry-level models. We didn’t find the RX 6600 particularly impressive when it first launched because it cost the same as an RTX 3060 12GB but frequently lagged behind the green team’s card in performance tests. But it’s now a great deal less expensive. Because it is even more affordable than Nvidia’s RTX 3050, it is a much better investment than both cards.
There is always the possibility that Nvidia will lower its prices on the RTX 3060 12GB, making it the superior option. The AMD card has 4GB less VRAM, typically performs worse in games, and one of its more useful features, FidelityFX Super Resolution, is cross-vendor compatible. Nvidia hasn’t made any apparent efforts to lower its current high prices.
Don’t worry; the AMD RX 6600 is more than capable of playing 1080p games in the modern era. It is constructed utilizing AMD’s RDNA 2 architectures, which is still essentially the best in the Radeon camp. The RDNA 3 architecture will eventually replace it, but not until the high-end cards have arrived—the RX 6600 still has a lot of life left in it.
AMD Radeon RX 6600 Specifications
| Stream Processors | 1,792 |
| Base clock | 1,626MHz |
| Boost clock | 2,491MHz |
| TFLOPs | 8.928 |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory clock | 14GT/s |
| Memory bandwidth | 224GB/s |
Why should you buy it?
- Decent 1080p performance
- Quiet
- Power efficient
- Works with 450W PSUs
- Much cheaper than RTX 3060 today
Why should you not buy it?
- Often slower than an RTX 3060
- Weaker ray tracing performance
