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What are the best GPUs for high-end desktop gaming?

16

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Considered

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Nov 25, 2018

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Here’s the Deal

8 Options Considered

Best GPUs for high-end desktop gaming	Price	Memory Clock	Memory Size
48 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080	$699	1251 MHz	8192 MB
-- MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING Z 8G	$853	-	-
-- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070	$449	2002 MHz	8 GB
-- AMD Radeon R9 390X	-	1500 MHz	8 GB
-- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition	$1,199.00	-	-

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080

Top Pro

Epic 4K performance

In benchmarks, the GTX 1080 FE (Founder's Edition) is a hair slower than two GTX 980 units in SLI configuration (the difference is 2% in 3DMark 11). In gaming tests, the GTX 1080 FE achieved 61fps average in Need For Speed 2016 on high settings at 4K resolution. For comparison, the AMD Radeon R9 Fury scored 40fps (34% lower), and the GTX 980 scored 34fps (44% lower than the GTX 1080 FE). The only slowdowns you will encounter in maxed out 4K graphics is during extremely demanding scenes. The GTX 1080 FE also supports GPU Boost 3.0 which lets it ramp up performance even higher as long as the temperature doesn't rise too much. See More

Top Con

No native support for 3- and 4-way SLI

SLI - short for Scalable Link Interface - is NVIDIA's technology of combining the power of two or more identical GPU's in order to reach a better performance. In other words, you can use multiple GTX 1080 video cards to further increase performance. Although the GTX 1080 supports 2-way SLI without a problem, NVIDIA does not offer support for 3- and 4-way SLI. The included SLI-bridge which serves as a connector between the two cards, is only compatible in a 2-way configuration. 3-way and 4-way SLI are possible but aren't supported. You'll have to use an older SLI-bridge found on older GeForce models and you'll need to generate an 'Enthusiast Key' on NVIDIA's website. However, NVIDIA does not guarantee a 3- or 4-way configuration will provide any noticeable benefits. See More

Specs

Memory Clock:1251 MHz

Memory Size:8192 MB

Memory Type:GDDR5X

Memory Bus:256 bit

Top Pro

Well optimized

NVIDIA properly optimized the GTX 1080 FE for DirectX. This means that games supporting DirectX 11 will see a slight performance boost, but more-so for the upcoming games using DirectX12. See More

Top Con

Disappointing performance improvements when using Vulkan

Vulkan is a graphical API that allows developers to communicate better with the GPU, which in theory should result in performance improvements compared to the more standard DirectX 12 or OpenGL API's. The GTX 1080 doesn't perform particularly better in Vulkan however, and the difference with the standard OpenGL is minimal at higher resolutions. Doom is one of the first (and only) titles with support for Vulkan and serves as a good benchmark for OpenGL vs Vulkan performance. In 1080p Full HD resolution and Ultra settings, the GTX 1080 is able to reach an average framerate of 140 FPS in OpenGL. Vulkan improves the frame rate to 166 FPS, a fifteen percent increase. Starting from 1440p resolutions however, performance improvements using Vulkan are very minimal and not noticeable during gameplay. 1080 does pretty well at 109 FPS in 1440p, while Vulkan only marginally improves this result with 145 FPS, a 5% increase. For comparison: AMD's RX 480 card does perform significantly better with Vulkan and higher frame rates, with a performance boost of 29.3%. Similar results are seen when testing in 4K. In this case, the GTX 1080 using Vulkan actually performs worse than the standard OpenGL, with 59 FPS and 60 FPS respectively. AMD's RX 480 is better optimized, as it's able to achieve a performance increase of 24.7% in this scenario. In short, Vulkan performance seems particularly useful when gaming in Full HD, but it doesn't provide much performance benefits otherwise. It would appear that NVIDIA's Pascal architecture isn't optimized for high-resolution Vulkan gaming. See More

Top Pro

Very power efficient

While performance is higher than its competitors, the GTX 1080 FE actually uses less power. The maximum amount of power consumption this GPU requires is around 185 watts, which is an improvement of over 35% compared to NVIDIA's previous generation high-end graphics card, the GTX 980 Ti. This also plays a positive role when choosing a power supply, or determining if you need to upgrade your existing PSU. See More

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING Z 8G

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

Top Pro

Great performance for its price

NVIDIA properly optimized the GTX 1070 for DirectX. This means that games supporting DirectX 11 will see a slight performance boost, but more-so for the upcoming games using DX12. At 1440p resolution (1440 x 2560) with the highest available settings the GTX 1070 achieves an average fps of 98.4 for Dirt Rally, 74.2 for Rise of The Tomb Raider, 84.4 for Battlefield 4 and 62 for GTA V. This makes the 1070 ideal for 1440p gaming and the card can often provide very high framerates of more than 120 fps when playing in 1080p. Gaming in 4K is also an option with the GTX 1070, where stable and fluent framerates of more than 30 fps can be achieved on ultra settings. In 4K Ultra HD and maximum settings, average framerates with the GTX 1070 are 39 for Rise of The Tomb Raider, 53.2 for Dirt Dally, 60.3 for Battlefield 4 and 29.7 for Grand Theft Auto V. Performance can be further improved by using less intensive graphical settings. See More

Top Con

Disappointing performance improvements when using Vulkan

Vulkan is a graphical API that allows developers to communicate better with the GPU, which in theory should result to performance improvements compared to the more standard DirectX 12 or OpenGL API's. The GTX 1070 doesn't particularly better in Vulkan however, and the difference with the standard OpenGL is very minimal and the GTX 1070 even performs worse under Vulkan in some cases. Doom is one of the first (and only) titles with support for Vulkan and serves as a good benchmark for OpenGL vs Vulkan performance. At 1080p resolution, the GTX 1070 manages to achieve an average framerate of 150 FPS for both OpenGL and Vulkan, which means there's no performance improvement at all. Unfortunately, similar results can be seen in 1440p, where a GTX 1070 with OpenGL averages at 99 FPS in the standard OpenGL and 96 FPS when using Vulkan. Same situation for 4K resolution: 50 frames per second for OpenGL and 48 FPS when using Vulkan. Instead of a performance improvement, the GTX 1070 actually performs worse. AMD's new Polaris-architecture graphics cards are significantly better optimized for Vulkan compared to the GTX 1070 and other NVIDIA Pascal-based GPU's. For example, the AMD Radeon RX 480 performs significantly better in Vulkan, with 1080p results of 94 FPS for OpenGL and 116 FPS in Vulkan, a 23% increase. See More

Specs

Memory Clock:2002 MHz

Memory Size:8 GB

Memory Type:GDDR5

Memory Bus:256 bit

Top Pro

Can handle overclocks well

By overclocking your graphics card, you increase the clock speeds of the chip and memory to gain even more performance. The GTX 1070 can handle overclocks well, as relatively high boosts of over 200 MHz for both the core and memory clock aren't uncommon, without using special cooling solutions. In this case, an overclock of 220 MHz for the GPU and 260 MHz for the memory resulted in an average performance increase of 6 frames per second in 1440p gaming. Enthusiast overclockers have been able to achieve much higher stable clock speeds, some even breaking the 2000 MHz limit, which is a 25% improvement over the reference clock speeds. See More

Top Con

No native support for 3- and 4-way SLI

SLI - short for Scalable Link Interface - is NVIDIA's technology of combining the power of two or more identical GPU's in order to reach a better performance. In other words, you can use multiple videocards to further increase performance. Although the GTX 1070 supports 2-way SLI without a problem, NVIDIA does not offer support for 3- and 4-way SLI. The included SLI-bridge which serves as a connector between the two cards, is only compatible in a 2-way configuration. 3-way and 4-way SLI are possible, but aren't supported. You'll have to use an older SLI-bridge found on older GeForce models and you'll need to generate an 'Enthusiast Key' on NVIDIA's website. However, NVIDIA does not guarantee a 3- or 4-way configuration will provide any noticeable benefits. See More

Top Pro

Doesn't consume much power

Power consumption of NVIDIA's new Pascal GPU's has been greatly improved compared to the previous generation graphics cards, and the GTX 1070 is no exception. In an idle situation (normal desktop usage), the GTX 1070 consumes very little power compared to similar performing alternatives. It even consumes six watts less than AMD's less powerful RX 480 card. Under gaming load, power consumption is also impressive. A testing system equipped with the GTX 1070 consumes 307 watts of power, while the RX 480 used in that identical system uses 301 watts. A power consumption marginal difference for a card that performs significantly better proves that the GTX 1070 architecture is more power efficient than AMD's latest Polaris GPU's such as the RX 480. The GTX 1070 only requires a single 8-pin PCIe power connector with a maximum rated Thermal Design Point of 150 watts. This is great for systems with a less powerful power supply unit or if you don't have many cables available. See More

Top Pro

Offers exclusive features such as Ansel and Simultaneous multi-projection

The GTX 1070 and other Pascal-based GPU's from NVIDIA offer a couple of exclusive features that aren't available on previous-generation graphics cards or current GPU's made by AMD. Taking advantage of the new GPU architecture, NVIDIA has introduced a feature called simultaneous multi-projection. It allows developers of games and applications to improve performance when rendering multiple viewports of the same image. This is particularly useful when using a multi-monitor setup or in virtual reality where two images are required, one for each eye. Simultaneous multi-projection allows up to 16 different viewpoints and only requires calculating the geometry of a scene once. In compatible games, users of multi-screen setups can calibrate this experience so that distortion no longer occurs. Virtual reality games can use SMP to improve performance, although developers will specifically need to implement this feature in their games. Ansel is another feature that is exclusive to NVIDIA's Pascal-based graphics cards. Ansel can be described as a very extensive 'photomode', where you can capture massive in-game screenshots of several gigapixels or capture images in 360 degrees. The player is also able to use filters, adjust camera positions, take HDR-images and share them via the built-in software. See More

AMD Radeon R9 390X

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Top Pro

High FPS in games

The R9 390X performs well in recent games. In Battlefield 4 for example, in 1080 and using ultra quality settings, the R9 390X achieves an average framerate of 130 frames per second, with a minimum measured at 72 FPS. The card also performs well in Grand Theft Auto V (maxed out settings and 1080p), where it is able to achieve an average framerate of 97 frames per second, and a minimum of 45 fps. In Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, the R9 390X is able to achieve an average 96 frames per second, with a minimum to 42. For Tomb Raider (2013), the R9 390X scores 98 frames per second on average and a minimum of 74 frames per second, all under 1080p and maximum settings. The R9 390X is also well-equipped with enough horsepower to handle 1440p gaming, where it scores an average of 111 FPS for Battlefield 4, 89 for GTA V, 72 frames per second for Shadow of Mordor and an average of 67 FPS for Tomb Raider. Gaming in 4K resolution is also a possibility, albeit with lower graphical settings. The R9 390X can handle Battlefield 4 fluently on medium settings with an average FPS of 70, and 60 FPS in ultra settings with a minimum of 36 FPS. A maxed-out Grand Theft Auto V results in a minimum and average framerate of 24 and 69, and 35 and 64 FPS for Shadow of Mordor. Tomb Raider is very playable in 4K even with a high preset, with an average framerate of 76 fps and a minimum of 62. See More

Top Con

Very little new tech

Mostly, this card is just a rebranded Radeon R9 290X, a card that was released in October 2013. See More

InterestingAlala's Experience

Specs

Memory Type:GDDR5

Memory Clock:1500 MHz

Memory Size:8 GB

Memory Bus:512 bit

Top Pro

Supported by most high end games

Most games specifically optimize for this card (among others). See More

Top Con

Uses a lot of power

The Radeon R9 390X consumes a lot of power - more-so than any other GPU (other than the 290X). In total, the testing rig used 440W of power when using the R9 390X. For comparison, the GTX 980 - which is also a previous-generation GPU - only used 280W, a 36% decrease. See More

Top Pro

Lower price point due to new GPU's

The Radeon R9 390X is an older graphics card and doesn't use AMD's new Polaris architecture such as the RX 480. As stores are trying to replace the previous generation GPU's with the new models, a lower price point is offered for the R9 390X. You can find a 390X graphics card for a little over 300 dollars, which is 100 dollars less than the recommended retail price. See More

Top Con

Almost end-of-life, causes availability issues

The R9 390X is almost end-of-life (EOL), and stocks aren't being replenished by AMD. Major retailers such as Amazon and Newegg are having stock issues, and there are only a handful of R9 390X cards that are available in stock. Prices are highly fluctuating because of these availability issues. See More

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition

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Top Pro

Best performance

The RTX 2080 Ti has the best performance out of all cards available on the market (excluding the $3000 Titan V). The card is great for gaming at high resolutions while not sacrificing frames per second(fps). For overall performance measures, the card scored 25,039 in the 3DMark Firestrike test. For comparison, the second best result is 22,678 by Nvidia Titan XP. The well-known Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti scored 22,246. This RTX 2080 Ti can run the newest games at outstandingly high fps. Techradar found that it runs Middle Earth: Shadow of War(1080p resolution) at 151 fps. Total War: Warhammer II(2160p resolution) runs at 46 fps. While the RTX 2080 Ti can not break the 60 fps benchmarks for gaming in 4K, it still provides the best performance you can currently get. See More

Top Con

Very pricey

The card costs $1,199, which is more than a whole gaming setup costs for an average gamer. Note that as per usual, you currently can not order more than two of them from Nvidia. See More

Top Pro

Relatively low power consumption

The card consumes relatively little power while gaming, taking into consideration its power. According to Techradar the card's max power draw is 268.23 Watts. The same measure for Nvidia Titan XP is 283.28 and for Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti it's 288.42. See More

Top Pro

Cool card

The card is relatively cool. Overheating and issues related to this should not be a problem. According to Techradar the card's maximum temperature is 80 degrees Celsius. For comparison the Nvidia Titan XP can reach 84 degrees, same temperature as the Nvidia 1080 Ti. Taking into consideration the power of the card, it is very cool in temperature even under heavy load. See More

MSI GTX 1080 TI GAMING X

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Top Pro

Great looks

The card looks similar to other MSI cards, it has a cool red and black design and customizeable RGB lighting. The card comes with a backplate, which protects the GPU. It also makes the card look much better - it has an MSI dragon on it. See More

Top Con

Large in size

The dimensions of this GTX 1080 Ti card are 28.0 cm x 14.5 cm. It's 2.5-slots thick. This means that the card might not fit all cases. See More

Specs

LOAD Noise Level (dbA):38

IDLE Noise Level (dbA):30

LOAD Temp (degrees C):69

IDLE Temp (degrees C):36

Top Pro

Great cooling system

This GTX 1080 TI has a great cooling system and shows no throttling. The temperatures are 36 and 69 in IDLE and LOAD respectively. See More

Top Con

Hard to acquire

It's been a while since the GTX 1080 Ti cards were released, but the MSI GTX 1080 TI GAMING X is still very hard to get your hands on. You will probably need to pay an extra $200-$300 and buy it from a reseller - which makes the card not worth buying at the moment. See More

Top Pro

Relatively quiet

The noise levels are 30 and 38 in IDLE and LOAD accordingly. The MSI GTX 1080 TI GAMING X is a quiet card. Furthermore, it's fans turn off completely when idling - so they don't make any noise at all.r See More

Top Pro

Awesome game performance

The MSI GTX 1080 TI GAMING X can play Gears of War 4 in 1080p with 178 FPS. It handles Battlefield 1 in 1440p with 136 FPS. Rise of the Tomb Raider runs in 2160p with an amazing 65 FPS. The card can run even the newest games in 2160p with an average FPS that's above 60. The card scored 10,062 in the 3D Mark Score(Time Spy) test. This is the highest score out of all the 1080 Ti cards. See More

NVIDIA TITAN X (Pascal)

Top Pro

Incredible performance, ideal for 4K

The NVIDIA TITAN X is the company's most powerful graphics card available based on the Maxwell architecture which makes it ideal for the most intensive gaming situations. In 1080p and 1440p gaming situations, the TITAN X will effortlessly achieve very high framerates of 100+ fps while using the highest possible graphical settings. The power of the TITAN X truly shines when gaming in 4K. For example, in the resource-intensive Rise of The Tomb Raider, the TITAN X achieves an average framerate of 61 fps with the highest possible settings and 4K resolution. The same can be said for games such as Doom (81 fps), Grand Theft Auto V (75 fps) and 64 frames per second in The Witcher 3. Considering the very high 4K-resolution and the use of the absolute maximum graphical settings with anti-aliasing and high-quality anisotropic filtering, this is a very impressive feat. See More

Top Con

High temperatures, throttling may occur

During full load, temperatures of the high-end TITAN X chip will reach roughly 80 degrees Celsius. Those temperatures are acceptable for a high-end card, but the TITAN X will not allow itself to go above this temperature in order to prevent damage to the chips. When the maximum target of 80° C is reached, the card will start to slow itself down and reduce the clock speeds (also known as throttling), which also results in a slightly lower and less consistent performance. See More

Specs

Memory Clock:1251 MHz

Memory Size:12 GB

Memory Type:GDDRX5

Memory Bus:384 bit

Top Pro

Large memory size allows for plenty of headroom

The TITAN X is equipped with 12 gigabytes of video memory, while most other high-end cards only have about 8 gigabytes. While those extra gigabytes of memory may prove quite useless for the moment, the extra memory does allow for plenty of headroom for more memory-intensive games in the future, especially at higher resolutions. See More

Top Con

Doesn't offer decent value

With a recommended retail price of $1,200, the TITAN X is one of the most expensive GPU's available. In fact, the price tag is almost two times as much as that of NVIDIA's second-fastest graphics card, the GeForce GTX 1080. The latter retails for a little bit over $600. While the TITAN X may perform about 30% better than a 1080, a card with nearly double the price tag may be hard to justify. See More

Top Pro

Decent overclocking potential

The TITAN X doesn't have issues with hefty overclock boosts of over 10%, both for the overall GPU clock speed and the memory. The increase in the power limit of the TITAN X also allows for more consistent results. See More

Top Pro

Offers exclusive features such as Ansel and Simultaneous multi-projection

The updated Titan X and other Pascal-based GPU's from NVIDIA offer a couple of exclusive features that aren't available on previous-generation graphics cards or current GPU's made by AMD. Taking advantage of the new GPU architecture, NVIDIA has introduced a feature called simultaneous multi-projection. It allows developers of games and applications to improve performance when rendering multiple viewports of the same image. This is particularly useful when using a multi-monitor setup or in virtual reality where two images are required, one for each eye. Simultaneous multi-projection allows up to 16 different viewpoints and only requires calculating the geometry of a scene once. In compatible games, users of multi-screen setups can calibrate this experience so that distortion no longer occurs. Virtual reality games can use SMP to improve performance, although developers will specifically need to implement this feature in their games. Ansel is another feature that is exclusive to NVIDIA's Pascal-based graphics cards. Ansel can be described as a very extensive 'photomode', where you can capture massive in-game screenshots of several gigapixels or capture images in 360 degrees. The player is also able to use filters, adjust camera positions, take HDR-images and share them via the built-in software. See More

AMD Radeon R9 Fury X

Top Pro

Fast memory speeds

Using High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) this card can provide much faster speeds than GDDR5 (which many current graphics cards use). This allows for a peak throughput of 512GB/s. This is accomplished by stacking DRAM vertically. See More

Top Con

Ever present coil whine

The card emits a high pitch whine when in use (which is always). It may not be heard when the pump is in action as that itself is noisy, but the coil whine is definitely audible when the pump is not running, which can be pretty annoying. One caveat is that this may be louder on some cards over others, but there is no way to know until the card is used. See More

Specs

Memory Clock:500 MHz

Memory Size:4 GB

Memory Type:HBM

Memory Bus:4096 bit

Top Pro

Liquid cooling for low heat and noise

The closed-loop liquid cooling circuit that comes with this graphics card helps cool it much more effectively than air can, and also produces less noise than a regular stock air fan would (especially AMDs stock cooling fans which are regarded as some of the loudest out there). Overall a good choice for quite AMD cooling out of the box. See More

Top Con

Cooling components vibrate

Because the pump needs to circulate water, it will cause some vibrations along the tubes. This may be annoying to some when running as it is audible. See More

Top Pro

Great power efficiency

The idle power consumption is under 5W, which is helped by the more power friendly HBM as opposed to GDDR5 configuration. Gaming power requirements are also good - an average of around 225W. This beats the GeForce GTX 980 Ti by a small margin. See More

Top Con

No room for overclocking

Under a stress test, temperatures reach their maximum. This means that there is little to no room for aftermarket overclocking. Basically this card is already overclocked, which is why it comes with its own liquid cooling unit. See More

Top Pro

Great fps when playing high end games

Battlefield 4 @1440p: 67.8fps average (54 min/82 max) @2160p: 35.8fps average (28 min/44max) Far Cry 4 @1440p: 77.4fps average (61 min/112 max) @2160p: 44.4fps average (34 min/61 max) Grand Theft Auto V @1440p: 72.9fps average (54 min/97 max) @2160p: 38.4fps average (28 min/47 max) The Witcher 3 @1440p: 59.2fps average (47 min/68 max) @2160p: 36.6fps average (28 min/41 max) See More

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