Graphics card buyers guide

The graphics card takes the largest share of most build budgets, and the decision is mostly made for you by things that aren't the card. Your monitor sets what it needs to do. Your case sets how big it can be. Your power supply sets what it can draw. Get those three straight and the choice usually narrows to two or three options.

Which is why the spec sheets are less useful than they look. Most of what's printed on them is detail. The order below is the one that matters.

This is the step people skip, and it decides everything that follows.

A graphics card's job is to draw frames for a screen, so the resolution and refresh rate of that screen set what you need. A card comfortably running 1080p at 60fps is doing a fraction of the work of one driving 1440p at 240fps.

So, two questions. What resolution is your monitor? 1080p is where most people play and where budgets go furthest, 1440p is a visible step up that asks noticeably more, and 4K is a real jump again in both quality and cost. Then, what refresh rate does it run? 60Hz, 144Hz and 240Hz are very different targets at the same resolution. Check the number, and check Windows is actually set to it, because panels frequently default to 60Hz regardless of what they can do.

If your monitor is 1080p 60Hz, an expensive card shows you nothing extra. If it's 1440p 144Hz, a budget card will spend its life with settings turned down. Match the two and you'll be happy with either.

Graphics card memory, usually called VRAM, is separate from your system RAM and you can't upgrade it. It's the specification most likely to age badly, so it's worth getting right.

8GB is a 1080p specification. It handles the overwhelming majority of games well at that resolution. It gets tight at 1440p in recent releases with high-resolution textures, and it's a hard limit at 4K.

12GB is comfortable at 1440p, and it's the point where the card usually runs out of processing power before it runs out of memory.

16GB and above is what you want for 4K, for heavy modding, or if you keep cards for four or five years.

Memory matters more than it used to because texture quality, ray tracing and frame generation all consume it, and they stack. Any one of them is manageable on 8GB. All three at 4K is not.

Two broad types, and the difference is worth being clear about because it catches people out at the budget end.

Integrated graphics are built into the processor. They're perfectly capable of running lighter games, older titles, browsers and office work, and they keep the price of a machine down. They borrow system memory rather than having their own, which is one reason dual channel memory matters more on these builds.

A dedicated card is a separate component with its own processor and its own memory. It's what you need for current games at decent settings, and it's what people mean when they talk about a graphics card.

If a machine is described as a gaming PC, check which it has. The two aren't equivalent, and integrated graphics won't run demanding modern titles at high settings however the rest of the machine is specified.

Three companies make the processors behind every graphics card on the market, whoever's name is on the box.

Ray tracing is where NVIDIA still leads, and the gap widens in the heaviest implementations. Support in games is now broad rather than occasional, so it's a fair thing to weigh rather than a future promise.

Upscaling is the one people miss, and it works differently between the two. Upscaling renders the game at a lower internal resolution and reconstructs it, which is why a mid-range card can produce a convincing 4K image. NVIDIA's DLSS runs across every RTX generation. AMD's current version, FSR 4, needs the RX 9000 series specifically, with earlier Radeon cards limited to the older version. So on the AMD side, which generation you buy matters more than it does on the NVIDIA side, and the current Radeon cards are in a much stronger position than their predecessors were.

Intel is the third player and is a real option at the budget end, though we don't currently build with their cards.

One thing worth separating, because the marketing bundles them together. Upscaling renders fewer pixels and reconstructs the rest. Frame generation inserts additional frames between rendered ones. Frame generation raises the number on your counter without making the game respond faster, so it's excellent for demanding single-player games and the wrong tool for competitive shooters.

Grouped by what they're built to drive rather than by price alone, since prices have moved a great deal.

The Radeon range currently tops out at the RX 9070 XT, so the two 4K rows are NVIDIA only. Competitive shooters shift this table down a row, because they are far lighter than modern single-player games. Simulators and heavily modded games shift it up. 

Three practical checks. If you're buying a complete system or using our PC configurator these are handled for you, so this section matters most if you're building yourself or upgrading an existing machine.

Physical size. Modern cards are long and their coolers are thick. Check length against the space in your case, and check how many expansion slots the card occupies, since many current cards take three rather than two.

Power supply capacity. Every card has a manufacturer's recommended wattage, and those recommendations already assume a capable processor alongside it. For a normal single-card build, buy the recommended figure rather than doubling it. An RTX 5090 wants a 1000W supply. Most mid-range builds land at 650W or 750W.

Power connectors. Current high-end cards use a single 12V-2x6 connector rather than the older 6 and 8-pin PCIe plugs. Older supplies deliver this through an adapter fed by several cables, which works but is less robust than a native one. If you're upgrading both, buy a supply that has the right connector, and never daisy-chain one cable to serve two connectors on a demanding card.

Worth knowing alongside that: modern cards draw power in brief spikes far above their rated figure. A supply that can't absorb those will shut the system down mid-game with no error and no heat problem, which people then spend weeks blaming on the card. Units built to the ATX 3.1 standard are specified to handle it.

Two ways to unbalance a build, and both are common.

The first is pairing an expensive card with a weak processor. At 1080p especially, the processor prepares frames and the card waits, so you'll see high benchmark scores and disappointing frame rates in real play. The card doesn't need to match the processor exactly. It just needs a processor that isn't holding it back.

The second is buying for a monitor you don't own. Graphics cards lose value quickly, so paying now for capability you'll need in two years is poor timing. Buy for the screen you have and upgrade when the screen changes.

If the machine is for work rather than games, the calculation shifts. Video editing, 3D rendering and AI work all benefit from a faster card and more memory, and professional applications often value memory capacity over gaming performance.

Otherwise, resist the pull of the biggest number on the shelf. A well-matched mid-range card in a balanced machine will give you a better experience than a flagship card fighting a weak processor, or feeding a screen that can't display what it produces.

You can browse the full graphics card range, see complete builds in the RTX 50 series and Radeon RX 9000 series ranges, or specify a card alongside the rest of a build in the PC configurator.

Where to go next 

• Gaming PC buying guide for the whole decision, not just the processorer.
• Motherboard buyer guide for chipsets and what each one gives you.
• CPU buyer guide for the component that sets your frame rate

Ready to buy 

• AMD gaming PCs and Ryzen 7 gaming PCs for X3D builds.
• Intel gaming PCs for Core Ultra builds.
• Motherboard bundles if you are building yourself and want the compatibility handled.
• PC configurator to build your machine.