The Best Graphics Cards for 1080p Gaming in 2022

Prior to reading this article, as you can see by looking at Amazon’s prices, the current state of GPU availability and cost are far from “normal.” If you’re planning to buy a card in the near future, check out this buying guide for tips on how to get the best deal. If you don’t mind waiting a little longer, take a look at this guide on how to get the most out of your existing GPU.

High-end monitors are becoming increasingly popular for “4K gaming,” but more affordable 1440p screens (2,560-by-1,440-pixel) are becoming increasingly popular. If you spend enough time in that region, you may come to believe that PC gaming is ruled by high-resolution games and pricey, monster video cards.

Not at all! In the long run, when they become significantly less expensive, they will play a significant role in our lives. However, for the foreseeable future, most PC gamers will continue to choose resolutions of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels (sometimes known as “full HD” or “full HD”) or higher.

With today’s low prices for 1080p monitors (many of which are around $100), anyone with a midrange video card can play the latest games at a steady frame rate on one of these displays. According to the most recent Steam Hardware Survey results, 1080p is still the most common native display resolution for PC gamers on the service.

A 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) or 1440p monitor and an excellent video card capable of playing at that resolution will set you back a lot of money, even though most gamers would want to play at the highest possible res. As a result of the other’s actions, A standard resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 is far more affordable for the majority of gamers who simply want their games to look beautiful and function properly.

As long as 1440p monitors remain available and 4K graphics cards remain prohibitively expensive, this resolution will be the de facto norm for gaming. A video card that can run 1080p games smoothly is a good purchase that should last you for several years, if not longer. (At the time of this writing, gaming at 4K resolution with popular PC titles was unachievable with a card costing much less than $400.)

1080p Gaming Cards: A Competitive Field

Only one problem: Since 1080p is so popular, there are a lot of video cards vying for the top rank in the category. As of 2022, there are over a dozen different 1080p graphics card classes (specified by their different core graphics processors) to select from. But we’re here to help. If you’re looking for a 1080p-optimized video card, we’ll show you what qualities you need to look out for, and which cards we’ve found to be the best for gaming at this resolution, given your price range.

What’s the good news, you ask? With Nvidia’s “Turing”-generation video cards and AMD’s “Navi” range of cards, 1080p power has never been better for less than $300. To round out its GeForce RTX lineup, Nvidia unveiled the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX 2080 and 2070 graphics cards in mid- to late-2018. With the addition and replacement of newer mid-2019 “RTX Super” editions, as well as newer, mid-2019 “RTX 30 Series” cards (RTX 3070/3080/3080 Ti and RTX 3080) With a theoretical price of $499 for RTX 3070 cards and $700 for RTX 3080 cards, these high-end GPUs are mighty overkill for 1080p gaming, even though they can run any game at this resolution extremely well. (Those are MSRPs or list prices, and are rarely the current market cost; due to silicon shortages and the activity of scalpers, it’s pricing pandemonium out there right now.) ( However, even in 2022, when costs are higher than usual, you won’t have to shell out that much for 1080p play…in the vast majority of circumstances.

Buying Basics: What to Look for in a 1080p Card

Between $100 to $300, most 1080p gaming graphics cards were available at the time this article was written (MSRP, not current street costs). The task can be accomplished using more expensive cards. For the most part, though, any game’s suggested retail price (SRP) that over $300 is considered extravagant. To summarise, here is what we’ve talked about.

How Much Video Memory Is Enough?

Your video card’s onboard graphics memory (or video RAM) has a direct impact on the resolution and detail settings at which you can play without stuttering. If you want to play a certain game at a certain level of detail, you’ll need a powerful graphics card with a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU). However, visualise the video memory as a freeway that allows the GPU to do its work without being slowed down by traffic.

The GPU’s performance will be limited if video RAM is not sufficient. The reason for this is that the video card really crunches all the pixels that appear on the screen while they are being stored in memory. As a result, more RAM is necessary to effectively process increasing amounts of data, whether for a specific resolution or to display more detail in a game. Higher pixel counts are required to render games at higher resolutions and with greater detail, hence high-end video cards have more on-card memory.

2GB of video memory is the absolute minimum for 1080p gaming, while 4GB is required for high-detail 1080p gaming in 2022.

Nowadays, GPU memory on cards under $300 (MSRP) ranges from 1 GB to 8 GB. 3GB/6GB and 4GB/8GB versions of some 1080p gaming cards are available. Make sure that you don’t buy any more RAM or GPU power than you actually require. If you plan to upgrade your gaming monitor to a 1440p or 4K screen in the near future, a 6GB or 8GB card is a good investment. But if that’s the case, you’ll need a higher powerful graphics card as well.

Which Ports Does My Graphics Card Need?

Although VGA and DVI connections have almost completely disappeared from recent-model graphics cards worth mentioning, all of today’s common outputs (VGA, DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort) support 1080p resolution. In most cases, all you have to do is choose a video card with a port that matches the one on your monitor. At 1080p and higher, some interfaces, like VGA and early HDMI, begin to have limitations that can no longer be accommodated.

It’s unlikely that you’ll have a problem if you’re keeping to 1080p, as all cards and most displays now come equipped with numerous connections. If you’re upgrading from an older system or card, you may need a new cable or adapter, but that’s about the worst that may happen. In other words, keep these suggestions in mind the next time you go shopping.

If playing games at a high refresh rate is important to you (we’ll get to that in a moment), make sure you get a video card and a video cable that are compatible with 1080p resolution and 240Hz refresh rate. When purchasing a top-of-the-line, cutting-edge monitor like the Asus ROG Swift 360Hz, be sure you’ve got the necessary GPU and cable to support 360Hz (i.e. DisplayPort 1.4b and higher).

Remember that HDMI and DisplayPort interfaces can convey an audio signal if your display has built-in speakers (or is an HDTV) if you’re making the switch from DVI or VGA for the first time.

How Much Should My Graphics Card Cost (at MSRP)?

Here we’re talking list prices (MSRP); keep in mind our caveats about video card street prices spiralling out of control all the way into 2022.

In 2022, you may expect to pay between $100 and $300 for a 1080p-compatible video card, depending on whether you want to play games at the highest possible settings or anything closer to medium. This is a shifting target. To get the best results from AA, which removes jagged edges from in-game objects, you’ll need to pay more money, especially if you want to set your AA settings as high as possible. (AA is known for its high standards.)

Even if your budget doesn’t allow for much more than typical detail settings and frame rates, you can stick to it. In order to get the best detail and AA at 1080p, you’ll likely have to spend between $200 and $300. Compared to the more expensive Nvidia GeForce RTX and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series cards, mainstream, 1080p-capable mainstream graphics cards haven’t gone quite as wild, but you’ll still see a premium over list price in many situations.

Should I Get an AMD or an Nvidia Graphics Card?

Both AMD and Nvidia have great choices between $100 and $400 MSRP, but we give Nvidia an edge for reaching more price points within the range with solid offerings. It’s impossible to go wrong with a 1080p card in that pricing range if you stick to the current generation from both providers.

We also give Nvidia the lead in terms of supporting software, but it’s a close race these days. Using Nvidia’s GeForce Experience software is easy thanks to its Shadowplay function, which allows you to record in-game footage and automatically upgrades your drivers when they’re ready to be installed. Nvidia’s software also makes it easier for you to join co-op games. Additionally, Radeon Software from AMD claims similar features; it is a vast upgrade over AMD’s previous Catalyst driver software release. As in past years, the gap between Nvidia and AMD’s green and red teams has narrowed.

FreeSync (AMD) and G-Sync (Nvidia) are two other image-smoothing solutions worth investigating (Nvidia). An important factor in deciding between two chip manufacturers would be whether your new monitor supports one or the other. G-Sync Compatible displays, on the other hand, can be found on monitors marketed as FreeSync, but which Nvidia additionally backs up under its G-Sync image-smoothing technology.

Also available is sharpening technology. This new tool for gamers allows them to squeeze every last drop of performance from their graphics cards. So what they’re really doing is squeezing a game’s resolution down by up to 30 percent without affecting graphic quality, which is what they do. Nvidia Image Scaling and Radeon Super Resolution are the current names of the two competing technologies from Nvidia and AMD.

DLSS completes the picture. Any gamer looking to get the most out of their GPU in 1080p gaming might find the frame-rate boosts (ranging from 5% to 40% in some circumstances) tempting. Since 1440p and 4K are the most likely to benefit from DLSS, the technology is often tailored and tweaked for these resolutions on the engine side. A “GTX”-branded card is more expensive than a “RTX”-branded card, although the price difference between the two isn’t always worth it for games produced in 1080p. As far as I know, there are no other graphics cards that have the requisite number of Tensor cores to pull this out. Instead of spending more money on a lower-end RTX model in the hopes that Nvidia may add DLSS support for the games you enjoy playing in the future, we recommend getting a high-end GTX model if you’re a 1080p gamer.

Should I Get an Overclocked Card, or a Reference Card?

For video cards, Nvidia and AMD are two of the most well-known manufacturers, with Nvidia developing the cooling system and AMD the GPU design. It is a “reference design” that has no additional features and runs at a reasonable pace. Chip producers offer the design to their partners so they can use it as a “reference” or “stock” for their own retail cards (such as MSI, EVGA, Asus, Gigabyte, or Sapphire).

When these businesses produce cards based on this fundamental architecture, they may also produce overclocked variants of the same card for a premium. The reference design usually has AMD or Nvidia branding somewhere on the card, and it looks conservative in comparison to the more aggressive designs with larger fans, unusual shrouds, and the manufacturer’s own branding more prominent than Nvidia or AMD’s branding. Overclocking these cards may be possible because of the larger, more complicated cooling circuitry on the board, which may allow them to run cooler as well, resulting in a minor increase in performance. In some cases, the graphics cards are already overclocked when they are sent.)

Even though these customised cards look great, they can be more distracting and more expensive than the standard issue. We recommend conducting some research before making a purchase unless you have a particular preference for the aesthetics of a particular model (to be displayed in a windowed PC case, for example) or know from a review that a particular model is particularly noteworthy. Overclocked cards based on lower-end (or older generation) graphics chips aren’t always the best use of your money; in most cases, upgrading to a stock card with a higher-end GPU is the preferable option.

What Is My Monitor’s Refresh Rate, and Why Does It Matter?

It’s important to keep in mind that all of our 1080p-card advice assumes a 60Hz refresh rate for your display. In order to get the most out of a 120Hz, 144Hz, or even 360Hz screen that’s currently on the market you’ll likely need a higher-end graphics card than this one.. (For the best gaming monitors, take a look at our list.) These panels will readily display frame rates greater than 60 frames per second (fps), and gaming test results will give you a sense of the potential sustained frame rates you will receive with any given card.

If you’re looking for a 4K monitor with a refresh rate of 144Hz, you’re looking at something like a Ferrari, not your typical Subaru. High-refresh-rate gaming for the great majority of players takes place in the world of 1080p. 144Hz, 165Hz, and 240Hz 1080p screens cost between $150 to $700, depending on the game you’re playing, and you’ll need a GPU with a higher or lower output to match them. Most standard monitors can only display 60 frames per second; a high-refresh monitor can display as many as the card can produce in frames per second, up to the monitor’s refresh-rate limit.

There are a slew of popular online games that benefit immensely from a refresh rate of 240Hz, 300Hz or 360Hz, and many games are also optimised to the point that you could potentially reach that frame rate with a video card costing less than $300 (MSRP) in 1080p. Games like Apex Legends, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Rocket League, and Rainbow Six: Siege can run at 144 Hz in 1080p on GPUs priced between $150 and $300. In order to play Apex Legends, you’ll need a high-end graphics card.

So if you’re expecting to play competitively at 1080p, be sure you’ve got a powerful enough GPU to support your expensive monitor, because you don’t want to wind up with a panel that isn’t supported by a powerful enough GPU. Looking at 1080p test results for a certain video card or class of cards can make all the difference.

So, Which Graphics Card to Buy for 1080p Play?

You may get a fair notion of what kind of frame rates you can expect in games by reading our in-depth reviews of particular cards. We use a mix of new and established titles in our testing. This is not the first time we’ve put together a list of the finest graphics cards; we’ve also put out lists for 4K gaming, small-form-factor desktops, and overall video card performance, so you can have an idea of what to expect. (Are you looking for a fully assembled gaming system? The finest gaming laptops and desktops, as well as our guide to the greatest PC games, can be found here.)