9 Best Video Cards For Gaming

Updated on August 14, 2022

This article specifically looks at single-GPU solutions to gaming at various price-points. We scale our GPU search from $100 to $600, covering PC builders across budget, mid-range, and high-end configurations. We’ve had extensive hands-on testing with the cards below, a fact accentuated by the burst of game launches in the past few weeks. Most of these cards have been tested in Battlefront, Fallout 4, AC Syndicate, Black Ops III, and the year’s earlier titles, like The Witcher 3 and GTA V.

Black Friday starting to hit full swing, we found some of the best graphics cards of the year on sale for – in some cases – significant discount. The GTX 970 at $290, R9 380 at $143, and GTX 980 at $400 are just a few of the finds below.

Table of Contents

Video Cards for Gaming

Video cards are to computers what turbochargers and superchargers are to automobile engines. They can offer you a sense of a computer’s overall graphics capability by displaying their results. While a strong processor is still required for most tasks, a dedicated GPU is the way to go when it comes to pushing polygons or crunching numbers. For the previous six months, how have computers in the workplace been sped up? As of this writing, these are the best-selling video cards of 2015.

Here, we’ve included both desktop and workstation visual cards (GeForce and Radeon) (Quadro and FirePro). While FirePro came in at number five overall, Radeon could not quite get there. With both desktop and workstation video cards in mind, we ranked them side-by-side to see how they compare. Check out our guide to workstation graphics cards to learn more about the differences between them and desktop cards.

We sifted through the data and discovered a few intriguing insights about performance and the GPU situation.

Only NVIDIA was discovered, no AMD.
There are three PNY cards, four EVGA cards, and three reference NVIDIA cards from each of the three major manufacturers. PNY, on the other hand, is an NVIDIA card manufacturer. As a result, there are six PNY cards and four EVGA cards in total.
Only three of the ten GPUs are Kepler-based; the other seven are Maxwell-based. It appears that Kepler’s time has come and gone.
Only one card has two GB of onboard memory, while one has 12 GB of onboard memory (you know which one).
The following is a breakdown of current pricing patterns.

$529 is the average cost
Over $700 cards: 3
In the range of $400 to $699, 4
The cards in the $200 to $399 range Two cards that cost less than $199: 1

Best Video Cards for Gaming

1. NVIDIA Quadro K4200

GPU	Kepler GK104GL
Clock Speed	780 MHz
Cores	1344
Ports	2 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI-I
Rating	4/5 Eggs
Price	$789.00

A Quadro leads the list. The K4200 is a Kepler-based GPU that offers plenty of graphics and processing power. It comes with two DisplayPort 1.2 connectors, a DVI-D connector, and VGA adapter. No annoyingly loud fan, which make it great for offices.

2. EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN

GPU	Maxwell GM200
Clock Speed	1127 MHz (1216 MHz Boost Clock)
Cores	3072
Ports	1 × HDMI3 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI-I
Rating	5/5 Eggs
Price	$1,029.99

NVIDIA’s newest flagship, the Titan X rears its fat head at second place. Surprisingly, this $1000+ graphics card outsells four of the five Quadro cards on this list. Either professionals are gaming at work or the Titan X has many features that make it fit for production work. Just be sure to have a power supply that can meet its needs.

3. EVGA GeForce GTX 980

GPU	Maxwell GM200
Clock Speed	1266 MHz (1367 MHz Boost Clock)
Cores	2048
Ports	1 × HDMI3 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI-I
Rating	5/5 Eggs
Price	$507.99

4. PNY Quadro K2200

GPU	Maxwell GM107GL
Clock Speed	1266 MHz
Cores	640
Ports	2 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI
Rating	5/5 Eggs
Price	$429.00

The second Quadro card to appear so far, the K2200 occupies a lower market segment than the K4200. But while it has fewer CUDA cores, it sports a Maxwell GPU and features a faster core clock.

5. EVGA GeForce GTX 970

GPU	Maxwell GM204
Clock Speed	1165 MHz (1317 MHz Boost Clock)
Cores	1664
Ports	1 × HDMI1 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI-I1 × DVI-D
Rating	4/5 Eggs
Price	$337.99

This is the third EVGA Superclocked graphics card to appear on this list. As much as professionals are saying overclocking has no place in the office, their video card purchases are saying otherwise.

6. PNY GeForce GTX 980

GPU	Maxwell GM200
Clock Speed	1126 MHz (1216 MHz Boost Clock)
Cores	2048
Ports	1 × HDMI3 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI
Rating	5/5 Eggs
Price	$549.99

This GTX 980 from PNY is close NVIDIA’s reference design, with the standard cooler and baseline core and boost clock speeds. If NVIDIA’s default clock speeds aren’t fast enough for you, a few short minutes with EVGA’s PrecisionX 16 overclocking software.

7. NVIDIA Quadro K4000

GPU	Kepler GK106GL
Clock Speed	800 MHz
Cores	768
Ports	2 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI
Rating	4/5 Eggs
Price	$724.99

The K4000 is fairly middle-of-the-road for a Quadro card and features “only” 3 GB of video memory. It features more CUDA cores than the K2200 but with a slower clock speed.

8. NVIDIA Quadro K2000

GPU	Kepler GK107GL
Clock Speed	950 MHz
Cores	384
Ports	2 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI
Rating	4/5 Eggs
Price	$399.99

The previous generation version of the K2200, the K2000 features a Kepler GPU instead of a Maxwell and only 2 GB of video RAM.

9. PNY Quadro K620

GPU	Maxwell GM107GL
Clock Speed	1000 MHz
Cores	384
Ports	1 × DisplayPort 1 × DVI
Rating	5/5 Eggs
Price	$159.99

The Quadro K620 is about as baseline as you get with the Quadro line, with only 2 GB of DDR2 memory, two video outputs, and 284 CUDA cores.

This GTX 980 is not a reference card. It comes factory overclocked by EVGA and sports the ACX 2.0 active cooler, which makes it quieter, cooler, and more energy efficient. At five out of five eggs, users love the 980.

Those are your best selling video cards of 2015 so far, both desktop and workstation. Did any of them surprise you? Let us know what you think are the top video cards of 2015 in the comments below.

Some Important Things Of A Graphics Card For Gaming

Buying my first graphics card, I had no idea what components of a GPU were crucial for gaming. I was under the impression that video memory was the only consideration. Improved performance is directly related to the amount of memory available. That, however, is not the case.

The graphics card’s video memory isn’t the only thing to consider. In addition to these, a graphics card has a number of other components, such as the following: L2 cache, boost clock, texture rate, ROPs, pixel rate, and pixel shader. All of these are critical in video editing, animation, and design, not just gaming.

Now, let’s look at an actual example!

A 512MB graphics card is generally considered inferior to a 1GB graphics card. Actually, that’s not correct. Video memory alone is insufficient to assess GPU performance. Other things must be overlooked as well.

Compare the 512MB version of Radeon HD 5670 to the 1GB version of Radeon HD 5450 and see which is better. Both the Radeon HD 5670 and the Radeon HD 5450 have 1 GB of video memory. Even so, the HD 5670 is noticeably faster than the HD 5450. It is four times faster than HD 5450.

To put it plainly, this is a no-brainer. There are a number of advantages to using Radeon HD 5670 over HD 5450, including faster L2 cache, faster boost clock and higher texture rates.

HD 5670 and HD 5450 can be compared in detail at Game Debate.

Here’s a more in-depth look at these parts. If you’re at all curious about them, this is a must-read.

Check out Best Static Pressure Fans for Gaming PCs before we get started.

1. Core Clock Speed:

This is the actual performance of the GPU. The unit of measurement is megahertz (MHz). Normal games now require at least 800 MHz of processing power in 2022. Overclocking tools can also increase Core Clock speed, but only to a certain point. If you’re looking for a graphics card for 2022 gaming, you should look for a card with a core clock speed of at least 800-1000 MHz. In 2022, you can rest assured that there will be no lag.

2. Memory Bus:

As the method your graphics card uses to access its memory is generally measured in bits (8 bits = 1 byte), the memory transport speed works in tandem with the memory check speed to get an exact estimate of how much memory can be accessed per second. Card designs ranging from 64 bits to 128 bits are ideal for games released up until 2012. 192, 256, and 384-bit GPUs are ideal for presentation and new-age games, whereas 128-bit GPUs are better for older titles.

3. Memory Type:

Data is stored in memory types such as cradle and Z co-ordinate in order to display a picture on the screen. As a result, while it won’t have a direct impact on execution, it will to some degree. When it comes to dealing with 3D design difficulties and sending them to pipelines where they are broken down into 2D pixel arrangements and shown on the screen, clock speed is critical.

4. Memory Bandwidth:

Memory Bandwidth tells us how quickly the GPU can access the memory. This was a combination of how many centres and how fast they were running. Well! The issue with memory can be analogous in certain ways. The transport rate and the memory information rate combine to determine how much memory can be accessed per second. As a result, looking solely at clock speed does not provide any information about the GPU’s actual memory speed.

5. Texture Rate:

Surfaces are mapped to the polygon network’s highest point in order to generate a 3D scene. Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) on the video card are responsible for “Surface Mapping.” It is the percentage of the speed with which a particular card can execute surface mapping. The fact that pixel shader preparation is becoming increasingly important does not diminish the significance of this statistic.

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