Are you on the lookout for the best gaming GPU for your PC? Then look no further – our guide to the best graphics card takes you through the cream of the crop, from affordable 1080p workhorses to premium 4K powerhouses, we’ve got you covered.
At Custom PC, we’ve been reviewing the latest gaming GPU options since 2003, and our game tests include measuring the frame rate in Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, and Metro Exodus, all with and without ray tracing. We also test with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. For more information, see our How we test page.
In this guide, you’ll find affordable gaming GPUs costing under $299 (£320), along with high-end graphics cards costing over $1,699 (£1,699) for those who want to enable all the eye candy at fast frame rates. Your choice of GPU will have a bigger impact on gaming performance than any other component in your PC, so it’s important to get it right.
Here are the best gaming GPUs in 2023:
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 – the best GPU for 4K gaming with ray tracing
- AMD Radeon RX 7600 – the best budget gaming GPU
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti – the best 1080p ray tracing GPU
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 – the best 1440p ray tracing GPU
- AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX – the best GPU for 4K gaming if you don’t care about ray tracing
1. Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090
The best 4K gaming GPU is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090.
The GeForce RTX 4090 shows how 4K gaming should be done. It annihilates the competition and its predecessors, making settings that were previously impossible achievable, including 240fps+ frame rates at 4K with ray tracing enabled.
The new tech it brings to the table is also mightily impressive, with DLSS 3 AI frame generation making demanding games such as Cyberpunk 2077 run at over 100fps with settings that look incredible. This tech is already lined up to be supported in several big titles as well. Few people will be able to afford one of these flagship cards, but If you have plenty of cash it’s undoubtedly the best 4K gaming GPU. Read our full GeForce RTX 4090 review for more detail on this monster GPU.
Pros:
- Amazing 4K ray tracing performance
- DLSS 3 has great potential
- Fastest GPU ever
Cons:
- Ridiculously expensive
- High power draw
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 specs:
| Stream processors / CUDA cores: | 16,384 |
| RT cores | 128 (3rd-gen) |
| Tensor cores | 512 (4th-gen) |
| Base clock | 2235 MHz |
| Max boost clock | 2520 MHz |
| Memory | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory clock | 1325 MHz (21.2 GHz effective) |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,018 GB/s |
| Memory interface | 384-bit |
| Card interface | 16x PCIe 4 |
| Power connectors | 1 x 16-pin / 4 x 8-pin |
Price: Expect to pay $1,699 (£1,699).
2. AMD Radeon RX 7600
The best budget gaming GPU is the AMD Radeon RX 7600.
We’re so pleased that you can finally buy a graphics card based on the latest GPU tech without spending a fortune, and the AMD Radeon RX 7600 offers spectacular value. This GPU is based on the AMD RDNA 3 architecture, which improves performance in several key areas over comparable RDNA 2 GPUs.
Unlike, the Radeon RX 6600 XT, the Radeon RX 7600 can handle Cyberpunk 2077 at 1,920 x 1,080 with Ultra settings, and you can even enable ray tracing with some help from AMD FSR. What’s more, it can even handle some games at 2,560 x 1,440, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Doom Eternal.
Across a lot of our tests, this affordable gaming GPU wasn’t far off the performance of the Radeon RX 6700 XT and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, while being well ahead of the GeForce RTX 3060. There’s only 8GB of memory, but you can’t have everything at this price, and that’s enough for most gaming at 1,920 x 1,080. Read our full AMD Radeon RX 7600 review for more information about this affordable gaming GPU.
Pros:
- Fantastic price
- Great rasterization performance
- Standard power connector
Cons:
- No AI frame generation tech
- Ray tracing performance could be better
- Only 8GB of VRAM
AMD Radeon RX 7600 specs:
| GPU | Navi 33 |
| Stream processors | 2,048 |
| RT cores | 32 |
| ROPs | 32 |
| Game clock | 2250 MHz |
| Boost clock | 2660 MHz |
| L2 cache | 2 MB |
| L3 cache (2nd-gen Infinity Cache) | 32 MB |
| Memory | 8 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bus | 128-bit |
| Memory clock | 2250 MHz (18 GHz effective) |
| Memory bandwidth | 288 GB/s |
| TDP / TGP | 165 W |
| Interface | 8x PCIe 4 |
Price: Expect to pay $269 (£259).
3. Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB
The best 1080p ray tracing gaming GPU is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.
Unlike the top-end GPUs based on the Nvidia Ada architecture, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti doesn’t have a scary price tag. In fact its price of $399 matches the price of its predecessor, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. It’s not massively faster than the 3060 Ti, but it has the added benefit of Nvidia’s DLSS 3 AI frame-generation tech, which massively improves frame rates in games that support it.
We found that it can cope with playing some games, such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, at 2,560 x 1,440, and it can also cope well with ray tracing at 1,920 x 1,080, especially if you enable DLSS. For example, with DLSS enabled, it ran our demanding Cyberpunk 2077 Medium ray tracing benchmark at 1,920 x 1,080 without dropping below a 99th percentile frame rate of 63fps.
The only downside is that it can’t quite cope with ray tracing in Doom Eternal at Ultra Nightmare settings, or Cyberpunk 2077 in Overdrive mode (even with DLSS 3 enabled), but we’re hoping the forthcoming GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB will fix all that. Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB review for more information.
Pros:
- Good price
- DLSS 3 support
- Low power draw
Cons:
- Only 8GB of VRAM
- Can’t cope with Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive mode
- Not much faster than RTX 3060 Ti
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti specs:
| GPU | AD106 |
| CUDA cores / stream processors | 4,352 |
| RT cores (3rd-gen) | 34 |
| Tensor cores (4th-gen) | 136 |
| ROPs | 48 |
| Base clock | 2310 MHz |
| Boost clock | 2535 MHz |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bus | 128-bit |
| Memory clock | 2250MHz (18GHz effective) |
| Memory bandwidth | 288 GB/s |
| L2 cache | 32MB |
| TDP / TGP | 160 W |
| Interface | 8x PCIe 4 |
Price: Expect to pay $399 (£389).
4. Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070
The best 1440p ray tracing GPU for gaming is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 delivers fantastic performance across the board at 2,560 x 1,440, and it’s amazingly power-efficient too, with our test system drawing just 369 W from the mains. In particular, its ray tracing frame rates are superb, and its support for DLSS 3 really gives it an edge in highly demanding games. Enable this AI frame-generation tech and you can even run Cyberpunk 2077 in its new Overdrive mode.
The Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4070 card we tested (pictured) is a great example, being available for just $599 and only needing a single 8-pin PCIe power plug. Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 review for the full story.
Pros:
- Fantastic 1440p performance
- DLSS 3 support
- Low power draw
Cons:
- Still a bit overpriced
- Radeon RX 6950 XT faster at rasterization
- Only 12 GB of memory
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 specs:
| Stream processors / CUDA cores | 5,888 |
| RT cores | 46 (3rd-gen) |
| Tensor cores | 184 (4th-gen) |
| ROPs | 64 |
| Base clock | 1920 MHz |
| Max boost clock | 2475 MHz |
| Memory | 12 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory clock | 1313 MHz (21 GHz effective) |
| Memory bandwidth | 504 GB/s |
| Memory interface | 192-bit |
| Card interface | 16x PCIe 4 |
| Power connectors | 1 x 16-pin / 2 x 8-pin / 1 x 8-pin |
Price: Expect to pay $599 (£589).
5. AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
The best 4K gaming GPU if you don’t care about ray tracing is the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
Not everyone wants to turn on all the fancy lighting and shadows that come with ray tracing, especially when there’s such a massive performance penalty attached to it. If your priority is getting smooth frame rates at 4K, but you’re not too fussed about ray tracing, then AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX is well worth considering.
With a price that undercuts the GeForce RTX 4080, and rasterization performance that’s in front of it, AMD has cut out an attractive market slot for the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
Also, while AMD still can’t catch Nvidia’s latest GPU tech on ray tracing, and there’s no AI frame generation tech, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX still has much more ray tracing power than previous AMD GPUs, performing similarly to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. Read our full AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX review to see all the details and test results.
Pros:
- Cheaper than RTX 4080
- Improved ray tracing performance over RDNA 2 GPUs
- Strong shader performance
- Standard power connectors
Cons:
- No AI frame generation tech
- Still expensive
- Nvidia is still faster at ray tracing
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX specs:
| Stream processors | 6,144 dual-issue |
| RT cores | 96 |
| ROPs | 192 |
| Game clock | 2269 MHz |
| Max boost clock | 2499 MHz |
| Memory | 24GB GDDR6 |
| Memory clock | 2500 MHz (20 GHz effective) |
| Memory bandwidth | 960 GB/s |
| Memory interface | 384-bit |
| L3 cache | 96 MB |
| Card interface | 16x PCIe 4 |
| Power connectors | 2 x 8-pin |
| Card length | 287 mm |
| Expansion slots | 2.5 |
Price: Expect to pay $1,049 (£,1049)
That’s it for our current roundup of the best gaming GPUs, but we’ll keep this guide regularly updated as we review more graphics cards in the future, so keep an eye on it if there’s nothing that suits your needs at the moment. The GeForce RTX 4070 is due to launch shortly, and we’re also expecting the GeForce RTX 4060 to launch this year, along with new AMD Radeon RX 7000 GPUs at a range of prices.
Of course, the GPU is also only one part of the gaming PC equation, so make sure you check out our guide to the best CPU for gaming as well.
