Top Graphics Cards 2023

If you have a budget and stomach for a performance-rich gaming graphics card, then GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24G (rev 1.1/1.0) offers silent operations, excellent cooling, feature-rich solution, and a powerful punch in every aspect of GPU performance.

The Zotac RTX 2080 Ti is one of the most powerful consumer-grade GPUs money can buy, and at $1,200 it better be. I'm not a fan of the Firestorm software, and it’s a bit skimpy in the looks department, but you can't argue with its chart-topping performance. It also runs cool and quiet too, so for now I think the Zotac card has the edge over the FE version, but just barely.

The RTX 2080 Ti Founder’s Edition is easily one of the most powerful consumer graphics cards ever made, and it's priced accordingly as well. Nvidia's Turing architecture raises the bar for 4K gaming, and that’s even before you take into account whatever benefit may arrive from real-time ray tracing or AI learning in the future. All in all, this GPU is future-proof, exceedingly powerful, and the current holy grail for PC gaming.

The Asus ROG Strix GTX 1070 Ti performs at the top of its class, and is whisper quiet even under full load thanks to its bulky form factor. The lighting is sweet as is the fan syncing feature, making it one of the best GTX 1070 Tis available. At $500 it's priced equivalent to lower-end GTX 1080s though, just like the Zotac AMP! Extreme, making it a tough sell. Still, compared to a high-end GTX 1080 it's a heck of a deal. I think it has slightly better features and lighting than the Zotac card, so get this one if you have $500 burning a hole in your PCI Express slot.

The Asus Tuf RX 7900 XTX Gaming OC is a stellar version of AMD's flagship RDNA 3 graphics card with faster performance and a brilliant heatsink. However, that comes at the price of the size, as a quad-slot GPU, it's truly massive being significantly larger than other versions of the card.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 (tested here in Asus livery) produces exceptional ray-tracing performance, thanks to its "Ada Lovelace" architecture. It's the best modern, moderate-cost graphics card for 1080p gaming.

Whereas the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is one of the best graphics cards of this generation, the PNY GeForce RTX 4070 XLR8 takes what makes the Founders Edition card great, adds some software overclocking, and lets you use a regular 8-pin power connector. You have to pay a premium for the privilege though, which takes away from one of the biggest points in the RTX 4070's favor.

ASRock's take on the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT is a well-made graphics card with excellent performance at its current price, even if it is a little power-hungry.

The Sapphire Nitro+ looks gorgeous, runs frigid, can’t be heard,

The RTX 4090 delivers on the technological and performance fronts, easily besting previous generation offerings. With major enhancements to all the core hardware and significantly higher clock speeds, plus forward looking tech like DLSS 3, the new bar has been set very high — with an equally high price tag.