Best graphics card 2025

What is the best graphics card for gaming? Shopping for a new GPU can mean wading through an often baffling set of numbers in specs lists, as well as weighing up the pros and cons of the different feature sets from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. That’s where we can help, as we’re not only genuine PC hardware enthusiasts who know our stream processors from our stream decks, but we’re also gamers.

Your choice of GPU will have a bigger impact on your gaming experience than any other PC component and by a long, long way. Yes, it’s always worth making sure you have the best gaming CPU in your system, as well as the best gaming RAM you can afford, but it’s the mighty graphics card that really sits on the throne in your gaming rig, so you need to make sure you nail this choice.

Your GPU is the primary driving force behind the frame rate in your games, and it also determines the resolution and graphics settings you’ll be able to use, including ray tracing and some GPUs are much better at handling these settings than others. There are also features that are exclusive to Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon GPUs, such as Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR, which also need to be considered.

We’ve tested all the graphics cards listed in this guide in a number of different games ourselves, so we can say authoritatively which GPU you should buy for your needs, and why. The situation has quickly changed with the release of Nvidia’s new RTX 5000 GPUs in January 2025 as well, with the new RTX 5090 now the undisputed king of the graphics card world, if you can afford (or find) it, and the new RTX 5080 offering decent 4K gaming performance for a much cheaper price, thanks to is support for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Gen..

The new AMD RDNA 4 GPU lineup is also scheduled to launch in March 2025, with the new Radeon RX 9070 XT bringing support for AMD FSR 4, which finally brings hardware AI to the company’s upscaling tech. The Radeon RX 9070 is also due to launch in this timeframe, with both GPUs expected to chase the RTX 5070 for the mid-range crown.

In the meantime, these graphics cards are the very best ones you can buy for gaming right now, with prices starting at just $249.99 for a great 1080p card, and going all the way up to the mammoth Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 if you want to play games at 4K with all the eye candy enabled.