Graphics Card suggestions - please advise me!

[JulianJ]

I need to get a new graphics card for my win 10 dell desktop.  I have found that buying refurbished Dell computers is a cheap and effective way to upgrade. It came with a NVIDIA GTX710 2 mb GPU. It feels a bit laggy on some games, even though I generally don't go for really major new releases -  it will also be used for photoshop, design and some video editing. PCI-Express x16 slot.

I planned to upgrade to a mid-range graphics card around Xmastime. I looked at the Palit GTX 1050. I didn't get round to buying anything. I thought there'd be bargains in January.

Unfortunately the huge rise in cryptocurrency mining (you use 6-8 GPUs in a rig) has meant graphics cards are very expensive and hard to get hold of. I'm at a bit of a loss and wondered if anybody had any advice - I don't need a top of the range card, and quietness is good, as I find a noisy fan quite distracting sometimes. 

[Redwolf]

I still use a 980ti, which works just fine for CM and can be had at reasonable prices. A true highend card is actually a waste for CM as it is CPU-bound.

[JulianJ]

It seems a bit academic: my local computer store plus eBuyer and Amazon are all out of cards. 

[Holien]

Have you tried Gumtree or even Ebay i just sold my old rig on Gumtree and the chap travelled 2 hours to get it. Once you know your target card / s just sent up a search and find a genuine seller. Of course you might already be doing this?

[lifaown01]

Quick tips

• Save some money for the CPU. If you spend all your money on graphics and don't opt for one of the best CPUs, your system might score well on synthetic benchmarks but won't do as well in real game play (due to lower minimum frame rates).

• Match your monitor resolution. Many mainstream cards are sufficient for gaming at 1080p resolutions at between 30-60 fps, but you'll need a high-end card for resolutions at or near 4K resolution with high in-game settings on the most demanding titles. So be sure to pair your GPU with the best gaming monitor for your needs.

• Consider your refresh rate. If your monitor has triple-digit refresh rates, you'll need a powerful card and processor to reach its full potential. Alternatively, if your monitor tops out at 60Hz and 1080p, there's no point in paying extra for a powerful card that pushes pixels faster than your display can keep up with.

• Do you have enough power and space? Make sure your PC case has enough room for the card you're considering, and that your power supply has enough watts to spare, along with the correct type of power connectors (up to three 8-pin PCIe, depending on the card).

• Check the MSRP before buying. A good way to tell if you're getting a deal is to check the launch price or MSRP of the card you're considering before buying. Tools like CamelCamelCamel can help separate the real deals from the fake mark-up-then-discount offerings. But note that in recent months, due to supply issues and increased demand, most recent cards have been selling for well above their MSRP.

• Don't get dual cards—they're not worth it. Game support for Multi-card SLI or CrossFire setups has been trending down for years. Get the best single card you can afford. Adding a second card is usually more trouble than it's worth.

• Don't count on overclocking for serious performance boosts. If you need better performance, buy a more-powerful card. Graphics cards don't typically have large amounts of overclocking headroom, usually only 5-10%.

AMD or Nvidia?

 

 

 

Nvidia and AMD GPUs (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

There are hundreds of graphics cards from dozens of manufacturers, but only two companies actually make the GPUs that power these components: Nvidia and AMD—although Intel's Xe Graphics could arrive this year. With its latest "Big Navi" RX 6000 cards, AMD is more competitive than it has been in years with Nvidia and its current-gen Ampere cards, like the GeForce RTX 3080, in general performance.

That said, the realistically lit elephant in the room that we've been ignoring thus-far is real-time ray tracing. Introduced as a major new feature with Nvidia's now previous-generation RTX 20-series cards, "Team Green" is now on its second generation RTX with 30-series GPUs. AMD ("Team Red") stepped into this game in a big way in 2020 with its RX 6000 cards, but it's still on its first go-round with real-time ray tracing, and so lags behind Nvidia on this front.

Still, the rollout of games that make use of (and specifically good use of) ray tracing has been slow. There's no doubt that more games are adding RT support—and many more will in the future as ray tracing is also supported by the recent Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Series X consoles. But as of this writing, only roughly 20 AAA games have ray tracing support (depending on what you classify as a AAA title and substantive ray tracing), with perhaps ten more slated to launch this year. Of those, we really only think two (Control and Cyberpunk 2077) really do the tech justice. So weigh the importance of ray tracing performance with how interested you are in these games, how important the best possible visuals are to your enjoyment, and how much future-proofing you want baked into your GPU.

Also, don't forget DLSS, Nvidia's AI-assisted resolution upscaling. It can deliver improved performance with less of a hit on frame rates than is typical from maxing out your monitor's resolution the traditional way. But again, support for this feature is limited to a subset of games (admittedly a growing one). And once again, AMD has its own (open source) answer to DLSS, called Fidelity FX Super Resolution. But it isn't ready for a 1.0 release yet, and Nvidia's DLSS 2.0 implementation has been in the wild for over a year now.

For more on these subjects as well as screen-smoothing variable refresh technologies, see our AMD vs Nvidia: Who Makes the Best GPUs? and FreeSync vs. G-Sync: Which Variable Refresh Tech Is Best Today? features.