![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes reference cards are duplicated by third-party card makers (companies referred to in industry lingo as AMD or Nvidia "board partners"), such as Asus, EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, Sapphire, XFX, and Zotac. This makes Nvidia's Founders Edition cards smaller, lighter, and faster than ever before, but so far we've only seen cards carrying Nvidia's Founders Edition badge with this treatment. Nvidia's engineering talent has been on full display in these cards, and although AMD puts up a good fight on performance, if advanced industrial design is your thing, the RTX 30 Series Founders Edition cards stand alone. The cards are packed onto a PCB ("printed circuit board," the guts of a GPU), that is 50% smaller than previous-generation RTX 20 Series Nvidia GPUs in each respective model that features the company's new "push-pull" cooling system. Nvidia's new designs for its Founders Edition cards throw most of the conventional wisdom out the window. But their designs tend to be conservative, not as accommodating to aggressive overclocking or modification as some third-party options are. Often the Founders Editions cards are the most aesthetically consistent of any cards that might come out during the lifetime of a particular GPU. ![]() Nvidia's own brand of cards are spotted easily by their "Founders Edition" branding, something that until the release of Nvidia's latest, the GeForce RTX 3000 series, didn't mean much more than slightly higher clock speeds from stock and sturdy build quality. Sometimes these reference-design cards are sold directly by Nvidia (or, less often, by AMD). The two companies work up what are known as "reference designs" for their video cards, a standardized version of a card built around a given GPU. (Nothing about graphics cards.ahem, GPUs.is simple!) (Photo: Zlata Ivleva) These processors are referred to as "GPUs," for "graphics processing units," a term that is also applied, confusingly, to the graphics card itself. All of the discrete video cards on the consumer market are built around large graphics processing chips designed by one of two companies: AMD or Nvidia. (Photo: Zlata Ivleva)Ī modern graphics solution, whether it's a discrete video card or an IGP, handles the display of 2D and 3D content, drawing the desktop, and decoding and encoding video content in programs and games. There's nothing inherently wrong with relying on an IGP-most business laptops, inexpensive consumer laptops, and budget-minded desktops have them-but if you're a gamer or a creator, the right graphics card is crucial. Indeed, sometimes that's for good reason a low-cost PC may not have a graphics card at all, relying instead on the graphics-accelerated silicon built into its CPU (an "integrated graphics processor," commonly called an "IGP"). If you're looking at any given prebuilt desktop PC on the market, unless it's a gaming-oriented machine, PC makers will de-emphasize the graphics card in favor of promoting CPU, RAM, or storage options. Nvidiaįirst off, what does a graphics card do? And do you really need one? It's easy to overpay or underbuy.but we won't let you do that. After all, consumer video cards range from under $100 to well over $1,499 (and that's just MSRP.more on that later). We'll also touch on some upcoming trends-they could affect which card you choose. Our guide will help you sort through the best video-card options for your desktop PC, what you need to know to upgrade a system, and how to evaluate whether a particular card is a good buy. If you're a PC gamer, or a content creator who lives and dies by the speed of your graphics-accelerated software, your video card is the engine that powers what you can do-or how lustily you can brag. You can take our recommendation of a single reference card in a given card class (such as the GeForce GTX 1660 Super, or the Radeon RX 5500 XT) as an endorsement of the GPU family as a whole. We've factored in just a sampling of third-party cards here many more fill out the market. If you want to wait it out a bit longer, check out this how-to tutorial this how-to tutorial on getting the most performance from the GPU you already own.Īlso note: Our picks above are based (in ascending order) on your target gameplay resolution, with picks for the most appropriate Nvidia and AMD cards for each usage scenario (unless one is an unequivocal clear choice). If you plan to buy a card soon, also see this buying-strategies guide this buying-strategies guide for advice on finding cards at a fair price.
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