GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy 2024 – Graphics Card Rankings

by Pelican Press
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GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy 2024 – Graphics Card Rankings

Our GPU benchmarks hierarchy ranks all the current and previous generation graphics cards by performance, and Tom’s Hardware exhaustively benchmarks current and previous generation GPUs, including all of the best graphics cards. Whether it’s playing games, running artificial intelligence workloads like Stable Diffusion, or doing professional video editing, your graphics card typically plays the biggest role in determining performance — even the best CPUs for Gaming take a secondary role.

The past few months had a lot of “refreshed” GPUs: The RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, RTX 4080 Super, and RX 7600 XT, plus the RX 7900 GRE arrived in the U.S. There were many sleepless nights, but we’ve finally got all the updated numbers for the hierarchy ready. We’re (still) retesting GPUs on a revamped test suite, using a Core i9-13900K instead of a Core i9-12900K. All our recent reviews use the updated test PC, but our hierarchy continues to use the older PC — but the charts at the bottom of the page are from the new testbed.

Our full GPU hierarchy using traditional rendering (aka, rasterization) comes first, and below that we have our ray tracing GPU benchmarks hierarchy. Those of course require a ray tracing capable GPU so only AMD’s RX 7000/6000-series, Intel’s Arc, and Nvidia’s RTX cards are present. The results are all without enabling DLSS, FSR, or XeSS on the various cards, mind you.

April 2024 Update

No new GPUs lately, which means everything has stayed the same. (Re)testing of cards on a revised test suite is under way.

Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture powers its latest generation RTX 40-series, with new features like DLSS 3 Frame Generation — and for all RTX cards, Nvidia DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction (which is only used in a few games so far). AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture powers the RX 7000-series, with seven desktop cards filling out the product stack. Intel’s Arc Alchemist architecture brings a third player into the dedicated GPU party, even if it’s more of a competitor to the previous generation midrange offerings.

On page two, you’ll find our 2020–2021 benchmark suite, which has all of the previous generation GPUs running our older test suite running on a Core i9-9900K testbed. It’s no longer being actively updated. We also have the legacy GPU hierarchy (without benchmarks, sorted by theoretical performance) for reference purposes.

The following tables sort everything solely by our performance-based GPU gaming benchmarks, at 1080p “ultra” for the main suite and at 1080p “medium” for the DXR suite. Factors including price, graphics card power consumption, overall efficiency, and features aren’t factored into the rankings here. The current 2024 results use an Alder Lake Core i9-12900K testbed. Now let’s hit the benchmarks and tables.

GPU Benchmarks Ranking 2024

For our latest GPU benchmarks, we’ve tested nearly every GPU released in the past seven years, plus some extras, at 1080p medium and 1080p ultra, and sorted the table by the 1080p ultra results. Where it makes sense, we also test at 1440p ultra and 4K ultra. All of the scores are scaled relative to the top-ranking 1080p ultra card, which in our new suite is the RTX 4090 — especially at 4K and 1440p.

You can also see the above summary chart showing the relative performance of the cards we’ve tested across the past several generations of hardware at 1080p ultra — swipe through the above gallery if you want to see the 1080p medium, 1440p, and 4K ultra images. There are a few missing options (e.g., the GT 1030, RX 550, and several Titan cards), but otherwise, it’s basically complete. Note that we also have data in the table below for some of the other older GPUs.

The eight games we’re using for our standard GPU benchmarks hierarchy are Borderlands 3 (DX12), Far Cry 6 (DX12), Flight Simulator (DX11 Nvidia, DX12 AMD/Intel), Forza Horizon 5 (DX12), Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12), Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulkan), Total War Warhammer 3 (DX11), and Watch Dogs Legion (DX12). The fps score is the geometric mean (equal weighting) of the eight games. Note that the specifications column links directly to our original review for the various GPUs. 

GPU Rasterization Hierarchy, Key Takeaways

  • Nvidia RTX 4090 takes the top spot but costs about twice as much as the second place RTX 4080 Super.
  • RTX 4090 can encounter CPU bottlenecks at 1440p and especially 1080p.
  • New cards typically match previous gen GPUs that are one or two model tiers “higher” (e.g. RTX 4070 Ti vs. RTX 3090 Ti, or RX 6600 XT vs. RX 5700 XT). This is not universally true, however (e.g. RX 7800 XT is only slightly faster than the prior 6800 XT).
  • Looking at 1440p, RTX 4080 Super ranks as the most efficient GPU, with other 40-series GPUs rounding out the top ten. AMD’s most efficient GPU is the RX 7900 XTX. Intel’s Arc GPUs rank near the bottom of the chart in terms of efficiency.
  • The best GPU value in FPS per dollar at 1440p is the Arc A580, followed by the RX 6600, Arc A750, RX 6800, and RTX 4060.
Graphics Card Lowest Price 1080p Ultra 1080p Medium 1440p Ultra 4K Ultra Specifications (Links to Review)
GeForce RTX 4090 $1849 100.0% (154.1fps) 100.0% (195.7fps) 100.0% (146.1fps) 100.0% (114.5fps) AD102, 16384 shaders, 2520MHz, 24GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 1008GB/s, 450W
Radeon RX 7900 XTX $909 96.7% (149.0fps) 97.2% (190.3fps) 92.6% (135.3fps) 83.1% (95.1fps) Navi 31, 6144 shaders, 2500MHz, 24GB GDDR6@20Gbps, 960GB/s, 355W
GeForce RTX 4080 Super $999 96.2% (148.3fps) 98.5% (192.7fps) 91.0% (133.0fps) 80.3% (91.9fps) AD103, 10240 shaders, 2550MHz, 16GB GDDR6X@23Gbps, 736GB/s, 320W
GeForce RTX 4080 $1185 95.4% (147.0fps) 98.1% (192.0fps) 89.3% (130.4fps) 78.0% (89.3fps) AD103, 9728 shaders, 2505MHz, 16GB [email protected], 717GB/s, 320W
Radeon RX 7900 XT $699 93.4% (143.9fps) 95.8% (187.6fps) 86.1% (125.9fps) 71.0% (81.2fps) Navi 31, 5376 shaders, 2400MHz, 20GB GDDR6@20Gbps, 800GB/s, 315W
GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super $799 92.3% (142.3fps) 96.8% (189.4fps) 83.5% (122.0fps) 68.7% (78.6fps) AD103, 8448 shaders, 2610MHz, 16GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 672GB/s, 285W
GeForce RTX 4070 Ti $699 89.8% (138.3fps) 95.7% (187.2fps) 79.8% (116.5fps) 63.8% (73.0fps) AD104, 7680 shaders, 2610MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 504GB/s, 285W
Radeon RX 7900 GRE $549 88.1% (135.8fps) 94.1% (184.3fps) 78.0% (113.9fps) 60.5% (69.3fps) Navi 31, 5120 shaders, 2245MHz, 16GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 576GB/s, 260W
GeForce RTX 4070 Super $589 87.1% (134.2fps) 94.6% (185.1fps) 75.2% (109.8fps) 57.8% (66.1fps) AD104, 7168 shaders, 2475MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 504GB/s, 220W
Radeon RX 6950 XT $579 84.7% (130.5fps) 91.7% (179.4fps) 75.3% (110.1fps) 58.6% (67.1fps) Navi 21, 5120 shaders, 2310MHz, 16GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 576GB/s, 335W
GeForce RTX 3090 Ti $1739 84.7% (130.5fps) 90.5% (177.1fps) 77.1% (112.7fps) 66.3% (75.9fps) GA102, 10752 shaders, 1860MHz, 24GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 1008GB/s, 450W
Radeon RX 7800 XT $509 83.9% (129.3fps) 91.5% (179.1fps) 72.4% (105.8fps) 54.4% (62.3fps) Navi 32, 3840 shaders, 2430MHz, 16GB [email protected], 624GB/s, 263W
GeForce RTX 3090 $1279 81.4% (125.5fps) 88.9% (174.0fps) 72.5% (106.0fps) 61.8% (70.7fps) GA102, 10496 shaders, 1695MHz, 24GB [email protected], 936GB/s, 350W
Radeon RX 6900 XT $779 80.9% (124.6fps) 89.6% (175.3fps) 69.9% (102.1fps) 53.5% (61.2fps) Navi 21, 5120 shaders, 2250MHz, 16GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 300W
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti $1089 80.4% (123.9fps) 87.8% (171.8fps) 71.1% (103.9fps) 60.1% (68.8fps) GA102, 10240 shaders, 1665MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@19Gbps, 912GB/s, 350W
Radeon RX 6800 XT $459 79.6% (122.7fps) 88.5% (173.2fps) 67.8% (99.0fps) 50.6% (57.9fps) Navi 21, 4608 shaders, 2250MHz, 16GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 300W
GeForce RTX 3080 12GB $999 79.2% (122.1fps) 86.5% (169.4fps) 70.0% (102.3fps) 58.3% (66.7fps) GA102, 8960 shaders, 1845MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@19Gbps, 912GB/s, 400W
GeForce RTX 4070 $539 79.2% (122.0fps) 90.7% (177.5fps) 66.9% (97.8fps) 50.0% (57.2fps) AD104, 5888 shaders, 2475MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 504GB/s, 200W
GeForce RTX 3080 $879 76.0% (117.0fps) 85.6% (167.6fps) 66.0% (96.4fps) 54.1% (62.0fps) GA102, 8704 shaders, 1710MHz, 10GB GDDR6X@19Gbps, 760GB/s, 320W
Radeon RX 7700 XT $449 75.3% (116.1fps) 87.7% (171.6fps) 63.4% (92.7fps) 45.0% (51.5fps) Navi 32, 3456 shaders, 2544MHz, 12GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 432GB/s, 245W
Radeon RX 6800 $399 74.4% (114.6fps) 86.2% (168.7fps) 61.0% (89.2fps) 44.3% (50.7fps) Navi 21, 3840 shaders, 2105MHz, 16GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 250W
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti $599 67.5% (104.0fps) 81.6% (159.8fps) 56.7% (82.8fps) 41.7% (47.7fps) GA104, 6144 shaders, 1770MHz, 8GB GDDR6X@19Gbps, 608GB/s, 290W
Radeon RX 6750 XT $359 66.8% (102.9fps) 82.6% (161.6fps) 52.9% (77.2fps) 37.4% (42.8fps) Navi 22, 2560 shaders, 2600MHz, 12GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 432GB/s, 250W
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB $429 65.3% (100.6fps) 82.6% (161.7fps) 51.8% (75.7fps) 36.4% (41.6fps) AD106, 4352 shaders, 2535MHz, 16GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 288GB/s, 160W
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti $374 65.1% (100.4fps) 81.8% (160.1fps) 51.7% (75.6fps) 34.6% (39.6fps) AD106, 4352 shaders, 2535MHz, 8GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 288GB/s, 160W
Titan RTX   64.5% (99.3fps) 80.0% (156.6fps) 54.4% (79.5fps) 41.8% (47.8fps) TU102, 4608 shaders, 1770MHz, 24GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 672GB/s, 280W
Radeon RX 6700 XT $339 64.3% (99.1fps) 80.8% (158.1fps) 50.3% (73.4fps) 35.3% (40.4fps) Navi 22, 2560 shaders, 2581MHz, 12GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 384GB/s, 230W
GeForce RTX 3070 $399 64.1% (98.8fps) 79.1% (154.8fps) 53.2% (77.7fps) 38.8% (44.4fps) GA104, 5888 shaders, 1725MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 220W
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti   62.5% (96.3fps) 77.2% (151.0fps) 51.8% (75.6fps) 38.0% (43.5fps) TU102, 4352 shaders, 1545MHz, 11GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 616GB/s, 250W
Radeon RX 7600 XT $319 59.7% (91.9fps) 77.3% (151.2fps) 45.1% (65.9fps) 32.4% (37.1fps) Navi 33, 2048 shaders, 2755MHz, 16GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 288GB/s, 190W
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti $449 58.9% (90.7fps) 75.0% (146.9fps) 47.9% (70.0fps)   GA104, 4864 shaders, 1665MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 200W
Radeon RX 6700 10GB $269 55.9% (86.1fps) 74.4% (145.7fps) 43.0% (62.8fps) 28.7% (32.9fps) Navi 22, 2304 shaders, 2450MHz, 10GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 320GB/s, 175W
GeForce RTX 2080 Super   55.8% (86.0fps) 72.2% (141.3fps) 45.2% (66.1fps) 32.1% (36.7fps) TU104, 3072 shaders, 1815MHz, 8GB [email protected], 496GB/s, 250W
GeForce RTX 4060 $294 55.1% (84.9fps) 72.7% (142.3fps) 41.9% (61.2fps) 27.8% (31.9fps) AD107, 3072 shaders, 2460MHz, 8GB GDDR6@17Gbps, 272GB/s, 115W
GeForce RTX 2080   53.5% (82.5fps) 69.8% (136.7fps) 43.2% (63.2fps)   TU104, 2944 shaders, 1710MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 215W
Radeon RX 7600 $269 53.2% (82.0fps) 72.3% (141.4fps) 39.2% (57.3fps) 25.4% (29.1fps) Navi 33, 2048 shaders, 2655MHz, 8GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 288GB/s, 165W
Radeon RX 6650 XT $229 50.4% (77.7fps) 70.0% (137.1fps) 37.3% (54.5fps)   Navi 23, 2048 shaders, 2635MHz, 8GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 280GB/s, 180W
GeForce RTX 2070 Super   50.3% (77.4fps) 66.2% (129.6fps) 40.0% (58.4fps)   TU104, 2560 shaders, 1770MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 215W
Intel Arc A770 16GB $289 49.9% (76.9fps) 59.4% (116.4fps) 41.0% (59.8fps) 30.8% (35.3fps) ACM-G10, 4096 shaders, 2400MHz, 16GB [email protected], 560GB/s, 225W
Intel Arc A770 8GB $343 48.9% (75.3fps) 59.0% (115.5fps) 39.3% (57.5fps) 29.0% (33.2fps) ACM-G10, 4096 shaders, 2400MHz, 8GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 225W
Radeon RX 6600 XT $399 48.5% (74.7fps) 68.2% (133.5fps) 35.7% (52.2fps)   Navi 23, 2048 shaders, 2589MHz, 8GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 256GB/s, 160W
Radeon RX 5700 XT   47.6% (73.3fps) 63.8% (124.9fps) 36.3% (53.1fps) 25.6% (29.3fps) Navi 10, 2560 shaders, 1905MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 225W
GeForce RTX 3060 $299 46.9% (72.3fps) 61.8% (121.0fps) 36.9% (54.0fps)   GA106, 3584 shaders, 1777MHz, 12GB GDDR6@15Gbps, 360GB/s, 170W
Intel Arc A750 $239 45.9% (70.8fps) 56.4% (110.4fps) 36.7% (53.7fps) 27.2% (31.1fps) ACM-G10, 3584 shaders, 2350MHz, 8GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 225W
GeForce RTX 2070   45.3% (69.8fps) 60.8% (119.1fps) 35.5% (51.8fps)   TU106, 2304 shaders, 1620MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 175W
Radeon VII   45.1% (69.5fps) 58.2% (113.9fps) 36.3% (53.0fps) 27.5% (31.5fps) Vega 20, 3840 shaders, 1750MHz, 16GB [email protected], 1024GB/s, 300W
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti   43.1% (66.4fps) 56.3% (110.2fps) 34.4% (50.2fps) 25.8% (29.5fps) GP102, 3584 shaders, 1582MHz, 11GB GDDR5X@11Gbps, 484GB/s, 250W
GeForce RTX 2060 Super   42.5% (65.5fps) 57.2% (112.0fps) 33.1% (48.3fps)   TU106, 2176 shaders, 1650MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 175W
Radeon RX 6600 $199 42.3% (65.2fps) 59.3% (116.2fps) 30.6% (44.8fps)   Navi 23, 1792 shaders, 2491MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 224GB/s, 132W
Intel Arc A580 $169 42.3% (65.1fps) 51.6% (101.1fps) 33.4% (48.8fps) 24.4% (27.9fps) ACM-G10, 3072 shaders, 2300MHz, 8GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 185W
Radeon RX 5700   41.9% (64.5fps) 56.6% (110.8fps) 31.9% (46.7fps)   Navi 10, 2304 shaders, 1725MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 180W
Radeon RX 5600 XT   37.5% (57.8fps) 51.1% (100.0fps) 28.8% (42.0fps)   Navi 10, 2304 shaders, 1750MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 336GB/s, 160W
Radeon RX Vega 64   36.8% (56.7fps) 48.2% (94.3fps) 28.5% (41.6fps) 20.5% (23.5fps) Vega 10, 4096 shaders, 1546MHz, 8GB [email protected], 484GB/s, 295W
GeForce RTX 2060   36.0% (55.5fps) 51.4% (100.5fps) 27.5% (40.1fps)   TU106, 1920 shaders, 1680MHz, 6GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 336GB/s, 160W
GeForce GTX 1080   34.4% (53.0fps) 45.9% (89.9fps) 27.0% (39.4fps)   GP104, 2560 shaders, 1733MHz, 8GB GDDR5X@10Gbps, 320GB/s, 180W
GeForce RTX 3050 $224 33.7% (51.9fps) 45.4% (88.8fps) 26.4% (38.5fps)   GA106, 2560 shaders, 1777MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 224GB/s, 130W
GeForce GTX 1070 Ti   33.1% (51.1fps) 43.8% (85.7fps) 26.0% (37.9fps)   GP104, 2432 shaders, 1683MHz, 8GB GDDR5@8Gbps, 256GB/s, 180W
Radeon RX Vega 56   32.8% (50.6fps) 43.0% (84.2fps) 25.3% (37.0fps)   Vega 10, 3584 shaders, 1471MHz, 8GB [email protected], 410GB/s, 210W
GeForce GTX 1660 Super   30.3% (46.8fps) 43.7% (85.5fps) 22.8% (33.3fps)   TU116, 1408 shaders, 1785MHz, 6GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 336GB/s, 125W
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti   30.3% (46.6fps) 43.3% (84.8fps) 22.8% (33.3fps)   TU116, 1536 shaders, 1770MHz, 6GB GDDR6@12Gbps, 288GB/s, 120W
GeForce GTX 1070   29.0% (44.7fps) 38.3% (75.0fps) 22.7% (33.1fps)   GP104, 1920 shaders, 1683MHz, 8GB GDDR5@8Gbps, 256GB/s, 150W
GeForce GTX 1660   27.7% (42.6fps) 39.7% (77.8fps) 20.8% (30.3fps)   TU116, 1408 shaders, 1785MHz, 6GB GDDR5@8Gbps, 192GB/s, 120W
Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB   25.7% (39.7fps) 36.8% (72.1fps) 19.3% (28.2fps)   Navi 14, 1408 shaders, 1845MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 224GB/s, 130W
Radeon RX 590   25.5% (39.3fps) 35.0% (68.5fps) 19.9% (29.0fps)   Polaris 30, 2304 shaders, 1545MHz, 8GB GDDR5@8Gbps, 256GB/s, 225W
GeForce GTX 980 Ti   23.3% (35.9fps) 32.0% (62.6fps) 18.2% (26.6fps)   GM200, 2816 shaders, 1075MHz, 6GB GDDR5@7Gbps, 336GB/s, 250W
Radeon RX 580 8GB   22.9% (35.3fps) 31.5% (61.7fps) 17.8% (26.0fps)   Polaris 20, 2304 shaders, 1340MHz, 8GB GDDR5@8Gbps, 256GB/s, 185W
Radeon R9 Fury X   22.9% (35.2fps) 32.6% (63.8fps)     Fiji, 4096 shaders, 1050MHz, 4GB HBM2@2Gbps, 512GB/s, 275W
GeForce GTX 1650 Super   22.0% (33.9fps) 34.6% (67.7fps) 14.5% (21.2fps)   TU116, 1280 shaders, 1725MHz, 4GB GDDR6@12Gbps, 192GB/s, 100W
Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB   21.6% (33.3fps) 34.1% (66.8fps)     Navi 14, 1408 shaders, 1845MHz, 4GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 224GB/s, 130W
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB   20.8% (32.1fps) 29.5% (57.7fps) 15.8% (23.0fps)   GP106, 1280 shaders, 1708MHz, 6GB GDDR5@8Gbps, 192GB/s, 120W
Radeon RX 6500 XT $159 19.9% (30.6fps) 33.6% (65.8fps) 12.3% (18.0fps)   Navi 24, 1024 shaders, 2815MHz, 4GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 144GB/s, 107W
Radeon R9 390   19.3% (29.8fps) 26.1% (51.1fps)     Grenada, 2560 shaders, 1000MHz, 8GB GDDR5@6Gbps, 384GB/s, 275W
GeForce GTX 980   18.7% (28.9fps) 27.4% (53.6fps)     GM204, 2048 shaders, 1216MHz, 4GB GDDR5@7Gbps, 256GB/s, 165W
GeForce GTX 1650 GDDR6   18.7% (28.8fps) 28.9% (56.6fps)     TU117, 896 shaders, 1590MHz, 4GB GDDR6@12Gbps, 192GB/s, 75W
Intel Arc A380 $119 18.4% (28.4fps) 27.7% (54.3fps) 13.3% (19.5fps)   ACM-G11, 1024 shaders, 2450MHz, 6GB [email protected], 186GB/s, 75W
Radeon RX 570 4GB   18.2% (28.1fps) 27.4% (53.6fps) 13.6% (19.9fps)   Polaris 20, 2048 shaders, 1244MHz, 4GB GDDR5@7Gbps, 224GB/s, 150W
GeForce GTX 1650   17.5% (27.0fps) 26.2% (51.3fps)     TU117, 896 shaders, 1665MHz, 4GB GDDR5@8Gbps, 128GB/s, 75W
GeForce GTX 970   17.2% (26.5fps) 25.0% (49.0fps)     GM204, 1664 shaders, 1178MHz, 4GB GDDR5@7Gbps, 256GB/s, 145W
Radeon RX 6400 $124 15.7% (24.1fps) 26.1% (51.1fps)     Navi 24, 768 shaders, 2321MHz, 4GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 128GB/s, 53W
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti   12.9% (19.8fps) 19.4% (38.0fps)     GP107, 768 shaders, 1392MHz, 4GB GDDR5@7Gbps, 112GB/s, 75W
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB     26.8% (52.5fps)     GP106, 1152 shaders, 1708MHz, 3GB GDDR5@8Gbps, 192GB/s, 120W
GeForce GTX 1630   10.9% (16.9fps) 17.3% (33.8fps)     TU117, 512 shaders, 1785MHz, 4GB GDDR6@12Gbps, 96GB/s, 75W
Radeon RX 560 4GB   9.6% (14.7fps) 16.2% (31.7fps)     Baffin, 1024 shaders, 1275MHz, 4GB GDDR5@7Gbps, 112GB/s, 60-80W
GeForce GTX 1050     15.2% (29.7fps)     GP107, 640 shaders, 1455MHz, 2GB GDDR5@7Gbps, 112GB/s, 75W
Radeon RX 550 4GB     10.0% (19.5fps)     Lexa, 640 shaders, 1183MHz, 4GB GDDR5@7Gbps, 112GB/s, 50W
GeForce GT 1030     7.5% (14.6fps)     GP108, 384 shaders, 1468MHz, 2GB GDDR5@6Gbps, 48GB/s, 30W

*: GPU couldn’t run all tests, so the overall score is slightly skewed at 1080p ultra.

While the RTX 4090 does technically take first place at 1080p ultra, it’s the 1440p and especially 4K numbers that impress. It’s less than 2% faster than the RTX 4080 Super at 1080p ultra, but that increases to 9% at 1440p and then 25% at 4K. Also note that the fps numbers in our table incorporate both the average and minimum fps into a single score — with the average given more weight than the 1% low fps.

Again, keep in mind that we’re not including any ray tracing or DLSS results in the above table, as we use the same test suite with the same settings on all current and previous generation graphics cards. Since only RTX cards support DLSS (and RTX 40-series if you want DLSS 3), that would drastically limit which cards we could directly compare. You can see DLSS 2/3 and FSR 2 upscaling results in our RTX 4070 review if you want to check out how the various upscaling modes might help.

Of course the RTX 4090 comes at a steep price, though it’s not that much worse than the previous generation RTX 3090. In fact, we’d say it’s a lot better in some respects, as the 3090 was only a minor improvement in performance compared to the 3080 at the time of launch, but with more than double the VRAM. Nvidia pulled out all the stops with the 4090, increasing the core counts, clock speeds, and power limits to push it beyond all contenders. There are two problems with the 4090, however: It’s not available at MSRP any longer, due to demand from the AI sector — it often costs $2,000 or more — and there are still concerns with pulling 450W of power over the 16-pin connector.

Stepping down from the RTX 4090, the RTX 4080 Super and RX 7900 XTX trade blows at higher resolutions, while CPU bottlenecks come into play at 1080p. We’ll be switching to an i9-13900K in the near future, and you can see those results in our latest graphics card reviews as well as in the charts at the bottom of the page.

Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition

(Image credit: Intel)

Outside of the latest releases from AMD and Nvidia, the RX 6000- and RTX 30-series chips still perform reasonably well and if you’re using such a card, there may not be any need to upgrade at present. Intel’s Arc GPUs also fall into this category and are something of a wild card.

We’ve been testing and retesting GPUs periodically, and the Arc chips running the latest drivers now complete all of our benchmarks without any major anomalies. (Minecraft was previously a problem, though Intel has finally sorted that out.) They’re not great on efficiency, but overall performance and pricing for the A750 is quite good.

Turning to the previous generation GPUs, the RTX 20-series and GTX 16-series chips end up scattered throughout the results, along with the RX 5000-series. The general rule of thumb is that you get one or two “model upgrades” with the newer architectures, so for example the RTX 2080 Super comes in just below the RTX 3060 Ti, while the RX 5700 XT basically matches the newer and less expensive RX 6600 XT.

Go back far enough and you can see how modern games at ultra settings severely punish cards that don’t have more than 4GB VRAM. We’ve been saying for a few years now that 4GB was just scraping by, and these days we’d avoid buying anything with less than 8GB of VRAM — 12GB or more is the minimum we’d want with a mainstream GPU, and 16GB or more for high-end and above. Old cards like the GTX 1060 3GB and GTX 1050 actually failed to run some of our tests, which skews their results a bit, even though they do better at 1080p medium.

Now let’s switch over to the ray tracing hierarchy.

Dying Light 2 settings and image quality comparisons

(Image credit: Techland)

Ray Tracing GPU Benchmarks Ranking 2024

Enabling ray tracing, particularly with demanding games like those we’re using in our DXR test suite, can cause framerates to drop off a cliff. We’re testing with “medium” and “ultra” ray tracing settings. Medium means using the medium graphics preset but turning on ray tracing effects (set to “medium” if that’s an option; otherwise, “on”), while ultra turns on all of the RT options at more or less maximum quality.

Because ray tracing is so much more demanding, we’re sorting these results by the 1080p medium scores. That’s also because the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 along with the Arc A380 basically can’t handle ray tracing even at these settings, and testing at anything more than 1080p medium would be fruitless.

The five ray tracing games we’re using are Bright Memory Infinite, Control Ultimate Edition, Cyberpunk 2077, Metro Exodus Enhanced, and Minecraft — all of these use the DirectX 12 / DX12 Ultimate API. The fps score is the geometric mean (equal weighting) of the five games, and the percentage is scaled relative to the fastest GPU in the list, which again is the GeForce RTX 4090.

If you want to see what the future may hold with ray tracing, check out our Alan Wake 2 benchmarks where the full path tracing barely manages playable performance even with upscaling on non-Nvidia GPUs.

GPU Ray Tracing Hierarchy, Key Takeaways

  • Nvidia absolutely dominates in ray tracing performance, with the RTX 4070 Super and above taking down AMD’s best AMD RX 7900 XTX, which sits at position 11. Intel’s Arc A770 lands at number 31.
  • DLSS 2 upscaling with quality mode is supported in most ray tracing games and can boost performance an additional 30~50 percent (depending on the game, resolution, and settings used). FSR 2 and XeSS support can provide a similar uplift, but FSR 2 is only in about a third as many games right now, and XeSS support is even less common.
  • You’ll need an RTX 4070 or RTX 3080 or faster GPU to handle 1080p with maxed out settings at 60 fps or more, which also means Performance mode upscaling can make 4K viable.
  • RTX 4080 again ranks as the most efficient GPU, followed by the rest of the 40-series cards. Even the RTX 3060, 3060 Ti, and 3070 rank ahead of AMD’s best, which is the RX 7900 XT. Intel’s Arc GPUs are still pretty far down the efficiency list, though in DXR they’re often better than AMD’s RX 6000-series parts.
  • The best overall ray tracing “value” in FPS per dollar (at 1080p ultra) goes to the Arc A580 again, followed by the RTX 4060, RTX 4070, Arc A750, and RTX 4060 Ti.
Graphics Card Lowest Price 1080p Medium 1080p Ultra 1440p Ultra 4K Ultra Specifications (Links to Review)
GeForce RTX 4090 $1849 100.0% (165.9fps) 100.0% (136.3fps) 100.0% (103.9fps) 100.0% (55.9fps) AD102, 16384 shaders, 2520MHz, 24GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 1008GB/s, 450W
GeForce RTX 4080 Super $999 86.8% (144.0fps) 85.3% (116.3fps) 75.6% (78.6fps) 70.5% (39.4fps) AD103, 10240 shaders, 2550MHz, 16GB GDDR6X@23Gbps, 736GB/s, 320W
GeForce RTX 4080 $1185 85.4% (141.6fps) 83.4% (113.6fps) 73.1% (76.0fps) 67.7% (37.8fps) AD103, 9728 shaders, 2505MHz, 16GB [email protected], 717GB/s, 320W
GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super $799 77.3% (128.2fps) 73.5% (100.3fps) 63.5% (66.0fps) 58.4% (32.6fps) AD103, 8448 shaders, 2610MHz, 16GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 672GB/s, 285W
GeForce RTX 3090 Ti $1739 71.9% (119.3fps) 68.4% (93.2fps) 59.6% (62.0fps) 56.9% (31.8fps) GA102, 10752 shaders, 1860MHz, 24GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 1008GB/s, 450W
GeForce RTX 4070 Ti $699 71.5% (118.6fps) 67.1% (91.6fps) 56.9% (59.1fps) 52.3% (29.2fps) AD104, 7680 shaders, 2610MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 504GB/s, 285W
GeForce RTX 4070 Super $589 68.1% (113.0fps) 62.7% (85.6fps) 52.4% (54.5fps) 47.8% (26.7fps) AD104, 7168 shaders, 2475MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 504GB/s, 220W
GeForce RTX 3090 $1279 67.7% (112.4fps) 63.5% (86.6fps) 55.1% (57.2fps) 51.8% (28.9fps) GA102, 10496 shaders, 1695MHz, 24GB [email protected], 936GB/s, 350W
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti $1089 66.5% (110.4fps) 62.2% (84.8fps) 53.2% (55.3fps) 48.6% (27.1fps) GA102, 10240 shaders, 1665MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@19Gbps, 912GB/s, 350W
Radeon RX 7900 XTX $909 66.1% (109.6fps) 61.7% (84.1fps) 53.2% (55.3fps) 48.6% (27.2fps) Navi 31, 6144 shaders, 2500MHz, 24GB GDDR6@20Gbps, 960GB/s, 355W
GeForce RTX 3080 12GB $999 64.9% (107.6fps) 59.9% (81.7fps) 50.8% (52.8fps) 46.3% (25.8fps) GA102, 8960 shaders, 1845MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@19Gbps, 912GB/s, 400W
GeForce RTX 4070 $539 61.2% (101.4fps) 54.2% (73.9fps) 45.1% (46.9fps) 40.7% (22.7fps) AD104, 5888 shaders, 2475MHz, 12GB GDDR6X@21Gbps, 504GB/s, 200W
Radeon RX 7900 XT $699 60.4% (100.3fps) 55.3% (75.3fps) 46.7% (48.5fps) 41.6% (23.3fps) Navi 31, 5376 shaders, 2400MHz, 20GB GDDR6@20Gbps, 800GB/s, 315W
GeForce RTX 3080 $879 60.2% (99.8fps) 54.5% (74.3fps) 46.1% (47.9fps) 41.8% (23.3fps) GA102, 8704 shaders, 1710MHz, 10GB GDDR6X@19Gbps, 760GB/s, 320W
Radeon RX 7900 GRE $549 52.9% (87.7fps) 46.8% (63.7fps) 39.6% (41.2fps) 35.7% (19.9fps) Navi 31, 5120 shaders, 2245MHz, 16GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 576GB/s, 260W
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti $599 50.6% (84.0fps) 43.0% (58.6fps) 35.7% (37.1fps)   GA104, 6144 shaders, 1770MHz, 8GB GDDR6X@19Gbps, 608GB/s, 290W
Radeon RX 6950 XT $579 48.3% (80.1fps) 41.4% (56.4fps) 34.3% (35.7fps) 31.0% (17.3fps) Navi 21, 5120 shaders, 2310MHz, 16GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 576GB/s, 335W
GeForce RTX 3070 $399 47.2% (78.2fps) 39.9% (54.4fps) 32.8% (34.1fps)   GA104, 5888 shaders, 1725MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 220W
Radeon RX 7800 XT $509 46.7% (77.5fps) 41.9% (57.1fps) 34.9% (36.3fps) 31.0% (17.3fps) Navi 32, 3840 shaders, 2430MHz, 16GB [email protected], 624GB/s, 263W
Radeon RX 6900 XT $779 45.4% (75.4fps) 38.3% (52.3fps) 32.1% (33.3fps) 28.8% (16.1fps) Navi 21, 5120 shaders, 2250MHz, 16GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 300W
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti $374 45.2% (75.1fps) 38.7% (52.8fps) 32.3% (33.5fps) 24.8% (13.9fps) AD106, 4352 shaders, 2535MHz, 8GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 288GB/s, 160W
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB $429 45.2% (75.0fps) 38.8% (53.0fps) 32.7% (34.0fps) 29.5% (16.5fps) AD106, 4352 shaders, 2535MHz, 16GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 288GB/s, 160W
Titan RTX   44.8% (74.4fps) 39.1% (53.3fps) 33.7% (35.0fps) 31.2% (17.4fps) TU102, 4608 shaders, 1770MHz, 24GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 672GB/s, 280W
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti   42.7% (70.9fps) 37.2% (50.7fps) 31.6% (32.9fps)   TU102, 4352 shaders, 1545MHz, 11GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 616GB/s, 250W
Radeon RX 6800 XT $459 42.2% (70.0fps) 35.6% (48.5fps) 29.9% (31.1fps) 26.8% (15.0fps) Navi 21, 4608 shaders, 2250MHz, 16GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 300W
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti $449 41.9% (69.5fps) 35.0% (47.7fps) 28.8% (30.0fps)   GA104, 4864 shaders, 1665MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 200W
Radeon RX 7700 XT $449 41.3% (68.4fps) 36.5% (49.7fps) 30.6% (31.8fps) 27.2% (15.2fps) Navi 32, 3456 shaders, 2544MHz, 12GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 432GB/s, 245W
Radeon RX 6800 $399 36.3% (60.1fps) 30.2% (41.2fps) 25.4% (26.3fps)   Navi 21, 3840 shaders, 2105MHz, 16GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 250W
GeForce RTX 2080 Super   35.8% (59.4fps) 30.8% (42.0fps) 26.1% (27.1fps)   TU104, 3072 shaders, 1815MHz, 8GB [email protected], 496GB/s, 250W
GeForce RTX 4060 $294 35.4% (58.8fps) 30.6% (41.7fps) 24.9% (25.8fps)   AD107, 3072 shaders, 2460MHz, 8GB GDDR6@17Gbps, 272GB/s, 115W
GeForce RTX 2080   34.4% (57.1fps) 29.1% (39.7fps) 24.6% (25.5fps)   TU104, 2944 shaders, 1710MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 215W
Intel Arc A770 8GB $343 32.7% (54.2fps) 28.4% (38.7fps) 24.0% (24.9fps)   ACM-G10, 4096 shaders, 2400MHz, 8GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 225W
Intel Arc A770 16GB $289 32.6% (54.1fps) 28.3% (38.6fps) 25.3% (26.2fps)   ACM-G10, 4096 shaders, 2400MHz, 16GB [email protected], 560GB/s, 225W
GeForce RTX 3060 $299 31.7% (52.5fps) 25.7% (35.1fps) 21.1% (22.0fps)   GA106, 3584 shaders, 1777MHz, 12GB GDDR6@15Gbps, 360GB/s, 170W
GeForce RTX 2070 Super   31.6% (52.4fps) 26.8% (36.6fps) 22.3% (23.1fps)   TU104, 2560 shaders, 1770MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 215W
Intel Arc A750 $239 30.7% (51.0fps) 26.8% (36.6fps) 22.6% (23.5fps)   ACM-G10, 3584 shaders, 2350MHz, 8GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 225W
Radeon RX 6750 XT $359 30.0% (49.8fps) 25.3% (34.5fps) 20.7% (21.5fps)   Navi 22, 2560 shaders, 2600MHz, 12GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 432GB/s, 250W
Radeon RX 6700 XT $339 28.1% (46.6fps) 23.7% (32.3fps) 19.1% (19.9fps)   Navi 22, 2560 shaders, 2581MHz, 12GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 384GB/s, 230W
GeForce RTX 2070   27.9% (46.3fps) 23.5% (32.1fps) 19.7% (20.4fps)   TU106, 2304 shaders, 1620MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 175W
Intel Arc A580 $169 27.5% (45.6fps) 24.0% (32.7fps) 20.3% (21.1fps)   ACM-G10, 3072 shaders, 2300MHz, 8GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 512GB/s, 185W
GeForce RTX 2060 Super   26.8% (44.5fps) 22.4% (30.5fps) 18.5% (19.3fps)   TU106, 2176 shaders, 1650MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 448GB/s, 175W
Radeon RX 7600 XT $319 26.6% (44.2fps) 22.6% (30.8fps) 18.3% (19.0fps) 16.0% (8.9fps) Navi 33, 2048 shaders, 2755MHz, 16GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 288GB/s, 190W
Radeon RX 6700 10GB $269 25.9% (42.9fps) 21.4% (29.2fps) 16.8% (17.5fps)   Navi 22, 2304 shaders, 2450MHz, 10GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 320GB/s, 175W
GeForce RTX 2060   23.2% (38.4fps) 18.6% (25.4fps)     TU106, 1920 shaders, 1680MHz, 6GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 336GB/s, 160W
Radeon RX 7600 $269 23.1% (38.3fps) 18.9% (25.7fps) 14.7% (15.2fps)   Navi 33, 2048 shaders, 2655MHz, 8GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 288GB/s, 165W
Radeon RX 6650 XT $229 22.7% (37.6fps) 18.8% (25.6fps)     Navi 23, 2048 shaders, 2635MHz, 8GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 280GB/s, 180W
GeForce RTX 3050 $224 22.3% (36.9fps) 18.0% (24.6fps)     GA106, 2560 shaders, 1777MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 224GB/s, 130W
Radeon RX 6600 XT $399 22.1% (36.7fps) 18.2% (24.8fps)     Navi 23, 2048 shaders, 2589MHz, 8GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 256GB/s, 160W
Radeon RX 6600 $199 18.6% (30.8fps) 15.2% (20.7fps)     Navi 23, 1792 shaders, 2491MHz, 8GB GDDR6@14Gbps, 224GB/s, 132W
Intel Arc A380 $119 11.0% (18.3fps)       ACM-G11, 1024 shaders, 2450MHz, 6GB [email protected], 186GB/s, 75W
Radeon RX 6500 XT $159 5.9% (9.9fps)       Navi 24, 1024 shaders, 2815MHz, 4GB GDDR6@18Gbps, 144GB/s, 107W
Radeon RX 6400 $124 5.0% (8.3fps)       Navi 24, 768 shaders, 2321MHz, 4GB GDDR6@16Gbps, 128GB/s, 53W

If you felt the RTX 4090 performance was impressive at 4K in our standard test suite, just take a look at the results with ray tracing. Nvidia put even more ray tracing enhancements into the Ada Lovelace architecture, and those start to show up here. There are still further potential performance improvements for ray tracing with SER, OMM, and DMM — not to mention DLSS 3, though that ends up being a bit of a mixed bag, since the generated frames don’t include new user input and add latency.

If you want a real kick in the pants, we also ran many of the faster ray tracing GPUs through Cyberpunk 2077‘s RT Overdrive mode, which implements full “path tracing” (full ray tracing, without any rasterization) — as well as Alan Wake 2, which also uses path tracing at higher settings. That provides a glimpse of how future games could behave, and why upscaling and AI techniques like frame generation are here to stay.

Even at 1080p medium, a relatively tame setting for DXR (DirectX Raytracing), the RTX 4090 roars past all contenders and leads the previous generation RTX 3090 Ti by 41%. At 1080p ultra, the lead grows to 53%, and it’s nearly 64% at 1440p. Nvidia made claims before the RTX 4090 launch that it was “2x to 4x faster than the RTX 3090 Ti” — factoring in DLSS 3’s Frame Generation technology — but even without DLSS 3, the 4090 is 72% faster than the 3090 Ti at 4K.

AMD continues to relegate DXR and ray tracing to secondary status, focusing more on improving rasterization performance — and on reducing manufacturing costs through the use of chiplets on the new RDNA 3 GPUs. As such, the ray tracing performance from AMD isn’t particularly impressive. The top RX 7900 XTX basically matches Nvidia’s previous generation RTX 3080 12GB, which puts it barely ahead of the RTX 4070 — and that’s not even in all DXR games. There are some minor improvements for RT performance in RDNA 3, though, as the 7800 XT for example ends up basically tied with the RX 6800 XT in rasterization performance but is 10% faster in DXR performance.

Intel’s Arc A7-series parts show a decent blend of performance in general, with the A750 coming in ahead of the RTX 3060 overall. With the latest drivers (and with vsync forced off in the options.txt file), Minecraft performance also looks much more in line with the other Arc DXR results.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

You can also see what DLSS Quality mode did for performance in DXR games on the RTX 4090 in our review, but the short summary is that it boosted performance by 78% at 4K ultra. DLSS 3 frame generation improved framerates another 30% to 100% in our preview testing, though we recommend exercising caution when looking at FPS with the feature enabled. It can dramatically boost framerates in benchmarks, but when actually playing games it often doesn’t feel much faster than without the feature. Overall, with DLSS 2, the 4090 in our ray tracing test suite is nearly four times as fast as AMD’s RX 7900 XTX. Ouch.

AMD’s FSR 2 and FSR 3 can help as well, and AMD continues to work on increasing the rate of adoption, but it still trails DLSS both in the number of games supported and in the overall image quality. Only two of the games in our DXR suite have FSR2 support. By comparison, all of the DXR games we’re testing support DLSS2 — and one also supports DLSS3.

Without FSR2, AMD’s fastest GPUs can only clear 60 fps at 1080p ultra, while remaining decently playable at 1440p with 40–50 fps on average. But native 4K DXR remains out of reach for just about every GPU, with only the 3090 Ti and above breaking the 30 fps mark on the composite score — and a couple of games still come up short on the 3090 Ti.

AMD also has FSR 3 frame generation. Like DLSS3, it adds latency, and AMD requires the integration of Anti-Lag+ support in games that use FSR 3. But Anti-Lag+ only works with AMD GPUs, which means non-AMD cards will likely incur a larger latency penalty. We’ve tested it in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and found it worked pretty well, but that was not the case in Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum.

The midrange GPUs like the RTX 3070 and RX 6700 XT basically manage 1080p ultra and not much more, while the bottom tier of DXR-capable GPUs barely manage 1080p medium — and the RX 6500 XT can’t even do that, with single digit framerates in most of our test suite, and one game that wouldn’t even work at our chosen “medium” settings. (Control requires at least 6GB VRAM to let you enable ray tracing.)

Intel’s Arc A380 ends up just ahead of the RX 6500 XT in ray tracing performance, which is interesting considering it only has 8 RTUs going up against AMD’s 16 Ray Accelerators. Intel posted a deep dive into its ray tracing hardware, and Arc seems reasonably impressive, except for the fact that the number of RTUs severely limits performance. The top-end A770 still only has 32 RTUs, which proves sufficient for it to pull ahead (barely) of the RTX 3060 in DXR testing, but it can’t go much further than that. Arc A750 and above also ends up ahead of AMD’s RX 6750 XT in DXR performance, showing just how poor AMD’s RDNA 2 hardware is when it comes to ray tracing.

It’s also interesting to look at the generational performance of Nvidia’s RTX cards. The slowest 20-series GPU, the RTX 2060, still outperforms the newer RTX 3050 by a bit, but the fastest RTX 2080 Ti comes in a bit behind the RTX 3070. Where the 2080 Ti basically doubled the performance of the 2060, the 3090 delivers about triple the performance of the 3050.

GPU Testbed

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Test System and How We Test for GPU Benchmarks

We’ve used two different PCs for our testing. The latest 2022–2024 configuration uses an Alder Lake CPU and platform, while our previous testbed uses Coffee Lake and Z390. Here are the details of the two PCs.

Tom’s Hardware 2022–2024 GPU Testbed

Intel Core i9-12900K
MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4
Corsair 2x16GB DDR4-3600 CL16
Crucial P5 Plus 2TB
Cooler Master MWE 1250 V2 Gold
Cooler Master PL360 Flux
Cooler Master HAF500
Windows 11 Pro 64-bit

Tom’s Hardware 2020–2021 GPU Testbed

Intel Core i9-9900K
Corsair H150i Pro RGB
MSI MEG Z390 Ace
Corsair 2x16GB DDR4-3200
XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB
Windows 10 Pro (21H1)

For each graphics card, we follow the same testing procedure. We run one pass of each benchmark to “warm up” the GPU after launching the game, then run at least two passes at each setting/resolution combination. If the two runs are basically identical (within 0.5% or less difference), we use the faster of the two runs. If there’s more than a small difference, we run the test at least twice more to determine what “normal” performance is supposed to be.

We also look at all the data and check for anomalies, so for example RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti all generally going to perform within a narrow range — 3070 Ti is about 5% faster than 3070, which is about 5% faster than 3060 Ti. If we see games where there are clear outliers (i.e. performance is more than 10% higher for the cards just mentioned), we’ll go back and retest whatever cards are showing the anomaly and figure out what the “correct” result would be.

Due to the length of time required for testing each GPU, updated drivers and game patches inevitably will come out that can impact performance. We periodically retest a few sample cards to verify our results are still valid, and if not, we go through and retest the affected game(s) and GPU(s). We may also add games to our test suite over the coming year, if one comes out that is popular and conducive to testing — see our what makes a good game benchmark for our selection criteria.

GPU Benchmarks: Individual Game Charts

The above tables provide a summary of performance, but for those that want to see the individual game charts, for both the standard and ray tracing test suites, we’ve got those as well. We’re only including more recent GPUs in these charts, as otherwise things get very messy. These are also using our new test PC, which changes the performance slightly from the above table, simply because our newest tests are more relevant (but haven’t been run on a lot of the older GPUs shown in the tables).

These charts are up to date as of February 13, 2024.

GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy — 1080p Medium

GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy — 1080p Ultra

GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy — 1440p Ultra

GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy — 4K Ultra

Power, Clocks, and Temperatures

While our GPU benchmarks hierarchy sorts things solely by performance, for those interested in power and other aspects of the GPUs, here are the appropriate charts.

If you’re looking for the legacy GPU hierarchy, head over to page two! We moved it to a separate page to help improve load times in our CMS as well as for the main website. And if you’re looking to comment on the GPU benchmarks hierarchy, head over to our forums and join the discussion!

Choosing a Graphics Card

Which graphics card do you need? To help you decide, we created this GPU benchmarks hierarchy consisting of dozens of GPUs from the past four generations of hardware. Not surprisingly, the fastest cards are from the latest Nvidia Ada Lovelace and AMD RDNA 3 architectures. AMD’s graphics cards perform well without ray tracing, but tend to fall behind once RT gets enabled — even more so if you enable DLSS, which you probably should, though FSR2 is a reasonable alternative. GPU prices are finally hitting reasonable levels, however, making it a better time to upgrade.

Of course it’s not just about playing games. Many applications use the GPU for other work, and we cover professional GPU benchmarks in our full GPU reviews. But a good graphics card for gaming will typically do equally well in complex GPU computational workloads. Buy one of the top cards and you can run games at high resolutions and frame rates with the effects turned all the way up, and you’ll be able to do content creation work as needed. Drop down to the middle and lower portions of the list and you’ll need to start dialing down the settings to get acceptable performance in regular game play and GPU benchmarks.

If your main goal is gaming, you can’t forget about the CPU. Getting the best possible gaming GPU won’t help you much if your CPU is underpowered and/or out of date. So be sure to check out the Best CPUs for gaming page, as well as our CPU Benchmarks Hierarchy to make sure you have the right CPU for the level of gaming you’re looking to achieve.





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