We have conducted a lot of tests on graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia. As a result, we have compiled an objective rating of our graphics card hierarchy. The ranking includes current and previous generation graphics cards. They are ranked by performance, including the most powerful products.
A video card plays a big role in computer performance. It affects the speed of video editing and content creation. In some areas of activity, processors take a back seat to the computer's performance.
Contents:
- Features of the tests
- GPU performance rating 2022
- Ranking of GPUs for ray tracing in 2022
- GPU performance rating for 2020-2021
- Choosing a video card
- Testing system
- Where to buy the best video card of 2022
Features of the tests
We have made a significant upgrade to the test bench to run the test based on 2022 components. Some graphics cards were tested again. Our ranking includes GPUs with ray tracing, so we considered such products:
- AMD RX 6000 series;
- Nvidia RTX;
- Intel Arc.
The results exclude XeSS, DLSS, DLSS.
Recently, Nvidia has offered consumers a new product, the GeForce RTX 4090, which has started to take first place in various GPU tests. This video card is characterized by high speed, so you can see all the advantages of 4K computer games with it. The company then offered the GeForce RTX 4080 with a similar Ada Lovelace architecture, but it uses fewer shaders.
On the other side of the price range are graphics processors from Intel: Arc A750 and A770. These devices are not the fastest graphics cards, but they are much cheaper than competitors from the Nvidia organization. They resemble AMD analogs. Speaking of AMD, the company has offered the public certification for its RX 7900 XTX/XT products and information about the RDNA 3 architecture. These cards are expected to be released in the near future.
Our rankings are based on GPU gaming texts at 1080p for the mid-range DXR set and 1080p ultra for the mainstream set. It does not take into account a number of other factors, such as functionality, overall efficiency, power consumption of the video card, and cost. The Core i9-12900K processor of the Alder Lake generation is used in the test bench. You can find the tables and benchmarks below.
GPU performance rating 2022
The benchmarks test all GPUs in medium and ultra-high 1080p resolution. For some situations, it makes sense to test in 1440p Ultra and 4K Ultra formats. The results are scaled to the best 1080p ultra card. In our rating, this is the RTX 4090, at least in 1440p and 4K formats.
The pictures above offer a summary chart where you can see the relative performance of video cards tested on stands with several previous generations of components at 1080p Ultra. The 8 most popular games were used to compile the standard GPU rating. FPS values are the average of these tests. Below is a table with the results.
The RTX 4090 is the clear leader and ranks 1st in 1080p Ultra. The card also demonstrates impressive 1440p and 4K values. The obtained values were 6% higher than the nearest RX 6950 XT graphics card in 1080p Ultra resolution. This advantage increases to 21% at 1440p and 63% at 4K.
If we compare it to the RTX 3090 Ti, we also see a serious advantage: the card is 10% faster in 1080p, 23% faster in 1440p, and 51% faster in 4K. It is important to remember that the average FPS is more important than the minimum and maximum frame rates.
It is also worth remembering that these tests do not take into account ray tracing. Only RTX graphics cards support DLSS, so this would significantly reduce the number of products in the tests.
The RTX 4090 is more expensive, although it is not much worse than the previous generation RTX 3090. Even earlier, it was believed that the 3090 had slight improvements over the 3080. Now Nvidia offers the 4090 card, which has surpassed all competitors in the following indicators:
- maximum capacity;
- clock frequency;
- number of cores.
It is not yet known what the rest of the RTX 40 series graphics cards will be like. AMD has not yet released RDNA 3 and RX 7000 GPUs. It is likely that AMD will offer competitive performance at a lower price than the 4090.
If you look at the previous generation of graphics cards, the GTX 16 and RTX 20 series chips are scattered in the ranking along with the RX 5000 series. Here we can mention the rule that the user gets 1 or 2 updates of the model with the latest architecture. For example, the RX 5700 XT is a few percent behind the RX 6600 XT, and the RTX 2080 Super is slightly lower than the RTX 3060 Ti.
If you go back far enough, you can see that in modern games, poor results are observed in cards with no more than 4 GB of video memory. Such parameters have already become irrelevant in games, and now the minimum value for such tasks is 6 GB or even more.
Ranking of GPUs for ray tracing in 2022
If you activate ray tracing in resource-hungry games, it leads to a significant reduction in frame rate. Tests were conducted with Ultra and Medium ray tracing settings. Ultra includes all RT settings with maximum quality. For medium, it is enough to set this value in the settings. If it is not available, it is enough to activate the "on" option.
Ray tracing requires more resources, so the results in the rating are based on 1080p. It is worth noting that Arc A380, 6400 and RX 6500 XT cannot process ray tracing, so it makes no sense for them to run tests with a resolution higher than 1080p.
Games with DirectX 12/DX12 Ultimate API were used for the tests. FPS values are an average. In our list, the values are scaled from the results of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti card.
Below is a table with the GPU ray tracing benchmarks rating.
If you thought the RTX 4090 was impressive in 4K, take a look at the ray tracing benchmarks. Nvidia offers improved ray tracing for the Ada Lovelace architecture. This is evident in the tests we conducted, with improvements visible in DMM, OMM, SER, and DLSS3.
Even at an average resolution of 1080p and manual DirectX Raytracing settings, the RTX 4090 card outperforms its competitors and outperforms the RTX 3090 Ti by 40%. In 1440p, the level of advantage is 70%, in 1080p Ultra - 56%. Before the launch of the RTX 4090 graphics card, Nvidia claimed that it would be 2-4 times faster than the previous generation RTX 3090 Ti. In practice, even without DLSS 3 technology, the 4090 card is 80% faster than the 3090 Ti.
The 3090 Ti outperformed the AMD RX 6950 XT card with the best performance. Although the RX 6950 XT chip is slightly better than the RTX 3080 10 GB. Therefore, the advantage of the RTX 4090 over its closest competitors is large, for example, almost twice that of the 6950 XT. At 1440p, this leadership increases to 2.68x, and at 4K - 3 times.
The introduction of DLSS technology has had a significant impact on DXR gaming performance on the 4090 card. This device was able to increase 4K Ultra performance by 78%. Using DLSS 3 technology can increase the frame rate by 30-100% in preliminary testing. It turns out that DLSS Nvidia RTX 4090 is more than 5 times faster than the competitor RX 6950 XT.
AMD FSR 2.0 will come to the rescue of graphics cards. Currently, the fastest AMD graphics cards have a hard time handling 1440p resolution at 30fps. The 4090 card is capable of processing 4K video in all existing games at speeds over 30 fps.
Mid-range graphics cards, such as the RX 6700 XT and RTX 3070, are generally good at 1080p Ultra graphics. For DXR-enabled GPUs, this value is average at 1080p, and the RX 6500 XT is not able to solve the problem even at single-digit frame rates. To manage ray tracing, the graphics card must have at least 6 GB of memory.
The Intel Arc A380 card outperforms the RX 6500 XT in ray tracing performance. It is important that it has 8 RTUs, as opposed to 16 ray accelerators on the AMD card. Intel has revealed all the features of the proposed ray tracing hardware. Arc is now showing impressive results, except that the RTU in the A380 card significantly limits performance.
The top-of-the-line A770 graphics editor has 32 RTUs, which is enough to outperform the RTX 3060 in DXR tests, but there is no room for improvement beyond that. The Arc A770 card is better than the RX 6800 in terms of DXR performance. This demonstrates all the shortcomings of AMD RDNA2.
Users will be interested to see the performance of Nvidia RTX cards. The slowest chip is the 2060, which is slightly better than the 3050. The fastest chip, the RTX 2080 Ti, is only slightly behind the RTX 3070. We hope that the upcoming RTX 4050 will be much cheaper than the 4090, but will include all its advantages.
GPU performance rating for 2020-2021
Below are the results of the video card tests. For this purpose, 9 popular games and 6 combinations of resolution settings were used. All the scores were combined into a single result that shows information about the speed of the graphics editor. Limitations for processors begin to appear at an average resolution of 1080p, and video memory limitations affect performance at 4K Ultra.
Choosing a video card
If the user is unable to choose a suitable video card, it is worth considering the tests of these products. Our rating includes several dozen cards of the latest generations. It is worth noting that the fastest graphics cards are based on AMD's Big Navi or Nvidia's Ampere architecture. AMD cards function perfectly without ray tracing. Their disadvantage is that they lag behind in terms of performance after disabling RT if DLSS is activated. At the moment, the cost of graphics cards has reached a reasonable level. Therefore, users can take advantage of the situation and upgrade their components.
Not only computer games, but also many programs use a video card to perform various tasks. A good video chip in games often shows excellent results when working with complex calculations. A user can buy one top-of-the-line graphics card to run games in excellent resolution and higher FPS. At the same time, it will be possible to create content quickly and efficiently. For this purpose, it is worth choosing a device that shows acceptable performance in various fields of activity.
We are not talking about high-performance graphics cards. For example, in the tests, it was noticed that the Intel Xe Graphics DG1 competes only with integrated cards, so no attempts were made to run it with settings higher than average 1080p. Such products are at the bottom of the 2020-2021 device list. Fortunately, Arc Alchemist or DG2 is made of a different stuffing.
If gaming is your main goal, you should pay attention to the processor. Buying a new graphics card will not solve all performance issues if the system uses an outdated or underpowered processor. Therefore, you should additionally pay attention to choosing the right processor that will meet the required level of gaming.
Testing system
Two different personal computers were used for the tests. For the 2022 rating, the Alder Lake generation processor was used. For previous generations, a bench based on the Z390 motherboard and Coffee Lake processor was used.
Each card underwent the same testing procedure. For each test, several runs were made, and only the best result with a difference of 0.5% was recorded in the table. If the difference was significant, repeated tests were performed to determine normal performance.
During the tests, work was done to identify anomalies in RTX 30 series. There are still games with significant deviations. Here, too, repeated tests were conducted to determine the correct result.
Testing takes a long time, so new drivers that affect performance may appear during this time. Periodically, we conducted additional tests to make sure they were up to date.
Where to buy the best video card of 2022
Despite the fact that video cards have become cheaper, they still remain one of the most expensive components in a PC. Therefore, when choosing them, you should contact a reliable company that provides a warranty. The Artline online store will be the best option when buying a video card for gaming. In the company's catalog, users can find RTX 4090 and other top cards at a market price.