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Our GPU benchmarks performance hierarchy ranks all the current and previous generation graphics cards, including all of the best graphics cards, in terms of performance. Whether it's playing games or doing high-end creative work like 4K video editing, your graphics card typically plays the biggest role in determining performance, and even the best gaming CPUs take a second role.

Note that the table below is based solely on the scores from performance-based GPU benchmarks. We have a separate article that lists the best graphics cards, based on all factors, including price, graphics card power consumption and overall efficiency. If you're shopping around and want to know whether an AMD RX 5600 XT is faster than an Nvidia GTX 1660 Super, and by how much, you've come to the right place.

To help you decide which graphics card you need, we've created this GPU hierarchy consisting of dozens of GPU benchmarks in the table below. Everything is ranked from fastest to slowest, using the results from our test suite consisting of nine games for our GPU benchmarks, running at 'medium' and 'ultra' settings with resolutions of 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. For comparison purposes, the fastest card, based on the combination of all nine GPU benchmarks, three resolutions, and two settings, gets normalized to 100 percent, and all others are graded relative to it.

The arrival of Nvidia's Ampere architecture, along with the GeForce RTX 3090 and GeForce RTX 3080, has pushed everything down a couple of rungs. However, we're not done with the new GPUs yet. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070 arrives in October, and AMD's Big Navi will be revealed on October 28, with cards likely following soon after. Those will further change the GPU benchmarks landscape.

Of course it's not just about playing games. Many applications use the GPU for other work, and we've covered some of the GPU benchmarks in our RTX 3090 review. 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'd be able to play 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 equally well. 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. And integrated graphics ... well, we tested that as well, and the results aren't pretty. (See the very bottom of the list for those entries.)

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GPU Benchmarks: Which Cards Ranked Highest?

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 takes top honors for raw performance, with a score of 152.5 fps across all 54 tests. That's the 100% mark, though it's worth noting that it also scored 98.8 fps at 4K ultra. It's also a $1,500 graphics card, which is out of reach of most gamers.

Nearly as potent as the 3090 is the GeForce RTX 3080, nominally priced at $700 (if you can find one in stock). It's about 10% slower than the 3090 at less than half the price. It also makes all of Nvidia's previous generation GPUs suddenly look a bit weak.

If we include the Titan RTX, Nvidia now owns the top nine positions on the hierarchy, with AMD's best result being the Radeon VII in 10th place. The thing is, AMD's RX 5700 XT is nearly as fast for less money, and the real competition from AMD will come in the form of Big Navi, which is slated to launch in late October or early November. The scuttlebutt right now is that the future RX 6900 XT might be able to match the RTX 3080, but we'll have to wait for the cards to launch before we can confirm that.

The Nvidia Ampere architecture and AMD Big Navi should also bring about feature parity, in that AMD will finally support ray tracing. It's not entirely clear how AMD's ray tracing performance will compare to Nvidia's RT cores, though. Based on some of what we've seen from the Xbox Series X console, AMD may just be using shader calculations with a bit of extra hardware to do the BVH traversal that Nvidia's RTX cards do in RT cores. It's definitely something to keep an eye on in the coming days.

Nvidia's upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

If you're in the market for a new sub-$500 graphics card right now, honestly, just wait. Wait a month or two and find out how the RTX 3070 and RX 6000 cards compare to the other GPUs. More importantly, find out how much they'll cost. Right now, the performance gap between RTX 3080 and the next closest GPU is quite large, and we expect the new GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia to propagate down the list and shake things up.

Consider the current $400-$500 leaders, the RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 from AMD, and the RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super from Nvidia. They're fine cards, and were even great options to purchase last year. But in one month, we expect a $500 card that will offer roughly RTX 2080 Ti levels of performance. Sure, that's about $100 more than the 2060 Super and 5700 XT ... but it's also 30-50% higher performance. And we'll probably see RTX 3060 and maybe RTX 3060 Ti before the end of the year, along with RX 6800 and RX 6700 cards — all very likely priced in the $300-$500 range.

Again, then: WAIT! Don't buy an expensive new GPU today only to see it eclipsed by the next generation hardware in a few weeks. If you can't wait, our advice is to just try and find any old GPU that still works to hold you over. Even a budget card will suffice, and at least those aren't likely to be completely obliterated before 2021 rolls in.

MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Super (Image credit: Future)

That brings us to the bottom third of the list, the home of true budget GPUs like the GTX 1650 Super, RX 5500 XT, and more. These cards give up a lot of performance in order to keep pricing down, and there are older generation GPUs that can perform just as well (or better) if you shop around. Brand new RX 570 cards are still hanging around in the $120-$130 range, and if you're willing to take a chance on a used card from eBay, you can find a GTX 1070 or RX 590 for around $200.

Sticking with recent new GPUs, though, the GTX 1660 Super, 1650 Super, and RX 5600 XT are the best options for $250 or less. And again, the higher you go on price, the more likely you are to see new GPUs arrive before the end of the year that make current cards look anemic.

We don't recommend going below the GTX 1650 Super, though if you already have such a card you don't have to upgrade. There are tons of light and indie games that will run just fine on ... well, practically anything! Even Intel's integrated graphics solutions are often sufficient, particularly more recent variants like UHD 630 and Iris Plus. But there's still a better option if you're on an extreme budget.

AMD Ryzen 5 3400G in socket AM4 motherboard (Image credit: Future)

If you're looking at something like an RX 550 or GT 1030, you should consider AMD's integrated graphics on its Ryzen APUs as a viable alternative. If you have an older PC and are looking at adding a GPU, a motherboard and CPU upgrade might end up being a better option. Or not, as even a basic motherboard, CPU, and RAM can set you back $200 or more.

We're interested in seeing what happens with the next generation of integrated graphics as well. Tiger Lake just launched for laptops, potentially doubling the performance of Ice Lake graphics and maybe even taking the lead for iGPU performance from AMD. AMD also has Zen 3 and potentially updated Zen 2 APUs with faster graphics coming as well.

Okay, maybe buying a basic GPU isn't a bad idea rather than dealing with a full motherboard and CPU upgrade (depending on what sort of CPU you're rocking). Provided you can provide at least a 6-pin PEG power connector, though, we recommend going for at least something at the RX 570 level or above rather than picking up a lesser graphics card.

Also worth noting is that the scoring assigned to each GPU uses all six test resolutions and settings, except on integrated graphics where we scale the result — because, come on, no one is going to try and run Borderlands 3 at 4K on an iGPU. (It will probably just crash.) If you want to check performance at just 1080p medium, or one of the other options, you can see the ranking order for the main GPUs in the charts below.

Test System for GPU Benchmarks

Our overall GPU benchmarks scores are based on the geometric mean frames per second (fps) of our testing of Borderlands 3, The Division 2, Far Cry 5, Final Fantasy XIV, Forza Horizon 4, Metro Exodus, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Strange Brigade. If you want to do your own GPU benchmarking, see our complete list of the best GPU tests , which includes a lot more games and synthetic tests as well.

That's nine games, six settings and over 40 cards from the current and previous generations. We have a solid mix of game genres and APIs, plus AMD and Nvidia promoted titles, making this the definitive GPU benchmarks and performance hierarchy for gaming purposes. The new mix of games and settings make for much larger differences between some of the GPUs, where previously the CPU and lower settings made things look much closer.

Note that while some of the games in our GPU benchmark suite support DirectX Raytracing (DXR) and Nvidia's RTX 30-series and 20-series GPUs, we have not tested with DXR enabled here. That's because none of AMD's current cards can run DXR, and while Nvidia does support DXR on certain GTX models, ray tracing performance on Pascal cards isn't great. For now, only Nvidia RTX GPUs are worth using for ray tracing games; we may begin with universal ray tracing performance comparisons once AMD's Big Navi arrives later this year.

GPU Benchmarks and Performance Hierarchy Charts

Here you can see the average performance charts for our testing at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K (medium and ultra on all three). If you want to see the full suite of individual game tests, check out the charts in our Best Graphics Cards article. We've focused on the 'executive summary' and have omitted individual game charts as well as a few GPUs that don't fully qualify. We've left off the integrated graphics solutions as well as the Titan V/Xp/X (Maxwell), giving us 42 GPUs in the charts, color coded for your viewing pleasure.

Yes, we know the labels on the charts are tiny. We've also included links to the fullsize (1920x1080) images below each chart for those on smaller devices that want to be able to read them.

Again, our GPU benchmarks scoring uses the geometric mean of all 54 scores (nine games, three resolutions, two settings). The geomean is a slightly 'better' weighting than a pure average, though it doesn't massively change the results. Either way, including all 54 scores means the fastest cards are somewhat penalized because they run into CPU limitations at 1080p and even 1440p, and the slower GPUs can also end up penalized because they were never intended to run games at 1440p or 4K.

If you intend to play at 1440p or 4K, the charts below can help you focus in on just those results. For example, the RTX 3080 overall scored 20.8% higher than the RTX 2080 Ti, but if you only look at 4K ultra performance, it's 33.5% faster.

Legacy GPU Hierarchy

Below is our legacy desktop GPU hierarchy with historical comparisons dating back to the 1990s. We have not tested most of these cards in many years, driver support has ended on many of the models, and the relative rankings are relatively coarse. We group cards into performance tiers, pairing disparate generations where overlap occurs.

Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTX Titan X (Maxwell) R9 295X2 GTX 1070 Ti GTX 1070 RX Vega 56 GTX 980 Ti R9 Fury X Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTX Titan Black GTX 980 R9 Fury GTX 690 R9 Fury Nano Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTX 1060 6GB RX 580 8GB RX 480 8GB GTX Titan RX 570 4G GTX 1060 3GB RX 470 4GB R9 390X GTX 970 R9 390 GTX 780 Ti R9 290X GTX 780 R9 290 HD 7990 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon R9 380X GTX 770 R9 380 GTX 680 R9 280X GTX 590 HD 7970 GHz Edition HD 6990 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTX 1050 Ti R9 285 GTX 960 R9 280 GTX 670 HD 7950 GTX 580 HD 7870 LE (XT) HD 5970 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTX 1050 RX 560 4G GTX 950 RX 460 GTX 760 R7 370 GTX 660 Ti R9 270X R9 270 HD 7870 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTX 660 R7 265 GTX 570 HD 7850 GTX 480 HD 6970 GTX 295 HD 4870 X2 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTX 750 Ti GTX 650 Ti Boost R7 260X GTX 560 Ti (448 Core) HD 6950 GTX 560 Ti HD 5870 GTX 470 HD 4850 X2 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTX 750 HD 7790 GTX 650 Ti HD 6870 GTX 560 HD 5850 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 1030 ( On -) RX 550 GTX 465 R7 360 GTX 460 (256-bit) R7 260 GTX 285 HD 7770 9800 GX2 HD 6850 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 740 GDDR5 R7 250E GT 650 R7 250 (GDDR5) GTX 560 SE HD 7750 (GDDR5) GTX 550 Ti HD 6790 GTX 460 SE HD 6770 GTX 460 (192-bit) HD 5830 GTX 280 HD 5770 GTX 275 HD 4890 GTX 260 HD 4870 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GTS 450 R7 250 (DDR3) GTS 250 HD 7750 (DDR3) 9800 GTX+ HD 6750 9800 GTX HD 5750 8800 Ultra HD 4850 HD 3870 X2 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 730 (64-bit, GDDR5) GT 545 (GDDR5) HD 4770 8800 GTS (512MB) 8800 GTX Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 740 DDR3 HD 7730 (GDDR5) GT 640 (DDR3) HD 6670 (GDDR5) GT 545 (DDR3) HD 5670 9800 GT HD 4830 8800 GT (512MB) Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 240 (GDDR5) HD 6570 (GDDR5) 9600 GT HD 5570 (GDDR5) 8800 GTS (640MB) HD 3870 HD 2900 XT Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon R7 240 GT 240 (DDR3) HD 7730 (DDR3) 9600 GSO HD 6670 (DDR3) 8800 GS HD 6570 (DDR3) HD 5570 (DDR3) HD 4670 HD 3850 (512MB) Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 730 (128-bit, GDDR5) GT 630 (GDDR5) HD 5550 (GDDR5) GT 440 (GDDR5) HD 3850 (256MB) 8800 GTS (320MB) HD 2900 Pro 8800 GT (256MB) Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 730 (128-bit, DDR3) HD 7660D (integrated) GT 630 (DDR3) HD 5550 (DDR3) GT 440 (DDR3) HD 4650 (DDR3) 7950 GX2 X1950 XTX Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 530 GT 430 7900 GTX X1900 XTX 7900 GTO X1950 XT 7800 GTX 512 X1900 XT Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon HD 7560D (integrated) GT 220 (DDR3) HD 5550 (DDR2) 7950 G HD 2900 GT 7900 GT X1950 Pro 7800 GTX X1900 GT X1900 AIW X1800 XT Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon HD 7540D (integrated) GT 220 (DDR2) HD 6550D (integrated) 9500 GT (GDDR3) HD 6620G (integrated) 8600 GTS R5 230 7900 GS HD 6450 7800 GT HD 4650 (DDR2) X1950 GT X1800 XL Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon 7480D (integrated) 6530D (integrated) 9500 GT (DDR2) 6520G (integrated) 8600 GT (GDDR3) HD 3670 8600 GS HD 3650 (DDR3) 7800 GS HD 2600 XT 7600 GT X1800 GTO 6800 Ultra X1650 XT X850 XT PE X800 XT PE X850 XT X800 XT Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon GT 520 6480G (integrated) 8600 GT (DDR2) 6410D (integrated) 6800 GS (PCIe) HD 3650 (DDR2) 6800 GT HD 2600 Pro X800 GTO2/GTO16 X800 XL Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon 6380G (integrated) 6370D (integrated) 6800 GS (AGP) X1650 GT X850 Pro X800 Pro X800 GTO (256MB) Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon 8600M GS X1650 Pro 7600 GS X1600 XT 7300 GT (GDDR3) X800 GTO (128MB) 6800 X800 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon HD 6320 (integrated) HD 6310 (integrated) HD 5450 9400 GT HD 4550 8500 GT HD 4350 7300 GT (DDR2) HD 2400 XT 6800 XT X1600 Pro 6800LE X1300 XT 6600 GT X800 SE X800 GT X700 Pro 9800 XT Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon HD 6290 (integrated) HD 6250 (integrated) 9400 (integrated) HD 4290 (integrated) 9300 (integrated) HD 4250 (integrated) 6600 (128-bit) HD 4200 (integrated) FX 5950 Ultra HD 3300 (integrated) FX 5900 Ultra HD 3200 (integrated) FX 5900 HD 2400 Pro X1550 X1300 Pro X700 9800 Pro 9800 9700 Pro 9700 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon X1050 (128-bit) FX 5900 XT X600 XT FX 5800 Ultra 9800 Pro (128-bit) 9600 XT 9500 Pro Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon G 310 G 210 8400 G Xpress 1250 (integrated) 8300 HD 2300 6200 X600 Pro FX 5700 Ultra 9800 LE 4 Ti 4800 9600 Pro 4 Ti 4600 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon 9300M GS 9300M G 8400M GS X1050 (64-bit) 7300 GS X300 FX 5700, 6600 (64-bit) 9600 FX 5600 Ultra 9550 4 Ti4800 SE 9500 4 Ti4400 4 Ti4200 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon 8300 (integrated) 8200 (integrated) 7300 LE X1150 7200 GS X300 SE 6600 LE 9600 LE 6200 TC 9100 FX 5700 LE 8500 FX 5600 FX 5200 Ultra 3 Ti500 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon FX 5500 9250 FX 5200 (128-bit) 9200 3 Ti200 9000 3 Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon FX 7050 (integrated) Xpress 1150 (integrated) FX 7025 (integrated) Xpress 1000 (integrated) FX 6150 (integrated) Xpress 200M (integrated) FX 6100 (integrated) 9200 SE FX 5200 (64-bit) Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon 2 Ti 200 2 Ti 7500 2 Ultra 4 MX 440 2 GTS Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon 2 MX 400 7200 4 MX 420 7000 2 MX 200 DDR 256 LE SDR Nvidia GeForce AMD Radeon Nvidia TNT Rage 128

For even more information, check out our Graphics Card Buyer's Guide.

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