PC gamers will go on at length about the perennial Nvidia vs AMD rivalry, much like how console gamers have an ongoing Xbox One X and PS4 Pro feud. And, even if you’ve never heard about it before, the sheer amount of competition and innovation that’s resulted from this battle is nothing short of amazing.

If you’re not quite ready to pledge allegiance to one of these tech giants, it might be hard to figure out which best graphics card is an ideal match for your needs. But don’t worry, we here at TechRadar have decided to sit down and figure out once and for all the true winner in the battle of Nvidia vs AMD. (Spoiler: there is no true winner...yet).

There are graphics card choices for days Image Credit: TechRadar

These days, the Nvidia vs AMD battle is in an awkward (or exciting, depending on your perspective) position. After the release of its Turing architecture with the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti , RTX 2080 , RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 , which led the pack in sales , Nvidia rolled out its Super RTX cards, the RTX 2080 Super , RTX 2070 Super and RTX 2060 Super , all of which boast clock and memory speed boosts.

And, while the RTX GPUs were much more expensive than their predecessors, their Super counterparts offer cheaper, competitive prices, in order to keep up with the increasing popularity of their more affordable AMD counterparts.

Now, with the announcement of the latest GeForce RTX 30-series cards, the RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070, Nvidia is pushing hard to claim a dominant position at the top ahead of AMD's highly-anticipated rDNA2 - aka Big Navi - announcement later this year.

AMD has covered the mid-range market for a while now with their AMD Navi cards, backed by their rDNA graphics architecture. This is the architecture behind the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and AMD Radeon RX 5700, two cards that take on the Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2060, respectively.

Though as far as competing with Nvidia’s ray-tracing technology, it seemed like AMD was in no rush to jump on that bandwagon. That seems to be changing with Big Navi, which is expected to feature AMD's take on the ground-breaking graphics technology.

In the creative sphere, Nvidia revealed its Quadro RTX cards for laptops at Computex 2019, which will leverage the Turing architecture and real-time ray tracing for creative professionals. Leading this charge is the Quadro RTX 5000.

No matter how you look at it, there are so many graphics cards from both AMD and Nvidia, so that’s why we crafted this guide – to help you figure out how they differ. From exclusive features to price-to-performance ratios, even down to drivers and features, we’ll help you find which graphics card manufacturer is right for you.

Price

Anyone who browses Reddit or comment sections on tech websites will tell you that AMD is widely known for its affordability, and Nvidia for its high-end performance and high prices. But, how accurate is this really?

Well, the answer is not as simple. In the past, Nvidia has rolled pricier cards. Nvidia's latest cards, built with their latest Ampere architecture, break somewhat from that trend, likely due to the stiff competition from AMD.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 is the latest generation's flagship card, which is slated to start at $699 (£649, about AU$950). For comparison, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti , is still selling for $1,199 (£990, AU$1,820), which was almost twice the price of the previous-generation GTX 1080 Ti while the RTX 3080's performance gains over the RTX 2080 Ti are substantial.

The price of the RTX 3080 is actually in line with the RTX 2080 - which sells for about $699 (about £530, AU$975) currently - with an even more impressive performance gain. The RTX 2080 Super, meanwhile, currently retails for around $799 (about £610/AU$1,120).

The RTX 3070, meanwhile, is slated to retail for $499 (£469, around AU$680), when it is released in October, which is about $100 less than what the RTX 2070 is selling for at around $599 (about £455, AU$840) and or the RTX 2070 Super, which currently sells for about $569 (about £450, AU$830).

The RTX 3090, meanwhile, aims to replace the Titan RTX, which retails for $2,499 (about £1,899/AU$3,499). Considering what it's replacing, the 3090's $1,499 (£1,399, around AU$2,030) price tag looks much more reasonable, only $300 more than the 2080 Ti.

Right now, the most affordable Nvidia Turing card is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650, which starts at $169 (about £130, AU$240). This means that Nvidia finally got around to making some graphics cards that can compete with AMD on the budget market as well.

As for AMD, we're still waiting on an announcement for its latest rDNA2-architecture GPUs that are expected to introduce ray-tracing cores to AMD's premiere graphics card line-up, so we can't say anything for certain yet. We can't even say that they'll be cheaper than the latest GeForce cards as many expect considering the much more competitive price point for the RTX 3080 and 3070 cards.

As for AMD's current offerings, you can find Radeon RX 500-series cards for a pittance, making them an decent balance between performance and price, but that might not be the case much longer once the latest generation cards hit the market.

Where AMD competes with Nvidia's 20-series GPUs, you used to be able to get the AMD Radeon VII - which set you back about $699 (£799, AU$1,169) when it was released - which was roughly equivalent to the RTX 2080 in most cases. One of it's biggest draws was that it was compatible with Mac – something no Nvidia card can claim – so it had a leg up for professionals.

The card has since been discontinued, so you may have a hard time finding it and if you did, it might be selling at a steep premium far beyond what it's really worth.

Fortunately, the Radeon RX 5700 XT is touting a price tag of $399 (about £300, AU$560) – is around $200 (about £150, AU$280) cheaper than the RTX 2070 that it was initially designed to compete with, but is only about $100 (about £76, AU$140) cheaper than the new RTX 3070 with is substantially more powerful.

As with any computer component, the price will vary depending on the manufacturer, so which card is the better value is going to depend on the specific card and the retailer who is selling it.

Image Credit: Nvidia

Performance

When you’re trying to build a PC that’s more powerful than your arch-enemy’s, buying a graphics card isn’t a matter of price, but performance. Packing the best performance for the lowest cost is arguably the most pertinent factor in driving GPU sales.

The RTX 2080 Ti was last-generation's performance champ, completely blowing away every other consumer-grade graphics card with 11GB of GDDR6 memory and high-end Tensor and RT cores that enabled AI-controlled super sampling and real-time ray tracing.

The RTX 3080 seized that title handily the moment its specs were announced. It doubles the number of CUDA cores over the RTX 2080 it's replacing and expanding the memory interface of the GPU, even as it trims the available VRAM from 11GB in the RTX 2080 Ti to 10GB in the RTX 3080.

The lower VRAM doesn't hold back the RTX 3080 though, which Nvidia says will double the performance of the RTX 2080 and appears to demolish the RTX 2080 Ti in the demos we've seen so far. As far as mainstream cards go right now, the RTX 3080 is as good as it gets.

We say mainstream cards, because the high-end RTX 3090 is obviously in a class by itself and is aimed those who are willing to pay a premium for the best possible performance. If there was a professional graphics card for creatives, game developers, and esports competitors, the RTX 3090 is it.

The 3090 more than doubles the number of CUDA cores in the Titan RTX (10,496 to 4,608) and has the same amount of VRAM, so it is an absolute beast of a graphics card.

During Nvidia's GeForce event on September 2, we didn't get to see the card's 8K gaming performance ourselves, but a series of popular streamers were shown playing various games on the RTX 3090 and from their reactions (assuming they were genuine, of course) the hype around the card might be entirely justified.

Just going off the specs for the "mid-range" RTX 3070, meanwhile, it leapfrogs right over the RTX 2080 Ti as far as CUDA cores go (5,888 for the RTX 3070 to the RTX 2080 Ti's 4,352), though it has 3GB less VRAM, so it remains to be seen how much that will impact the 3070's fps while playing at 4K.

Fortunately, most 4K gaming doesn't need more than 8GB of VRAM, so the 3070 might hit the 4K gaming sweet spot in terms of performance while costing nearly a third of the cost of the 2080 Ti, making this kind of gaming performance much more accessible to many more gamers out there.

So what about AMD? Right now, it doesn’t have anything in the same ballpark as even the RTX 20-series – but does that even matter?

AMD has always been known for being the clear value champions, whereas Nvidia usually has more powerful hardware. However, at CES 2019 , AMD revealed the Radeon VII . We found that it was on equal footing with the RTX 2080 – at least until you turn DirectX 12 on - and with its 16GB of HBM2 memory, it remains a great card for any aspiring creatives out there if your can find one.

The lowest end current-generation graphics card in the RTX lineup is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 , with performance that outmatches the AMD Vega 56 at the same price point. And, while the prices for these two GPUs are mostly comparable, AMD is currently dominating the budget-to-mid-range product stack with the AMD Radeon RX 5700, which brings about 2GB more VRAM than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 at the same price point.

At the end of the day, AMD and Nvidia are still occupying completely different sides of the marketplace, but Nvidia is clearly making a play to compete with AMD on price as well as performance. The upcoming Big Navi cards are expected to feature ray-tracing, but how well AMD's new rDNA2 architecture compares to Nvidia's Ampere is still an open question.

For now, what we can say is if you’re trying to play games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at 4K, you’re definitely going to want to go with Nvidia, and if you want to game at 8K, Nvidia is really the only option at the moment. But, if you just want to play Overwatch at 1080p with a high refresh rate – AMD's Radeon cards might still be better even with the lower price of the new RTX 30-series since you can still get the performance you need out of the card at a lower price.

How much longer that will be the case, however, remains to be seen. We'll know once AMD announces their next generation cards in the next couple of months.

Image Credit: AMD

Software, drivers and features

One key draw to using Nvidia hardware over AMD is the Green Team’s GeForce Experience software.

Because it delivers driver updates and optimizes games in addition to letting you broadcast gameplay and capture screenshots as well as videos directly from its easy-to-use interface, Nvidia GeForce Experience is posited as the one PC gaming application to rule them all.

There are also more software solutions coming with Nvidia's RTX 30-series for the streamers out there.

Meanwhile, AMD’s Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition aims to overtake Nvidia’s solution. The latest update is stacked with features including automatic overclocking (that doesn’t need tensor cores) and streaming games to your mobile device.

AMD’s latest GPU software will even let you stream VR games to your phone or standalone VR headsets. So, you can leverage the power of your AMD graphics card to play the best VR games without slowdown. Radeon Software’s underlying benefit, of course, is also more consistent updates driver updates to account for every major game release.

You could already livestream via Radeon Crimson ReLive, but now you can really customize your broadcast with a Xsplit/OBS-style program from AMD and multi-channel audio control. And as of June 10, 2019, AMD has also made available their new game-developer toolkit, Fidelity FX, for free. Fidelity FX enables game developers get more detail and crispness in low contrast textures, allowing them to fully take advantage of what these AMD Navi cards are capable of.

Image Credit: Nvidia

Still, GeForce Experience boasts the game optimization features we’re all crazy for. So when you don’t know what settings are best for your computer in The Witcher 3, Nvidia takes care of the heavy lifting for you.

AMD users can download and install Raptr’s Gaming Evolved tool to optimize their gaming experience. However, the add-on is less than ideal considering its biggest rival’s audience can accomplish nearly everything from within GeForce Experience. That includes using Nvidia Ansel to take way cool in-game photos at resolutions exceeding 63K (16 times that of which a 4K monitor can display).

Nvidia also has a leg up when it comes to streaming games whether it’s to another gaming PC with at least a Maxwell-based GPU, as well as the company’s self-made tablets and set-top box. Not to mention, Nvidia also has a cloud-based gaming service call GeForce Now available to Windows 10 and MacOS users.

And, of course you can’t talk about Nvidia in 2019 without mentioning ray tracing. When Team Green announced its Turing line of graphics card, it made huge claims about revolutionizing gaming with real-time ray traced lighting, shadows and reflections. Games with these features have been out for a while now, and while they certainly look great, these effects drain performance, even from cards designed for them.

However, it won’t just be Nvidia for long. Word on the street is that AMD will have cards to support ray tracing in the future . Soon, AMD users won’t have to live their lives without ray tracing – though they may have to wait until 2020.

Image Credit: Nvidia

Exclusivity

It was once rumored that AMD and Nvidia were enacting shady tactics, “paying off” game developers to show preferential treatment towards one or the other. Were this the case, it would certainly explain why certain games run better using GeForce graphics than Radeon and vice versa.

Fortunately, besides new technologies like ray tracing and deep learning super-sampling in the new Nvidia Turing cards, we don’t see these concerns from PC gamers as much anymore – but they still exist.

Following its Capsaicin & Cream livestream event at GDC 2017, we spoke with AMD its to discuss its strategy in contending with Nvidia. The news that the company would partner with Bethesda Softworks to optimize its games for Radeon, Ryzen or both was worrying to say the least. And it still is.

At the time, the potential for games operating more smoothly on AMD systems meant that Nvidia could fight back by partnering with an equally large publisher. Although the latter maneuver hasn’t happened yet, early Wolfenstein II performance comparisons, such as this one from TechEpiphany on YouTube have exhibited better performance and lower temps coming from the AMD Radeon RX 64 when pitted against Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080.

We’re not saying there’s a bias towards AMD in Bethesda’s technical design decisions, however we aren’t ready to take off our tin foil hats quite yet either.

Of course, Bethesda is hardly the only company to show favoritism to either team red or green. If you ever see an AMD or Nvidia splash screen ahead of the title page when you start a game, you can bet it will run better with that company’s hardware.

So, which is better? Neither

There’s so much to love, and in some instances “dis-love,” about both Nvidia and AMD graphics. In the end, both of these companies rely on competition with each other to thrive. Suffice to say, the Nvidia vs AMD debate requires that you understand there’s a reason Radeon and GeForce GPUs are so similar in performance right now.

Each company is doing its best to keep up with the mindshare of the other, and that’s good for us. They’re basically fighting for our money, learning from each other’s mistakes and legislating marked improvements along the way.

It’s up to you who wins the fiery contest of Nvidia vs AMD, although we will say this: Nvidia is unmatched in the 4K market right now. If it helps any, the RTX 2080 Ti is probably your best bet if you want your PC to keep up with your Ultra HD display – as long as you can afford it. On the other hand, if you’re on a budget and looking into mid-range cards, Nvidia and AMD graphics cards will probably be about the same.