PC gaming is currently going from strength to strength. Upcoming games such as Bios hock Infinite and The Darkness II look set to raise the graphical bar even higher, and recent games look phenomenal on the PC. Just compare Skyrim running on a decent PC and graphics card to it running on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 and the difference is like night and day. Plus as the consoles stagnate due to their ageing technology, it's something that's only set to continue.
In order to experience such games at their best, though, you're going to need to ensure you have a machine that's up to the task. And by machine, we're primarily focusing on your graphics card.
So welcome to our best graphics card article – it's constantly updated with the very latest best graphics cards.
It's the graphics card that does the serious work when it comes to rendering your games, and the more effects and higher resolutions you throw at it, the more is asked of that graphics card.
It's important to pick your graphics card so that it works well with your display, or displays. There's no point, for instance, trying to power a 30-inch screen with the likes of a GeForce GTS 450.
By the same notion, running a standard 20-inch screen with the likes of an AMD Radeon HD 6990 won't begin to tap into the card's power.
As a quick rule of thumb, whatever you spent on your screen, you're going to want to spend a similar amount to power it. Roughly.
The question is, which one of the many graphics cards out there should you actually spend your hard earned cash on? Here TechRadar highlights the top 15 cards worth considering. We cover the notable cards from the last generation, the best all-rounders for most PC gamers and the £550 monsters that can handle multi-screen outputs.
In this guide we'll let you know what's hot, what's cool and what are the fastest GPUs available right now and worthy of your time.
Best of all, because we're now enjoying the second generation of DirectX 11 hardware, every card we look at here is capable of rendering the latest, funkiest DirectX 11 games.
So how does your graphics card stand in our countdown, and is it time for an upgrade?
March 5 2011
There are a remarkable variety of graphics cards on the market aimed at gamers. While the very latest technology is always expensive, there are also solutions for those who don't have hundreds of dollars to spend. These video cards were selected because they are good values in their class, and they are ordered roughly from fastest (most expensive) to slowest (most affordable). I can't include every quality card, but I do update the list when I can, so your suggestions are welcome.
1. Nvidia GeForce GTX 570
In late 2010 Nvidia introduced their GeForce 500 series, beginning with the GTX 580 and GTX 570. The former has taken over the top spot in the single-GPU speed contest, but it comes at a price that makes two lesser cards in an SLI or Crossfire configuration a more practical option. The GTX 570 is a dialed down version of the 580, but it readily outperforms the previous generation GTX 480. 1.25 GB of GDDR5 memory is standard on the 570 and it has two 6-pin power connectors. It's priced competitively and it's a great card for high-end gaming.
4. Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
The first GTX 560 cards appeared in late January of 2011, just in time to do battle with the Radeon HD 6950. The 560 Ti represents a jump in performance of roughly 35 percent over the previous generation GeForce GTX 460 with only the slightest increase in power consumption, and it has launched at about the same price point. Unlike many of AMD's recent offerings, these cards have only 1 GB of memory, so they're not really aimed at those with 28" monitors, but they provide exceptional value for those in the market for a mid-range card.
