The Nvidia GTX 970 is a game changer in terms of performance per watt and value for money. The GTX 970 is based on Nvidia's ground-breaking Maxwell architecture which delivers considerable clock for clock performance gains over Kepler, its predecessor. Comparing the GTX 970 and 780 Ti shows that the two cards offer comparable performance yet the new GTX 970 costs nearly half as much! Unsurprisingly Nvidia are discontinuing the 780 Ti as it's now largely redundant. These price to performance gains typically occur once or twice a decade and although the new Maxwell architecture will improve down the line with the release of the Ti/Titan versions, at the moment the 970 offers the best value for money on the market by miles. Since this summary was originally written AMD have slashed prices and older Nvidia models (780/780 Ti/770) have also been hugely discounted. See the latest value for money rankings here. [Jul '15GPUPro]
The RTX 3050 is built on NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture. It marks the first time that ray-tracing has been available on an entry level (50-series) card. Second generation ray tracing cores can be switched on for more realistic light simulation, albeit at a hit to performance. The 3050 features 2560 CUDA cores, a boost clock frequency of 1.78 GHz, 8 GB of the latest GDDR6 memory and NVIDIA’s DLSS. DLSS technology uses the 3050’s tensor cores to scale up resolutions whilst maintaining high frame rates and without losing significant image quality. The 3050 also includes an encoder (NVENC) for sharper images and smoother capture whilst recording/streaming. The MRSP of entry models is $249 USD, however, street prices are closer to $600 USD. Early benchmarks show that the 3050 only headlines around 50% faster than AMD's 6500 XT whilst street prices for the 3050 are over 100% higher. Many experienced users simply have no interest in buying AMD cards, regardless of price. AMD’s neanderthal marketing tactics seem to have come back to haunt them. Their brazen domination of social media platforms including youtube and reddit resulted in millions of users purchasing sub standard products. Experienced gamers know all too well that high average fps are worthless when they are accompanied with stutters, random crashes, excessive noise and a limited feature set. [Jan '22GPUPro]
We calculate effective 3D speed which estimates gaming performance for the top 12 games. Effective speed is adjusted by current prices to yield value for money. Our figures are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top GPUs. [GPUPro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.