The Best Graphics Cards for 2021
Professional Workstation Users. These folks, who work with CAD software or in video and photo editing, will still benefit greatly from a discrete GPU. Some of their key applications can transcode video from one format to another, or perform other specialized operations using resources from the GPU instead of (or in addition to) those of the CPU. Whether this is faster will depend on the application in question, which specific GPU and CPU you own, and other factors.
Productivity-Minded Users With Multiple Displays. People who need a large number of displays can also benefit from a discrete GPU. Desktop operating systems can drive displays connected to the IGP and discrete GPUs simultaneously. If you've ever wanted five or six displays hooked up to a single system, you can combine an IGP and a discrete GPU to get there.
That said, you don't necessarily need a high-end graphics card to do that. If you're simply displaying business applications, multiple browser windows, or lots of static windows across multiple displays (i.e., not demanding PC games), all you need is a card that supports the display specifications, resolutions, monitor interfaces, and number of panels you need. If you're showing three web browsers across three display panels, a GeForce RTX 3080 card, say, won't confer any greater benefit than a GeForce GTX 1660 with the same supported outputs.
Gamers. And of course, there's the gaming market, to whom the GPU is arguably the most important component. RAM and CPU choices both matter, but if you have to pick between a top-end system circa 2018 with a 2021 GPU or a top-end system today using the highest-end GPU you could buy in 2018, you'd want the former.
Graphics cards fall into two distinct classes: consumer cards meant for gaming and light content creation work, and dedicated cards meant for professional workstations and geared toward scientific computing, calculations, and artificial intelligence work. This guide, and our reviews, will focus on the former, but we'll touch on workstation cards a little bit, later on. The key sub-brands you need to know across these two fields are Nvidia's GeForce and AMD's Radeon RX (on the consumer side of things), and Nvidia's Titan and Quadro, as well as AMD's Radeon Pro and Radeon Instinct (in the pro workstation field). Nvidia continues to dominate the very high end of both markets.
AMD Radeon RX 6700XT
(Photo: Zlata Ivleva)
For now though, we'll focus on the consumer cards. Nvidia's consumer card line in mid-2021 is broken into two distinct classes, both united under the long-running GeForce brand: GeForce GTX, and GeForce RTX. AMD's consumer cards, meanwhile, comprise the Radeon RX and (now fading) Radeon RX Vega families, as well as the end-of-life Radeon VII. Before we get into the individual lines in detail, though, let's outline a few very important considerations you should make for any video-card purchase.
Target Resolution and Monitor Tech: Your First Considerations
Resolution is the horizontal-by-vertical pixel count at which your video card will drive your monitor. This has a huge bearing on which card to buy, and how much you need to spend, when looking at a video card from a gaming perspective.
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