If you HAVE to upgrade your GPU today, these are the five graphics cards I think are worth looking at

MSI RTX 4060 Ventus 2X Black OC | 8 GB GDDR6 | 128-bit | 3072 CUDA cores | 2.46 GHz boost clock | 115W | $380 at Newegg | £249 at Amazon UK

I know that last-gen cards aren’t particularly exciting anymore, not when we’re all drooling over the likes of the RTX 5090 (which, by the way, apparently can’t run Oblivion Remastered at a steady 60 fps. Go figure). But I didn’t promise you excitement; I promised you GPUs at prices you’d be able to stomach, and that’s why the RTX 4060 is at the top of the list.

With upscaling and DLSS 3, you’ll still run most games at high settings at 1080p. Can the RTX 4060 handle 1440p? Yeah, it can, but you’ll need to be conservative with the graphics settings.

In our RTX 4060 review, you’ll find that the card can comfortably maintain 60 fps in most games even if you drive the settings all the way up to max. Cyberpunk 2077 on ultra with ray tracing on is not a thing for this card, though, at least not without DLSS 3 and Frame Generation.

Going last-gen has one glaring downside: No DLSS 4. You can’t quadruple your frame rates with Nvidia’s Multi Frame Generation. But, seeing as you can still double them, I say you’ll be fine for a few years.

Price-wise, I’m sorry to report that the RTX 4060 is, like every other card, selling above MSRP. Like I said, the GPU market is awful right now. But, I found one for sale for $380 at Newegg (or £249 for us lucky Brits) and that’s as good as it gets right now. View Deal

MSI Ventus 3 | 16 GB GDDR7 | 256-bit | 8960 CUDA cores | 2.45 GHz boost clock | 300W | $900 at Newegg | £808 at Amazon UK (Palit card)

For gamers with deeper pockets that don’t quite go all the way to the RTX 5090, the RTX 5070 Ti is the only option right now. With the RTX 5080 selling for $1,280 and up on Amazon, you don’t have much of a choice.

Back to the RTX 5070 Ti. Polarizing graphics card, that one.

PC Gamer’s reviewed two different models of it, the Asus TUF Gaming RTX 5070 Ti and this MSI Ventus 3X RTX 5070 Ti, and while one scored a hefty 86 out of 100, the other one fares much worse with a 68 score. It’s not that one was great and the other one was not; it’s all about the price.

If we just close our eyes and pretend for second the pricing issue isn’t a thing (mmm, what a world…), the RTX 5070 Ti is a decent GPU. It can almost match the RTX 5080 with the right overclock.

The RTX 5070 Ti is roughly 20% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti Super, and around 15 to 20% slower than the RTX 5080. In our 1440p benchmark, it scored between 61 fps (Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing on ultra settings) and well above 100 fps in games that don’t make a mockery out of every GPU. It’s brilliant at 1440p, good enough at 4K, and overkill at 1080p.

The RTX 5070 Ti is also overpriced, no surprise there. The cheapest one I spotted was $900 at Newegg, and it also gets you Doom: The Dark Ages for free, which normally costs $100. If you’re over on this side of the pond, Amazon UK sells the RTX 5070 Ti for £807.View Deal

Sapphire Pulse RX 7800 XT | 16 GB GDDR6 | 256-bit | 60 compute units | 2.43 GHz boost clock | 263W | $580 at Newegg | £461 on Amazon UK (XFX card)

Listen, I’m a sucker for AMD, and I love the RX 9070 XT. I just don’t think you should buy one right now, so I’m still recommending the RX 7800 XT instead.

The RX 9070 XT is one frustratingly pricey affordable GPU these days. Its big selling point was that it was massively undercutting the Nvidia competition and delivering on gaming performance. Scarcity and opportunism, however, has bumped the $599 MSRP to the moon. The absolute cheapest option on Newegg is $859, and just typing that is upsetting. At that price point, just get the RTX 5070 Ti, which wins in ray tracing and offers MFG.

The RX 7800 XT is an acceptable alternative if you’re willing to forgo (some of) that fancy-schmancy ray tracing stuff. And if not, I’ve got two more Nvidia options for you below, so what are you still doing here?

The RX 7800 XT didn’t break any records when it first launched, but it offered top-notch value for the money, and even now, when it costs $580 at Newegg and $590 on Amazon (or £461 on Amazon UK), that side of it is still true. When we look at pure rasterization, this is a GPU that rivals the RTX 3080 and the RTX 4070, and you’ll generally find it for less than either.

A 1440p card through and through, the RX 7800 XT delivers some of its best work at that resolution—although it certainly wouldn’t mind if you scaled down to 1080p. At 1080p, it easily hits 60 fps in every game bar Cyberpunk 2077; at 1440p, it gets absolutely obliterated by the dystopian blockbuster, huffing and puffing as it averages 27 fps with ray tracing on. Outside of Cyberpunk, it’s an admirable GPU, and it hits anywhere from 60-ish to 120-ish fps in every other game in our test suite.View Deal

Gigabyte RTX 5060 Ti Gaming OC | 16/8 GB GDDR7 | 128-bit | 4608 CUDA cores | 2.57 GHz boost clock | 180W | $530 at Amazon | £450 at Amazon UK (MSI card)

I admit that I had low hopes for the RTX 5060 Ti. After many hours spent ranting about the stupidly narrow memory bus on the RTX 4060 Ti and how close those two GPUs were to the RTX 3060 Ti (don’t even get me started), I have come to accept that Nvidia is doing the same thing yet again. That’s what they want, right?

Imagine my disappointment then, when all my whining was for nothing, and the RTX 5060 Ti actually turned out to be a decent GPU? Preposterous.

We took the Palit Infinity 3 RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and the MSI Gaming Trio OC RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB out for a spin, and found that the former was 20% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti. This is a 1080p card, but reach into Nvidia’s bag of goodies (aka DLSS and Multi Frame Generation) and you can pull off 1440p. If you force it to run at 4K, you’ll find that the extra bandwidth gained from using speedier GDDR7 RAM actually puts it 40% ahead of the last-gen GPU.

Performance-wise, I’m pleased; price-wise, this GPU is stuck in the same hellscape we’re all living in right now. The cheapest one I’ve found is this Gigabyte Gaming OC 16 GB model, priced at $530 (or an MSI Inspire 2X model for £450 in the UK).

The 8 GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti finds itself adrift in the current Nvidia lineup. You can buy one for $420 (£360), but the question is, should you? At 1080p, absolutely go for it. Anything beyond and you’re better off with the 16 GB version.View Deal

Gigabyte WindForce RTX 5070 | 12 GB GDDR7 | 192-bit | 6144 CUDA cores | 2.51 GHz boost clock | 250W | $604 at Newegg | £519 at Amazon UK (Palit card)

While the RTX 5060 Ti was a pleasant surprise, the RTX 5070 sort of disappointed me. But it’s only just a bit pricier than the RTX 5060 Ti right now, and that gives it some merit.

This GPU is considerably slower than the RX 9070 XT, so if both were sold at MSRP, I’d be sending you a whole bunch of links to buy the AMD flagship instead. It’s only around 13% faster than the RTX 4070 Super, but the access to MFG elevates it to a whole new level, unless you’re not a fan of them ‘fake frames’ that is.

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang promised us RTX 4090-level performance with this one. Well, we’re only about 80% behind that figure at 4K, so he was almost right. Kind of.

But if you compare it to cards in a similar pricing bracket, the RTX 5070 is not too bad. It’s just not outstanding, but at $604 (£519), I’ll take it.

Given the lacklustre gen-on-gen improvement, you might as well get the RTX 4070 Super, but that old GPU is actually pricier right now. The RTX 5070 quietly slides onto this list with no applause, and no fanfare, but as a means to an ends during a rough market.View Deal