The graphics cards you should buy right now

Nvidia and AMD are preparing to launch new generations of graphics cards, but if your gaming rig can’t hold out until then, their current products offer better value than ever before.

AMD’s Radeon RX 500-series is a solid competitor to Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 10-series, and now that the hype around cryptocurrency mining has died down customers can easily get their hands on these GPUs locally.

To compare the performance offered by each graphics card while also accounting for their price, we pulled data from PassMark’s benchmark database and compared the “value scores” of the products.

The value score was calculated using the GPU’s average G3D Mark benchmark score from PassMark and the price of the product in South Africa.

Each graphics card benchmark score was divided by its rand price, with a high value score denoting a better “value for money”.

The lowest pricing available from online retailers such as Wootware, Evetech, Rebel Tech, and Raru was used for the graphics cards.

Older graphics cards were excluded from the comparison, as these offer worse value than the latest generations from Nvidia and AMD.

Value comparison

The comparison shows that Nvidia products are still superior in terms of value locally, a phenomenon which could be attributed to the popularity of AMD’s Radeon RX 500-series cards among miners.

The only enthusiast-grade GPU to make the list is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, which offers impressive performance at its price point – even in the South African market.

Next-generation cards

Buying one of these cards would allow you to play modern games for a long time to come, but enthusiasts may wish to wait for the next generation of hardware.

While there haven’t been many details released regarding Nvidia’s “Volta” and AMD’s next-generation graphics cards, there has been a fair amount of speculation regarding their capabilities.

Many expect that both AMD and Nvidia will make use of the next generation of VRAM technology (GDDR6), or HBM2.

The chips could boast big performance and efficiency improvements over the current product line-up, and they could be released as early as the end of 2018.

However, if you need a new graphics card right now, the GPUs listed above all deliver great performance across a range of price points.

Now read: Intel working on a new quantum chip