GAMING SUPPORT – What’s The Best Graphics Cards for the money right now?
Dive into our list and let us guide you to the best graphics cards for your needs.
The best graphics cards for 2022 can help you with your video editing or graphic design needs, as well as handle any graphically intensive game at high resolutions. And, there are some really impressive cards like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 .
Unfortunately, AMD and Nvidia graphics cards are currently in short supply, leading to skyrocketing prices on the used market. The latest cards in the AMD RDNA 2 and Nvidia Ampere lineup are definitely worth it, but you’ll want to make sure you’re picking the right card before you drop hundreds of dollars.
Whichever direction you take, whether you’re upgrading your old gaming laptop or building your own PC , you need one of the best GPUs for an immersive and seamless experience with the best PC games or the most demanding content creation software. Take a look at our list to find the solution that suits you best.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
Let’s not forget that the RTX 2060 Super is, for all intents and purposes, the opposite number of the RTX 3060 Ti for the RTX 30 series. The price tags of both cards match at launch, at €449 , but the significant pull of the RTX 3060 Ti to RTX 2080 Super performance again shows the tremendous generational leap introduced with the Ampere architecture. RTX 3060 TI SPECIFICATIONS
The RTX 3060 Ti has a decent 1665MHz boost clock, rendered partially useless due to Nvidia’s GPU Boost technology, which will often see this GPU far exceed that under load – around 1875MHz on average. This makes it the fastest in the RTX 30 series to date.
This is also a Founders Edition reference card, so we’re not considering out-of-the-box overclocking. However, the general availability of the Founders Edition coincides with the launch of the third-party AIB RTX 3060 Ti (December 2, 2020), so keep an eye out for OC models if you want to push things a bit further.
Specifications for RTX 3060 Ti
| Stream Processors | 4,864 |
| Basic Clock | 1.41 GHz (1.67 GHz boost) |
| Memory | 8 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Clock | 14 Gbps |
| Exits HDMI | 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a |
| Power Connectors | 1x PCIe 8 pin (adapter to 1x 12 pin included) |
However, you’ll miss the Founders Edition shroud if you do. It’s pretty much the same cooler design as the RTX 3070, which makes it comparable to my personal favorite of the lot, but it differs in one minor way: the tone of the metallic finish on the RTX 3060 Ti is considerably more lighter than dark gray for the three 30-series cards above.
It just pushes the RTX 3060 Ti to the top of the leaderboard in my eyes, but that’s purely an aesthetic shake-up. Both offer much the same quiet and cool operation as the others, equipped with the Nvidia-branded heatsink and smart cutout cooler, and they also use the new compact 12-pin power connector. Don’t worry, there’s only one 8-pin to 12-pin adapter included in the box.
Peformance RTX 3060 Ti
Still, these are mostly cosmetic changes, and while this cooler provides more than adequate cooling power. It’s the redesign of the rasterized rendering pipeline through the Ampere architecture that is the architect of its performance. The details of which you can read more about in our Nvidia RTX 3080 review, but again for those on the back.
Each streaming multiprocessor, or SM, in Nvidia’s RTX 30 GPUs received double the number of floating point units (FP32) compared to previous generations of GPUs . The advantage is greater parallelism and the ability to not only switch between integer and floating point operations depending on the workload. But also to use more FP32 units when there is fewer entire operations required. This happens a lot in games, hence the change.
FP32 units within a given GPU are also what Nvidia counts as the CUDA Core total for each GPU specification. So when comparing the RTX 30 series with the RTX 20 series. The reality of such an architectural split becomes very clear.
Cores
Where you might expect a card closer to the RTX 2060 Super’s 2,176 core count, we’re now looking at the 4,854 CUDA Core RTX 3060. The same could be said for the opposite number of 4,352 CUDA Core RTX 2080 Ti (sort of). The RTX 3090, equipped with 10,752 CUDA cores.
It’s all been an efficient experiment in GPU topology too, with the existing RTX 30-series GPUs managing to dominate their RTX 20-series counterparts. And I’m happy to report that the RTX 3060 Ti is no different . But we will get there.
Capacity RAM
With 8GB of GDDR6 capacity and a free 256-bit memory bus. The RTX 3060 Ti is capable of an overall memory bandwidth of 448GB/s, which matches the RTX 3070 in every way. only possible concern for any potential buyer of the spec list that I can point out with possible dismay.
It’s not that an 8GB memory capacity apparently has much of an impact on gaming performance right now. Not to say that it will not be the case at one time or another.
I won’t talk too much about unsubstantiated rumors in a review, but we’ve heard several rumors of as-yet-unannounced RTX 30-series cards with higher memory capacities than currently available. Including an RTX 3080 with 20GB of VRAM, an RTX 3080 Ti with 20 GB of VRAM, and even an RTX 3060 with up to 12 GB of VRAM.
It’s hardly proof of anything, I have to admit. But that makes me wonder if this is just reflexive action in light of AMD’s 16GB (and possibly 12GB) RX 6000 series graphics cards. Or if there’s a dark cloud which is approaching for those of us who own cards with, perhaps, say, modest memory capacities and overall bandwidth .
Conclusion
Every game developer I’ve spoken to has been keen to make better use of larger high-speed memory stores for more elaborate textures and the like chance. Scalability is still the name of the game for almost every stage of development, and not in the least for PC games.
But as I said, that’s not so much a reality that we have to face today. The RTX 3060 Ti manages to maintain a stable gallop in modern games at 1080p, 1440p and even 4K. Which is the first time I think we can safely say that of an xx60 level graphics card without hissing laborious or serious warnings.