Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table (Archive)

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What a great list!
Fun to go back and see where all my old cards are.
Would release dates be hard to implement?
I think my first was a Viper 770? or 1770?
was a weapon! :)
 
Very glad to see this chart continue. Its the BEST resource ever for helping decide how to replace an older video card. Its 'three tier' rules is not perfect, but I've used it 4 or 5 times with very good results. TY for not losing it in the new format "best graphics card".
 



Hi, suggest you post exactly that question over on the graphics/display forum. Not may people are checking this article to see new comments at this point.

Antec 300 is a mid tower case, and probably can fit just about any video card (a very long one might cause problems, but new cards tend to be shorter.)

Here is a list of video cards by performance: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html If you give your rough price range people can suggest cards, or if you only want the 'best' then look at the top few cards and see if they fit.

As a starting point, 980 Ti, R9 Fury X, GTX 980, R9 Fury, GTX 970, R9 390X, R9 390 would likely all be viable.

Not knowing your background, it's possible you will need a new power supply when you upgrade video depending on what you currently have, and it's possible your CPU is not strong enough for cards as strong as the ones above to make sense unless you are planning to carry the video card forward into another build sometime in the future.

 


FWIW, your 780Ti is 1 tier below the 980. The table explicitly says to make sure any upgrade is at least 3 tiers if you want to actually see a difference. So someone using the hierarchy chart should come to the same conclusion you did.... the 780Ti is strong enough no one should upgrade from a 780Ti to a 980.

The hierarchy chart is far from perfect. The CPU is even less perfect. But the chart is the best resource I've seen to tell you if you should do the research to see if you want to upgrade.
 
Thank you for the write ups, they really help out those getting back into the scene who have fallen out of sync with the ever changing hardware.

I did have one question/suggestion however.

I would think it would be beneficial to add a combination tier chart of CPU/GPU combinations. (or in essence, tier level charts that would place an intel i3 for example, with corresponding video cards for a level of performance that would pair well without bottlenecks.

I am currently running an i3 4170, but would like to know if i threw a GTX 970 in the system, whether or not the CPU would fall on a lower tier and cause any sort of bottleneck for the GTX 970 ( or cause frames to be lower than they could be than say if it were paired with an i5 4690.
 
Always great, but can y'all add a simple row number? When mixing and matching multiple options, it's very difficult to keep track of what's where.
 
This is THE most useful GPU list of its kind.
Not that it's perfectly-complete NOR it is perfectly-accurate, but this list is very referable instead of pining for thousands of numbers of GPU specification one-per-one.
It IS hell difficult to make this list accurate, given different generations of the GPU and test bench, let alone a complete one.
Great.
 

Since I'm the one that originally mentioned it, the answer was 'no' as of a few days ago. Whoops... it has magically appeared!

Kind of a moot point for me, since the GTX 1070/1080 speed and features (and hopefully AMD's pending release, as well) make me want to ignore the chart and budgets altogether... maybe even get an extra and put it in a frame on my shelf. Not sure how I can afford it, but I still can't keep the drool from running down my face.
 


Yes the 1080 and 1070 will affect the top of the food chain but the 950 is more of a lower mid-ranged card and those interested in them probably have a budget they have to keep within, and are not the going to sub a 1070 or 1080 for them.

Of course if their release pushes prices down on all the lower models like the 970 to the 750 Ti in which case that would be awesome for budget gamers. Imagine if the 970 dropped down to the current price of the 960 and 960 to the 950 so on.
Then we both may need to invest in bibs, lol.
 
Not that I'm in any way knocking the list OTHER THAN the fact that it's almost (6) months out of date. Doing what you do for a living, you folks know better than I that that is an ETERNITY in gaming hardware......
 
Wonder if there's going to be a blank row or two between the Titan Z's row and the 1080's when it's added.
 
The problem is that the Hierarchy Table makes no account for the relative overclock ability of the various cards. For example. let's choose two cards from the same tier (numbers from techpowerup's testing of measured fps increase @ 1440p in gaming):

Fury-X overclocks 105.05%
980 Ti overclocks 131.38%

That makes one card 25% faster than the other. Given that, just don't see how the two can possible be considered equal. Yes, it could be argued that every OC is different and that the table can not account for all possible variations but, by the same token, the Fur-X OC'd is only 15% faster than the 970 OC'd, so an argument could be made that they should be in the same tier.

However I do agree that it would be a difficult task to make a 2nd table for overclocked comparisons, but at the very least it should be mentioned via asterisk or notation that there are major differences between the major offerings inviting the reader to explore further.

 
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