Best Graphics Cards in the UK

The most demanding gamers require only the top-end hardware for their gaming computers. This includes a top-end processor, motherboard, and all of the peripherals. Of the most importance to many, though, is having the top-of-the-line graphics card in their system. This ensures that whatever games they play can be played using the absolute highest settings possible while still maintaining a smooth framerate. This, of course, can only be achieved with the fastest graphics cards available.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 GAMING is a top-of-the-line graphics card that has few other equals. Featuring a base clock rate of 1569 MHz, with a turbo boost up to 1683 MHz, this NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics card is simply unbeatable. The 11264MB of GDDR5X video memory ensures that the highest resolution textures can be stored in the video memory with plenty of room left over, leaving no bottlenecks in this card's performance. The card comes complete with support for both the DirectX 12 and OpenGL 4.5 graphics APIs, giving your games the highest details with the latest graphics effects included. Simply put, everything about this card is high end, which is sure to please even the most demanding hardcore gamers.

Although a lot of gamers like having a monster tower case that is fitted with all of the bells and whistles imaginable, there is a subset of gamers who value elegance and compactness over having a blinged-out gaming rig. Many of these like having smaller form factor cases that are easy to stow away in a tight place, which comes in handy when desk and / or floor space is at a premium. Unfortunately, there are few high-end video card options available for such small form factor cases, especially those with a mini-ITX build, as most high-end cards have cooling systems and components that often make this impossible.

The Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Mini Graphics Card is probably the best and most powerful option for those who have a mini-ITX build case. This graphics card, while not as powerful as the flagship GeForce GTX 1080 models, comes pretty close in its overall power, yet has a compact, well thought-out design that is perfect for smaller form factor cases. This video card comes equipped with 8 GB of 256-bit GDDR5 video RAM, and a GPU with a boost clock frequency of up to 1708 MHz, making this an extremely powerful video card despite its small, compact dimensions. In fact, on seeing the card, most gamers will be incredulous that it is capable of its benchmarked performance.

NVIDIA has lately been the company that has released the most powerful graphics cards available, with their competition only being with themselves as far as the fastest available graphics card is concerned. However, there are a number of gamers who actually prefer the AMD Radeon series of cards, as they often provide a better price to performance ratio in comparison to those from NVIDIA. Despite wanting a lower price, though, these gamers still demand high performance from their video cards, which is what the Radeon series delivers.

The Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX 580 4GD5 Graphics Card is a top-of-the-line card featuring AMD's Radeon graphics, which delivers performance nearly on par with top-of-the-line NVIDIA cards but at a much lower price. This card features 4 GB of DDR5 video memory, giving you plenty of video RAM for textures, and also has a clockrate of 1340 MHz, giving it plenty of graphics processing power. The processing power is so good, in fact, that most gamers are amazed that it can deliver the performance it does at its price point, which is well below the high-end cards from competitors. Games will run at max settings with perfectly fluid visuals, giving any gaming computer the graphical horsepower it needs for even the most demanding games.

As most gamers are already aware, the highest-end video cards tend to be quite expensive, with many of them costing more than the rest of the components of a good gaming computer combined. This is especially true of the high-end NVIDIA cards like the GeFore GTX 1080, which is quite an expensive card. Of course, not every gamer can afford the high-end cards, which leaves a bit of a conundrum. Some can opt for an AMD Radeon card, but many gamers are diehard NVIDIA fans and swear by their performance.

The Gigabyte GTX 1060 WF 6GB Graphics Card is a high-performance video card that is much more reasonably priced than the flagship model. This card features 6 GB of GDDR5 graphics RAM along with a base clockspeed of 1582 MHz, and up to 1797 MHz when overclocked. Speaking of overclocking, this card comes with the XTREME Engine utility that gives you the ability to safely overclock your graphics card without worrying about burning it out. This utility, along with the overall design of the card, shows an amazing attention to detail that is often missing from most other graphics cards. Within the utility, you have the ability to super overclock your card with just a single click, making overclocking as easy as it can possibly get.

As we have mentioned before, the biggest advantage that AMD's Radeon GPUs offer is their price to performance ratio. Although their top-end cards are not as powerful as the ones from NVIDIA, they still offer pretty close performance at a fraction of the price. This has made them an attractive option for many gamers who simply can't afford the extremely high priced video cards from NVIDIA for their gaming systems, and thus find the Radeon series a very attractive option.

The MSI Radeon RX 580 ARMOR 8G OC Graphics Card is a high performing model that is based on the AMD Radeon architecture. This blazing fast video card offers 8 GB of GDDR5 256-Bit Memory, giving you high performance video memory that helps your games run smoothly, even at the highest settings. The base clock rate of 1366 MHz is a bit lower than that of its contemporary models, but thanks to the included MSI Afterburner overclocking utility, you can crank up the clock rate to get the most performance out of this card. One negative to note with it is that the overclocking utility is not very user-friendly, causing headaches for a lot of people, but once you do manage to get it overclocked, you should be more than pleased with its performance.