The CPU may be the brain of your PC, but when it comes to gaming, the graphics card is the beating heart that pumps pixels out of your obelisk of a tower and into your monitor. A graphics card consists of dedicated video memory and a graphics processing unit (GPU) that handles all sorts of calculations, like mapping textures and rendering millions of polygons. Simply put, the graphics card is the most vital component of your gaming PC. And these are the ones worthy of your next PC, whether it's a savvy middle-of-the-road build, a budget rig, or a 4K monster.
Nvidia has now launched their GTX 1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060; AMD followed suit with their launch of Polaris 10 and the RX 480, RX 470, and 460. With inventory finally stabilized, people in most markets can go out and buy the card they want. The previous generation of cards is also mostly on the way out, though a few noteworthy deals remain.
More recently, Nvidia has seemingly wrapped up their GTX 10-series cards with the ultra-budget GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti. AMD for their part has cut pricing on the RX 470, and we now have new graphics cards in each category. Here are the cards that rise above the rest...
But still waiting on a Ti
