AMD Vs. Nvidia: Which GPU Is Best For Your Gaming PC?

AMD and Nvidia have been battling it for GPU dominance and the competition has only become ever fiercer as buzzwords such as AI get thrown into the mix. Which company is best for building a PC from scratch or upgrading an older system? Most of the best graphics cards are made by AMD and Nvidia with the latter producing the world’s faster GPU, the mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090.

Nvidia primarily makes GPUs for graphics cards and has an advantage over AMD for research and development. AMD has to split resources for different divisions, including its CPU business. For performance, Nvidia is king with the RTX 4090. For budget-friendly and efficient GPUs, there’s not too much that separates the two tech giants.

History doesn’t mean much when choosing a graphics card today and when comparing various options from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, we factor in performance, value, architecture, thermals, and efficiency. But when it comes down to it, the choice of GPU doesn’t massively affect your gaming experience, so long as you match it with your monitor.

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Gaming performance

The battle of the GPU giants

Nvidia creates the most powerful GPU making the company top the charts for measured performance. Removing the incredibly powerful RTX 4090 allows AMD to flex its muscles, especially at a 1440p resolution with more affordable graphics cards. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a good match for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 and we’ve directly compared these two GPUs.

We’re still compiling our benchmark and test results across a band of graphics cards. Until we’ve got data to share, we’ll focus on measured frames-per-second (FPS) and benchmark scores in numeric format. Gorgeous graphics will be added in due course! All of our tests are run on systems with as close of a specifications match as possible and any super sampling or performance enhancements disabled.

Fire Strike Ultra is an intensive GPU stress test to see how the graphics card performs at 4K (2160p). It’s not the best metric for determining which GPU is best like an average FPS measurement across numerous PC games, but it’s a good indicator to see the positioning of GPUs on the performance chart.

According to our Fire Strike Ultra results, two of the top three most powerful GPUs are from Nvidia. AMD did have a winner with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, but it’s not even close to the Nvidia flagship RTX 4090. These results are mirrored in many game tests, including Cyberpunk 2077, GTA V, Mount & Blade: Bannerlord, and Forza Horizon 5.

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Software support

GeForce Experience vs. Adrenalin

AMD and Nvidia offer driver and software support through Nvidia Control Panel, GeForce Experience, and Adrenalin. All three software packages have their positives and drawbacks, so there’s no clear winner but AMD is generally considered the more refined experience due to Nvidia bundling two separate apps. AMD has also managed to get more performance out of their GPUs over time through driver updates, at least compared to Nvidia.

Both brands have some form of ray tracing, AI acceleration, synchronization technology, and super-sampling. How all these features come together to improve the performance of the GPU is what can make or break a graphics card when comparing in-game numbers with all settings enabled. Nvidia’s mature ecosystem continues to be ahead of AMD but Team Red is catching up.

Driver performance is incredibly subjective. All you need to know is AMD and Nvidia are committed to improving GPU performance and support over time.

So, does it matter?

Choosing between AMD and Nvidia should come down to price and performance. The prices of graphics cards have spiraled in recent years through component shortages and heightened demand, but it is possible to grab a GPU at a discount. So long as the graphics card you buy for your gaming PC can handle the maximum resolution supported by your monitor, you’ll have an excellent gaming experience.