Is it worth the money to buy a high-end graphics card? A high-end graphics card is probably necessary if you want to play PC games, mine crypto, edit videos, or model 3D models. High-end graphics are used even by artificial intelligence supercomputers. The question is, what is a high-end graphics card? Here’s what we found out.
Which High-End Graphics Cards Have What Specs?
GPUs have graphics processing units (GPUs), memory, interfaces, cooling systems, power connectors, and BIOSs. You either have an integrated graphics card in your CPU or you have one separate. Comparing the performance of integrated graphics cards to stand-alone graphics cards, integrated cards don’t come close.
The video random access memory (VRAM) is one of the most important specs for high-end graphics cards. There is a video RAM size between 12GB and 24GB on the latest high-end graphics cards. VRAM usually boosts performance, but it’s not always true. A GeForce RTX 3060 Ti has 8GB VRAM but performs better than a RTX 3060 with 12GB VRAM. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti isn’t the only difference between the two.
Also consider the GPU’s clock speed, measured in gigahertz (GHz). GPU performance is measured by this. Core clock speeds of 2GHz and up are common on high-end graphics cards. However, PC benchmark tests are more reliable than VRAM and clock speed specifications for determining a high-end graphics card’s performance. 8K and 3D videos shouldn’t be a problem for the best graphics cards.
More importantly, graphics cards are named in a hierarchy. Graphics cards at the top have higher model numbers than those at the bottom. In Nvidia’s 30-Series GPUs, the RTX 3090 is the top-tier graphic card, while the RTX 3050 is an entry-level one.
High-End Graphics Cards: How Much Are They?
It’s pretty much just Nvidia or AMD if you want to buy a high-end graphics card. We found that AMD graphics cards are slightly cheaper than Nvidia graphics cards from our AMD vs. Nvidia comparison. There are cheaper graphics cards than $1,000, like AMD’s RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT.
Meanwhile, Nvidia’s best graphics card, the RTX 4090 with 24 GB VRAM, starts at $1599. A 16GB RTX 4080 costs $1,199, while a 12GB RTX 4070 Ti costs $799. Here’s what the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 have in common.
The Nvidia A100, which costs about $10,000, is one of the most expensive high-end graphics cards. AI models like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT are trained on the Nvidia A100. Since the supercomputers in research labs use the Nvidia A100 to train neural networks for artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, it’s not a gaming GPU.
What Graphics Card Should You Get?
Games don’t need a high-end graphics card if all you’re doing is playing them on your PC. With a midrange graphics card, you can play almost any video game at 1080p and 60 fps. Using high-end graphics is better if you want to play video games at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second, but it’s not essential.
You’ll need a high-end graphics card if you’re rendering 3D animations in 4K or 8K resolution. In the same way, a good graphics card should help speed up the crypto mining process if you’re into it. If you want to train AI models with high-end GPUs, it might be too expensive. A cloud-based AI service customized for businesses might be a better option if high-end graphics cards are out of your budget.
Immerse Yourself in Games With High-End Graphics
For an immersive experience with the best performance, you should get a high-end graphics card. Plus, you can use a high-end graphics card for a couple years before the technology catches up and you have to upgrade. It’s also great because a high-end graphics card can be used for gaming, crypto mining, video editing, 3D modeling, and AI training.
