BUYING GUIDES Nvidia Graphics Cards: Which One Is Right for You?

If you’re thinking about buying a graphics card, there’s a good chance you’ll buy from Nvidia. These cards have a strong hold on the market because of their phenomenal performance and excellent prices. But which one should you buy? What’s the difference between Ge Force and Quadro? How much of a performance boost will you see going from a GTX 1070 to a 1080? What’s Pascal?

When you’re done reading this article, you’ll have a solid understanding of the different Nvidia graphics cards. And if you’re looking to build or upgrade your PC you’ll know which one to buy.

GeForce vs. Quadro vs. Tesla

Unless you work professionally with graphics or rendering, you might not even know that Nvidia has multiple sets of cards. The GeForce cards are classified as gaming graphics cards, while the Quadros and Teslas form the lesser known “workstation” line. What’s the difference between these lines of cards? Both price and gaming performance. The workstation graphics cards are very expensive because they’re optimized for professional-level graphics. The GeForce line comes optimized for gaming.

If you want to get into the different technical specifications, there are a few differences. For example, the Quadro P5000, the second-highest in the lineup, packs 16 GB of memory and a bandwidth of up to 288 Gb/s. The GeForce GTX 1080, also the second-highest in its lineup, has 8 GB of memory and a bandwidth of 10 Gb/s. Reading that, you might expect the Quadro to dominate in gaming. But you’d be wrong: benchmarks show that the GeForce outperforms it. Why? It likely comes down to driver optimizations. The GTX 1080 focuses on gaming so it can do a lot more with lower specs.

Of course, you can game on a Quadro or a Tesla. But you’re likely to get slightly lower performance at a significantly higher cost. The Quadro P5000 costs $2,500 on Newegg, whereas you can probably get a GTX 1080 for around 600 bucks. The situation with Tesla is similar.

The short version: Unless you’re a video producer, medical imagery, 3D rendered, or high-level virtual reality designer, you want GeForce. But which one?

The majority of GeForce cards that Nvidia offers are in the GTX series, but there are also GT cards and some with no prefixes before their model numbers:

There’s also the Nvidia Titan X card, which isn’t branded as GeForce at all. The lineup is simple. From top to bottom, it goes Titan, GTX, GT, and no-prefix cards. The Titan can run up to over $2,000 with non-reference hardware. On the other hand, you can grab a lower-level GTX card for just over $200.

The short version: If you’re gaming on a desktop, you want a Titan or GTX card.

Nvidia’s Proprietary Technologies

When looking at different Nvidia graphics cards, you’re going to come across a lot of different terms. Some of them are standard for graphics cards, but some of them are unique to Nvidia. Here are a few key terms that you’ll probably want to know when you’re shopping around.

Pascal Architecture

The microarchitecture of a GPU determines how the different components work together to process information. It includes things like buses, caches, buffers, instruction queues, decoders, and all of their connections. Nvidia’s latest architecture, named Pascal, has been touted as the most advanced in gaming. This is, of course, marketing speak.

However, when Nvidia comes out with a new architecture, it consistently shows increased performance with a lower power cost. Pascal, they say, packs up to three times more performance than previous-generation cards. That means your games look better without your card generating as much heat or drawing as much power.

G-SYNC

Much like PhysX, ShadowWorks, and HairWorks function with specific games, G-SYNC works with specific monitors. Put simply, G-SYNC makes sure your graphics card and monitor are working well together. It smooths out gameplay and reduces the likelihood of screen tearing at refresh rates of up to 240 Hz. In short, if you have a G-SYNC-compatible monitor, it’ll improve the visuals of your gaming.

SLI

The Scalable Link Interface (SLI) is a propriety Nvidia technology. It lets you use up to four different GPUs in tandem. SLI with two beefy graphics cards can play the newest games on the highest settings. You’ll need an SLI-compatible motherboard to make this work, and it’s not cheap to buy two cards. However, knowing that you can upgrade instead of purchasing a new card is something to keep in mind.

GeForce Experience

This piece of software helps optimize your graphics card’s performance. New drivers are released to ensure that your card is ready to play the latest games as soon as they come out. Your system is analyzed, and game settings are customized to make sure you get the best performance. You can share clips and highlights directly to social media. And you can stream your PC games to your Nvidia Shield portable console.

Which Nvidia Graphics Card Should You Buy?

It’s obvious that if you want the absolute best in gaming, and can pay for it, you should buy the Titan X. It beats everything on the market (at least until AMD’s Vega arrives). But what if you can’t drop $1,500 on a graphics card and you’re looking to make the most of your money? Here’s how the GeForce GTX 10-series cards break down.

A couple notes: prices will vary depending on the manufacturer (we’ll discuss that in a moment), but we’ve tried to give you an average price. You could pay up to $100 more or less than the price listed here for an expensive card. The benchmarks reported are from VideocardBenchmark.net and are derived from thousands of users using their service to benchmark their own hardware, so keep those things in mind.