Finding the right GPU in 2025 is all about matching your needs and budget with a card that delivers where it matters most. Whether you’re pushing polygons in the latest games, training AI models or diving into content creation, the best graphics cards balance raw power with smart design—but sifting through pages of specs and benchmarks can feel overwhelming. At CGMagazine, we’ve selected our top picks for the best GPUs of 2025 to help you find the one worth your money and time.
With this in mind, we’ve taken the time to highlight the best GPUs we’ve reviewed over the past year, showcasing what’s truly worth investing in. Our selections also reflect the evolving landscape of AI integration and ray tracing—technologies that are reshaping gaming and professional workflows. By blending benchmarks with real-world usability, we aim to guide you toward a GPU that fits your goals, not just your wallet. After all, the best card isn’t the fastest one—it’s the one that lets you focus on what you love at every budget.
Intel Arc B580
Intel has been exploring the GPU market for a few years, and with its latest offering, the Battlemage Intel Arc B580, the company appears ready to go all in. This new GPU marks a significant evolution in Intel’s strategy, delivering numerous upgrades and improvements over the previous generation Alchemist GPU range. Built on the new Xe2 architecture and manufactured using TSMC’s N5 process, these cards represent Intel’s most competitive entry yet in the mainstream gaming segment, targeting the crucial $200 to $300 price bracket.
This new GPU represents a significant improvement over Intel’s previous generation lineup. Although the flagship B580 features fewer Xe-cores than its predecessor (20 compared to the A750’s 28), it delivers superior gaming performance—highlighting the architectural advancements of the Xe2 generation and underscoring why this new GPU is so noteworthy. In addition to this performance boost, the Intel Arc B580 GPU offers a 70 percent improvement per Xe-core and a 50 percent enhancement in energy efficiency compared to the previous generation.
The Intel Battlemage Arc B580 is without question a solid evolution compared to their Alchemist range, delivering impressive results across the board. It stands as an impressive mainstream gaming and creative workflow GPU, bringing some of the latest technology to the forefront at a price that makes it exciting to new builds. Even more impressive is how well Intel has priced the GPU, hitting the sweet spot below what AMD and NVIDIA charge for their comparable offerings. With the AMD RX 7600 costing around $269.99 and the NVIDIA RTX 4060 setting you back $299.99 currently (the 4060 TI we tested starting at $399), the value proposition with the Intel Arc B580 is striking.
I am impressed by what Intel has brought to the table, demonstrating they have what it takes to compete with the major players in the GPU market. The Intel Arc B580 is a fantastic GPU that delivers on its promises, offering a price-to-performance ratio that is hard to beat. If you are considering the NVIDIA RTX 4060 or the AMD RX 7600, it’s worth looking at the new Arc B580. It delivers performance that is equal to or better than these cards in many titles and continues to improve as the drivers mature.
While Intel Arc is not yet competing with enthusiast-level cards like the RTX 4070 or RX 7800, for anyone seeking a 1440p gaming experience, the Intel Arc B580 is an excellent choice.
- The Complete Gaming Experience: Game at high resolutions with high frame rates and high image fidelity with Intel XeSS AI-enhanced upscaling technology and full support for ray tracing.
- A Versatile Creator Toolkit: The advanced Xe Media Engine handles high throughput creation easily in up to 8K resolution, plus support for all the most popular media codecs for varied content creation
AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU (also known as the Golden Rabbit Edition) is a unique new offering targeting mainstream gamers who want strong 1440p and entry-level 4K performance made for the mid-range gamer. With solid performance and a great entry point for the AMD RDNA 3 family, it strikes a solid balance between price and performance, even if it struggles at some 4K workflows.
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics card was first released to target the Chinese market, delivering performance capable for many gaming and computing tasks while falling short of reaching the heights of the top-end cards in the RDNA 3 family of GPUs. Even though it started life made for China, AMD has decided to bring the GPU to the US, giving a new mid-range gaming and content creator-focused card that offers just enough to make it worth considering over the Radeon 7800 XT.
Given how AMD is positioning the card in marketing material and the review guide, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU is designed to excel at 2560 x 1440 and deliver playable framerates at 3840 x 2160. It can tackle any game you throw at it with max settings at 1440p and put up a fight when stepping up to 4K resolution. It is something that we saw done well with the Radeon 7800 XT, so for the slight uptick in price, what the Radeon RX 7900 GRE offers feels very compelling.
At $549, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE goes toe-to-toe with NVIDIA’s $599 RTX 4070 Super and largely keeps pace for $50 less. That’s mighty impressive for a card two tiers down from AMD’s top offering. Of course, there are always tradeoffs when buying a mid-range card. The 7900 GRE trails the RTX 4070 Super in ray tracing performance, lacks DLSS 3 frame generation, and can’t quite hit the same 4K gaming heights or be able to support CUDA-based workflows in various software packages.
- Boost Clock: Up to 2680 MHz
- Game Clock: Up to 2510 MHz
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super
2023 was a strange year for the GPU market, with some truly powerful cards but prices to match. NVIDIA is seemingly looking to change things up; they have already done so with the RTX 4070 Super, and now the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Super looks to complete the image by fixing many of the complaints about the past iteration. With a new $999 price point and impressive specifications, this might just be NVIDIA’s comeback card.
I’ll cut to the chase here: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super appears to address the two major concerns with the standard RTX 4080. With an MSRP of $999, it is $200 more affordable than the original, aligning better with expectations for a xx80 class card. NVIDIA has also unlocked additional cores and increased clock speeds, resulting in estimates of the 4080 Super performing approximately 10-15% better. This should make the card more competitive as a high-end gaming GPU, better suiting what consumers want.
With ray tracing and DLSS 3 enabled, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super leaves the last generation king, the RTX 3080, in the dust. You’re looking at average performance gains of 25-30% across most AAA titles at 4K maximum settings. For example, in Cyberpunk 2077, with full ray tracing enabled at 4K, the 4080 Super manages 92 FPS on average with DLSS 3, compared to just 61 FPS on the 3080.
The RTX 4080 Super clearly delivers excellent performance; there is no question that NVIDIA has created an absolute beast of a GPU here. But it is only worth the investment if you are coming from the previous generation of GPU. The standard GeForce RTX 4080 already delivers incredible 4K gaming performance with all the bells and whistles enabled. And it remains a productivity powerhouse for creative workflows. Investing in a GPU that only gives minor improvements over the standard GeForce RTX 4080 is a hard pill to swallow for most.
NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition
NVIDIA has unleashed yet another addition to their GeForce RTX 40 series lineup, the RTX 4070 Super. Announced at CES 2024, NVIDIA unveiled three new Super variant additions to their 40-series lineup: RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and RTX 4070 Super. Now, with CES over, we finally have our hands on the RTX 4070 Super, and with its $599 price point, it has all the potential to be the mainstream card many people have been asking for, and if the promises are to be believed, is a major upgrade for people who have been sitting on the fence waiting to jump on the Ada Lovelace range of graphics cards.
Enter the RTX 4070 Super. By swapping in a more fully unlocked AD104 GPU with 7,168 CUDA cores (up from 5,888 on the RTX 4070) and upgrading to a wider 256-bit memory bus, NVIDIA has created what looks to be the ultimate 1440p gaming card. The card also sports a healthy 48MB of L2 cache to keep those cores well-fed. With a boost clock speed of 2.61 GHz, it delivers some seriously snappy performance, especially compared to the non-super variant.
Between vastly improved rasterization and ray-tracing throughput, NVIDIA’s latest architecture, and future-proof features like AV1 encoding, the NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super Founders Edition is a GPU built to last. As long as you’re aware of the memory limitations, I have no qualms about recommending it as the new midrange card to beat.
For PC gamers looking for a high-end 1440p or entry-level 4K card, the NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super checks all the right boxes. It may not have the raw horsepower to deliver triple-digit 4K frames consistently, but 60+ FPS at maxed settings is very achievable, especially with DLSS thrown into the mix, and you’ll be well-equipped to enjoy next-generation gaming effects. If that sounds like your ideal scenario, picking up one of these GPUs will serve you well for years to come.