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Which graphics card should you buy in 2025?
- Thread starter garkot9
- Start date
- Joined
- May 28, 2019
- Messages
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- 113
As far as 2022-2025 cards go:
1080p - Just about anything that isn't the bottom-most GPU offering from any manufacturer. Just make sure to stick with something with at least 8 GB, although less is definitely doable here, just not recommended. Most GPUs in the $400-$600 range should do fine as you're more in the CPU-bottleneck territory at this resolution.
1440p - RTX 5070 Ti (said to launch at $799 for the lucky few who can get one and has the same GPU and memory as the 5080 but cutdown and slightly slower) or AMD RX 9070 series (price not yet announced but rumored to be very competitive vs NVIDIA or Intel GPUs). AMD RX 9070 series hasn't launched yet but is expected to perform well at 1080p and somewhat at 1440p. 8GB-12GB VRAM does fine here for most things. 16GB tends to be the new sweet spot but can be overkill. A RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is a great value/perf here as well but becoming increasingly difficult to find at MSRP now. So are 4070/4070 Ti for a bit less (my laptop has a GPU similar to these and does great at 1440p).
For 4K, you can get by with an RTX 4080 SUPER/RTX 5080 or AMD 7900XT/XTX but getting them at MSRP is crucial for any argument involving value. An RTX 4090/5090 card is best but virtually impossible to get at MSRP now unless you can get to a Microcenter or incredible luck online. However, I don't recommend anyone paying more than MSRP for an 4090/5090 and there's probably better luck trying to snag a 7900XT/XTX. A minimum of 16GB VRAM is recommended although there are plenty of other titles that will use less at 4K. The other thing to consider with any of these cards is power and heat as all will need a considerable of power (400W-600W) and generate more heat.
You mention having an i7 but Hogwarts is a game known to be CPU intensive so that is something to think about. There's a chance, depending on your setup that upgrading other system parts (CPU/memory) could increase performance for less money.
NVIDIA's DLSS technology has a tendency to allow their cards to excel for raytracing compared to other manufacturers but often come with a price premium. AMD cards can often trade blows and exceed in rasterization with a lower price but fall behind for RT tasks (although the upcoming 9070 series is said to have improvements here). Intel is really looking to capture the 1080p market with much lower prices than either and its cards have tested well there but tend to begin struggling at 1440p (although in some titles does well).
I do recommend that you check out our various GPU reviews as @Brent_Justice does go into depth in his reviews and Hogwarts is listed in more than a few of them.
1080p - Just about anything that isn't the bottom-most GPU offering from any manufacturer. Just make sure to stick with something with at least 8 GB, although less is definitely doable here, just not recommended. Most GPUs in the $400-$600 range should do fine as you're more in the CPU-bottleneck territory at this resolution.
1440p - RTX 5070 Ti (said to launch at $799 for the lucky few who can get one and has the same GPU and memory as the 5080 but cutdown and slightly slower) or AMD RX 9070 series (price not yet announced but rumored to be very competitive vs NVIDIA or Intel GPUs). AMD RX 9070 series hasn't launched yet but is expected to perform well at 1080p and somewhat at 1440p. 8GB-12GB VRAM does fine here for most things. 16GB tends to be the new sweet spot but can be overkill. A RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is a great value/perf here as well but becoming increasingly difficult to find at MSRP now. So are 4070/4070 Ti for a bit less (my laptop has a GPU similar to these and does great at 1440p).
For 4K, you can get by with an RTX 4080 SUPER/RTX 5080 or AMD 7900XT/XTX but getting them at MSRP is crucial for any argument involving value. An RTX 4090/5090 card is best but virtually impossible to get at MSRP now unless you can get to a Microcenter or incredible luck online. However, I don't recommend anyone paying more than MSRP for an 4090/5090 and there's probably better luck trying to snag a 7900XT/XTX. A minimum of 16GB VRAM is recommended although there are plenty of other titles that will use less at 4K. The other thing to consider with any of these cards is power and heat as all will need a considerable of power (400W-600W) and generate more heat.
You mention having an i7 but Hogwarts is a game known to be CPU intensive so that is something to think about. There's a chance, depending on your setup that upgrading other system parts (CPU/memory) could increase performance for less money.
NVIDIA's DLSS technology has a tendency to allow their cards to excel for raytracing compared to other manufacturers but often come with a price premium. AMD cards can often trade blows and exceed in rasterization with a lower price but fall behind for RT tasks (although the upcoming 9070 series is said to have improvements here). Intel is really looking to capture the 1080p market with much lower prices than either and its cards have tested well there but tend to begin struggling at 1440p (although in some titles does well).
I do recommend that you check out our various GPU reviews as @Brent_Justice does go into depth in his reviews and Hogwarts is listed in more than a few of them.