The GPU market finally feels manageable, with prices stabilizing and a few standout deals emerging, even as AI demand and rising DRAM costs threaten to shake things up again.
The Best GPUs - Late 2025 Update
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
gamerk2
Posts: 1,606 +2,039
GodisanAtheist
Posts: 1,236 +2,598
-What do you do with your cards? Just game?
Is so the drivers have been fine for me, but I'm on a 6800xt and largely playing older games (recently finished Jedi Survivor for example and now playing through Dead Space 3).
That said I've rarely ever had issues with card drivers from either Nvidia or AMD since the Vista Launch fiasco almost 20 years ago so if you keep having driver issues it might not be the cards but some other instability in the system.
The short answer is buy what you want, but buy it NOW.
After Christmas is going to be bad for a while.
After Christmas is going to be bad for a while.
Nobina
Posts: 4,702 +5,824
RX 9070 has been the most stable AMD GPU I've had so far, no issues. Previously on RX 570 and 6700 XT, there were some minor driver issues like resetting clock settings to default and before that for some time I would lose signal to monitor until I restart the PC, which was fixed at some point. Last time I had an Nvidia card, it was GTX 1050 Ti with no driver issues, since then I've only heard they've gotten worse, but it could be false or bias.
The Techspot feature of the Best of GPU list showing AMD in 3 of the top 5 spots is kind of a shocker for me. I think its the first time I've seen any ranking where Nvidia is not first.
Built a rig in July (Thanksgiving thankful because it was before the tariffs hit and Ram skyrocketed) with a AMD RX 9060XT - 16GB . Wanted to mention that in addition to gaming my occasional video and photo editing and rendering is outstanding too. Thanks for the exhaustive reviews. I'd like to see mentions of performance outside of gaming too. - My rig at build time was $1700, Ryzen 7700x, 32GB, 2 ea 4tb nvme, Radeon 9060XT at 16GB, 8TB HDD. Just recofig'd it at today's prices - it now works up about $2200. Ah! Thanksgiving!
My experience with the AMD drivers has been problem free
Built a rig in July (Thanksgiving thankful because it was before the tariffs hit and Ram skyrocketed) with a AMD RX 9060XT - 16GB . Wanted to mention that in addition to gaming my occasional video and photo editing and rendering is outstanding too. Thanks for the exhaustive reviews. I'd like to see mentions of performance outside of gaming too. - My rig at build time was $1700, Ryzen 7700x, 32GB, 2 ea 4tb nvme, Radeon 9060XT at 16GB, 8TB HDD. Just recofig'd it at today's prices - it now works up about $2200. Ah! Thanksgiving!
My experience with the AMD drivers has been problem free
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Axeia
Posts: 998 +1,402
Been a while uh (like 2 decades?
)Aside from having Adrenalin resetting my overclock and fan speed settings (that I stored and could restore from a config file) a couple of times it's been entirely problem free for me from a 290x, to Fury to RX 580 to RX 6700 XT.
My NVIDIA 970 in the same time frame ironically had VRAM struggles in Skyrim and crashed at the factory overclock. Although the GTX 1060 and 1070 were trouble free.
yRaz
Posts: 9,242 +16,268
If you have even the slightest interest in SteamOS or Linux, AMD is currently your only real option. You CAN run an Nvidia GPU, but you're going to be pasting lines of code into the command line off of github with moderate success.
BogdanR
Posts: 603 +1,039
No issues whatsoever for some time… maybe 3 years? RX 6800 and RX 9070XT user. Apart from some undervolting I’m not tweaking anything anymore and the experience has been painless thus far. The RX 6800 is also performing “video” duties on my Media Center PC with very decent quality output and no issues whatsoever. Both systems are color calibrated with a pro colorimeter.
GhostLegion
Posts: 224 +250
3050 6GB is fine…if you’re in my position with a Dell computer with no power connector. Then it’s your only option and yes, destroys the RX 6500. Plus it even has media encoders and the like! So it actually doesn’t totally suck. Only makes sense when you get the rest of the computer for peanuts or even free. It’s basically equivalent to a GTX 1060, so it plays decent at 1080P and older titles. Which is all I do because modern gaming is a wasteland of AI and micro transactions.
I wish the 7500 was available at retail! Would be interesting to see numbers. Steve, any interest in that?
Can I interest anyone in some fine wine but Intel? I’d take the B580 over the 8GB 9060XT just because of the VRAM. Drivers can improve but without soldering skills and a flashed VBIOS, that 9060XT won’t. Plus Intel isn’t so bad anymore. Unless on Linux. Then it’s merely ok at best. Sadly.
Using 3050 6GB is pleasantly not horrible on Bazzite. Basically anything runs, just a question of if it’s a slide show.
I wish the 7500 was available at retail! Would be interesting to see numbers. Steve, any interest in that?
Can I interest anyone in some fine wine but Intel? I’d take the B580 over the 8GB 9060XT just because of the VRAM. Drivers can improve but without soldering skills and a flashed VBIOS, that 9060XT won’t. Plus Intel isn’t so bad anymore. Unless on Linux. Then it’s merely ok at best. Sadly.
Using 3050 6GB is pleasantly not horrible on Bazzite. Basically anything runs, just a question of if it’s a slide show.
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OortCloud
Posts: 2,209 +3,200
I agree with everything said here except the 5080. Yes it's expensive for the gains it gives, but it is much better value for money than a 5090 and offers twice the Frame Per Dollar as the 5090. It also has a load of headroom for overclocking. For me, if you want to stay on NVidia because you (rightly) like the better DLSS and the RT capabilities of NVidia cards and you want a good experience in all games at 4K, then if you can find a card at RRP it's the card to go for.
themastergoose
Posts: 266 +856
As a long-time Radeon user, from the 5700 XT to the 6950 XT and now the 9070 XT, I have found the drivers to be very stable since around this time last year. I have experienced no issues recently, though I acknowledge that in the past they were somewhat inconsistent - albeit not nearly as problematic as often portrayed by the media. Interestingly, the same media did not criticise Nvidia to the same extent, despite their drivers causing display output failures across three GPU generations for much of the first half of this year driver release after release.
My consistent recommendation for AMD Radeon drivers is to switch the update branch to official releases rather than the default official + optional setting in the control panel, as beta drivers are often best avoided in my experience - perhaps contributing to the perception of poor driver quality with installing beta drivers being the default setting.
Agreed. The 5080 was a bad deal when it was $1300+
But at MSRP it’s more a do you want to pay more for more performance card which is a totally valid use case. Especially when several new games had the 5070 TI just below my target FPS.
Megalomaniac
Posts: 1,131 +1,205
I have a 5090FE and my new Alienware AAT2250 came with a 5090 (I have no idea what model). Feels good!
I wish I could get the Astral Liquid but I'm not paying no $3700
I wish I could get the Astral Liquid but I'm not paying no $3700
You know what's even better value?
A 5070 Ti that uses the same die and has the same amount of VRAM and is only 15% slower while being 30% cheaper. Steve is right in his assessment that 5080 is the most pointless card this generation.
15% is going from 60fps to 69fps. Not nice. Even less at higher fps numbers.
Certainly not worth paying 30% premium over.
If 5080 had 24GB at the some price it has today then I could at least some use for the 30% higher price.
OortCloud
Posts: 2,209 +3,200
At stock I'd agree but read about the overclocking headroom on a 5080, it's really capable of so much more. You can basically very easily make any 5080 perform similarly to a 4090 with ten minutes effort. The 5070 Ti doesn't have nearly so much overclock capabilities.
OC is roughly 10% on all cards anyway. Not to mention silicon lottery.
Besides given the modern cards are already pushed to the limit OC offers very little in return. Most people are much better off undervolting their cards instead.
The argument that 5080 is some kind of OC monster is laughable anyway.
ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua OC Review - Amazing Cooling
ASUS and Noctua—two market leaders—have joined forces to release the new GeForce RTX 5080 Noctua OC Edition. Our testing confirms it’s the quietest RTX 5080 you can buy, with the most powerful cooling solution on the market. However, it comes with a hefty price tag of $1,500.
MiqWalsh
Posts: 71 +82
Jeezus. You're concentrating exclusively on the most powerful cards possible with huge amounts of VRAM. Where the hell are you guys living.......Dreamland?
Most ordinary users out there don't earn enough to shell out the amounts of money you guys seem to shrug off as "nothing"....slagging off a mid-range 5000-series card as garbage. FFS.
Most ordinary users out there don't earn enough to shell out the amounts of money you guys seem to shrug off as "nothing"....slagging off a mid-range 5000-series card as garbage. FFS.
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