user benchmark computer geforce gtx 1080

The GPU Hierarchy: A Guide to Understanding Graphics Card Performance

When it comes to playing games, running artificial intelligence workloads like Stable Diffusion, or doing professional video editing, your graphics card plays a crucial role in determining performance. Even the best CPUs for gaming take a secondary role when it comes to graphics rendering.

In this article, we will explore the GPU hierarchy, ranking all current and previous generation graphics cards by performance. We'll also provide an overview of the various architectures powering these cards, including Nvidia's Ada Lovelace, AMD's RDNA 3, and Intel's Arc Alchemist.

At 1080p 'ultra' for our main suite and at 1080p 'medium' for our DXR suite, we've conducted a series of benchmarks to compare the performance of various graphics cards. Our results are based solely on these performance-based GPU gaming benchmarks, without enabling features like DLSS, FSR, or XeSS.

The following tables present our findings, sorted by our benchmark scores:

For a more detailed look at the ray tracing capabilities of each card, we've also compiled a separate hierarchy based on our DXR suite benchmarks:

As you can see from these tables, Nvidia's RTX 40-series and AMD's RX 7000-series cards dominate the performance charts. However, Intel's Arc Alchemist architecture also shows promise, particularly in the mid-range segment.

We've recently retested our GPUs on a revamped test suite using a Core i9-13900K instead of a Core i9-12900K. This change has resulted in updated numbers for our hierarchy, which we're excited to share with you.

In recent months, several new graphics cards have been released, including the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and RX 7600 XT. We've also seen the arrival of AMD's RX 7900 GRE in the United States.

Our GPU benchmarks hierarchy is designed to help you make an informed decision when choosing a graphics card for your gaming needs. Whether you're looking for the best performance or the most affordable option, we hope this guide will provide valuable insights into the world of computer graphics.

User benchmark computer geforce gtx 1080