GRAPHICS CARDS
If gaming is something that interests you, you need a graphics card. If you want to play the latest games, you need an up-to-date graphics card. That’s pretty much the long and short of it. If gaming is lower down on your list, you probably don’t need to upgrade—in fact, you might be able to get away with the integrated graphics capabilities of your CPU. As we say, knowing what you want to use your machine for is key.
As ever with graphics cards, you need to keep your target display in mind when looking at upgrades. There’s not a lot of point dropping $800 on a Ge Force GTX 1080 if you’re happy with your standard HD display, and don’t intend to upgrade it any time soon. Buy a graphics card that can drive your display (s), it’s that simple. We run plenty of graphics card group tests to help you make the decision on what graphics card is right for you, but just as with the processor market at the moment, there’s a good correlation between price and performance—if you’re serious about gaming, then it’s wise to spend as much as you can to get the performance you need for today’s and tomorrow’s titles.
Again, there’s a proviso, which is to do with using a graphics card for more serious work. Some applications can take advantage of the processing power of a graphics card using CUDA or Open CL to improve performance significantly—we’re talking about the likes of Blender, Maya, and Sony Vegas, among others. The problem is knowing which applications you use actually take advantage of which cards, using which API, and ultimately to what benefit. Check out the software developer’s website for the application you’re utilizing, to see if there’s any advantage to using a specific graphics card.