Still, the rollout of games that make use of (and specifically good use of) ray tracing has been slow. AMD ('Team Red') stepped into this game in a big way in 2020 with its RX 6000 cards, but it's still on its first go-round with real-time ray tracing, and so lags behind Nvidia on this front. Introduced as a major new feature with Nvidia's now previous-generation RTX 20-series cards, 'Team Green' is now on its second generation RTX with 30-series GPUs. That said, the realistically lit elephant in the room that we've been ignoring thus-far is real-time ray tracing. With its latest 'Big Navi' RX 6000 cards, AMD is more competitive than it has been in years with Nvidia and its current-gen Ampere cards, like the GeForce RTX 3080, in general performance. There are hundreds of graphics cards from dozens of manufacturers, but only two companies actually make the GPUs that power these components: Nvidia and AMD-although Intel's Xe Graphics could arrive this year. Nvidia and AMD GPUs (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) Graphics cards don't typically have large amounts of overclocking headroom, usually only 5-10%. If you need better performance, buy a more-powerful card. Don't count on overclocking for serious performance boosts.Adding a second card is usually more trouble than it's worth. Game support for Multi-card SLI or CrossFire setups has been trending down for years. Don't get dual cards-they're not worth it.But note that in recent months, due to supply issues and increased demand, most recent cards have been selling for well above their MSRP. Tools like CamelCamelCamel can help separate the real deals from the fake mark-up-then-discount offerings. A good way to tell if you're getting a deal is to check the launch price or MSRP of the card you're considering before buying. Do you have enough power and space? Make sure your PC case has enough room for the card you're considering, and that your power supply has enough watts to spare, along with the correct type of power connectors (up to three 8-pin PCIe, depending on the card).Alternatively, if your monitor tops out at 60Hz and 1080p, there's no point in paying extra for a powerful card that pushes pixels faster than your display can keep up with. If your monitor has triple-digit refresh rates, you'll need a powerful card and processor to reach its full potential. So be sure to pair your GPU with the best gaming monitor for your needs. Many mainstream cards are sufficient for gaming at 1080p resolutions at between 30-60 fps, but you'll need a high-end card for resolutions at or near 4K resolution with high in-game settings on the most demanding titles.

If you spend all your money on graphics and don't opt for one of the best CPUs, your system might score well on synthetic benchmarks but won't do as well in real game play (due to lower minimum frame rates).

What graphics card do i have