How to read this table
Every row is the cheapest in-stock Amazon.co.uk listing for that chipset, so you are comparing best current prices, not launch RRPs. The list is ordered by raw GPU performance (fastest at the top), which means the best value for your budget is usually a few rows down, not the most expensive card you can afford.
End-of-life cards (the RTX 40 and older Radeon RX 7000 series) still appear when Amazon has stock, but they are frequently third-party listings at inflated prices now that the newer generation has launched. If a last-gen card costs more than the current-gen card that replaced it, buy the newer one.
Which tier is right for you
- 1080p, high settings: RTX 5060, RX 9060 XT (8GB or 16GB), Intel Arc B580. Plenty for esports and most single-player games at 1080p.
- 1440p, the mainstream sweet spot: RTX 5070, RX 9070, RX 7800 XT. Enough VRAM and grunt for high-refresh 1440p with room to spare.
- 1440p maxed or entry 4K: RTX 5070 Ti, RX 9070 XT. The best price-to-performance step before flagship pricing.
- 4K and beyond: RTX 5080, RTX 5090, RX 7900 XTX. Only worth it on a high-refresh 4K panel with a CPU to match.
VRAM matters more than it used to
Modern games at 1440p and 4K, especially with ray tracing and high-resolution textures, can exceed 8GB of video memory. That makes the 16GB versions of the RX 9060 XT and RTX 5060 Ti worth the small premium over their 8GB variants if you plan to keep the card for several years. At 1080p, 8GB is still workable today but is the first thing to compromise your frame rate as games get heavier.