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Best GPU for ray tracing

Ray tracing punishes weak dedicated hardware. This ranks on ray-traced performance with a check that the card can also hold up in rasterisation.

How this is ranked: 70% ray tracing index at 1440p, 20% performance index at 1440p, 10% VRAM headroom. Only cards still in production are eligible. Price-based elements use each card's verified current price.

Rank 1
Top pickNVIDIA$6,592Category score 100/100

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

The fastest consumer graphics card on the market and the only one that treats 4K at high refresh rates as routine. It also asks for a 575 W power budget, a large case and flagship money, which is why it only makes sense at the very top of a build.

  • Ray tracing index of 100 at 1440p, where 100 is the fastest card here.
  • Retains 100% of its rasterisation standing once ray tracing is on.
  • Upscaling support: DLSS 4 Super Resolution, DLSS Ray Reconstruction, FSR 3.1, XeSS.
  • $6,592 current price.

Strengths

  • Comfortably the fastest option at 4K, with a wide margin over everything below it
  • 32 GB of GDDR7 removes memory capacity from the equation for gaming and most creator work
  • 1,792 GB/s of bandwidth keeps the card fed at 4K and in path-traced titles

Trade-offs

  • 575 W board power demands a high-quality 1,000 W-class PSU and strong case airflow
  • Flagship pricing puts it far outside the value curve
  • Partner boards are large enough to rule out most compact cases

Cheaper alternative: RTX 5080 at $1,973

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Rank 2
NVIDIA$1,973Category score 73/100

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

A capable 4K card with the full RTX 50 feature set at roughly half the price of the flagship. The 16 GB memory pool is the one specification that invites debate at this price point.

  • Ray tracing index of 72 at 1440p, where 100 is the fastest card here.
  • Retains 97% of its rasterisation standing once ray tracing is on.
  • Upscaling support: DLSS 4 Super Resolution, DLSS Ray Reconstruction, FSR 3.1, XeSS.
  • $1,973 current price.

Strengths

  • Strong 4K performance without the flagship's power and size requirements
  • 960 GB/s of GDDR7 bandwidth, unusually high for a 256-bit card
  • Full DLSS 4 feature set including Multi Frame Generation

Trade-offs

  • 16 GB is the same capacity as the previous generation's equivalent tier
  • The gap to the RTX 5090 is much larger than the gap in price suggests
  • Still a four-figure purchase

Cheaper alternative: RTX 5070 Ti at $1,510

More powerful: RTX 5090 at $6,592

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Rank 3
NVIDIA$1,510Category score 64/100

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

The most sensible high-end RTX 50 card: 16 GB of memory, near-RTX 5080 feature parity and a 300 W power budget, for meaningfully less money. It is the natural pick for a high-refresh 1440p build that might move to 4K later.

  • Ray tracing index of 62 at 1440p, where 100 is the fastest card here.
  • Retains 95% of its rasterisation standing once ray tracing is on.
  • Upscaling support: DLSS 4 Super Resolution, DLSS Ray Reconstruction, FSR 3.1, XeSS.
  • $1,510 current price.

Strengths

  • 16 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, generous for the price tier
  • Sits close enough to the RTX 5080 to make the price gap hard to justify
  • 300 W works on mainstream 750 W power supplies

Trade-offs

  • No Founders Edition, so pricing and cooling quality vary by partner
  • Still a premium purchase for a card aimed at 1440p

Cheaper alternative: RX 9070 XT at $988

More powerful: RTX 5080 at $1,973

Full specificationsCompare with alternatives

The thinking behind this category

These picks come from the database. The guide explains the decision they are meant to answer.

The best graphics cards for ray tracing

Ray tracing performance does not track rasterisation performance. Two cards that are evenly matched in a normal game can be far apart once ray tracing is enabled, which is why this ranking uses a separate index.

Other categories

The same database, weighted for a different priority. Expect different winners.