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.
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How this guide was put together
- Ranked on ray tracing index at 1440p (70%), performance index at 1440p (20%) and VRAM headroom (10%).
- The rasterisation component is included so the answer is a card that is good at both, not one that is only relatively less bad at ray tracing.
- Both indices are CompareYourGPU estimates aggregated from public review coverage, not CompareYourGPU measurements.
The full site-wide methodology, including how the performance index and value scores are produced, is on the methodology page.
Computed from the database
Current picks: best gpu for ray tracing
These are not hardcoded into the guide. They are read from the live ranking, so this section updates whenever the underlying data does.
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. Any price-based element uses launch MSRP, because CompareYourGPU holds no verified current price for these cards.
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.
- $1,999 launch MSRP.
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 $999
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.
- $999 launch MSRP.
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 $749
More powerful: RTX 5090 at $1,999
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.
- $749 launch MSRP.
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 $599
More powerful: RTX 5080 at $999
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What ray tracing actually costs
Enabling standard ray-traced effects such as reflections and shadows typically costs a substantial share of your frame rate. Path tracing, where the entire lighting model is ray traced, costs far more again and is currently only offered by a handful of games.
The cost is not uniform across hardware. Cards with more capable dedicated ray tracing hardware lose proportionally less, which is why the ranking on this page differs from the general performance ranking.
Upscaling is part of the equation
In practice, ray tracing and upscaling are bought together. The card renders at a lower internal resolution, reconstructs the image, and spends the performance it saved on ray tracing instead. That means the quality of a manufacturer's upscaler matters almost as much as its ray tracing hardware.
This is where the vendor differences are sharpest. NVIDIA's DLSS has the widest game support and is generally considered the strongest reconstruction. AMD's FSR 4 closed much of that gap but needs current-generation hardware and has narrower per-game support. Intel's XeSS is competitive on Arc hardware.
Which games are worth it
Ray tracing implementations vary enormously in how much they change the image. In some games it is a subtle improvement to reflections; in others, particularly those with full path tracing, it changes the entire look of the scene.
Before weighting ray tracing heavily in your purchase, check whether the specific games you play have implementations worth the performance cost. The game pages on this site note which titles have meaningful ray tracing and which have token support.
Frequently asked questions
Is ray tracing worth the performance cost?
Do AMD cards handle ray tracing well now?
How much VRAM does ray tracing need?
Related reading
The best graphics cards for 1440p gaming
1440p is where most high-refresh gaming monitors sit, and where the price and performance curves meet most usefully. This ranking balances raw performance against memory headroom and value rather than optimising for any one of them.
The best graphics cards for 4K gaming
4K is roughly 2.3 times the pixel count of 1440p, and it is unforgiving of a narrow memory bus or a small memory pool. This ranking weights 4K performance and VRAM heavily and excludes cards with under 12 GB of memory.
How to choose a graphics card
Most graphics card advice starts with a list of products. This guide starts with the four questions that decide which list you should even be looking at, because a card that is perfect for one build is a waste of money in another.
Or skip the reading: answer seven questions and get a recommendation with the reasoning shown.