GPU Hierarchy 2020 – Graphics Card Tier List For Gaming

Variety is both a blessing and a curse in the world of PC gaming. The number of options to choose from when it comes to hardware can be mind-boggling, especially when you need to consider all of those options to find a product that best fits your needs and your budget.

To help you find the right graphics card more easily, we have put together a table that ranks GPUs according to their performance, but we also kept value in mind, as it is also an important factor.

We update this list very often, so be sure to check back for fresh info or bookmark the page.

If you’d like to take a look at our selection of the best GPU’s for gaming in 2020, check out this article.

Tier 1 – Enthusiast

The first tier is what is often referred to as the “enthusiast” tier, and is comprised of the most powerful (and most expensive) GPUs in the world. Nvidia has had indisputable dominance in this tier for a very long time, as they are the only ones currently offering GPUs of this caliber.

In 2020, enthusiast-grade GPUs are even more expensive than they used to be, but they are also more powerful. Most of them aren’t even geared towards gaming but towards professional users.

In any case, these GPUs really push the envelope when it comes to both performance and pricing. They push the technological boundaries and pave the way for more advanced technologies to be implemented in mainstream GPUs, though they themselves are hardly mainstream products. 

Tier 2 – High-End

The second tier is comprised of high-end GPUs that are often the best pick for gamers with deeper pockets, as they offer better value for gaming than their enthusiast-grade counterparts do.

In 2020, these GPUs are solid solutions for 4K gaming, and while Nvidia still has the upper hand here, AMD will hopefully be offering proper competition in the very near future when they unveil their latest RX 6000 GPUs.

Tier 3 – Mid-range

The third tier consists of mid-range GPUs that tend to offer the best balance between performance and pricing that you can find. They offer good 1440p performance but some of them can also handle 4K remarkably well.

Nvidia and AMD are fairly evenly matched in this department, though the RX 5000 series was plagued by some major driver issues that ultimately made them less appealing than the competition.

Tier 4 – Budget

Finally, for those who don’t have a lot of money to spend on a beastly gaming PC, there are a number of affordable yet reliable budget-friendly solutions to choose from. As before, AMD used to offer better solutions in this price range, but now there are some solid Nvidia GPUs to choose from, too.

Budget GPUs are intended mainly for 1080p gaming, though the performance will, naturally, vary from game to game and model to model, with some of them quite capable of running games in 1440p, albeit not at stellar framerates.