Buying a Graphics card has been very difficult since 2016 when the current generation of Graphics card both from Nvidia and AMD were announced. As the new hardware was far better than the previous generation the performance premium over the currently present Graphics card was to such an extent that even short scale mining became profitable.
2017 was the year when we saw sharp increases in the prices of cryptocurrency, and as the business was becoming more and more profitable the demand of the Graphics card increased, and we saw the increasing prices of the graphics card some of them were even retailing at 2 or 3 times of the actual price.
The Graphics cards that were saved from the shortage were mostly the mid-end or the low-end Graphics cards since some of them did not meet the minimum requirements that are required to mine. But due to a trend in the market their prices also increased. Now, as the prices are coming to their previous state and market is replete with many used and new budget GPUs, we thought it would be a better idea to compare the price and performance of these graphics cards and see which one to buy in 2018.
How we tested
The graphics cards that we are comparing today include the budget Graphics cards from both AMD and Nvidia which include RX 550 and RX 460 from AMD, GT 1030 and GTX 750Ti from Nvidia. All these cards range from $95 to $105, and the models we used in testing have 2GB of GDDR5 memory and to remain as justified as possible the specifications of the test rig remained the same for every card.
Moreover, we have individual reviews of these cards too if you want to go in depth of each card. We tested these cards at different esports and AAA titles to see which one provides the best price to performance ratio. Without wasting much time let’s get into it.
Battlefield 1
Battlefield 1 is one of the first-person shooter masterpieces from EA that was based on the World War 1. The game had stunning visuals and the multiplayer include 16 people battles on the same World War map, the multiplayer is dead, but the single-player campaign is worth checking out if you haven’t played it yet.
Coming to our budget Graphics cards all of them managed to play the game at 1080p high settings with the RX 460 coming first with average framerates of 50 followed by GTX 750Ti which got 48 then Gt 1030 and RX 550 came last with an average of 38FPS. None of them could manage to attain 60 framerates, but the game was playable since all of them got more than 30 frames during the whole time. So, if you are looking for a console like an experience any of them would do the trick in Battlefield 1, but the RX 460 is highly recommended since it got the best framerates.
Grand Theft Auto V
The 2015 masterpiece from Rockstar north games Grand Theft Auto V is the 7th installment in the series that took the series to a whole new level as they introduced new gameplay and a choice to switch between 3 playable characters at any time in the game. All characters featured different abilities to aid in different missions. Moreover, the open world game was optimized to such an extent that it was playable in almost any device.
Coming to our competition all our contenders perform very well at 1080p low settings but to keep the competition reasonable we had to upscale the settings at 1080p max settings. As all of them had 2GB of VRAM all of them suffered from ram bottlenecking at high textures making the experience worse comparatively. At max settings, all of them kept smooth framerates more than 30, but only GTX 1050Ti and RX 460 got closer to 50 the remaining were lurking around mid-thirties.
FIFA 18
Another game from EA that is to all those ultimate teams and generally FIFA fans who do not want to spend much on their computer. All these cards can handle these games at 1080p ultra settings easily with framerates locked at 60, or if fluctuating frames does not bother you, then the framerates fluctuate from 60 to 100 in all of them. The RX 460 shines here too with framerates averaging 120, GTX 750Ti got around 110, and the remaining got around 100 FPS always.
Verdict
All these budget graphics cards can play esports games at highest possible settings at 1080p while for AAA games the RX 460 go the best results compared to the rest at every game that we tested with GTX 750Ti coming at 2nd at almost all tests. Now to answer the question which one is the best for you, it would be RX 460 if you happen to get it at $105 or GTX 750Ti if there is a $100 offer.