Although it feels like forever ago, we actually had a lot of new GPU launches in 2025. Their availability and pricing were both disappointing, but at least the benchmarks were nice to look at.
We’ve seen some real hits across the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series, AMD Radeon RX 9000-series, and even Intel’s humble but mighty Arc Battlemage lineup. Here are the standout GPUs of this year, plus one that really disappointed me.
HTG Wrapped 2025: 24 days of tech
24 days of our favorite hardware, gadgets, and tech
AMD RX 9070 XT
A welcome surprise (with a major caveat)
The RX 9070 XT turned out to be the surprise GPU I didn’t know we all needed.
While it’s true that AMD made no attempt to challenge Nvidia at the high-end, it created a great alternative at that price range.
The RX 9070 XT lands just under Nvidia’s RTX 5070 Ti and AMD’s own RX 7900 XTX in rasterization benchmarks at 4K. It also beats the RX 7900 XT by up to 10%. All of those cards cost more, so it’s a huge win for AMD’s RDNA 4 generation.
Nvidia rules the ray tracing scene. AMD wasn’t able to change that with this generation, but it did manage to push the RX 9070 XT to be nearly at the same level (or sometimes slightly better) than the RX 7900 XTX with RT enabled.
These benchmark scores, combined with its MSRP of $599, made the RX 9070 XT a fantastic value pick. Unfortunately, the card sold above the recommended list price for most of the year, and even now is hard to come by without paying extra—but the RX 9070 exists as a solid alternative.
Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti
This is as high as you realistically need to go
The RTX 5070 Ti is a lot pricier than the RX 9070 XT, with a $749 MSRP. It’s faster, but not massively so, so going from the RX 9070 XT to the RTX 5070 Ti won’t change your life in any meaningful way.
And yet, the RTX 5070 Ti remained the mid-to-high-end GPU to buy throughout most of the year, and that’s largely thanks to Nvidia’s DLSS 4.
DLSS 4 gives you access to Nvidia’s Multi-Frame Generation technology, and arguably, this is one of the best GPUs to use this tech with. You need a reasonably decent base frame rate for MFG to boost your frame rates without adding lots of latency, and the RTX 5070 Ti delivers that in most games.
As the RX 9070 XT sold for closer to $700-$800 throughout the year, and the RTX 5070 Ti hovered at around $800 to $850, it was an easy pick: the Nvidia card gives you DLSS 4 and better ray tracing, after all.
Now, the tables have turned, as the RTX 5070 Ti is sold for around $770 to $830, and the AMD equivalent can be found for $630. But, if you’re already spending $1,500 and up on a PC, the extra bit of future-proofing in the way of better RT capabilities and DLSS 4 can be worth it.
AMD RX 9060 XT
The GPU most people can settle for
I’m not a fan of spending too much money on your GPU, which is why I often recommend the RX 9060 XT as a viable option for budget-oriented PC builds. The 16GB version can be found for $369, which is considerably cheaper than Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti ($429 and up).
Performance-wise, these two graphics cards are nearly on the same level, but the AMD GPU is around $60 cheaper. That $60 can go a long way in a midrange PC. It can make the difference between a 1TB and a 2TB SSD (hint: you should always go for 2TB).
The only argument against the RX 9060 XT is the lack of Nvidia’s frame generation. But, seeing as AMD has its own upscaling and frame gen tech (FSR 4), you’ll still get some of the benefits, all the while saving a pretty penny.
Nvidia RTX 5090
The absolute king of the hill
It’s impossible to make a ranking of interesting GPUs that launched in 2025 without mentioning the RTX 5090. It is, after all, the absolute best graphics card currently available on the consumer market.
Various benchmarks pin the RTX 5090 as 20% to 40% faster than its predecessor, the RTX 4090, in pure rasterization. However, most of these gains are closer to 25% than to 40%.
While the RTX 5090 is undoubtedly the most impressive GPU we’ve ever seen, it also feels like it should’ve done more, simply because the RTX 4090 was nearly twice as fast as the RTX 3090.
The glaring downside to the RTX 5090 is its price. The MSRP sits at $1,999, but in reality, the GPU is hardly ever available under $2,300.
The GPU that was a major letdown in 2025
I saw it coming, and it still disappointed me
The GPU that let me down the most this year was Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti, with an emphasis on the version with 8GB VRAM—but, in all honesty, both didn’t quite hit the mark.
The 8GB version basically doesn’t need to exist. It costs $379, which is $10 more than the AMD variant with 16GB memory. The 16GB version is $429, making both a worse deal.
Performance-wise, it doesn’t exactly get destroyed by the RX 9060 XT, but at least AMD gives you more VRAM at $10 less. The RTX 5060 Ti 8GB GPU is essentially a vessel for DLSS 4, but if you care about that, I’d still recommend saving up the extra $50 to get the 16GB version.
At a time when video memory is a hot topic in GPUs, the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB is difficult to justify, and it was painful to see Nvidia repeat the exact same memory configurations as in the RTX 40-series.
We’re currently in the middle of what might turn out to be a short window when the GPUs aren’t as expensive as they’ve been all year, and their prices—while expected to rise—are still somewhat steady. If you need a new GPU, I suggest buying now instead of waiting for next year.
