Best Budget Graphics Cards for 1080P Gaming - Buyer's Guide

January 2017 - Edition

It's time for the best budget graphics card. For the records, these cards selected after 

1.countless adding, subtracting and reading hundreds of reviews (reference) out there. 

2. I'm not writing or adding gazillions of numbers here. You can see that on review sites 

3. Under $200. I believe most of us looking for price performance ratio. Future proof, energy efficiency or best bang for buck 

4. If you are into crossfire or SLI these budget cards, then it's not worth it, and some cards don't support pairing at this range. It's better to invest in a single slot option rather than gets into problems at this price bracket.

Without further ado, 

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC 3GB GDDR5 Graphics Card

GTX 1060 mini 3GB edges out RX 480 4GB and efficient in most current games, Hence i choose it. GTX 1060 mini is the new card based on Nvidia Pascal architecture in 2016. You can run almost all games at 1080P 60FPS and is even VR ready. It can even do 1440p at medium ultra settings. It’s in the league of GTX 980 as well.But If you think it’s the same card as GTX 1060 6GB, it’s not. There’s difference between the regular version and this 3GB version core configuration(fewer cores). Hence the lower price and 6GB version goes for a high price.But it is not a deal breaker for me at least. Its ~10% faster than RX 470. Only concern is 3GB VRAM. But its enough for 1080p gaming for a couple of years in our opinion. A solid choice

XFX Radeon RX 470 RS 4GB

RX 470 beats 1050Ti in performance. The difference is huge. It's highly recommended over 1050Ti if you have good a PSU. Its approx 22% faster than 1050Ti overall. That's a huge gap.It can toe to toe with 480 and 1060 in some games if overclocked.

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1050 Ti mini 4GB

1050Ti is the fastest card without external power supply.Throw it on the crappy PSU and works fine.Its performance is 3X better than previous fastest 750Ti. Good for esports games and HTPC builds looking for upgrade. If you want to breath new life into old pc without upgrading PSU. its the best card you can get today.

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1050 mini 2GB

RX 460 launch price is under $100 but the various models are asking for a hefty price tag of $149 at launch.Now it’s stabilized, 1050 2GB price is around the same as RX 460 and beats RX 460 by approx 30%.

Wrap-up

There are older generation cards that can do 1080P games as well. But considering the price-performance ratio, new architecture, efficiency and performance these newly selected cards fit well here for 1080p gaming.Also, wait for holiday sales and price to drop further.Feel free to ask questions and express opinions as well. Budget gaming is really a mess.