Explore the best gaming GPUs of 2025: RTX 5090, RX 9070 XT, RX 9060 XT, RTX 5070 and Intel Arc B580. Specs, performance and top picks for 1080p–8K today.
© A. Krivonosov
2025 turned into one of the most unusual years for the gaming GPU market. Makers picked divergent paths: NVIDIA chased outright performance, AMD went all-in on the mainstream crowd, while Intel pushed to cement itself as the affordable alternative. With supply hiccups and inflated early-year prices, the sweet spot for gamers shifted toward mid-range and budget options. The Pepelats News team gathered the standout graphics cards worth considering.
Built on the Blackwell GB202 architecture, the GeForce RTX 5090 emerged as the most powerful consumer GPU of the year. It packs 21,760 CUDA cores, 32 GB of GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus, and a massive 1,792 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Power draw peaks at 575 W. In practice, it handles 4K and even 8K gaming with confidence, delivers advanced ray tracing, and suits professional and AI workloads. The flip side is hard to ignore: a $1,999 price tag, retail shortages, and very high power demands that call for a costly, capable system.
Based on RDNA 4 and the Navi 48 die, the Radeon RX 9070 XT became the marquee hit of the mainstream segment. The card features 4,096 stream processors, 16 GB of GDDR6, a 256-bit bus, and 640 GB/s of bandwidth, with power consumption around 304 W. It offers excellent performance at 1080p and 1440p, a generous VRAM buffer, and noticeably better ray tracing than previous AMD generations. Weak spots remain: higher power usage and a lag behind NVIDIA in Path Tracing. Even so, its price and availability made it the most appealing pick for most gamers.
The RX 9060 XT 16 GB ranks among the year’s best budget-friendly options. It’s built on RDNA 4 Navi 44 and comes with 2,048 stream processors, a 128-bit bus, and roughly 320 GB/s of bandwidth, drawing about 160 W. Expect solid 1080p performance and respectable results at 1440p, helped by its 16 GB of VRAM. The limiting factor is the memory bus, which holds back higher-resolution performance, and FSR still trails DLSS in both image quality and game support.
The GeForce RTX 5070 sits squarely in the mid-range and targets players who value NVIDIA’s software stack. It sports 6,144 CUDA cores, 12 GB of GDDR7 (some models offer 16 GB), a 192-bit bus, and about 672 GB/s of bandwidth, with power usage around 250 W. It’s well suited to 1440p gaming, stands out for power efficiency, and benefits from strong ray tracing and DLSS 4 support. That said, the VRAM capacity is lower than AMD’s competing cards, and in pure raster performance it can sometimes trail the RX 9070 XT—especially considering the higher asking price.
Powered by the Xe2-HPG Battlemage architecture, the Intel Arc B580 arrived as a surprising but meaningful entrant. It offers 12 GB of GDDR6, a 192-bit bus, and 456 GB/s of bandwidth, with a 190 W power draw. Aimed at 1080p gaming, it can stretch into 1440p and provides a healthy VRAM pool at a relatively low price. The main obstacles are immature drivers and the limited reach of XeSS, which for now lags behind DLSS and FSR in game support.
In 2025, the winning formula wasn’t raw records but a sensible balance of price, specs, and availability. AMD solidified its grip on the mainstream, NVIDIA kept the crown in the ultra-high-end and software technologies, and Intel took an important step toward being seen as a credible alternative.