The Best Graphics Card for Gaming Under $250

In this article you can find the recommended and the best graphics card made for those who want play 1080p gaming with the best settings, keep on reading.

GTX 1050 Ti


To strengthen the Pascal gpu series from Nvidia, they released both GTX 1050 Ti and non Ti version at the same time few years ago. Fortunately, GTX 1050 especially the Ti version is still popular to budget gamers due to its affordable price and its low power consumption (75 Watts), therefore you don't need to upgrade your computer power supply.

Gaming video test



As you can see from video above, GTX 1050 Ti is quite strong to run some "heavy" games like Doom, COD infinite warfare and The Witcher 3 on the ultra setting with decent framerate.

Judging from its specifications and how GTX 1050 Ti can run most modern games with decent settings, we can conclude if this GTX 1050 Ti is the best performance/watt gaming graphics card for 1080p resolutions.

GTX 1050 Ti standard specifications from techpowerup.com

Our recommendations:

A. EVGA GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5

Our first choice comes from Evga. As the number one vendor for Nvidia, Evga always provides gamers with their best graphics card product.

One of the most noticeable thing from this video card is it uses single fan, unlike most mid end graphics that use dual fan for their cooling system. Hence this Evga gtx is very quiet. Furthermore, its tiny size makes this Evga GTX 1050 ti is ideal for a computer with small case.

Let's go deeper to its specifications. This Evga card has been featured with DX12 that optimizes gaming experience for windows 10 OS. Technically, judging from its large bandwidth and faster memory, the EVGA GTX 1050 Ti is designed for 1080p gaming. One thing to note that it uses 4GB memory (unlike the GTX 1050 Ti reference model that uses 2GB), the minimum requirements for most modern and "heavy" games. 

Conclusion: EVGA GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5 is one of the best choice for pc users and budget gamers who need perfect replacement for their older and slower graphics card.

B. MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDRR5

The GTX 1050 ti from MSI is also your ideal choice for gaming because of its affordable price compared to others GTX 1050 ti brands. One thing that makes this MSI GTX card unique is its sophisticated cooling system.

For its cooling system, MSI powers this GTX card with dual fans, which means it can stay cool even when you play games for extended times. Furthermore, this MSI GTX video cards features auto fan control (zero frozr technology) where the fans start to spin when the GPU's temperature reaches 60c.

Like the GTX 1050 ti from reference model, its max TDP is just 75 Watts. So you can run the card inside the case with 300w-400w power supply unit and no extra power required from your computer.

GTX 1060


First released to the market in july 2016, GTX 1060 is still very popular thanks to its great specification, competitive price, and its support to VR gaming. In fact, some local retailers were running out of this video card in the beginning of 2018 because of miners. GTX 1060 is also Nvidia's best weapon to counter AMD Radeon RX 480 that has been supported with VR technology.

Gaming video test



From the video above, you can see the performance of GTX 1060 with RX 480. Both video cards can run the tested games on ultra setting with high framerate.

GTX 1060 is the new "Sweet Spot" for gamers due to some reasons as mentioned above. Nvidia designed this GTX 1060 with pascal GPU to replace one of the fastest video card from previous generation, GTX 980. Furthermore, GTX 1060 is made for gamers who want to play the latest AAA games with the highest frame rate as possible in 1080p.

AMD Radeon RX 560




AMD seems to want the Radeon RX 560 to be an attractive upgrade option for graphics card users with older GPUs in the entry-level class.

Following the released of Radeon RX 550, RX 570, and RX 580, AMD also released the GPU for the RX 500 Series line. This time, the GPU released is the RX 560. This GPU will fill the previous level gpu generation by RX 460, and it seems expected that AMD will trigger entry level graphics card users from previous generations to switch to a new output graphics card.

Radeon RX 560 standard specifications from techpowerup.com

This RX 560 carries a slightly different specification from RX 460, carrying the 1024 Processor Stream. RX 460 only offers 896 Stream Processor. AMD also offers a base clock and a higher standard boost clock for the RX 560, which is 1175 MHz / 1275 MHz, compared to 1090 MHz / 1200 MHz at RX 460.

The upgrade in specification makes the RX 560 requires a little higher power than the RX 460. AMD says that the RX 560 requires 80 Watt max TDP, 5 Watts higher than RX 460. RX 560 will be paired with 128-bit GDDR5 with an option of 2 GB or 4 capacity GB, as well as an effective speed of 7000 MHz.