Top 7 Best Graphics Card Under $500 in 2020 |Laptopsgeek

In order to have a great gaming experience, you need to have and the perfect graphics card.

A perfect gaming card may be hard to find but when found, it will help you achieve the balance between power, performance, price, and features. When looking for the best GPU under $500, you may come across hundreds of products. But how will you know that in the midst of hundreds of GPUs, which is one is the right choice for you.

Keeping that in mind, we did extensive research and came up with a few highly recommended graphic cards under $500. We know how hard it is to do a whole lot of research so we took it upon ourselves to come up with some best recommendations for you.

So, without further ado, take a look at the following top 7 graphics design cards that you will be able to find under a tight budget. And in case, you do not have enough time to read the entire article, these three are our top picks that you can surely consider:

• ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 TI 8GB Graphics Card
• MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 2070 8GB HDCP Graphics Card
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition

And in case, you do have time, continue reading this article and by the time you are done reading it, you will have a winner.

1: ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 VR Ready DP HDMI DVI-D Graphics Card

We all profoundly agree that one of the most reliable company to buy a graphics card from is none other than ASUS. It has maintained its name for providing functional and quality graphics card in the world of rapidly developing technology. The product that we are recommending you regarding the best GPU under $500 is GTX 1070, TI Graphics Card.

Without further ado, let’s talk about each and everything this graphics card offers you with:

Have you used the previously launched GTX 1080 TI Graphics Card? If so, we would like to tell you beforehand that it comes in the same size, same features and is almost identical to that except for the internal nestling ASUS did with it. The price of this graphics card is somewhat $500 but don’t forget, this card possesses a cooling apparatus, ASUS premium components along with LEDs so the price is nothing compared to the magnificent features it comes with.

If you have been using an ASUS graphics card previously, you will know that there is no extreme difference in this card as well. Most of the companies usually develop one mainframe design and then add or subtract components according to positioning and pricing.

The graphics card comes with a MaxContact heat spreader that will keep the card cooler even at maximum load. The card comes with LEDs so while you are at it, those LEDs will make it look even smarter than you can imagine. The card also includes one-click overclocking that will allow you to bump the Boost Clock up to 1.759MHz.

The best thing about this card is its huge size. You can easily mistake this card for a GTX 1080 but it isn’t. It will take up two PCIe slots and requires a single PCIe power connector. Another thing that is worth mentioning is that this GPU has two HDMI ports whereas usually there is only one. This is a plus point for those who won’t to work on multiple screens at a single time.

As mentioned before, this GPU comes with RGB lighting and you also get to have two fan headers on the edge of the PCB. Once your plugin, the case fans will increase your cooling efficiency and it will make sure that your system doesn’t heat up even at a lot of loads.

In order to make the most of GTX 1070 TI for monitoring and overclocking, you will have to use two kinds of software. The LED system isn’t connected to the mainframe so you will have to download a separate application known as AURA in order to use the LED lighting efficiently. And the other application that you will use for this card in order to monitor and overclock is GPU Tweak II.  Both of the applications are really easy to use and coordinate well.

All in all, the performance of this graphics card given that it is extremely economical. We highly recommend this GPU for your technological upgrade.

2: EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Black Gaming, 8GB GDDR6, Dual HDB Fans Graphics Card

When EVGA announced the new GeForce RTX 20 Series, most of the tech nerds were excited to see what the company had in store for them now. Most of the GPUs launched in this series were quite expensive and people really weren’t that excited about those cards after that.

But the RTX 2070 is something extremely exceptional in this series. It comes at an amazing price under 500 and provides its users with some of the best features and functionalities. EVGA is known for manufacturing some of the best graphics cards that you find in the market. Let’s see what RTX 2070 offers us with,

First and foremost thing, the RTX 2070 is one of those graphics cards that doesn’t run out of supplies like other flagship products of EVGA do. You will always find in the market and it will provide you with all the basic features that you need to fulfill your requirements. These cards are basically manufactured by Nvidia but this time, in RTX series, the company has partnered with EVGA to provide the customers with some of the best components that a graphics card can hold.

The ACX cooling system of EVGA has proved to be one of the best over the years and this company happens to be the largest partner of Nvidia. Most of the RTX models may look similar to you but all of them come with underlying changes that you need to thoroughly study before making the purchase. The product that we are reviewing is the Black edition and it comes with some differences as compared to the other models of 2070.

This graphics card only comes with a single 8-pin PEG connector and it has an 8-phase power design. That’s enough for 225W with the x16 slot’s 75W and shouldn’t be too limiting. Another difference that the Black addition of 2070 has in comparison with other models is that it doesn’t come with an RGB logo and neither does it possess any sort of LEDs.

At stock, the GPU runs around 1750-1800MHz in most games. After increasing the voltage to “100 percent” and ramping up the fan speeds, I eventually ended up with a +150MHz overclock on the GPU core, and +500MHz on the GDDR6. I had to run the fans at an aggressive speed in order to keep the cards stable.

One drawback that some users have discussed is that these graphics cards doesn’t come with a metallic black plate. That makes this card a bit unprotected. However, all in all, this graphics card is definitely worth buying.

3: MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 2070 8GB HDCP Graphics Card

If you are looking for a graphics card that provides you with maximum functionality, then you are really going to like our next recommendation. The GeForce RTX 2070 provides you with more power than any other base model offer you with. This graphics card is equipped with a lot of VRAM and MSI has also provided the users with a test sample that has a prominent higher TDP rating.

The design of this card is not referenced from Nvidia instead; MSI has developed its own layout. The company has added its own cooling apparatus in order to cater to the needs and demands of the customers placed on it. The main reason why users have higher expectations with GeForce RTX 2070 is that it comes with a higher TDP rating as compared to the other models. The graphics card also has a Twin-Frozr cooler that comes with two axial fans and because of its bulk; it takes up to 2.5 slots.

In order to enhance its external connectivity, the MSI RTX 2070 features the following ports: 3 x Displayport (1.4), 1 x USB Type-C. Internally and 1 x HDMI (2.0b), the card also requires PCI-E power connectors (6 + 8 pin).

The base clock of MSI RTX 2070 is of 1,410 MHz and it has the same level of interference as the Nvidia reference model. However, if you consider the boost clock feature, the MSI model is able to clock to 1,830 MHz which is quite far from its reference model. Since this graphics card comes with more TDP rating, it is able to extract more performance from the Turing GPU because it has more headroom. VRAM of MSI RTX 2070 is however same as the reference model and it is clocked at an effective 14 GHz.

However, even with its optimized performance, the power consumption figured of MSI RTX 2070 is somewhat worse than its reference model. The benchmark results of MSI RTX 2070 are just like Asus ROG RTX Strix 2070 OC. Both of these graphics cards deliver identical performance. Whereas, in the game benchmark, the graphics card was able to outdo it. It displayed all the current titles in 1080p and 1440p, offering maximum details to the viewers.

Most of the tasks were done really easily and did well on the respective graphics card. The card also doesn’t heat up at a rapid pace and works really well under all sorts of situations. The performance of MSI RTX 2070 is quite noticeable even when it comes to commuting. The card doesn’t hang or gets stuck at all. It performs really well and doesn’t heat up. If you are looking for a graphics card that provides you with maximum outreach, this card is the one you should go for.

4: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 WINDFORCE OC 8G REV2.0 Graphic Cards

The next product that we would like to recommend when it comes to buying the best GPU under $500 is a graphics card from Gigabyte. This is a factory customized graphics card and it comes all cooled and tweaked, a much better option than the founder’s edition and another plus point of this graphics design is that it has much better aesthetics as well.

The GTX 1070 G1 Gaming is located under SKU code N1070G1 GAMING-8GD and it comes with a WINDFORCE cooler along with that. 1070 became a customer favorite since the moment it was launched and it comes with some crazy features and aspects. It is safe to say that GeForce GTX 1070 is the graphics card you have been waiting for.

For a very long time, companies have been waiting for a small fabrication process, a design that would consume less power, less transistor gate leakage and, obviously, more transistors in a GPU. The answer was to be found in the recent 14/15/16 nm fabrication processors and processes with the now all too familiar FinFET + VLSI technology.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming is fitted with a high-end Pascal GP104 based GPU. This is a product that is going to replace the GeForce GTX 980. These graphics cards has a nice black design and it comes with ACX cooler. This graphics card is all about the integrated Pascal GP104 GPU. The GeForce GTX 1070 might have the same GP104 GPU housed on its PCB as that 1080, however, it is a cut-down version of the GPU as Nvidia stripped away some segments.

One thing that is worth mentioning about GTX 1070 is that it comes with 1920 shader processors which means, the results it displays are much more detailed as compared to all the other graphics cards available in this price range. Another big change that this graphic card has experienced is in terms of memory type. It features regular GDDR5 memory instead of the new DGGR5X. That memory is clocked at 2,000 MHz which is 8 GHz at a memory bandwidth of 256 GB/s.

The two differences are responsible for a performance drop from 9 TFLOP/s Single-precision floating point performances for the GeForce GTX 1080 towards 6.45 TFLOP/s for the GeForce GTX 1070.

This graphic card is exclusively custom made and it is fitted with a WINDFORCE 3x cooler. The best part about it is that the cooler is a direct heat pipe touch-based and it sits right on the top of GPU. The card will efficiently stay in passive mode and the fans will not spin. The graphics card also offers default clock frequencies of 1784 MHz (boost) / 1594 MHz (base) with a reference clocked 8192 MB GDDR5 / 8008 MHz effective data-rate on the memory.

Another thing that we would like to tell you about this graphics card is that it comes with Extreme Engine software that will help you turn on the OC mode and enable a 26 MHz to overclock. However, if you want the OC mode to work properly, you will have to keep the software turned on at all times. The graphics card is extremely efficient and it provides you with optimized performance.

5: MSI Gaming GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 SLI DirectX 12 VR Ready Graphics Card (GTX 1070 AERO 8G OC)

Have you been looking for a graphics card that not just performs well but is also a sight to behold? In that case, we have a recommendation that you are really going to appreciate. As mentioned before, MSI is known for manufacturing some of the most outstanding graphics cards in the tech industry. Their graphics cards provide optimal performance, great speed and they don’t heat up rapidly. Which is why we always check their catalog when we are looking for some smart tech enhancements.

The design of this card is not referenced from Nvidia instead; MSI has developed its own layout. The company has added its own cooling apparatus in order to cater to the needs and demands of the customers placed on it. You will find a nice and elegant looking matte black PCB that comes with 10-phases along with 2-power headers. One has 8-pin and the other is 6-pin and provides a little more overclocking headroom. This graphic design also possesses the newly launched TwinFrozr VI cooler to make sure the device doesn’t heat up rapidly.

All the board partners are allowed releasing the GTX 1070 card in different configurations; you will see many versions of this graphics card in the market. Most of these versions are based on the difference in PCB/component and the mandatory cooling systems. The graphics card that we are talking about is the X edition of the gaming series and it has somewhat high clocks if not the highest.

The MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G has default clock frequencies of 1771 MHz (boost) / 1582 MHz base) with a reference clocked 8192 MB GDDR5 / 8100 MHz effective data-rate on the memory. You will be clocking your card at 1582/1771MHz. Another thing that is worth mentioning regarding this graphics card is that those LEDs that add to the grace of its aesthetics can be controlled by the MSI Gaming Application. So, you will not need the software to run them efficiently.

All the 1070 cards in this series have a power design of approximately 160 Watts. The MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G takes advantage of Nvidia’s Pascal GPU GP104 based on 16 nm FinFet architecture, and with 7.2 billion transistors, 1,920 shader/stream cores, and 8 GB of GDDR5. It displays all the current titles in 1080p and 1440p, offering maximum details to the viewers.

Most of the games also performed really well on the respective graphics card. The card also doesn’t heat up at a rapid pace and works really well under all sorts of situations. The performance of MSI RTX 2070 is quite noticeable even when it comes to commuting. The card doesn’t hang or gets stuck at all. It performs really well and doesn’t heat up. If you are looking for a graphics card that provides you with maximum outreach, this card is the one you should go for.

6: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition

When looking for a graphics card under $500, one thing that matters most is quality under a sufficient budget. Most the people think that a good thing is hard to find under a small budget but if you have been a consistent reader of our articles, you will know that is not true.

Another product that we would like to mention when for the respective topic is a Founders Edition graphics card namely, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. This card is based on the same GPU like GTX 1080 by Nividia GeForce. However, it only has 25% of its CUDA cores and unit textures disabled. This graphics card was basically the one card that Nvidia used to call its reference design. But this time around, the company wanted to launch a graphics card with the premium quality so they did some corrections with this one and made it available to the customers.

The exterior of this graphics card is a cooler aluminum cover that comes in silver and black color. The design is made up of high quality and this product is quite heavier as compared to other graphics cards due to its metallic nature. The back of the board is covered by a metallic plate that is purely aesthetic and does nothing to keep the device cooler in nature. You can easily unscrew the backplate if you have more than one card next to each other in SLI. The card has an 8-pin power connector for external connectivity and it has been placed near the end.

The GTX 1070 comes with GDDR5 memory and it leans on Samsung’s shoulders for that feature. Eight K4G80325FB-HC25 modules are each able to store up to 8GB (32x 256Mb). Voltages are specified between 1.305V and 1.597V, depending on the clock rate. After the card has been warmed up nicely, the GPU Boost frequency reaches up to .7 GHz under extensive load.

Because of higher temperatures, Nvidia’s fans have to work at a higher pace and need to run more aggressively. The fans were slow in the beginning but they slowly caught up with the device’s clocking and did let it heat up. All in all, a design that used to be a reference design, in the beginning, is now known as Founder’s Edition and it is no doubt one of the best graphics cards that you will find in the market.

7: EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming ACX 3.0 Black Edition Graphic Cards

When EVGA announced that it was finally stepping up in the world of gaming, most of the game players were excited to see how they will be able to benefit from it. Every gamer’s dream is to play in high-quality resolution and to see each and every detail of the game he has been playing in massive coloring. That is where EVGA comes in because they have offered some of the best graphics cards that you can find in the market.

In their previous launches, EVGA has been successful enough to launch different kinds of graphics cards that come with different kind of features for all the players out there. But the GTX 1070 is something extremely exceptional in all their manufactures GPUs to date. It comes at an amazing price of $499 and provides its users with some of the best features and functionalities. EVGA is known for manufacturing some of the best graphics cards that you find in the market. Let’s see what GTX 1070 offers us with,

Once you place an order for EVGA GTX 1070 GPU, you will receive graphics card, EVGA case badge, and documentation and EVGA poster, PCIe power cable along with EVGA stickers. Aren’t all of the things so cool?

The most prominent thing about this graphics card is its aesthetics. The metal surfaces make this card look extremely good and the black color just adds to its grace. The dimensions of this card are 27.0 x 11.5 cm and there is a high-quality black metal plate with the EVGA logo on the placed on its back. You will need to have two slots in your system in order to install this graphics card efficiently.

The ACX cooling system of EVGA has proved to be one of the best over the years and this company happens to be the largest partner of Nvidia. Most of the GTX models may look similar to you but all of them come with underlying changes that you need to thoroughly study before making the purchase. The product that we are reviewing is the Black edition and it comes with some differences as compared to the other models of 1070.

There are different connectivity options that GTX 1070 offers you with. That includes HDMI port, DVI port along with three other Display Ports. Unlike previous NVIDIA cards, the DVI port no longer includes the analog signal, so you’ll have to use an active adapter. NVIDIA also updated DisplayPort to be 1.2 certified and 1.3/1.4 ready, which enables support for 4K at 120 Hz and 5K @ 60 Hz, or 8K @ 60 Hz with two cables.

Another thing that we would like to mention regarding these graphics cards is that it supports HDMI 2.0 which means, you can easily watch Blu-ray 3D movies on it without any kind of hindrances and quality problems. This GTX 1070 also comes with an integrated cooling apparatus that doesn’t let it heat up even under extreme conditions. This graphics card is no doubt one of the best enhancements you can find in your market for all your visual needs.

So, these were a few of our recommendations regarding the best graphics cards under $500. If you have any queries regarding these products, don’t hesitate to let us know and we assure you that we will provide you with all the answers you are looking for. Your feedback is highly appreciated.