NVIDIA Graphics Buying Guide - NVIDIA GPU guide

The graphics card is the most important component in a gaming or content creation PC as its responsible for rendering games and applications. More powerful, and more expensive, graphics cards enable you to play and work at higher resolutions as well as producing higher frame rates, improving user experience

A graphics card comprises two main components, the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), effectively the brain of the card plus VRAM (Video Random Access Memory) which the GPU uses to store data such as models, textures as well as buffering rendered frames.

NVIDIA GeForce is a range of GPUs designed for gaming and graphics-intensive content creation workloads such as 3D animation, rendering and video editing. There have been multiple generations of NVIDIA GeForce cards released over the years, you can spot the generation by looking at the first two digits of the model number, with a higher number indicating a more recent release, i.e. GeForce RTX 5090 is more recent than RTX 2090.

NVIDIA GeForce is a range of GPUs designed for gaming and graphics-intensive content creation workloads such as 3D animation, rendering and video editing. There have been multiple generations of NVIDIA GeForce cards released over the years, you can spot the generation by looking at the first two digits of the model number, with a higher number indicating a more recent release, i.e. GeForce RTX 5090 is more recent than RTX 2090.

A CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) core is the primary processor inside NVIDIA GeForce GPUs responsible for rendering graphics and other tasks. Each GPUs has thousands of CUDA cores working together in parallel; the more cores, the higher the performance. Some tasks are accelerated by specialist RT or Tensor cores, see the separate entry in this FAQ for further detail on these types of core.

You can see how advanced a CUDA core is by the name of the architecture, to name some recent examples Blackwell (2025), Ada Lovelace (2022) and Ampere (2020).

RT (Ray Tracing) cores work alongside CUDA cores inside NVIDIA GeForce GPUs to accelerate ray traced effects in games and applications. Unlike traditional rasterised graphics, ray tracing simulates how light beams and shadows actually work, providing far more rich and realistic graphics. The more RT cores, the faster the framerate when ray tracing is enabled.

You can see how advanced the RT cores are in a GPU by its generation, i.e. 5th gen is more advanced than 4th gen etc.

Tensor cores work alongside CUDA cores inside NVIDIA GeForce GPUs to accelerate AI workloads in games and applications. The more Tensor cores, the faster the AI performance will be.

You can see how advanced the Tensor cores are in a GPU by its generation, i.e. 5th gen is more advanced than 4th gen etc.

DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is an advanced AI-powered rendering technique unique to NVIDIA graphics cards that uses the Tensor cores to increase frame rates. DLSS enables you ramp up the resolution to enjoy higher quality graphics, without sacrificing performance.

A FLOP (Floating-Point Operation per Second) is a measure of how quickly GPUs calculate the complex floating-point maths behind complex calculations such as simulations and training AI models. The more FLOPS, the faster the performance.

Depending on the software, floating point calculations can be calculated to as great or little precision as required. This is commonly shorted to FPx where x is a number typically in the range of 4 to 64. See the separate entry in this FAQ for further detail.

Like other metrics in computer science such as KB, MB, GB and TB when it comes to RAM or storage, the number of FLOPS is commonly shortened to GFLOPS (giga, 10 to the power of 9), TFLOPS (tera, 10 to the power of 12) and PFLOPS (peta, 10 to the power of 15).

These are a shortened representation of how precisely a floating-point calculation is performed. The most common levels are in order of increasing precision:

A TOP (Trillion Operations per Second) is a measure of how quickly a GPU can perform the integer maths that is commonly used when inferencing AI models. The more TOPS, the faster the performance.

GeForce Experience is a suite of tools to improve your gaming experience, such as an fps overlay, showing how fast games are running. It also includes profiles for games, automatically adjusting the image quality to best match the capabilities of your hardware.

Reflex is a technology introduced with RTX 30-series GPUs that reduces input lag, the delay between you moving your mouse and seeing the game update on your monitor. 50-series GPUs add an improved version, Reflex 2, that cuts latency even further, helping you aim more accurately in fast-paced competitive games.

The NVIDIA App is the essential companion for PC gamers and creators. Keep your PC up to date with the latest NVIDIA drivers and technology. Optimise games and applications with a new unified GPU control centre, capture your favourite moments with powerful recording tools through the in-game overlay, and discover the latest NVIDIA tools and software.

Broadcast is a software suite that helps streamers take their channel to the next level with tools such as background noise removal, virtual backgrounds and an auto frame function that zooms in on you and uses AI to track your head movements, keeping you at the centre of the action even as you shift from side to side.

NVIDIA RTX Studio is a special driver that enhances the performance and stability of GeForce RTX cards in content creation applications such as 3D animation, rendering and video editing. For more information on this driver, read our dedicated RTX Studio PC buyers guide.

The best performing gaming graphics card is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 based on the Blackwell architecture.

NVIDIA’s last GTX 10-series GPUs were released in 2017, whereas the most recent RTX 50-series GPUs were released in 2025. As with all things in computers, the most recent RTX GPUs are far more powerful, delivering much higher frames in games. They also have additional features that GTX GPUs lack, such as realistic raytraced graphics, DLSS frame generation, Reflex and Broadcast. In short, an RTX GPU is much better for gaming than a GTX GPU.

NVIDIA’s last GTX 10-series GPUs were released in 2017, whereas the most recent RTX 50-series GPUs were released in 2025. As with all things in computers, the most recent RTX GPUs are far more powerful, delivering much higher frames in games. They also have additional features that GTX GPUs lack, such as realistic raytraced graphics, DLSS frame generation, Reflex and Broadcast. In short, an RTX GPU is much better for gaming than a GTX GPU.

All NVIDIA GeForce GPUs released since 2019 have RTX technology, which adds realistic raytraced graphics to games.