Digit Zero1 Awards and Digit Best Buy Awards 2022: Best Graphics Cards

The new GPU launch cycle has just begun and we can only say that it’s been a tumultuous start for quite a few. We were honestly expecting three competitors this year between AMD, Intel and NVIDIA. Team Blue’s new Arc GPUs were hyped up quite a bit but the launch delays have been just as much in magnitude. With just one desktop graphics card out for the retail market, Team Blue still has some time before they get a flagship-tier product out. It’s still their first GPU based on the new Intel Xe architecture and there are a lot of tweaks and 

Driver improvements for the architecture to bear its fangs. For now, the real competition is still between NVIDIA and AMD. NVIDIA tried to pass off a lesser performing GPU as a higher-tier GPU but was met with swift feedback in the form of the gaming community going into an uproar. The lower performing GPU launch has been postponed so that it can be relabelled in its proper tier. Team Red on the other hand has had a relatively straightforward launch of their RDNA 3 based Radeon 7000 cards. Both competitors only have flagship tier GPUs out at the moment and the mid-range and entry-level cards are expected to launch over the coming year. Onto this year’s winners.

Digit Zero1 Award 2022 Winner: ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO

Price: ₹1,72,800

We don’t know what brief was given to the engineers that designed this card but we can only summarise it with one word – more! More performance, more power and more heat. The RTX 4090 is one massive graphics card that will fit within not that many PC chassis and will force you to upgrade your power supply as well. Also, the performance headroom is so high that you are most certainly CPU bound, even if you’re pairing the RTX 4090 with a flagship CPU. NVIDIA’s power connector for the cards have received some flak for melting due to the heat generated from all the power that the card demands from the PSU. We didn’t face that issue with the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO. It’s got a funky new design with organic curves that really does set it apart from all the other cards that feature sharp geometric edges. Performance wise, we only saw minor improvement over the reference RTX 4090, then again, a reference RTX 4090 is still light years ahead of the nearest competing card. This was a very easy win for the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO.

1st Runner Up: SAPPHIRE NITRO+ PURE Radeon RX 6950 XT

Price: ₹1,05,999

The revised RX 6×50 GPUs are simply the same graphics cards as the initial RX 6000 GPUs but with slightly better tuned silicon that can hit higher clock speeds. Essentially, they are factory overclocked versions of their predecessors. Usually, factory overclocked cards only offer about 1-2 per cent improved performance on average, however, in the case of the RX 6950 XT, we saw close to 8-10 per cent improvement in frame rates within popular video games and even in synthetic benchmarks. So releasing the tweaked GPUs was certainly justified considering that the performance uplift was quite high. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere close to a generational performance uplift like what the RTX 4000 cards boast of. Nevertheless, for a lot less cash, the RX 6950 XT is a much better value proposition in the flagship segment.

Digit Best Buy Award 2022 Winner: AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT

Price: ₹37,100

Not a lot of graphics cards launched this year, especially in the entry-level segment. For GPU manufacturers, the entry-level segment has become more of an afterthought. Also, with graphics card prices having been as high as they have for the last couple of years, people were buying anything and everything that they could get their hands on without having a look at the price tag. So, this year’s Best Buy is a little on the expensive side but it’s one of the cheapest cards to have launched this year. Performing at the same level as the RTX 3060 Ti and a smidge below the RTX 2080 Ti, the Radeon RX 6650 XT will last you for several years easily. And that kind of value proposition is what bags the GPU, the Best Buy Award.

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Mithun Mohandas

Mithun Mohandas is an Indian technology journalist with 10 years of experience covering consumer technology. He is currently employed at Digit in the capacity of a Managing Editor. Mithun has a background in Computer Engineering and was an active member of the IEEE during his college days. He has a penchant for digging deep into unravelling what makes a device tick. If there's a transistor in it, Mithun's probably going to rip it apart till he finds it. At Digit, he covers processors, graphics cards, storage media, displays and networking devices aside from anything developer related. As an avid PC gamer, he prefers RTS and FPS titles, and can be quite competitive in a race to the finish line. He only gets consoles for the exclusives. He can be seen playing Valorant, World of Tanks, HITMAN and the occasional Age of Empires or being the voice behind hundreds of Digit videos. View Full Profile