Best Graphics Card Under 200

Which company to buy a card from - Gigabyte, Asus or MSI

There are cards that differ from the reference design only by a sticker and a bundle, there are products aimed at simplifying and reducing the cost of the original design, but there are also deeply redesigned devices designed for enthusiasts and overclockers.

Accordingly, video cards of each of the three types will differ in different characteristics. For example, a conditional Inno3D video card from the iChill line, with a massive cooler developed by Arctic on special order, will always be colder, quieter and take higher frequencies than a conditional Asus TURBO video card using a reference turbine for cooling. And no amount of "brand reputation" will ever change that.

However, do not think that this does not work in the opposite direction: the Asus ROG STRIX graphics card will always be quieter, cooler and more suitable for overclocking than, for example, Palit StormX on the same graphics chip. And Palit Jetstream or Super Jetstream, in turn, can be in no way inferior to Asus ROG STRIX, but defeat them at the cost ...

You need a gaming video card. Will a 4 GB card work?

The question can be rephrased as follows: “I want to buy a car that accelerates to 100 km/h in 7 seconds. Enough for this car with a trunk volume of 520 liters? Which, you see, is completely absurd - the volume of the trunk is obviously not a factor influencing the dynamics of the car's acceleration.

One of the common misconceptions about graphics cards is that their performance is directly related to the amount of memory installed.

This is partly true, but only partly. The memory installed on the video card is a kind of "trunk", which stores the entire amount of data generated and used by the GPU: game textures, geometric vertices and buffers. If this volume is enough for a particular game, great, everything will work as usual.

If the amount of memory is small, problems may arise. On modern platforms, part of the RAM will begin to be allocated for the needs of graphics - however, DRR4 is slower than GDDR5 and even more so GDDR6, and switching to its resources can lead to a temporary drop in performance, which is not very comfortable. So, let's try to choose the Best Graphics Card Under 200 in 2022.

Best Graphics Card Under 200

As you can see, the 8GB version of the Radeon RX 5500 XT uses its own memory, while the RX 5500 XT 4gb and GTX 1650 Super are forced to use some of the RAM.

What this leads to can be seen in the FPS counter, and in particular - in terms of 1% of events. Both cards with 4 gigabytes of memory on board sag dramatically, which makes the gameplay far from the concept of comfort. On the other hand, in this example we are talking about one screen resolution and one set of settings, in which none of the three cards provides a constant and stable 60 frames per second in terms of average FPS. Therefore, the settings will have to be reduced one way or another.

As you can see, as the graphics settings are lowered, the video memory consumption decreases. Therefore, even in this demanding game, compromise parameters can be found.

So how much on-board memory should there be in the end? It should not be too much or too little: there should be enough memory to play at those settings at which the GPU is capable of delivering a comfortable FPS level.

And certainly you should not think that the GeForce GT 730 and GeForce GTX 1650 Super with the same amount of memory of 4 gigabytes will allow you to set the same settings and get the same performance: What is Graphics Card.

Power consumption of the video card

Of course, the ideal scenario is if when you buy a graphics card and your current power supply suddenly runs out of power, you just go to the store and get a new one.

But, firstly, let's call a spade a spade: not all of us have budgets that allow us to buy two not the cheapest devices at the same time.

And secondly, some people understand the power consumption of video cards so differently that advice to purchase 750-watt units for the GeForce GTX 1650 Super and Radeon RX 5500 XT on the modern Internet is never uncommon.

Under these conditions, the task is to buy a video card that your current unit can handle, and on the other hand, not to spend money on a new unit, the power of which is obviously excessive for a configuration with a new video card.

How to do it? Pretty simple, and there are two possible ways.

The first one is to read a video card review from a reputable source. Yes, reviews often indicate the power consumption of the entire system, and not a separate video card - but this turns out even more clearly.