Recently we put together a "Top v Worst CPUs" feature as a fun side article and readers loved information technology. The requests came in for a similar commodity looking at graphics chips and so we're going to have a get at that today.

As before, think this is not meant to be taken too seriously, and if y'all happen to have one of these GPUs nestled away on your graphics card please don't exist offended. If you're looking for whatsoever kind of Intel integrated graphics in this listing, now that'd be both hilarious and offensive, but don't fret, merely discrete options apply.

Worst Mobile GPU: Radeon M470X

Kicking starting the worst GPU picks we decided to get mobile, for the longest time mobile gaming has been pretty rubbish to be honest and AMD's latest efforts on this front are about as, ahh... ordinary, as information technology gets. The Radeon RX 400 series represented pretty proficient value on the desktop though in comparison to Nvidia's GeForce x series it wasn't the most power efficient.

This sadly didn't bode well for the Radeon RX M400 series, the 'M' indicating that this is the mobile function. The RX 470 was the budget king and the must have sub-$200 GPU on the desktop, for laptops though information technology was the "must avoid at all costs" GPU.

The RX M400 series proved so bad for laptops that few brands even offered models supporting them. Power consumption was the key result here and that caused a knock on effect for mobile parts that destroys everything. The poor efficiency meant AMD had to cutting the Radeon RX M470X down to 896 stream processors from the 2048 SPUs of the desktop part, a massive 56% reduction.

This meant the mobile RX 470 performed at best similar a desktop RX 460 and if yous recall the 460 was embarrassingly slow.

In brusk, the Radeon M470X offered RX 460-like performance with power consumption that was comparable to that of the significantly faster GTX 1060. So laptops that used AMD'due south solution were thick, loud and sadly much slower.

Worst Aging GPU Series: Nvidia Kepler

Information technology's hard to believe the GeForce GTX 780 series is roughly 4 years one-time at present. That said though, it's really showing its age. Compared to the Radeon R9 390, the GTX 780 has slipped farther behind today. It may be downward to the its architecture or Nvidia'south neglect of driver evolution, or a bit of both. Either way we've never seen an Nvidia architecture fall away like Kepler has.

Kepler also marked the birth of the insane $1,000 Titan series, setting the tone for Nvidia'south enthusiast boning tactics. Y'all know, where they release the $1m000 model and then later that year release a product that delivers the same or meliorate performance for a much easier to swallow price. Like the GTX 780 Ti!

Yep, the GTX 780 Ti seemed like the ultimate gift to high-terminate gamers in late 2022 and then by 2022 the ultimate expletive.

Today Kepler-based GPUs have become so nurfed in mod games they're no longer worth even buying. You'd have to be picking up, the once mighty GTX 780 Ti for pocket change to fifty-fifty consider it. It'southward not a great bargain faster than the GTX 1050 Ti in a lot of modern titles, simply it'll use around 150% more ability.

Thankfully we've yet to see whatsoever noticeable refuse in performance for the following generation, the Maxwell-based stuff. The GTX 970, 980 and 980 Ti still perform very well in modern titles, but equally always we're keeping a close eye on this stuff.

Worst Mid-Range GPU: Radeon R9 285

We had a hard fourth dimension working out which GPU we should pull the trigger on for this category. We only wanted to get dorsum a few years to proceed the picks somewhat relevant and we narrowed it downwardly to a few options from both AMD and Nvidia. Finally, nosotros settled on the Radeon R9 285, the model that launched the GCN 3rd-gen architecture in late 2022, about a year after the Radeon 200 series was introduced.

Chief amidst the reasons why we picked this GPU was its terrible timing. Nigh a yr afterwards the first 200 series models arrived, the R9 285 was revealed on September 2022 for $250. We wrapped upwardly our review by saying…

"At $249, the R9 285 doesn't exactly redefine the landscape with only four% more operation on average than the card information technology volition be replacing, the R9 280. Even if you discount the big loss in Tomb Raider, which could possibly exist commuter related, the R9 285 is still only vi% faster than the R9 280. Bringing a 4-vi% boost for the same price obviously isn't bad, simply we're not certain if the R9 285 was completely necessary either."

We also noted that the Sapphire bill of fare tested was overclocked by v% so the results are likely inflated by 2-3%, making the margin between the R9 285 and R9 280 even thinner." The R9 285 did come up with FreeSync support and enhanced DirectX 12 capabilities, but at the time neither were useful for nearly.

Another and perhaps more serious consequence for the Radeon was the GTX 970 that launched afterward that same month. The GeForce offered considerably more than functioning for a ~30% increment in cost. So within the same month, the R9 285 faced a serious price cutting simply to remain relevant.

Though there was nix incorrect with the R9 285 -- the 2GB VRAM buffer was questionable -- its main result was arriving too late, it didn't change anything in the market, and and so it disappointed with the latest iteration of the GCN architecture, information technology was a bit of a fizz kill you could say.

Worst GPU Naming Scheme: Nvidia'southward Titan

There were a few candidates to take this category, just come on, who'south going to dispute this selection: the Pascal-based Titan range. Nvidia wowed the world when they announced an insane Titan X and I don't hateful the Maxwell-based Titan 10 in 2022, that was the GeForce GTX Titan X, I'm talking virtually the Nvidia Titan Ten, yep the Pascal version.

Okay, so confusingly, on August 2022 nosotros got a second graphics card to be named the Titan X. Since this was all very disruptive some of us reviewers decided to rename the Pascal Titan X to the Titan XP. XP was cool for a few reasons. Obviously the P stood for Pascal, but XP or Experience Points are likewise something you are rewarded with in many mod games, get plenty XP and you can level upward. So it was also a fun play on that.

So while a questionable and possibly dumb conclusion on Nvidia'south side, we simply moved on and got to benchmarking. Then months later Nvidia's marketing team decided to troll united states again and actually released a "Titan Xp," can yous believe that?

Anyway, the Titan Xp tin can simply be purchased through Nvidia for an centre watering $1,200 and information technology'southward really no faster than a custom GTX 1080 Ti for gaming.

Worst Reference Designs: Radeon R9 290/290X

Wrapping things upward, information technology'south time to pick what I feel was the worst reference carte design past AMD or Nvidia in the past few years. Looking at my shortlist there is a heck of a lot more candidates from AMD than there are from Nvidia.

Conspicuously Nvidia has had some shockers, but with a much larger budget to piece of work with, they've corrected poor designs of the past. Plus, they're now charging a price premium for their reference cards, then that kind of seems like adulterous.

Anyway, we don't have to go back far to find an AMD reference cooler that doubles as a leafage blower. Ane of my favorite AMD GPUs in recent memory was the Radeon R9 290. It was an amazingly adept value buy. We did test the reference model initially in 2022, and we even so gave an overall score of 95 out of 100, 1 of the highest scores we had ever handed over to a GPU.

That said, we did annotation thermal results were less than desirable, adding to my anticipation of third-party designs. The R9 290 screamed like a jet, but I was confident board partner models would be much improve and indeed they were. There was a long and loud two calendar month expect for a quality board partner card that could tame the R9 290.

Unfortunately rubbish reference cards are notwithstanding the bane of AMD's being and they seem unable to do anything about it, money is obviously a fundamental issue hither. The RX 480 reference carte was some other abomination and Vega 64 air-cooled looks to exist ane of the worst results yet. We should probably just get-go calling them AMD throttle-carte designs, now with automatic underclocking to save your ears.

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We hope you enjoyed that, we certainly had fun putting it together. Do let us know what you thought of the picks and what your list looks like.

Also, if you happen to have a computer with an older GPU, maybe something Kepler-based and you lot want to upgrade, then check out our Upgrade My PC Please! series. It'south a heap of fun and there are loads of cool prizes to be won, so be certain to check it out!