
The best graphics card for 4K gaming: Nvidia GTX 970 SLI
If you’re gaming at 1080p, a single 970 is a great card. You’ll be able to run games at high and ultra settings and 60 fps. 1440p and 1600p gaming, though, is a different story. To keep a consistent 60 fps at ultra settings in most games, not even a GTX 980 will be enough. For high settings at those resolutions, or even at 4K, the best graphics card is actually another GTX 970.
The GTX 980 costs $550 (£429), though as of this writing the cards are out of stock and prices are far higher. But you can get two GTX 970s for $660, and the extra graphics power is essential for max settings at an average 60 fps when it comes to resolutions above 1080p. Our tests have shown that two GTX 970s significantly outperform a single GTX 980, and can even handle most games at 4K 60fps.
If you want to play games at those settings and resolutions right now, a pair of GTX 970 cards in SLI is the way to go. You’re getting far more for your money than you are with a single 980.
Over at Anandtech, the EVGA GTX 970 manages to beat out the R9 290X and nearly match the GTX 980 in a number of 4K benchmarks. And on high settings, it's actually able to hit framerates of around 50 fps in Bioshock Infinite and Metro: Last Light!
Ultra settings are far more demanding, of course, but there a pair of GTX 970s running in SLI really shine. On Ultra at 4K resolution, Techpowerup found that two GTX 970s often matched or outperformed the dual-GPU AMD Radeon R9290X2, and was able to deliver playable-to-great framerates in most games: 75 fps in Bioshock Infinite, 46 fps in Battlefield 4, 45 fps in Metro: Last Light, 67.5 fps in Tomb Raider. Other sites that performed SLI benchmarks returned similar results. Considering that two GTX 970s cost about $700, compared to the $1000 R9295X2, the GTX 970 is still the best bargain around.
If you have tons of money to spend on cards, though, two GTX 980s are the best bet for gaming at 4K. In our testing, a pair of GTX 980s in SLI dramatically outperformed AMD’s dual-GPU R9 295X in most games, and they cost only $100 more--$1100 versus $1000. The 980 also outperforms Nvidia’s older cards, including the 780 Ti and the Titan Black.

Two GTX 980s is absolutely overkill for 1600p gaming, which is why we’d recommend a pair of 970s for any PC gamer with a large (but not insane) budget. There is one other alternative: buy a single GTX 980 now, with plans to pick up another GTX 980 later, for SLI. When Nvidia rolls out a new wave of cards in 2015, the 980 will drop in price.
But we don’t like this approach. Next year’s graphics cards will only be more efficient when it comes to 4K gaming, and staggering your card purchases for SLI will just put you behind the curve. It’s better to buy once and keep the same cards for as long as you’re happy with their performance.
Some gamers prefer to go for a fast single card over two cards in SLI, and we understand why. Running two GPUs can sometimes introduce issues in games like microstutter, or offer less efficient performance than each of the cards would deal individually. But as we've pointed out in the past, sometimes two well-priced cards can greatly exceed the performance of one high-end single-GPU card. That's exactly the case here with the GTX 970—two 970s costs $100-$150 more than a GTX 980, yet deliver far greater performance.
Best strategy: buy two GTX 970s now for 60fps, ultra settings at 1440p and above. Only buy two GTX 980s if you have tons of cash to burn and already own a 4K monitor.
For UK readers
The best prices we've seen on the GTX 970 in the UK are on Newegg, but most GTX 970 cards are currently unavailable there and on Amazon. We'll update this list when they're in supply.
On the next page: the best budget graphics card.