Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton)

What constitutes a “budget” graphics card? I’d argue that it’s anything that costs less than £250/$250. Although—as evidenced by the, uhh, constructive feedback on the Nvidia GTX 1060 and AMD RX 480 reviews—not everyone agrees. Fortunately, both AMD and Nvidia have updated their range of sub-£250 graphics cards in recent months, with their more efficient Polaris and Pascal architectures promising better performance without the need for extravagant cooling and power requirements. The cheapest card of the lot, AMD’s RX 460, costs a mere £112/$110.

At this end of the market, where the cheapest cards don’t even require an external power connector to function, the target is good quality 1080p gaming above 30FPS, or high frame rates for e-sports players at 720p. These are those modest goals that all the graphics cards on test hit, but what’s surprising is just how much performance you get for such a small outlay. No, the RX 470, RX 460, GTX 1050 Ti, and GTX 1050 won’t blow your socks off in the same way a GTX 1080 will, but they are all excellent, affordable cards that fill a niche and price point.

The question is, which of these budget wonders offers the most bang for your buck?