LOADING_
The calculator gives you a verdict in a second. These guides are what sits behind it: how to check it yourself, what to pair before you buy, and what the words in the result mean.
Each guide answers a different situation. Find yours in the left-hand column.
Four ways to measure it on your own machine: a real-time overlay, Task Manager, a thermal-throttling check, and the calculator.
Balanced pairings by budget and target resolution, from entry-level 1080p to flagship 4K.
Where to cut without noticing it and where never to cut, with concrete builds and current prices.
What actually happens when a game does not fit in memory, why single-channel costs more than a CPU tier, and when 32 GB buys you nothing.
Draw calls, frame times, 1% lows, TDP, VRAM and the synthetic scores, one line each.
The fifteen cards you can order today, with price and FPS at 1080p, 1440p and 4K. And the three we would not buy.
Fourteen processors with price and FPS, and the two cases where an X3D is worth what it costs.
Three ordinary machines and what each gains from one swap, plus a two-minute test for yours.
Which Ryzen 5000 to fit in your board, when you don't need to, and what moving to AM5 really costs.
How much video memory each game asks for by resolution, and on which cards the extra 8 GB is worth paying for.
Wattage for every card from the RTX 5050 to the RTX 5090, the connector it uses, and how to tell if your current unit will do.
A percentage with no method behind it cannot be checked. These two pages explain how every figure on the site is produced, and how far the model is off when it is held against frame rates measured by other people.
The calculator answers for your exact pairing across twelve resolutions; the optimizer says what to buy with the budget you have.