Advice on GPU upgrade wanted
So I'm in the market at the moment for a GPU upgrade. I haven't spent a dumb amount of money on something stupid in a while now and I'm thinking this Christmas season is the time. My only problem is, I've been really out of the loop since the Great Shortage. I've heard AMDs cards these days are actually more than complete jokes, and NVIDIA has been getting too big-headed and making some poor consumer choices. So a switch to AMD sounds like it might be viable for me.
At the moment, I've got an RTX 2070 8GB. I've read that lately, games have been utilizing VRAM like crazy so I want to bolster my numbers on that front. Was looking at 12GB cards since the 24GB ones are all ludicrously priced. At the moment, I'd say my budget is around 500/600 USD. Is AMD worth switching to at the moment? Or should I go for something like a 4060?
Well you got to consider compatibility with your mother board too. GPU prices are only just going down so they are still expensive right now too.
Put your build into PC part picker and then see if AMDs 7000 series cards are compatible. You might also wanna wait to buy the 8000 series come out because then the 7000 will go down in price hopefully.
AFAIK unless your MOBO was made over 10 years ago there shouldn't be any compatibility issues
MOBO compatibility issues are not always obvious though, especially when it comes to firmware. That's why it's still always a good idea to check pcpartpicker, IMO, since they will warn you about outdated firmware versions that are not compatible with your other selected parts. For GPUs that's not usually much of an issue, but for CPUs and RAM it definitely is. And while those issues can usually be solved by simply updating the firmware, if someone isn't aware of that it can be pretty confusing/scary/frustrating when their new setup fails to work properly at first.
GPU compatibility didn't even occur to me. Is that a newer thing? I know compatibility for RAM and CPU are crucial, but I've always just been able to plug my cards right in without paying attention. I'll definitely check that, then; thank you.
It has always been a thing, it's just that there has been a lot of compatibility with NVIDIA for a long time, and in my experience the other brands tend to be smaller and not have the same issues. It's always a good idea to put your parts in PC Part Picker and see if there are any potential issues.
About GPU's and motherboards? No, only thing you can check is if the GPU fits into your case, but all modern gpu's will not have any issues with any motherboard. If you can, give a specific example please.
I just meant all the things @stu2b50 said, with the addition of checking use of PCI/PCIE slot usage. I had an issue with a built where I couldn't use the wireless card and the GPUs I wanted because even though it seemed like it would fit, it would not fit, and PCPartpicker noted that and saved me $100. I'm not saying GPUs are motherboard specific.
That's fair, forgot about other pci-e components.
There's only two things you need to watch for: whether or not your motherboard has PCI lanes of sufficient speed (which is almost never an issue) and whether or not your PSU can power the GPU. Otherwise, there's no compatibility issues like with CPUs and sockets.
Well, the third issue is the physical one - sometimes your GPU can be so big it doesn't fit in your case.
I feel like the case size is almost always the biggest issue with video card compatibility.
Almost everyone I know who's built a computer has, at one point or another, had to alter their plans or just order a new case.
That's what Dremels are for!
I just alter the case!
Doesn't fit the physical case, or has a collision with something else that is in the case, and PCPartpicker has always caught that for me before I've built. I was thinking almost just the third option, not really either of the first two.
There really isn't a technical compatibility you have to worry about. However a new GPU might be thicker and can cover more of your PCIe slots. This will only be an issue if you have any other PCIe components, such as a soundcard or Wi-fi adapter. If you don't have any PCIe components next to your current GPU then you just need to be sure the new one fits in your case and your PSU has enough wattage.
However I would actually highly recommend Nvidia if your budget allows it. DLSS is so much better than FSR and even without considering that, Nvidia GPUs are better at RT than AMD. They are almost objectively the better purchase if the cards are within your budget.
AMD GPUs often have been raster performance for any given price, but the X-factor would be DLSS and the other goodies nVidia has cooked up to differentiate itself. Personally, DLSS has made enough of a performance difference in most of the performance demanding games that I play that an nVidia GPU still makes more sense for the money. But that'll depend on what you do with it.
Spending dumb amounts of money shouldn't be a problem in today's market, the question is: how dumb?
Though in my opinion there's only two viable choices when it comes to price/quality ratio: RTX 4080, or the 7900 XTX.
Little addendum to that is that I use an ultrawide 4K screen so the beef required is a bit higher than if you'd game at 1440p or even 1080p. If that's the case for you there's a bunch more viable options available.
Ultimately it's about what you're going to do with it and how much overkill you're going for (so again, how dumb are we talking?).
I do think, all politics and consumer policy aside, that nvidia provides a better allround package. DLSS is great and VSR is actually a really nifty tech that I'm looking forward to maturing.
Believe me I'd love to drop what, 1600 on a 4080? But I did specify my budget as being 500-600 dollars haha. Mainly I'm just unsure of how to get the biggest bang for my buck. Will an nvidia card do, or could I possibly save money and get more performance out of an AMD card? I've always had nvidia so I'm not familiar at all with AMDs capabilities
I uhh... Completely read over that budget requirement. I do apologise.
Lmfao no worries at all I also had my eye on the 4080 but my girlfriend would murder me
4080s should be around 1100-1200. Not 600, but not 1600 either. Perhaps you can hold on for a bit and it'll creep into your price range.
The 4090 seems firm at around 2k so that one just looks like a complete nonstarter.
Depends on where you are. In Sweden 4080 costs around 16 000 SEK which is about $1500. This price is including taxes etc, so it's not comparable 1:1 with US prices of course.
Of course, it's always location dependent. Though I did included tax in mine. Just feels natural to do so (as I'm Dutch). It's hovering around 1200 here.
In my opinion, there isn't anything great at 550. The consensus is that this whole generation is kinda lame for the average buyer. If you want to drop a mortgage payment on a video card, then get a 4090 and it will be top of the line, but for everyone else, it's super disappointing.
That being said, your choices in that price range are a 7800xt at 500 or a 4070 at 550. both will double your fps from your 2070 at 1440. That is pure raster, so if you like post processing, both cards will get you plenty of extra fake frames or upscaling. Both of those are super subjective, but the consensus is that upscaling's performance boost is worth it, and the fake frames aren't.
What games/genres are you planning to play? What are your monitor's specs?
Atm I've got two monitors. One's just a regular 1080/59hz, and the other's a 144hz. I play just about everything. I like to download skyrim/fallout modpacks, I often play AAA (and AAA adjacent) releases such as Baldur's Gate 3, RDR2, Elden Ring, etc. I also own a Valve Index and play a handful of games on it as well (mainly Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades). I'm not sure I understand "raster" in this context. Is that just as opposed to raytracing?
Yeah, rasterized performance is just the raw output the screen without any post processing like ray tracing or frame generation or upscaling.
All of those games are so different when it comes to performance. Elden Ring's engine is capped at 60 fps. It's one of those games where the game ticks at that speed, so adding more frames messes with the game's timing system.
Baldur's gate seems to be well optimized for gpus. Its more intensive on the cpu side, but it scales awesomely on most gpus. I get 90ish fps at 2560x1080 on a 6700 non xt. I haven't tried it with the new fsr update, but it was fine without it.
The mods for skrim/fallout/starfield are going to eat up ram, so maybe the 7800xt has the edge there, even if you dont care about the nvidia post processing.
I would encourage you to look into the vr stuff though. I have no experience with it, but there seem to be rumblings about compatibility issues with amd cards.
also, there are plenty of rumors of a 40 series super release being announced in Jan. Some rumors that amd is going to counter with price drops then too, so it may be a good idea to wait it out a little longer.
I upgraded from a 970 to a 6700 non xt earlier this year for 310 usd. I wanted to upgrade when the 20 series came out and it felt like a lame release, then I was 100% gonna buy a 3080 for 700, but then you couldnt, then nvidia decided to charge ridiculous prices for the 40 series. I feel like many people are in the same position as me, where we are ready to drop 700 on a great card, but currently there are no great cards at that price, comparatively.
Thank you for the detailed insight! I'll likely hold off until Q1 2024, then. My CPU could probably use an upgrade (Ryzen 7 3700X) and it wouldn't be nearly as pricey to do so.
5800x3d is a drop in upgrade and loads more performance, fyi. also, ssd's are dirt cheap right now.
good luck.
Oh, nice! I can never keep up with all of the wacky variations on the main families of AMD's CPUs. That might be just what I go for, then
Edit: Some minor component edits (turns out I had an RX 590, not 580).
Good thread. Er...sorry to hijack it, but I don't think my question really warrants making a new one.
I was also considering an upgrade, since I've had an RX 590 GPU and Ryzen 5 2600 3.4GHz CPU since 2019, and have no idea what to upgrade these 2 components to, because I've not kept up closely with things. I've looked on PC Parts Picker and Logical Increments, and I don't think any of the GPUs or CPUs I've seen would be incompatible with my PRIME A320M-K motherboard or exceed the 600W PSU. Trouble is, I can't really tell the components apart. I think the K suffix means overclockable and Matisse is just the name for AMD's 3000-series processors, but beyond that I feel kind of lost.
Really, I want to be able to run Cyberpunk 2077 and Darktide on a 2560x1440 monitor at very high settings with a minimum of 60 FPS, hopefully without breaking the bank (£500 budget). I don't know much about overclocking, but could probably do it if I had a YT tutorial to follow.
Overclocking is a bit of a meme these days; out of the box there just isn't much more juice to squeeze out of it like there used to be. It's gone from an enthusiast hack that requires in-depth knowledge to just another commercialized feature on most UEFIs. Really, just use https://gpu.userbenchmark.com to compare your GPU/CPU to those of your price range and see how much better they are than what you have. CP2077 at very high w/60 FPS minimum is a very tall order, imo. Not one you'll be able to make within your budget. I have an RTX 2070, a Ryzen 7 3700X, and 64GB of ram and I can barely run that game at 60FPS on medium. Darktide is much less demanding, however. That is a nearly 7 year old GPU. You would do well to get literally any GPU made in the last 3/4 years. Same for your CPU.
Hmmmm, fartbungleclowns. That's a bit of a downer. Surprised what you said about Darktide, though, as that game seems to be very harsh on my hardware compared to CP2077. Maybe it's just not well optimized, but the thing struggles to reach 60 on low settings for me and takes ages to load, whereas I can hover around 60 driving around Night City.
The reason I'm aiming for high settings rather than max is that I could really do without most of the gimmicky effects and post-processing that just muddies the image and causes eye strain (and makes my PC cry anyway). Turning on chromatic aberration and motion blur and other excessive lighting and graphical effects makes me feel like Michael Bay has tied me to a chair and is forcing me to sit through his latest cinematic poo-de-grace. The human brain can only take so much.
Thanks for the link, I'll check that out when I get home. It sounds like exactly the sort of comparison tool I've been looking for. My GPU being about 7 years old does explain some things, haha...like why I struggle to find it listed on hardware sites and system requirement lists.
5800x3d(289 pounds) is the only part to consider if you are on a ryzen 2k or 3k cpu. It will be so much faster than the 2600.
Op is right about overclocking. Modern cpus will push themselves if you give them the thermal head room, so definitely get an aftermarket cooler. Doesn't have to be expensive, but don't use the stock cooler.
If you want 1440 high 60, though I would argue med 90 is a better experience if you have a monitor that has a higher refresh rate, you will need to upgrade your video card too. You are gonna be kind of limited here, but in my opinion, the best bet is the rx6700 for 305 pounds. You can go lower and get a 6650, but the extra 2 gb of memory may be worth it? I would again wait till the new year for the gpu, just to see what comes of the refresh releases.
I'm not actually sure which cooler I use, so I don't know whether it's stock. I got my PC pre-built through Cyberpower, but for some reason it wasn't listed on the receipt...so maybe it is stock.
Thanks, I'll key in the CPU and GPU you listed to run some comparisons. Not sure I entirely understand how to do that on the UserBenchmark site, and I don't really know how percentiles work, but maybe with practice it'll make more sense.
FWIW, I commented a little up the chain: I chose the 5600 as my processor, because it kept costs down. The 5800x3D is an excellent processor, but more than twice the price of the 5600 and will also need a cooler, which meant close to $400 versus the $120ish for the 5600.
On the cooler front, GN did a comparison of some dual tower air coolers a couple months back and the highlighted PA120 is $34 USD on amazon. Blows my mind considering I paid 3x that on a NH-D15 several years back and it's better in some metrics.
That is the most enormous cooler I have ever seen. It would fit in my case, and hopefully on my motherboard, but...please tell me that size of CPU cooler isn't the norm for the last few gens of CPUs. o_o
It depends on what CPU you're trying to cool, if it's overclocked, and whether you care about the fan speed. Larger fans can move the same amount of air as a smaller fan at a lower fan speed (generally). So if you get a large cooler like this and put it on a CPU that's much lower power than the cooler's maximum capacity you'll end up with a quieter PC. There are diminishing returns, but here it's only $34 so it's hard to argue you're overpaying by a significant amount.
On the flip side, the top end Intel chips are closer to 300W if it can stay cool when overclocked so this isn't going to keep it from throttling down all the time. More mainstream chips would be more like 100W.
Wow, maybe it's been too long since I booted up CP2077. I never had issues with dark tide, but I was always unhappy with how I couldn't do anything to make CP2077 work well and look decent at the same time. I'll have to give it another go
Hey, I was in a similar situation back in September. I had a Ryzen 2600 and a GTX 1070. I ended-up going with a Ryzen 5600 (about $120) (Non-X. There is a performance difference, but it's marginal and I had no intention to overclock) and a Radeon 6700XT (About $345 US after tax)(As well as an NVME, but I'm not including that in my price here). Final price with both came in just under $500 US and I'm very happy with the performance of them together.
I game at 1080p and have so far been able to put stuff on Ultra no problem. Cyberpunk runs at 100FPS +/- without ray tracing on Ultra settings and looks great, Starfield has no issue maintaining 60FPS all settings on Max.
I should say: Everything was drop in, which is why I selected what I did. I upgraded my Mobo back in 2019 and wanted to stick with that and keep my costs low.
I have a Ryzen 5800X and was hamstrung with an Nvidia 1060GTX, and couldn't play Starfield, so I looked at what my GPU options were and ended up going with a 6700XT as well. GPU's are stupid expensive, and this one seemed to be a pretty grea bang for the buck. Starfield hums along at medium/high settings, and is much, much better than trying to play it on my Steamdeck.
I definitely feel like it was a good bang for the buck. I don't game extensively on my desktop, so it seemed not unreasonable at $329, given I paid $379 for my 970 GTX and used it for 8 years.
Bearing in mind, I'd be running 1440p, since I have a 2560x1440 monitor (at least I think that means it's 1440p). NVME memory is new to me, but having read a little about it, I think I should be okay with my current memory (2x8GB DDR4/3200MHz) for the time being. I doubt I'd really want to run any game with the highest possible settings, since above the "High" level they seem to start really punishing the PC for relatively little benefit.
You’re fine on RAM. The newer gen DDR5 is great, but it’s probably the last upgrade you should make in terms of raw performance boosts.
NVMe are drives similar in tech to SSDs and plug directly into your motherboard rather than use SATA to connect them. Blazingly fast and dirt cheap to boot.
1440p isn't that much higher than 1080p and I'd think you'd be fine with High settings in most games. I have a friend who's running a worse CPU with a 3060 and plays things on High with his 1440p monitor.
I chose to stick with 1080p, just because I want my upgrades to go a little bit longer (before my friend gave me his 1070, my 970 had been in use for 8-years and was still doing pretty alright), as I don't use my gaming PC all that often. As well, I don't really see a substantial difference between 1080p and 1440p, but that's just my eyes.
4060 isn't worth looking at, the Gamer's Nexus review says it's not a generational improvement compared to a 3060, so compared to a 2070 you won't see any benefit.
Amd's 7700 XT is slightly behind the 4070 and their 7800 XT is slightly ahead of the 4070 (for non ray-tracing stuff) and are around $500, so they might be worth looking at.
If you're more interested in ray-tracing, nvidia is still ahead so a 4070 is what to look at.
For AMD partner cards, Sapphire is equivalent to EVGA for quality and customer service, but you do pay a bit more. I always go for Sapphire and haven't had any problems, but I'm sure the other brands are good too.
Thanks for the insight! Yeah I don't really give a damn about ray-tracing. I don't play enough games that actually utilize it to justify dropping more money on it. I'll definitely look into the 7800XT! Gonna be a pain in the ass making the switch though
So if this were me right now and I had that 500-600 budget and I NEEDED an upgrade, this is exactly what I'd do. The current gen of cards available aren't a super great deal, the next gen coming in 2025 is probably gonna be the one to shell out some money for. I don't mind taking a bit of a risk on used gear as I use good judgement usually, so I'd look for a 3080 Ti or 6950XT on FB Marketplace/Craigslist and look for a really legit card, which you could probably find in that price range. By legit I mean, you can see it running before buying and see that the person hasn't been running it in some kind of furnace environment and has treated it well, and they don't give you any bad feelings. An undervolted card would be a plus also. I'd buy that and try and save my money for the next gen release to get a sweet experience. And if I happen upon a good deal on a current gen card, I'd buy that. A 4060 Ti or 4070 Ti or non-Ti would definitely get you through to next gen.
Honestly, I would REALLY like to give Nvidia the finger and buy AMD, but unfortunately their DLSS and raytracing performance is still just too good 😭 Playing Cyberpunk without path tracing just isn't the same experience, it's that good.
I am unfortunately far too impatient to wait until Q1/Q2 2025 for an upgrade lmao. I think buying used is just too much work for me. I don't really want to try and figure out if the person I'm looking to buy from is just another gamer or if that card was thrown in a mining rig for years and now they're just selling it for cheap. Not to mention I would absolutely hate the possibility of getting scammed/entropy deciding that it's that card's time to go only days after I purchase it.
I'm okay with paying the peace-of-mind tax lol
Absolutely nothing wrong with that! In that case, I guess if it were me I'd probably buy whatever AMD is offering in that price range since they're good at rasterization and also just to give Nvidia the finger for a while. I'd probably shop around for a sale maybe since BF is coming very soon and buy whatever seems like a good deal. Then next gen I'd buy whoever takes the cake with the better cards and sell this purchase to help cover it.
But really, I could also see if raytracing and DLSS is important to you going Nvidia right now too. I currently have a 3080 Ti and DLSS is great, even running at 1080p on a 1440p monitor in really demanding titles.
You know, if I would buy used, I would rather buy it from miners. The conditions for the card is usually better there than in a gamers computer, because they want to use it as efficiently as possible (they undervolt) and the card doesn't go through too many heat cycles compared to a gamer's one. And from my experience, they have way less dust.
A bit offtopic, but if you will ever try to install Linux, go for amd gpu, you will have an easier time. Cheers
Can you get a used card? I picked up a 6800xt for around $400 back in January. Runs Cyberpunk at ultra on a 1440p
I can't help but balk at the idea of used gear. No warranty and all that. Just doesn't feel very safe
Some have a transferable warranty
I recently bought a 7800 XT, (in my case, a powerColour red devil, but other brands are available). I did it because I was sick and tired of NVIDIA driver issues on Linux, but AMD is still a good option for windows as well. Its in your price range, and I haven't been able to max it out in my (admittedly indie focused) game library.
I bought a pc last year but held off upgrading my 2070 for a bit. I finally ended up getting the 4070 for 550 to round out the system and I'm very happy with it. It's just about double the 2070 in performance and I'm no longer seeing 10 percent cpu and 99 percent gpu utilization. I'm gaming at 1440p and really it's plenty of frames on anything I throw at it.