[SOLVED] Looking for recommendations on new GPU
GPU Purchased: RX 6650XT for $330+tax
Overview
I am currently looking at replacing my GPU, as I believe it is broken. I do not want to spend a high amount as money is a bit tight for me. However, I am open to spending a bit more than the cheapest option, if it will last me longer.
Current Hardware
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500
- RAM: 32GB DDR4
- PSU: 550W
- GPU: NVidia GTX 970
- Primary Display: 1080p60
- Secondary Display: 1600x900 60hz
Workload
I do not do need that strong of a GPU, since I primarily play games a bit older and I occasionally do video editing. For video editing, my video projects tend to be relatively lightweight, so I do not need a beefy GPU for it.
A couple game examples:
- Minecraft
- Far Cry 5
- Civ VI
Other factors
For budget, I am trying to stay as low as possible. However, I do want to buy new, as I am pretty sure my GPU is the problem, but do not know for sure so want to be able to return it. For OS, I am running Fedora KDE. I had my GTX 970 working with it, but I have heard AMD cards work better for Linux. Is switching to AMD better overall or just easier to setup?
Current GPU Considerations:
$145 GTX 1030- $260 RTX 3050
- $360 Radeon RX 7600
All prices posted are in Canadian. I am open to others, these are just the first that came up as I was doing light research
Edit: After some suggestions, I am currently leaning towards the RX 6650XT for $330
At the price point you are targeting you might be best off with an Intel B580. They have good Linux drivers in mainline and should beat a 3050 handily. Sometimes games are confused and dismayed to see an Intel GPU, but unlike Intel's last gen I hear they mostly work now.
They also seem to be mostly sold out, so they must be good?
There's actually news breaking on the B580 right now that when paired with a lower powered CPU, its performance with CPU-heavy games really suffers.
Intel Arc B580 Overhead Issue! Upgraders Beware
Unfortunately I think OP's CPU might be one affected.
I did see that pop up when I searched the card, but did not look closely into that issue
There's been another video from today that actually covers this GPU with your specific CPU and it's looking like there's a big performance hit.
It's a shame because these cards were priced really well for their performance... when paired with a high end modern CPU.
Seems like the combination of not being a good match for my CPU, limited availability, and market price being a bit high makes it seem like it is not a good option for me right now.
It is worth noting that the Intel B580 is at $360 in Canada. So that prices it more in line with the RX 7600 I included in my list. I am unsure performance difference between the 3050 and 7600 though.
It might not be a good deal at market price, either, and it might not make sense to wait for sufficient supply to dump it back to MSRP.
What exactly are the problems you're having that leads you to believe your video card is the problem? That 1030 will probably be a performance decrease for you and it'd be cheaper to buy a used 2060 or something that would be an upgrade.
On linux I've had equal issues with both nvidia and AMD. Neither is fully painless. The open-source enthusiast will enjoy that AMD contributes to the open-source community and there is a version of the AMD driver that's fully open-source. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but that driver is still less stable and still doesn't perform as well as the AMD closed-source driver.
Do you have someone you can borrow a GPU from to test? Your GTX 970 is getting old. If you have to buy a new GPU it should ideally be an upgrade, instead of paying $150 for the same or less performance as a 10+ year old GPU.
Yeah, I was not a fan of the option of the 1030, but threw it in there as a cheaper option.
The problem is that my computer will not boot, and after much troubleshooting, discovered that it will boot without my GPU, but will not boot with my GPU. I thought earlier on in troubleshooting that it was my PSU, so I tried a new PSU a while back and it would not boot as well. Unless I ended up buying a broken PSU before Christmas, it seems to indicate that the issue lies with my GPU
Edit: Booting is probably not the best term, since in the broken state my computer will not even power on. With the GPU in, when I turn on the computer the fans will slightly move and then stop, like a slight twitch. Without the GPU the fans will fully start spinning and the system powers on. It feels like a PSU issue, but this problem has persisted on both my current PSU and a brand new PSU I bought last month.
Well that sounds like you narrowed it down pretty good. If it boots with the GPU removed but doesn't when it's plugged in, that's a pretty big tell.
To confirm, without the GPU it boots up to the desktop. With it, it doesn't show any signs of life like a POST beep?
It'd be great if you had a friend nearby who could lend you their GPU to confirm. If you're really sure that's the problem I'd really recommend buying something like a used 3050 instead of a new 1030.
The rest of your system is pretty modern. Your GPU is ancient. If you're forced to upgrade you may as well bring the rest of the system up to the current era and future-proof it a bit for a little extra money.
It shows signs of life without GPU, but since my CPU does not have integrated graphics, I have no indicators besides just the fans spinning.
The rest of the system is modern since either RAM/CPU/MoBo broke in September and I replaced those, but the GPU was still working and I was on a budget so I left the GPU as the old one.
I didn't realize that and it's kinda unfortunate in this case. Anyway, can you define "signs of life"?
If you press caps lock does the light turn on? That's a fairly good test that it's not CPU, RAM or Mobo.
I have already done an RMA claim on my MoBo so I know that is not the case, and I tried swapping RAM as well. The biggest sign of life is to just see if it will power on and the fans will start turning, which it does without the GPU, but not with it. With the GPU, the computer does not seem to even turn on.
It sounds like it could also be a motherboard issue if there's power delivery issues through pcie or something like that. While less likely a secing gpu test might be worthwhile.
I already did an RMA on my MoBo and it is good
My two cents on the driver: I haven't heard many people using the closed source driver, since the open source one works like a charm. For me, the main advantage of having an open source driver, is that it works out of the box and that the kernel developers can work on it. As for the equal, issues, I have just installed Linux on my brothers PC with an older Nvidia GPU and it's given nothing but problems, meanwhile my AMD GPU of 4 years has never had issues. Also, installing the Nvidia driver was not easy either. So my advice: given they are equal, pick the AMD card.
Given the much bigger part open source software plays in the Linux ecosystem, having open source GPU drivers that are actively supported by the manufacturer (NVIDIA does have open source drivers but their development is mostly driven by volunteers reverse-engineering the behavior of the closed source driver, not by NVIDIA themselves. Large improvements have been made over the years, but they still haven't caught up to the performance of the closed source drivers) is also a great help for debugging window managers (on the X11 side) and compositors (on the wayland side) which in turn greatly impacts the user experience since pretty much everything graphical relies on those. This is particularly noticeable when you look at documentation for various WM/compositors and everything related to NVIDIA GPUs is pre-emptively marked "here be dragons" (even though in practice enough work has been put in to coerce NVIDIA cards into working mostly without issues in recent years... so long as you have one of the newer GPUs). Just ask the Sway devs what they think of NVIDIA :)
This is no longer true with the development of nvidia-open. Nvidia even recommends their open source driver for newer architectures: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
This would be true if we were talking about NVIDIA cards, but on the AMD side it's the reverse: the open-source driver is almost always the better option both performance and stability-wise for the general user, with the closed source one being outright discouraged unless you are in one of the few special cases where they are still required.
I can confirm that AMD cards have better driver support on Linux (though generally NVIDIA cards can be made to work fine). If you have the choice between two comparable AMD and NVIDIA cards, I'd pick the AMD one. Also of note is the existence of the 6650XT, a step-up to the 6600XT which can be found at the same or even lower price. I have found this listing (apparently geoblocked to Canada, had to use a web proxy to actually check the page as I'm in France) for one at 330 CAD.
That listing does look promising. It seems like the 6000 series cards from AMD are quite good based on the recommendations here
They definitely are. They had pretty good general performance for a much better price to performance ratio than NVIDIA as long as you don't have a need for features that are only present or much better supported on NVIDIA cards (real time ray/path tracing in video games and anything that requires CUDA comes to mind. Video encoding can also be a concern but this is probably not an issue for you in particular) and now that they're being phased out to be replaced by the newer (but not exactly groundbreaking) RX 7000 series, sellers are incentivized to bump down the price for their remaining 6000 series while they're still new enough to be an attractive option. Now is probably the best time to buy one.
After some more research, that is looking the most promising. In my research so far, in comparing the 6600 vs 7600 the price is similar, but the 6600 has a bit less performance but also has a significantly lower power draw. The 6650xt is at the same price point as the other cards with the listing you provided, has similar power draw to the 6600 but has closer performance to the 7600.
I have been using this article to figure out rough performance in comparison the my current GPU
Personally I really like the 6600 or 6600xt in this price range. It's as I recall a really good value card -- maybe a bit overkill for your use case (call it headroom if you like). But it's on the newer end, it's like 200 bucks (in my region), and it shouldn't strain your PSU at all
e: though I don't know what the Canadian hardware market is like, sorry!
Agreed. I have the 6700xt personally and it's been great.
Based on what this poster has shared, somewhere in this range would work well. It's not a huge step down by any means but the 6600xt is half the price of the 6700xt right now.
Been a great card.
In CAD it is about $350 so similar in pricing to the 7600, but also the 6600 is a bit harder to find compared to the 7600. Quick research seems to indicate that the 7600 will give me a bit more performance, assuming my PSU can handle it
Edit: Checked a PSU calculator and the 6600 would handle it comfortably but the 7600 will be pushing it a bit
I have a 6600xt and the settings utility thing I use let's me drop the max wattage by 10w. If the 7600 is just barely pushing it you could possibly tweak it down?
If you could find a used 6600 for a good price though, they seem to go for 200-250 CAD used right now.
Second the 6600. Decent card possibly limited by only 8GB though. I'm still using one today. Rock solid in Linux with steam and wotnot
I would consider buying a used one. You don’t need any particular graphics performance; you basically just need the minimum viable product. So don’t spend a bunch of money when you don’t need to.
Not a bad idea, except as I am reflecting on it more I just want something new that will last a decent amount of time. My computer was getting old, so I had one failure in September and then this one that happened late November that has just been a long process of troubleshooting due to a variety of factors. I am just at the point now where I want something that will be reliable for a long time. Therefore, that is also influencing my decision to buy new and have it be something I am not wanting to replace immediately