Looking to upgrade graphic card, suggestion welcomed.

meiam

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I'm pretty far from an expert on PC part, but my graphic card is getting old so I'm looking for advice to upgrade. Just some sort of mid tier card with good value/price ratio.

My PC (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KNDWBc):
intel i5
2x8 gb ram
GTX 970 4 GB

I made my PC in early 2016 and I've been quite happy with the performance so I'm looking for something equivalent that'll last me the next 4 years or so. Not sure if I should change the motherboard and/or processor too. I'm guessing the RAM should be fine (I upgraded not too long ago).
 

Gordon_4

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Well, I’d say a sensible upgrade path is the nVidia 3060 Ti since it’s the midrange at $400, and out performs most of the 20XX series cards.

Only problem is, like every new GPU this year, they’re as rare as rocking horse shit.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Now's a really bad time to buy. The 2000 series cards are completely outclassed by the 3000 series ones, but the 3000 series cards aren't available anywhere and the 2000 series cards haven't depreciated in price enough.

You should probably give it another 6 months (though there's rumors that nvidia is going to do a card refresh early next year so you may have the exact same thing happen again).

I upgraded early this year from a 980 to a 5700XT. The 5700XT is pretty decent and was a good value at the time, but if I'm able to get my hands on a 3070 for non-scalper prices at some point upgrading would actually be pretty tempting.
 

meiam

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Cool thanks for the advice, I'm not in super hurry so I'll wait a bit I guess. I looked a bit at the 3060 but the price were all in the 500-600 range, is that due to poor availability?

Oh and here my pc part link, stupid steam link messing up.
 

Chimpzy

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It really depends on what you want to do. Keep up with the new consoles on AAA games? Then just gpu probably won't cut it for the next 4 years. Cuz looking at your current build, pretty much everything except the case and power supply could do with an upgrade.

Tho I agree with Gordon_4 that the 3060ti is the soundest plan, assuming you can find one.
 

meiam

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Hum I guess so, even the RAM?

What kind of processor would work? Never tried an AMD but they seem like they're half the price of intel.
 

09philj

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Hum I guess so, even the RAM?

What kind of processor would work? Never tried an AMD but they seem like they're half the price of intel.
The Ryzen 5 5600X is the most similar to a current generation i5 in price, but generally offers better performance.
 

Chimpzy

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Agreed, a Ryzen 5600X should keep you settled for a good while. Though any Ryzen cpu will also require a new motherboard. I'd suggest either a B550 or X570, since those boards are compatible with both Zen 2 (i.e. Ryzen 3000 series) and Zen 3 (i.e. Ryzen 5000 series) cpus, giving you the widest range of options. But also because they have pcie 4.0 chipsets, in case you were to get one of the new RTX 3000 series or Radeon RX 6000 series gpu now or later, since those are pcie 4.0 cards. I mean, those cards will still work fine on your current mobo, but just not as well as they could on those newer boards.

And if you go Ryzen, you might also want to swap out that old DDR3 ram for the fastest DDR4 you can buy, since Ryzen cpu's tend to perform best when paired with fast ram. But not too fast either. I seem to remember 3600Mhz is the sweet spot for optimal performance on both Zen 2 and Zen 3 cpus. Good news is 3600MHz is quite affordable. About $80 gets you 16gb. Keep it dual channel tho i.e. 2x8gb, or 2x16gb if you want to splurge.

Also, what kind of storage are you using? If you're still on a mechanical HDD, you'll definitely want to upgrade to an SSD. Another area where those motherboards mentioned above have an advantage, since they also leave room for a pcie 4.0 nvme m.2 SSD, which is pretty much the fastest storage you can currently get for pc. Tho if you're already on an SSD, I suppose you could get away with just skipping this one.

Sorry if I'm making this confusing by dropping a whole lot of tech talk on you. It's just that if you'd slap any of the new gen gpus in your current build, the disparities between it and the rest of your pc will very likely mean the gpu will be bottlenecked. Or put otherwise, you'll have put down money for power you can't fully utilize. If that is not a problem for you or you're planning on doing incremental upgrades, and you just want a recommendation? Then easy, RTX 3060 Ti, plain and simple.
 
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gorfias

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I'm pretty far from an expert on PC part, but my graphic card is getting old so I'm looking for advice to upgrade. Just some sort of mid tier card with good value/price ratio.

My PC (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KNDWBc):
intel i5
2x8 gb ram
GTX 970 4 GB

I made my PC in early 2016 and I've been quite happy with the performance so I'm looking for something equivalent that'll last me the next 4 years or so. Not sure if I should change the motherboard and/or processor too. I'm guessing the RAM should be fine (I upgraded not too long ago).
@Chimpzy his pick is very good.


Your 970 is still considered a solid mid level card. But if you don't want to break the bank and see a substantial gain in performance, this site compares with RX 5700 XT

But the will save you a few bucks and still show that performance boost.

 

meiam

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Agreed, a Ryzen 5600X should keep you settled for a good while. Though any Ryzen cpu will also require a new motherboard. I'd suggest either a B550 or X570, since those boards are compatible with both Zen 2 (i.e. Ryzen 3000 series) and Zen 3 (i.e. Ryzen 5000 series) cpus, giving you the widest range of options. But also because they have pcie 4.0 chipsets, in case you were to get one of the new RTX 3000 series or Radeon RX 6000 series gpu now or later, since those are pcie 4.0 cards. I mean, those cards will still work fine on your current mobo, but just not as well as they could on those newer boards.

And if you go Ryzen, you might also want to swap out that old DDR3 ram for the fastest DDR4 you can buy, since Ryzen cpu's tend to perform best when paired with fast ram. But not too fast either. I seem to remember 3600Mhz is the sweet spot for optimal performance on both Zen 2 and Zen 3 cpus. Good news is 3600MHz is quite affordable. About $80 gets you 16gb. Keep it dual channel tho i.e. 2x8gb, or 2x16gb if you want to splurge.

Also, what kind of storage are you using? If you're still on a mechanical HDD, you'll definitely want to upgrade to an SSD. Another area where those motherboards mentioned above have an advantage, since they also leave room for a pcie 4.0 nvme m.2 SSD, which is pretty much the fastest storage you can currently get for pc. Tho if you're already on an SSD, I suppose you could get away with just skipping this one.

Sorry if I'm making this confusing by dropping a whole lot of tech talk on you. It's just that if you'd slap any of the new gen gpus in your current build, the disparities between it and the rest of your pc will very likely mean the gpu will be bottlenecked. Or put otherwise, you'll have put down money for power you can't fully utilize. If that is not a problem for you or you're planning on doing incremental upgrades, and you just want a recommendation? Then easy, RTX 3060 Ti, plain and simple.
That's pretty much what I wanted to get from this thread, thanks. I don't mind spending a bit, but I'd rather stay under 1000$ so I'll just wait for 3060ti to be somewhat common since the consus seems firmly behind that. For ram, is it worth going 4 x 8?

I'm mostly SSD, I got a big HDD for big game that don't need much loading but otherwise I got a 250 for windows (evo 850) and 1 gb for game (evo 860), probably would pick out another 1 gb if I see it for cheap but I don't see a point in replacing anything since my case still has lots of place for new one.

The 970 is still doing alright, but I'm having to lower setting more and more so I figure it'd be good to upgrade, I'm not after 4K 120 fps with raytracing, but I'd like consistent frame at least.
 

Chimpzy

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That's pretty much what I wanted to get from this thread, thanks. I don't mind spending a bit, but I'd rather stay under 1000$ so I'll just wait for 3060ti to be somewhat common since the consus seems firmly behind that.
If you're on a budget, that RX 5600 XT Gorfias mentioned is still a very solid 1080-1440p card. Not as futureproof as the 3060ti, but cheaper and you can actually find stock of it. It could tide you over for a couple years, assuming you're not too fussy about being visually on par with the new consoles in AAA games. But it doesn't seem like you are.
For ram, is it worth going 4 x 8?
Not really. Your current motherboard and the ones I mentioned are all dual channel setups. You can add more sticks, but the benefits would be negligible. Maybe 1-2 frames, if any. To get the full advantage of 4 sticks, you'd need a quad channel setup, like a Threadripper or Cascade-Lake X cpu and compatible mobo, but that would easily breeze past $1000.
I'm mostly SSD, I got a big HDD for big game that don't need much loading but otherwise I got a 250 for windows (evo 850) and 1 gb for game (evo 860), probably would pick out another 1 gb if I see it for cheap but I don't see a point in replacing anything since my case still has lots of place for new one.
Fair enough, just asked since it's not uncommon for build from that time to still be on mechanical drives.
 

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If you can get ahold of an RTX 3080, your set for the foreseeable future. RTX 3090 is too much for too little reward compared with an RTX 3080. IDK about 3070.
 

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I looked a bit at the 3060 but the price were all in the 500-600 range, is that due to poor availability?
Quite definitely.

MSRP for the 3060TI here in the UK is £369. Everything has had a price hike of about £200-£300.

The only card that is relatively untouched is the 3090, but that thing goes for £1400 anyway. No wonder it is still in stock.

Its just like as @Dirty Hipsters said: the 3000 series completely destroys the 2000 in performance, but the 3000 series is completely sold out. So you are either buying a 2000 series which no longer good value, or you are waiting an undetermined amount of time for the 3000 series to come back in stock.

Not that any 2000 series GPUs are even still in stock, anyway.

And the same goes for AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs.

Its just not a great time to buy GPUs or CPUs.
 

Gordon_4

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Quite definitely.

MSRP for the 3060TI here in the UK is £369. Everything has had a price hike of about £200-£300.

The only card that is relatively untouched is the 3090, but that thing goes for £1400 anyway. No wonder it is still in stock.

Its just like as @Dirty Hipsters said: the 3000 series completely destroys the 2000 in performance, but the 3000 series is completely sold out. So you are either buying a 2000 series which no longer good value, or you are waiting an undetermined amount of time for the 3000 series to come back in stock.

Not that any 2000 series GPUs are even still in stock, anyway.

And the same goes for AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs.

Its just not a great time to buy GPUs or CPUs.

Honestly if I had the money I'd buy the 3090 based on the fact that its available at all, rather than any other justification. I mean I'd never likely max it out, but if nothing else I'd end up with a serious amount of overhead for the foreseeable future.
 

laggyteabag

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Honestly if I had the money I'd buy the 3090 based on the fact that its available at all, rather than any other justification. I mean I'd never likely max it out, but if nothing else I'd end up with a serious amount of overhead for the foreseeable future.
I mean sure, but you will be spending a hideous amount of money, for something that the next generation will match, or comfortably beat, for half the price. Not to mention that the (probably) upcoming 3080TI will comfortably bridge the gap between the 3080 and 3090, but likely with a much less ugly price tag

Personally though, I'd rather spend £700 on a 3080, and another £700 on the 4080 in 2 years time, than spend £1400 on the 3090, that will likely be weaker in the long run.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Quite definitely.

MSRP for the 3060TI here in the UK is £369. Everything has had a price hike of about £200-£300.

The only card that is relatively untouched is the 3090, but that thing goes for £1400 anyway. No wonder it is still in stock.

Its just like as @Dirty Hipsters said: the 3000 series completely destroys the 2000 in performance, but the 3000 series is completely sold out. So you are either buying a 2000 series which no longer good value, or you are waiting an undetermined amount of time for the 3000 series to come back in stock.

Not that any 2000 series GPUs are even still in stock, anyway.

And the same goes for AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs.

Its just not a great time to buy GPUs or CPUs.
In terms of game performance, unless you're playing something that really CPU bound, like Microsoft Flight Sim or something that requires a lot of physics calculations like Kerbal Space Program, you aren't going to get a lot of additional gaming performance out of a Ryzen 5600 over the Ryzen 3600. If you can get a Ryzen 3600 right now at a decent price.

Looking at the benchmarks of the 5600x versus the 3600x:


Yeah, the 5600x is very clearly faster in all departments and is a significantly better card for productivity and things like video rendering. In terms of gaming through, it only had a significant improvement over the 3600x in CS: GO. It's a very big difference in CS:GO, but at framerates that high I don't think you're actually getting an appreciable benefit gameplay benefit from hitting 300fps over hitting 230fps.

In all the other games the 3600x basically performs just as well while being half the price.
 
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meiam

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Hello

I'm hoping this topic is still watched because my computer upgrade just became far more urgent since I had to ship my computer (I moved quite far) which resulted in some damage to it: CPU cooler was rip off and some of the physical connector have been broken and the thermal pace is all dried out (can I just re apply new one on new one?), one my 2 SSD is unresponsive (I'll need to spend the day playing with cable and port to see if that's the issue) and FPS is much lower than I used to get but I can't figure out what's holding it back.

So I looked around, there's one place where 3060 are available (https://www.adorama.com/msig306tgxt...0Mo36JUkEyOCW9W0X4xU0&utm_source=rflaid912925), but I've never heard of it and it's weird that only that place has some in stock (cheaper than everywhere else). So I'm wondering if there's something fishy going on.

Second issue is that the B550 motherboard apparently doesn't play nice with AMD processor. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/MWw9RT
So I'll probably go with a X570 instead https://pcpartpicker.com/list/t9QTj2

Hopping everything makes sense.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Hello

I'm hoping this topic is still watched because my computer upgrade just became far more urgent since I had to ship my computer (I moved quite far) which resulted in some damage to it: CPU cooler was rip off and some of the physical connector have been broken and the thermal pace is all dried out (can I just re apply new one on new one?), one my 2 SSD is unresponsive (I'll need to spend the day playing with cable and port to see if that's the issue) and FPS is much lower than I used to get but I can't figure out what's holding it back.

So I looked around, there's one place where 3060 are available (https://www.adorama.com/msig306tgxt...0Mo36JUkEyOCW9W0X4xU0&utm_source=rflaid912925), but I've never heard of it and it's weird that only that place has some in stock (cheaper than everywhere else). So I'm wondering if there's something fishy going on.

Second issue is that the B550 motherboard apparently doesn't play nice with AMD processor. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/MWw9RT
So I'll probably go with a X570 instead https://pcpartpicker.com/list/t9QTj2

Hopping everything makes sense.
What do you mean by "connector" being broken? Do you mean that the mount for the cpu cooler broke, or do you mean pins on your CPU broke off?

As for thermal paste, you can use isopropyl alcohol (99% preferred) and a cloth to wipe off the old thermal paste and apply new paste.

I bought an M.2 NVME SSD from adorama once. It took them way too long to ship it and I ended up cancelling my order after a week and a half and buying from another source (it was supposed to arrive in 5 days, and after 10 days it hadn't even been shipped out yet). I suspect adorama just lies about having stock. Might be worth a gamble if it's something you can wait on, but if it's something you need urgently or you can't build I wouldn't waste my time with them.

Not sure what you mean about the B550 not working with the ryzen 3600. There shouldn't be any compatibility issues with that.

Edit: Also, I know this is too late, but next time you need to ship a computer you should use "instapak" foam. It's a foam cushion you put in a computer and it expands to conform around the components so that they aren't getting bounced around during shipping. It prevents damage to the cpu cooler and GPU. I think it costs like $5. A lot of prebuilds ship with that kind of foam in them.
 
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meiam

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I did think about putting something in the computer but I only had bubble wrap or styrofoam and I was afraid they might damage the inside, good to know abut the instafoam since in a year or two I'll need to ship it again. Thanks for the isopropyl trick, I could get some 99% at work so that shouldn't be an issue.

The fan connector is the mounting connector to the board (the four little "feet" thing around the fan), the pin are all fine as far as I can tell. I'll pop into best buy and see if I can find a replacement for the fan, those should be pretty standard right (will it come with new thermal paste)? I need to go anyway since I found out the reason the other SSD isn't working is the cable so I need to buy a new one.

Good to know about adorama, guess I'll wait for something else to show up.

For the B550, pc part picker says it might need a Bios upgrade for ryzen 5, I'm really not sure how you'd do a Bios upgrade on a new computer without a chip in it. I don't need anything fancy for motherboard (don't need Wifi, bluetooth and won't play with overcloacking so I'm not really picking for motherboard).
 
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Dirty Hipsters

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For the B550, pc part picker says it might need a Bios upgrade for ryzen 5, I'm really not sure how you'd do a Bios upgrade on a new computer without a chip in it. I don't need anything fancy for motherboard (don't need Wifi, bluetooth and won't play with overcloacking so I'm not really picking for motherboard).
I'm pretty sure the B550 boards are ryzen 3000 series compatible out of the box without needing to flash bios. I have a B450 mobo and it was compatible out of the box with my 3600x despite being an older board series. You'll probably need to flash the bios if you ugrade to a 5000 series cpu later.