Considering 970 -> 1660ti upgrade

[Kalmairn]

Hey, everyone.

 

Despite the repeated "community forum that <I> should totally join," I joined today.  First post, long time watcher.

 

I'm about to build my wife a new gaming PC.  RTX, other happy stuff.  Her old system hands down to my son, which means he has as good as system as I do.  I'm trying to allay my envy.

 

Bottom line: Should I upgrade my GTX970 to the GTX1660TI?

 

My Use Case

I'm a casual gamer, mostly MMOs (currently Elder Scrolls Online) and some Cities: Skylines.  I rarely dip a toe into first-person - Doom, Wolfenstein, Everspace - but not online.  I play at 1440p.  I am aiming particularly to maximize ESO.  My 970 does reasonably well with mostly high settings, AA off, distances at ~60-70%.  I see rare/occasional frame drops and stutter which I attribute to loading textures not already resident in the framebuffer, along with texture loss or late arrivals, i.e. smooth or drawn well inside the draw distance.

 

My System

I run an I5 6600k at 4.4GHz on an MSI Z170 motherboard.  I can run 4.5GHz without issue, I pulled back for longevity.  No success with bclk, however.  Even at stock multiplier the only stable part of my system with just a 100-->101 bump is that I stably crash. every. single. time.

 

My MSI 970 is overclocked, 105% power, +150 core, +300 memory.  I get artifacts and texture loss in ESO if I push memory much higher, although other games cope with up to +500.  Thermals won't support sustaining much over +150 on the core.  I'm sure there's a little room in both, but not enough to fight over it. (I know, I know, sacrilege.)

 

I use a non-gaming monitor - a Samsung CH711 27-inch 1800R curve display.  Nothing special, but it's bright, brilliant, and does support FreeSync - up to 60hz anyway.

 

Back to the GTX1660TI

So, yeah, I'm looking at the GTX1660TI.  I know ESO will still see framerates limited by the engine and, thus, CPU.  Still, I see a couple advantages.  First, I get the additional 2GB memory, which can only help with keeping ahead of textures and rendering, particularly at 1440p.  I also get more horsepower, which should help with view distances and allow me to max settings.

 

I also get the side benefit of freeing up the GTX970 to move the 970 to a Linux workstation I built on a Ryzen 3 2200G that's still running the integrated Vega.  Really not necessary, but welcome, but I do have it set up with 2GB of memory reserved, which I could return to the system.

 

If you got this far, congrats.  I aimed to get my word count average high in my first post.  I now leave this in your capable, and patient, hands.

[averagebilly]

32 minutes ago, Kalmairn said:

Hey, everyone.

 

Despite the repeated "community forum that <I> should totally join," I joined today.  First post, long time watcher.

 

I'm about to build my wife a new gaming PC.  RTX, other happy stuff.  Her old system hands down to my son, which means he has as good as system as I do.  I'm trying to allay my envy.

 

Bottom line: Should I upgrade my GTX970 to the GTX1660TI?

 

My Use Case

I'm a casual gamer, mostly MMOs (currently Elder Scrolls Online) and some Cities: Skylines.  I rarely dip a toe into first-person - Doom, Wolfenstein, Everspace - but not online.  I play at 1440p.  I am aiming particularly to maximize ESO.  My 970 does reasonably well with mostly high settings, AA off, distances at ~60-70%.  I see rare/occasional frame drops and stutter which I attribute to loading textures not already resident in the framebuffer, along with texture loss or late arrivals, i.e. smooth or drawn well inside the draw distance.

 

My System

I run an I5 6600k at 4.4GHz on an MSI Z170 motherboard.  I can run 4.5GHz without issue, I pulled back for longevity.  No success with bclk, however.  Even at stock multiplier the only stable part of my system with just a 100-->101 bump is that I stably crash. every. single. time.

 

My MSI 970 is overclocked, 105% power, +150 core, +300 memory.  I get artifacts and texture loss in ESO if I push memory much higher, although other games cope with up to +500.  Thermals won't support sustaining much over +150 on the core.  I'm sure there's a little room in both, but not enough to fight over it. (I know, I know, sacrilege.)

 

I use a non-gaming monitor - a Samsung CH711 27-inch 1800R curve display.  Nothing special, but it's bright, brilliant, and does support FreeSync - up to 60hz anyway.

 

Back to the GTX1660TI

So, yeah, I'm looking at the GTX1660TI.  I know ESO will still see framerates limited by the engine and, thus, CPU.  Still, I see a couple advantages.  First, I get the additional 2GB memory, which can only help with keeping ahead of textures and rendering, particularly at 1440p.  I also get more horsepower, which should help with view distances and allow me to max settings.

 

I also get the side benefit of freeing up the GTX970 to move the 970 to a Linux workstation I built on a Ryzen 3 2200G that's still running the integrated Vega.  Really not necessary, but welcome, but I do have it set up with 2GB of memory reserved, which I could return to the system.

 

If you got this far, congrats.  I aimed to get my word count average high in my first post.  I now leave this in your capable, and patient, hands.

The 1660ti is definitely a upgrade choice, quite a bit of a performance boost. If you are only gaming at 60Hz on 1440p, you may be able to get off with a 1060 or 10709, though. Anyway, I'm not that knowledgeable in Nvidia products, so I might be wrong, but, if you want to go AMD, the RX 590 or Vega 56 would work just fine.

[Streetguru]

40 minutes ago, Kalmairn said:

 

It's not the biggest upgrade, but there's no other more reasonable options, unless you find Vega 56 for about $250 on ebay

[Ankerson]

3 hours ago, Kalmairn said:

Hey, everyone.

 

Despite the repeated "community forum that <I> should totally join," I joined today.  First post, long time watcher.

 

I'm about to build my wife a new gaming PC.  RTX, other happy stuff.  Her old system hands down to my son, which means he has as good as system as I do.  I'm trying to allay my envy.

 

Bottom line: Should I upgrade my GTX970 to the GTX1660TI?

 

My Use Case

I'm a casual gamer, mostly MMOs (currently Elder Scrolls Online) and some Cities: Skylines.  I rarely dip a toe into first-person - Doom, Wolfenstein, Everspace - but not online.  I play at 1440p.  I am aiming particularly to maximize ESO.  My 970 does reasonably well with mostly high settings, AA off, distances at ~60-70%.  I see rare/occasional frame drops and stutter which I attribute to loading textures not already resident in the framebuffer, along with texture loss or late arrivals, i.e. smooth or drawn well inside the draw distance.

 

My System

I run an I5 6600k at 4.4GHz on an MSI Z170 motherboard.  I can run 4.5GHz without issue, I pulled back for longevity.  No success with bclk, however.  Even at stock multiplier the only stable part of my system with just a 100-->101 bump is that I stably crash. every. single. time.

 

My MSI 970 is overclocked, 105% power, +150 core, +300 memory.  I get artifacts and texture loss in ESO if I push memory much higher, although other games cope with up to +500.  Thermals won't support sustaining much over +150 on the core.  I'm sure there's a little room in both, but not enough to fight over it. (I know, I know, sacrilege.)

 

I use a non-gaming monitor - a Samsung CH711 27-inch 1800R curve display.  Nothing special, but it's bright, brilliant, and does support FreeSync - up to 60hz anyway.

 

Back to the GTX1660TI

So, yeah, I'm looking at the GTX1660TI.  I know ESO will still see framerates limited by the engine and, thus, CPU.  Still, I see a couple advantages.  First, I get the additional 2GB memory, which can only help with keeping ahead of textures and rendering, particularly at 1440p.  I also get more horsepower, which should help with view distances and allow me to max settings.

 

I also get the side benefit of freeing up the GTX970 to move the 970 to a Linux workstation I built on a Ryzen 3 2200G that's still running the integrated Vega.  Really not necessary, but welcome, but I do have it set up with 2GB of memory reserved, which I could return to the system.

 

If you got this far, congrats.  I aimed to get my word count average high in my first post.  I now leave this in your capable, and patient, hands.

The 1660Ti is limited at 1440P so it's really going to depend on the games you play and plan on playing and what setting you expect to use. If you do get one you will figure that out on your own.

 

They have been pushing the 1660Ti pretty hard, that's a red flag in my book, same thing they did with the 1070Ti....

 

I don't recommend anything below an RTX 2060 and even that is limited in the newer games at 1440P.

 

For 1440P I would recommend an RTX 2070, but that depends on what you really expect the system to do and the games you play etc.

 

 

[jones177]

It is a good choice for 1440p 60hz MMO but you may want to play something more challenging.

For a better upgrade go with a 8gb vram card. Most games I play use over 6gbs but none of my unmodded games use more than 8gbs.

 

For used go GTX 1080 

For new go GTX 2070