My friend needs help with deciding on either getting an upgrade or a completely new PC. (GPU bottleneck)

[Slyceth]

Build Upgrade

My friend has the Acer Aspire Predator G3-605 PC, with a 4770 and a Radeon 8760 (OEM).

Does he need to build a new pc from scratch to be able to play latest games like Mount&Blade II and Red Dead Redemption 2 on max settings?

We can't pin down if his motherboard (Proprietary Acer NE996) could support an upgrade to a RTX 2060/2070 Super, and whether the power supply (484W/500W) (FSP Group Inc) might support a new card in the first place.

This is a site with some more minor details about his old 2013 pre-built.

The budget is a bit dependent on what he gets from it. A ballpark of 1000$ perhaps?

 

https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/369440/acer-aspire-predator-g3-605-i9812/specificaties/

Any help is appreciated! He really wants to get back to Bannerlord!

[Sauron]

10 minutes ago, Slyceth said:

max settings?

Resolution and framerate?

[Slyceth]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Resolution and framerate?

1080p, 60 FPS, max settings.

[Sauron]

48 minutes ago, Slyceth said:

1080p, 60 FPS

Then the cpu is fine. The motherboard should also support a new card just fine.

 

The power supply should be fine so long as it has the correct cables.

[Slyceth]

10 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Then the cpu is fine. The motherboard should also support a new card just fine.

 

The power supply should be fine so long as it has the correct cables.

And the graphics card itself, which graphics card would you recommend?

And does he need more GB ram?

[Sauron]

33 minutes ago, Slyceth said:

And the graphics card itself, which graphics card would you recommend?

A 2070 is plenty for 1080p I'd say, maybe a SUPER just to make sure he can max all current games no matter what.

34 minutes ago, Slyceth said:

And does he need more GB ram?

Going up to 16 might be a good idea but try it with 8 first, if it works well there's no reason to spend more.

[tdkid]

you should be fine with most of those specs but a new GPU is what I would say you need. I also had a prebuilt from 2012/13 but mine was a dell XPS 8300 with an ATI radeon HD 6770 and in some of todays games I would get about a 1-2fps in certain areas of a map depending on the game. so I upgraded my GPU and that is no longer the issue. but before I upgraded my GPU I upgraded everything else with a new MOBO, RAM, case, HDD, and PSU.

[Slyceth]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

A 2070 is plenty for 1080p I'd say, maybe a SUPER just to make sure he can max all current games no matter what.

Going up to 16 might be a good idea but try it with 8 first, if it works well there's no reason to spend more.

Thanks for the advice so far! Say he goes with increasing his ram, would he need to buy 2 more exact same RAM sticks (if yes, do they need to be the same brand and speed?), or would he need to remove the old ram sticks and put in 2 newer higher capacity ones?

[Bruh1]

12 minutes ago, Slyceth said:

Thanks for the advice so far! Say he goes with increasing his ram, would he need to buy 2 more exact same RAM sticks (if yes, do they need to be the same brand and speed?), or would he need to remove the old ram sticks and put in 2 newer higher capacity ones?

Ram has to be same speed or faster , cause if u get lower speed ur mother board will lower the speed of ur existing ram and use the slower speed to match both. Same latency for sure, I've read online that mixing brands is fine and won't have issues most of the time , I have put a stick of 8 gb ram in my laptop from Crucial while the existing stick was Samsung and it works great 0 issues so far(done it 2 months ago) so maybe do some research online to make sure. same capacity is also a must

[Sauron]

29 minutes ago, Slyceth said:

Thanks for the advice so far! Say he goes with increasing his ram, would he need to buy 2 more exact same RAM sticks (if yes, do they need to be the same brand and speed?), or would he need to remove the old ram sticks and put in 2 newer higher capacity ones?

You don't need to get rid of the existing ram and barring incompatibilities any type should do. It's an old platform so I wouldn't spend a lot of money on a bunch of high speed ram.

14 minutes ago, Bruh1 said:

cause if u get lower speed ur mother board will lower the speed of ur existing ram and use the slower speed to match both.

With his cpu that's not much of an issue.

[Bruh1]

13 hours ago, Sauron said:

With his cpu that's not much of an issue.

True , it's not a Ryzen because if it is that would've affected performance insanely , My bad

[Slyceth]

18 hours ago, Sauron said:

You don't need to get rid of the existing ram and barring incompatibilities any type should do. It's an old platform so I wouldn't spend a lot of money on a bunch of high speed ram.

With his cpu that's not much of an issue.

He's just presented another question, he's doubting between which brand of GPU he should go for (MSI, Gigabyte Aorus, Gigabyte Geforce) and he's considering the regular 2070 as well because it's 100 euros cheaper?]

And he's really concerned his 500Watt power supply is not powerful enough? 

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Slyceth said:

he's doubting between which brand of GPU he should go for (MSI, Gigabyte Aorus, Gigabyte Geforce) and he's considering the regular 2070 as well because it's 100 euros cheaper?

Can't really make that decision for him, a 2070 or a 2060 super are most likely fine too. Just have him look at some benchmarks:

more

 

As for the brand it doesn't matter a whole lot, just buy a version that is cheap and has good reviews. Make sure it fits in your case by the way.

2 hours ago, Slyceth said:

And he's really concerned his 500Watt power supply is not powerful enough? 

Wattage is not the problem. 500W are plenty - the question is whether 1) the power supply has the right cables for a high end graphics card (you can check what cables the card you'll buy needs on the product page) and 2) it's reliable enough. I wouldn't worry too much about the latter unless he can't afford any downtime (at worst it might break and need replacement anyway).