Best GPU's for ~400$

[MiiaBestLamia]

Hello!

Bought an amazing monitor for sale recently, but my GPU isn't really good enough to "power" my system, so I'd like to hear your opinions on which GPU to go for. 

Windows 10, 64 bit

Corsair RM 550X (550W, recently upgraded with the help of this forum, thanks!)

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X

NVIDIA 1060 3GB

ASRock A320M-HDV

Predator Z1 (2560 x 1440, 144Hz)

After reading a bunch of threads on this and other forums, I've heard a lot of good stuff about the 1070 - it's fairly inexpensive, has good performance. There's a couple for sale in a good shop in my town, specifically this version: link. It'd cost me around 400 dollars. The RTX 2060 is fairly new, and the RTX feature isn't really interesting to me, but it is more powerful, so could that be a viable option? I've heard that the new RTX cards are somewhat unstable/bad.

I don't really care about playing on maximum graphics (hooked on Apex Legends right now, if that's relevant), so as long as i get a stable 144fps, I don't mind playing on medium, maybe even low graphics.

The highest i could go would be 450$ or so. Also, what should I do with my current 1060 3GB after I upgrade? Should i try to sell it to a friend, or keep it in my PC (I'm pretty sure my motherboard can't have 2 GPU's)?

Thank you for your time!

[Jurrunio]

RTX 2060 will be my choice, but if going for the 1070 means extra money to upgrade the motherboard, get the cheaper card.

[MiiaBestLamia]

4 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

RTX 2060 will be my choice, but if going for the 1070 means extra money to upgrade the motherboard, get the cheaper card.

There's seem to be 3 types of 2060's for sale, all go for approx 370 dollars (two and one fan designs).

Now that I think about it, the 1070Ti is within my price range, (an extra 35 dollars is okay), so maybe that's an option.

About the motherboard - I'm not gonna upgrade my motherboard to support two cards, since one should be enough, so I guess that answers that - I'll just sell the 1060.

[Jurrunio]

4 minutes ago, MiiaBestLamia said:

About the motherboard - I'm not gonna upgrade my motherboard to support two cards, since one should be enough, so I guess that answers that - I'll just sell the 1060.

not changing the board for using multiple cards, but overclocking the CPU.

[Acid Panda]

second hand 1070/80 there are a few around hunt and see if you can find one

[MiiaBestLamia]

7 minutes ago, Acid Panda said:

second hand 1070/80 there are a few around hunt and see if you can find one

I definitely won't buy anything second-hand. Any thoughts on the 2060, 1070Ti? Monitor has G-Sync, so I'd prefer an NVidia card.

[martward]

I'd get a 2060 unless you can find a 1070ti for cheaper. The performance difference between a 2060 and a 1070 is pretty big. The difference between the 2060 and 1070ti is rather small. Where I live the 2060 has always been cheaper than the 1070ti so it makes absolutely no sense to buy a 1070ti, don't know how this is in your location.

[MiiaBestLamia]

26 minutes ago, martward said:

I'd get a 2060 unless you can find a 1070ti for cheaper. The performance difference between a 2060 and a 1070 is pretty big. The difference between the 2060 and 1070ti is rather small. Where I live the 2060 has always been cheaper than the 1070ti so it makes absolutely no sense to buy a 1070ti, don't know how this is in your location.

This is a decent Latvian website, could you have a look and say which one of these are good? There's a lot of models, obviously the triple-fan ones look the best and are the most expensive ones. I checked out the Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2060 OC Edition, it has a "gaming mode" clock of 1830 (base is 1365), so it seems pretty good. The cheapest one is 1680 and 1365 respectively. Only about 70 euro difference between the most expensive and the cheapest one.

[martward]

11 minutes ago, MiiaBestLamia said:

This is a decent Latvian website, could you have a look and say which one of these are good? There's a lot of models, obviously the triple-fan ones look the best and are the most expensive ones. I checked out the Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2060 OC Edition, it has a "gaming mode" clock of 1830 (base is 1365), so it seems pretty good. The cheapest one is 1680 and 1365 respectively. Only about 70 euro difference between the most expensive and the cheapest one.

I really don't know too much about all the different models. I have a Gigabyte windforce OC which boosts to about 1935-1950 without overclock if I cool it sufficiently (aka rather loudly). The most reliable way to make a choice is by reading lots of reviews. Personally I never buy the cheapest card, but like €30 over MSRP. I'd just find as much reviews as you can and/or start a separate thread.

[Quadriplegic]

Considering you have G-Sync monitor, RTX 2060.

Vega 56 and 64 can be had around similar price point, but I guess Nvidia card would make more sense

[Zeitec]

17 hours ago, MiiaBestLamia said:

There's seem to be 3 types of 2060's for sale, all go for approx 370 dollars (two and one fan designs).

Now that I think about it, the 1070Ti is within my price range, (an extra 35 dollars is okay), so maybe that's an option.

About the motherboard - I'm not gonna upgrade my motherboard to support two cards, since one should be enough, so I guess that answers that - I'll just sell the 1060.

No that's an A320 board. It's kind of a piece of garbage. It won't OC your CPU and I doubt it'll have the VRMs to support an upgrade to 12 core Zen 2 CPUs in a few years if you find yourself wanting the extra clockspeed and cores. Seriously. Spend the extra $50 now so you can upgrade your CPU for cheap later instead of buying a whole new PC. 

[MiiaBestLamia]

29 minutes ago, Zeitec said:

No that's an A320 board. It's kind of a piece of garbage. It won't OC your CPU and I doubt it'll have the VRMs to support an upgrade to 12 core Zen 2 CPUs in a few years if you find yourself wanting the extra clockspeed and cores. Seriously. Spend the extra $50 now so you can upgrade your CPU for cheap later instead of buying a whole new PC. 

Yeah, I bought it for cheap since all of the games that interest me weren't all that CPU heavy, so I didn't plan on overclocking. I don't think I'll need to upgrade it any time soon, but thanks for the input!

[Zeitec]

6 hours ago, MiiaBestLamia said:

Yeah, I bought it for cheap since all of the games that interest me weren't all that CPU heavy, so I didn't plan on overclocking. I don't think I'll need to upgrade it any time soon, but thanks for the input!

I mean those A320 boards can struggle to even maintain boost clocks. No I am not kidding, it's entirely possible you'll see worse performance, even at stock, with that A320 board compared to even a basic B450 board. 

[Stefan Payne]

You can sometimes find a VEGA Card for that, might want to look for that as well.

[GoldenLag]

7 hours ago, MiiaBestLamia said:

Yeah, I bought it for cheap since all of the games that interest me weren't all that CPU heavy, so I didn't plan on overclocking. I don't think I'll need to upgrade it any time soon, but thanks for the input!

if you at all have the option, swap the A320 board for a B450m Pro4 or B450m Aurous M.

 

A320 boards do not allways have the correct BIOSes for Ryzen 2000 and they are really bad, in so many ways.

[hosty1337]

I have a 1440p 165Hz monitor and I feel like my GTX 1080 is just about right for the resolution and refresh rate. Anything below that would be a not enjoyable performance for me. 

[hosty1337]

On 3/13/2019 at 8:07 AM, martward said:

I'd get a 2060 unless you can find a 1070ti for cheaper. The performance difference between a 2060 and a 1070 is pretty big. The difference between the 2060 and 1070ti is rather small. Where I live the 2060 has always been cheaper than the 1070ti so it makes absolutely no sense to buy a 1070ti, don't know how this is in your location.

Yeah but the 6GB VRAM isn't very comforting at 1440p, I can see it not being enough in some games. 

[hosty1337]

Also guys above are right, I wouldn't use the A-320 motherboard for anything above Ryzen 3, it is a very basic board meant for CPUS like the Athlon 200GE or Ryzen 3s, using a 6c/12t and the more power hungry X version really seems like you're pushing your luck. The VRMs are really getting tested there. 

[Gareque]

If you were going to potentially look at a 1070, then I'd recommend a Radeon Vega 56 instead.  They are betwee £3-400 and have 8GB VRAM.

 

In terms of performance, they sit pretty much in the middle between a 1070 and the 1070 Ti.