Can't decide between 5700XT and 2070 Super

[tfninja]

December 2018 I bought a 3440x1440 freeysnc monitor on the assumption worthwhile graphics cards would be releasing in January. It wasn't the case so ive been making do with RX480.

Now I am really very very bored and desperate to upgrade but the market is in such a s**t state.

 

Options are: Overspend on a 5700XT, pay £440 on a Pulse from Overclockers because the only aftermarkets I can find at a semi reasonable price are the MSI cards from Quzo.net who have the best prices by far but are out of stock of Pulse with no idea when they're coming back. If I do that then I also have the concern that the drivers are total cack, with many reports of crashing even in Youtube, etc.. and I really resent the price gauging. Or, I buy the cheapest 2070 dual fan Super I can find, which is the Zotac for £500. Some ray tracing would be nice but i've no real idea if I could get a good balance of picture quality and performance (60+fps), because the benchmark videos always use absolute max settings which may be costly but totally negligible in visual clarity. With the Super I have to worry about my Freesync monitor (ex3501r) not playing well with it.

 

Another consideration is that i am using an r5 1600 and i *think* at this resolution it won't be a bottleneck, but I am not certain.

 

I am really tired of waiting and AMD's incompetence with ultra slow AIB release has hacked me off. I want something by the end of this week. What should I go for?

 

[Mobashir]

2070 super because in high-end gpus amd is sluggish and more power hogging and heat generator.

[G00fySmiley]

I'd just grab a 2070 super. I personally do not trust the reference 5700 or 5700xt cooler. If i were in the market today I would be looking at the 5700xt but an aib board and unfortunately they are all sold out from what i can find. within a month or a few weeks that may change but if you need to pull the trigger now... i just would not go reference with those temps its been my experience things do not last. 

 

I have a rtx 2070 (nonsuper) and barring ray tracing it does 1440p at 144h hz in almost everything 

[Epimetheus]

5 minutes ago, Mobashir said:

2070 super because in high-end gpus amd is sluggish and more power hogging and heat generator.

that's not true with navi though

[Epimetheus]

losing freesync would be a huge hit in my opinion, but if you can get freesync to work with the 2070S it wouldn't be a bad choice. However 440 for a great partner card 5700 xt isn't too bad

[Princess Luna]

11 minutes ago, Epimetheus said:

that's not true with navi though

There's a bit of merit though, Navi performance does not scale well as resolution increases... While at 2560x1440p the 2070S is 5% faster on average than the 5700XT on 4K It increases to a 9% gap on average.

 

nVidia handles higher resolutions a bit better than AMD right now, hardware unboxed has some really good videos about it.

 

How much this matters is up to the user.

[Epimetheus]

1 minute ago, Princess Luna said:

There's a bit of merit though, Navi performance does not scale well as resolution increases... While at 2560x1440p the 2070S is 5% faster on average than the 5700XT on 4K It increases to a 9% gap on average.

 

nVidia handles higher resolutions a bit better than AMD right now, hardware unboxed has some really good videos about it.

 

How much this matters is up to the user.

yeah, it's not quite as fast as a 2070S (more of a 2070), but power consumption has improved quite a bit from what i've seen in the reviews

[G00fySmiley]

20 minutes ago, Epimetheus said:

that's not true with navi though

I mean don't know about sluggish but they sure do run beyond what i call acceptable temperatures for a blower cooler. seriously the 5700 performance itself seems great, but what was AMD thinking with their reference cooler design? how much would it have cost to move to a two fan reference and get those thermals down? 

[Epimetheus]

2 minutes ago, G00fySmiley said:

I mean don't know about sluggish but they sure do run beyond what i call acceptable temperatures for a blower cooler. seriously the 5700 performance itself seems great, but what was AMD thinking with their reference cooler design? how much would it have cost to move to a two fan reference and get those thermals down? 

yeah the cooler designs are terrible there's no denying that. They run hot because of the trash coolers though, not because of the tdp, since a 5700 xt consumes roughly as much as a 2070 super

[tfninja]

24 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

There's a bit of merit though, Navi performance does not scale well as resolution increases... While at 2560x1440p the 2070S is 5% faster on average than the 5700XT on 4K It increases to a 9% gap on average.

 

nVidia handles higher resolutions a bit better than AMD right now, hardware unboxed has some really good videos about it.

 

How much this matters is up to the user.

I noticed that too, and it's one point to the 2070S. Can anyone say whether the 1600 will be any kind of bottleneck at 3440x?

[Princess Luna]

Just now, tfninja said:

I noticed that too, and it's one point to the 2070S. Can anyone say whether the 1600 will be any kind of bottleneck at 3440x?

Targeting what refresh rate? 75hz? 100hz?

 

The Ryzen 5 1600 will be your weaker link if you get a RTX 2070 Super, but your performance should still be perfectly fine specially if you shift the workload into the GPU with ultra settings here and there.

[tfninja]

2 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

Targeting what refresh rate? 75hz? 100hz?

 

The Ryzen 5 1600 will be your weaker link if you get a RTX 2070 Super, but your performance should still be perfectly fine specially if you shift the workload into the GPU with ultra settings here and there.

yeah 60-100hz. The monitor only goes to 100hz.

[Princess Luna]

Just now, tfninja said:

yeah 60-100hz. The monitor only goes to 100hz.

Only really CPU demanding titles are going to give you a bad time like AC Odyssey.

[tfninja]

6 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

Only really CPU demanding titles are going to give you a bad time like AC Odyssey.

OK. I am also running a ~5 year old Fractal Design 80+ Bronze 650w PSU with 30a on the 12v1 and 22a on the 12v2 rails. That should still be fine, right?

[Princess Luna]

2 minutes ago, tfninja said:

OK. I am also running a ~5 year old Fractal Design 80+ Bronze 650w PSU with 30a on the 12v1 and 22a on the 12v2 rails. That should still be fine, right?

Not really, like it will work but that amperage on the 12v rail is relatively low, and this is a pretty old unit that already wasn't the best thing ever at it's time.

 

Using it on a current day RTX 2070 Super would be sketchy being honest...

[Lii]

2070s also for software support, for games, there is the possibility to abilitate the raytracing

in orther areas nvidia support both of open and cuda, (also tensor cores), there are also a pretty vast of bunch of software that support only cuda (or if they support open, they lack at it, or often the few alternative that support open, go worse than the cuda one, or they lack of feature), especially with pbr software; also since they also support open there is no problem

 

but if your use is only open or games and you dont care about raytracing, or you have some problem with nvidia driver on linux, pick the amd one, even if I dont understand why you would take a worse choice with the same amount of money

[tfninja]

1 hour ago, Princess Luna said:

Not really, like it will work but that amperage on the 12v rail is relatively low, and this is a pretty old unit that already wasn't the best thing ever at it's time.

 

Using it on a current day RTX 2070 Super would be sketchy being honest...

Hmm. So is it the combined 30a +22a that is relevant? So it is effectively the same as 52a on one 12v rail? I do have a backup PSU if needed, so i'd be happy to let this one play out and see how it goes so long as theres no chance it'll kill other components. Realistically there is no chance of that, right? Otherwise i'd be looking at something like the Corsair RM650, which has 54A on the 12v, so to my understanding there isn't much technical difference, if i am right that 12v1 and 12v2 should be combined.. It's only age that's a concern.

[Princess Luna]

Just now, tfninja said:

.

You should likely make a new thread on the PSU section of the forum specifying your current PSU and if you'll really be placing a RTX 2070 Super on it.

 

If we know what model it is exactly and with more people that's used to PSUs it'll be easier to advise, but either ways replacing it is going to be pretty likely because yes, there's always a chance to kill components.

[StarsMars]

6 hours ago, tfninja said:

 

I am really tired of waiting and AMD's incompetence with ultra slow AIB release has hacked me off. I want something by the end of this week. What should I go for?

If you want something this week go for the 2070s. You're getting quite a bit for that extra 60. (ray tracing,performance bump, driver support)

If you wait, you can see what else AMD releases this year.