Graphics Card For My Friends PC

[SkyPhantom]

Hi my friend is looking for a graphics card for his PC and I was wondering if you guys would had any recommendations. He's fine with used parts and has a budget of $160. I was thinking something like a gtx 1650 or 1650 super.

 

The specs that I know he has (and are probably the only important ones) are:

Intel Pentium Gold g5400

16 gb ddr4

Powerspec 650 watt bronze psu

 

[glenalz81]

Stretch just a tiny bit and get a used GTX 1070.

[Viper9]

If you can get a Radeon RX580 or a GTX 1060 it would be better then a GTX 1650 or 1650S. 

[Jurrunio]

1650S is roughly equal to RX 580 and 1060 6GB in performance which costs even less

 

On the used market there may be 1070 or even 980Ti deals around, but I wont go with even faster cards since even these two will be bottlenecked by the CPU rather easily

[JoostinOnline]

24 minutes ago, SkyPhantom said:

Hi my friend is looking for a graphics card for his PC and I was wondering if you guys would had any recommendations. He's fine with used parts and has a budget of $160. I was thinking something like a gtx 1650 or 1650 super.

 

The specs that I know he has (and are probably the only important ones) are:

Intel Pentium Gold g5400

16 gb ddr4

Powerspec 650 watt bronze psu

 

Is your friend planning to get a new computer later, or at least upgrade the CPU? A dual core CPU is really going to struggle to run anything from the last 5 years. It was in the early 2010s that quad cores became standard for gaming, and we're moving to 6 cores being standard now.

 

If he plans to stick with that Pentium permanently, I don't think there's any point in going past an RX 570 4GB card, or a 1060 3GB (they're roughly the same performance).

[SkyPhantom]

45 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Is your friend planning to get a new computer later, or at least upgrade the CPU? A dual core CPU is really going to struggle to run anything from the last 5 years. It was in the early 2010s that quad cores became standard for gaming, and we're moving to 6 cores being standard now.

 

If he plans to stick with that Pentium permanently, I don't think there's any point in going past an RX 570 4GB card, or a 1060 3GB (they're roughly the same performance).

Unfortunately, I don't believe he is planning to upgrade anytime soon as he recently built it. Had I known he was planning to build this system I definitely would've gotten him to build something different, but this is the system he has for the foreseeable future. He mostly plays indie games, 2d platformers, and Minecraft, so I don't think he really needs anything too powerful. The reason he wants a graphics card is for running Minecraft shaders which are fairly GPU heavy I believe.   

[SkyPhantom]

Welp apparently he just bought a "gtx 1060" with 8 gigs of vram for $157.30, so I don't know whats going on there. I guess that's the end of it? Thanks anyway guys. I might add to the post once I find out what he actually bought.

[Azura Lightfeilt]

I am more concerned about the CPU itself as it might bottleneck the full potential of the graphics card performance. So you should keep that in mind.

 

My advice is to upgrade the graphics card, but don't get something too fast, otherwise it will get held back by the CPU. Try to save money to get a better CPU, and then you can buy a ln even faster graphics card. You can either upgrade your graphics card first, or CPU first.