Guidance for GPU Selection for my Upcoming Build

[Therim]

Hey! I've decided to treat myself to a new PC after my university graduation with the money I have saved over the years. Since this will be my second build, I'm already accustomed to the details to be careful of while picking PC parts (clearance, what not to cheap out on etc.). The only part which I struggle with right now is the GPU, given the current state of the GPU market. Therefore, I came to ask for some guidance from you all. 

 

Budget (including currency): Soft budget of 2000 Euros

Country: Netherlands

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming, mostly recent AAA titles.

Existing Parts List: 3440x1440 144Hz Ultrawide Gaming Monitor

 

 

First of all, I don't really have a budget limit, since this will be like a graduation gift for myself, but the soft limit I have set is around 2k euros, it can go over this limit or below. I plan to use this PC mainly for gaming, I don't plan to stream or I don't do any heavy content creation in mind. Therefore, I was planning on going with a current-gen Ryzen 5 as I think a 6-core CPU would be fine for my use case. 

 

However, for the GPU, I was heavily conflicted. I want to get a high-end GPU that can support my monitor to its capabilities and also last for a long while. Therefore, my first choice was Nvidia cards, however, their 40-series cards are absurdly high in terms of the price while the other competitors don't seem to be that close to the high-end. I'm stating these from the conclusions I drew from my research so I might be wrong of course so, please feel free to correct me. On top of this, I feel like 50-series cards are still a long way ahead and I highly doubt Nvidia will ever go back to their old prices on their GPUs, maybe a hundred or two decrease but nothing drastic. 

 

With this in mind, the card I have in mind now is a 4080, however, I wanted to hear about your opinions, suggestions, and tips before I call the shot. Thank you for your time and attention!

 

 

[venomtail]

23 minutes ago, Therim said:

I want to get a high-end GPU that can support my monitor to its capabilities and also last for a long while. Therefore, my first choice was Nvidia cards

Funny, as NVIDIA cheaped out on their display connectors by sticking to the older standard. AMD already moved over to new display port as well as USB C. Technically better and more "futureproof" if only the bar for performance doesn't exceed what the card can deliver. Like how you can buy and RX580 16GB version but it's sort of useless as even base model struggled to get 60fps in newest titles before running into VRAM issues.

 

In my mind the sensible choice stops at 4080/7900XTX, in the idea that 4080/7900XTX will age equally shit to a 4090, you'll just have spend less money. Radeon's control panel impresses me more than Nvidias, to the point where I sort of don't want to switch over as I fear their recording options will be less than if I stick with AMD, then again, gaming tools, NVIDIA has more, as well as productivity app support more than AMD.

 

Can't go wrong with either.

[Agall]

1 hour ago, Therim said:

 

Hey! I've decided to treat myself to a new PC after my university graduation with the money I have saved over the years. Since this will be my second build, I'm already accustomed to the details to be careful of while picking PC parts (clearance, what not to cheap out on etc.). The only part which I struggle with right now is the GPU, given the current state of the GPU market. Therefore, I came to ask for some guidance from you all. 

 

Budget (including currency): Soft budget of 2000 Euros

Country: Netherlands

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming, mostly recent AAA titles.

Existing Parts List: 3440x1440 144Hz Ultrawide Gaming Monitor

 

 

First of all, I don't really have a budget limit, since this will be like a graduation gift for myself, but the soft limit I have set is around 2k euros, it can go over this limit or below. I plan to use this PC mainly for gaming, I don't plan to stream or I don't do any heavy content creation in mind. Therefore, I was planning on going with a current-gen Ryzen 5 as I think a 6-core CPU would be fine for my use case. 

 

However, for the GPU, I was heavily conflicted. I want to get a high-end GPU that can support my monitor to its capabilities and also last for a long while. Therefore, my first choice was Nvidia cards, however, their 40-series cards are absurdly high in terms of the price while the other competitors don't seem to be that close to the high-end. I'm stating these from the conclusions I drew from my research so I might be wrong of course so, please feel free to correct me. On top of this, I feel like 50-series cards are still a long way ahead and I highly doubt Nvidia will ever go back to their old prices on their GPUs, maybe a hundred or two decrease but nothing drastic. 

 

With this in mind, the card I have in mind now is a 4080, however, I wanted to hear about your opinions, suggestions, and tips before I call the shot. Thank you for your time and attention!

 

 

For mostly AAA titles at 1440p UW, you'll want an RTX 4080 or RTX 4090, specifically for ray tracing performance. Unfortunately, the reality of the RTX 4080 being it's an equivalent bin to an RTX 3070 but for more than double the price comparably, so its a horrible value compared to the RTX 4090. RTX 4090 generally doesn't blow away the competition until 4K. RTX 4090 not even being close to the fully unlocked AD102 GPU, falling some where between the RTX 3080 12GB and RTX 3080ti in binning.

 

RTX 4090 isn't overkill for 1440p UW, however, if you can get a good deal on an RTX 4080, it'll be enough. 16GB of VRAM isn't the greatest for AAA titles, but it's probably enough.

 

I'd consider getting more than a 6 core with modern AAA titles, since especially ray tracing can be exceptionally CPU heavy. Something like the 7800x3D can fit into that budget, but worst case scenario, a i5 13600k.

 

Intel generally out performs AMD in multithreading performance and raw single threaded at the same price points, AMD just having 3D v-cache right now that annihilates them in gaming performance (especially per watt). 13600k/13700k being more than capable at reaching high enough framerates in 1440p UW for AAA games. Usually those games are heavily GPU bound anyways, so paired with an RTX 4080, a 13600k/13700k/7800x3D would be the tiering in my opinion.

 

[Nalyk]

Agreed. 

 

With that kind of budget you kind of need to decide if ray tracing is important to you or not.  If it isn't, get a 7900xtx.  If it is get a 4080.

 

If you're looking to save some cash there are or were some pretty good deals on 6950xt's on various retailer sites at least in the US, can't speak for Europe though.

 

As above, if you go the cheaper route you can easily fit a 7800x3d into your budget as well.

[Brooksie359]

So for me I wouldn't pair a 4080 with a r5 7600 or 7600x because yes if you are only gaming you can probably get away with 6 cores in alot of games but not all and if you have background programs running like discord and others then you really want 8 cores or more. If you are spending 2k then you really shouldn't cheap out ok the cpu. That being said the i5 13600k has alot of e cores that could take care of that problem so you might want to look into that if you are going to go for a midrange cpu. Personally I would get a 7800x3d if budget allows it. As for the rx 7900xtx I would probably not go for it simply because I have heard from my local microcenter that they have had a ton of returns on their rx 7900xtx due to instability issues. Just something to keep in mind but I have heard that the 6000 series cards are super solid so a 6950xt isn't a bad option depending on the price. 

[Brooksie359]

https://nl.pcpartpicker.com/list/Tsw7h3

This is just making a starter list and I picked the MSI psu because it comes with a 12 pin for Nvidia gpus. Much better than having to use an adapter. As for the r5 vs the r7 7800x3d the difference in total cost isn't big so I wouldn't save so little money when you can get way better performance with the slightly more expensive cpu. I mean you get 2 extra cores and the extra IPC due to the 3d cashe. 

[Brooksie359]

Alternatively you could save money going with last gen r7 5800x3d 

https://nl.pcpartpicker.com/list/tDBTHG

[Nalyk]

If you go am4 you kind of paint yourself into a corner.  Yeah you can upgrade your gpu, but you're stuck with a dead end socket.  That being said the price is hard to beat.  That's what I did for my wife's computer. 

[SorryBella]

11 hours ago, Therim said:

the card I have in mind now is a 4080

I mean its a self treat system, that would be the best 1440p card before you go up to 4090 which economically barely make sense as @venomtail mentioned. 7900XTX is the AMD alternative if you want to stay cranking the texture high, but beyond that they perform neck in neck barring heavy driver support biases like in Fortnite. But if you want Nvidia specific game feature like ULMB2 (Nvidia's special sauce variable refresh rate backlight strobe that dramatically increases clarity on fast moving objects), NULL and Reflex (Latency cutdown through offloading), DLSS3 (Nvidia's Temporal Super Resolution system, currently the best TSR system in the market), or RTX, then 4080 it is.

 

But either way for raw gaming? AMD CPU is still the easier pick of the bunch thanks to it being pretty dirt cheap in platform cost compared to its raw gaming performance.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  (€344.80 @ Azerty) 
CPU Cooler: Deepcool AG620 67.88 CFM CPU Cooler  (€54.90 @ Amazon Netherlands) 
Motherboard: MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard  (€179.00 @ Amazon Netherlands) 
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL30 Memory  (€102.20 @ Azerty) 
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (€104.00 @ Azerty) 
Video Card: Zotac GAMING Trinity OC GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Video Card  (€1179.00 @ Amazon Netherlands) 
Case: Deepcool CC560 ARGB ATX Mid Tower Case  (€70.99 @ Azerty) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (€98.85 @ Azerty) 
Total: €2133.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-08-22 04:17 CEST+0200

 

There's also Intel CPU that is more all rounded for productivity, but on anything that are cache-sensitive, the small L3 cache really makes it suffer especially in frametime consistency.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-13700 2.1 GHz 16-Core Processor  (€421.39 @ Amazon Netherlands) 
CPU Cooler: Deepcool AG620 67.88 CFM CPU Cooler  (€54.90 @ Amazon Netherlands) 
Motherboard: MSI B760 GAMING PLUS WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (€160.00 @ Amazon Netherlands) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory  (€112.31 @ Amazon Netherlands) 
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (€104.00 @ Azerty) 
Video Card: Zotac GAMING Trinity OC GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Video Card  (€1179.00 @ Amazon Netherlands) 
Case: Deepcool CC560 ARGB ATX Mid Tower Case  (€70.99 @ Azerty) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (€98.85 @ Azerty) 
Total: €2201.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-08-22 04:19 CEST+0200