GPU Upgrade for a recent build

[bover21]

I am not sure if this is the right section, as most of the build is already done (~2 months ago). 

When I built this new PC, I kept my GTX 1080 as it was still adequate for the job and I couldn't justify the price of a new GPU. Now I'm planning to upgrade my monitor from a 144Hz 1080p Ultrawide to a 100-1200Hz 1440p Ultrawide, so a GPU upgrade is probably in order.

 

I'm somewhat partial to NVIDIA, but if I can get a lot more performance by going to AMD, I will consider it of course. My reasons for preferring NVIDIA are primarily that my 1080 has been working perfectly for the nearly 7 years I've owned it. Which I can't say for my previous AMD card, where it felt like all I was doing was fighting with drivers and the card.

 

I don't really play heavy games, and mostly play a lot of esports titles, but would like to have the option to play heavier games with friends occasionally.

 

Power efficiency is relevant, as electricity is not that cheap where I am (~€0.35 per kWh).

 

Current setup:

• Ryzen 5 7600X
• 32GB (2x 16GB) 5600 MHz (Running at 4800 MHz, because of a bunch of weird issues)
• 850W Platinum PSU
• MSI PRO B650-P WIFI
• Samsung 980 Pro 2TB NVME SSD (gen4)

 

As for new vs second hand, my preference goes out to a new card, I intended to use this card for a while again and don't mind paying a small premium for that. I've included pricing for cards below.

 

I've included the games I play below. But this is just a bit of an additional note, I really like cyberpunk 2077, and kind of want to give its ray tracing a go. I'm OK with all the DLSS, from the videos I've seen I can't tell the difference between "Real" and DLSS.

 

Budget (including currency):  €600-700 (Up to €800 for significant performance gains)

Country: Netherlands

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

Games:

• Esports
  • Overwatch
  • Apex Legends
  • League of Legends
• Casual Multiplayer
  • Red Dead Redemption 2
  • Team Fortress 2
  • Sea of Thieves
• Single Player
  • The Witcher 3
  • Hitman 1,2,3 (The new ones)
  • Horizon Zero
  • Cyberpunk 2077

Programs:

• Light Blender use
• Light Machine Learning work
• Small projects in Unreal Engine 5

Other details:

Monitor: My current monitor is an ultrawide 1080p 144Hz, new monitor is 1440p 100-120Hz.

Most of the parts for my setup usually come from azerty.nl 

 

These are the prices for cards that are around the budget:

• New
  • NVIDIA
    • RTX 3070 TI: €600-700 (Not many available)
    • RTX 3080: - (Not available)
    • RTX 4060 TI (8 GB): €400-500
    • RTX 4060 TI (16 GB): €480-580
    • RTX 4070: €600-700
    • RTX 4070 TI: €860-950
  • AMD
    • RX 6700 XT:  €360-450
    • RX 6800 XT:  €500-570
    • RX 7700 XT:  €500-550
    • RX 7800 XT:  €560-660
    • RX 7900 XT:  €830-970
• Second Hand (price ranges from looking at "for sale" listings on marktplaats.nl)
  • NVIDIA
    • RTX 3070: €350-450
    • RTX 3070 TI: €400-600 (Very few listings, and some a little weird)
    • RTX 3080: €450-550
    • RTX 3080 TI: €700-800
    • RTX 3090:  €650-1000 (Mostly used for mining)
  • AMD
    • Very few listings and most listings are close in pricing to a new one

 

[PDifolco]

Given your needs and budget, you should get a 4070 or a 7800XT

The 7800XT is a bit cheaper and faster, which is important for Esports, but 4070 has better RT and DLSS that's neat in CP2077 and such

[SorryBella]

37 minutes ago, bover21 said:

Power efficiency is relevant

then you pretty much want to get rid of all of your option besides the Ada line, 7700XT, and 7800XT. Those are still on sub 200W range in raw consumption or when they are above 200 the wattage per FPS still compensates for it.

[QuantumSingularity]

Hmm this is tough one. If power efficiency has the upmost priority, that leaves basically just one choice - the RTX 4070. It basically doubles on the performance of the GTX 1080 for the exactly same power draw. The problem is its price - for less money you can get the 7800XT, which draws about 80W more, but performs much better, especially at 1440p, no small part thanks to the larger VRAM size - 16GB vs just 12GB on the 4070, which are actually starting to get insufficient even for 1080p modern titles. So if you are serious about upgrading to 1440p, 16GB is the minimum size you should be looking at, preferably 20GB. If i was you, i would've gone for the 7900XT and undervolt it a bit if it gets too high of a consumption. It reduces the power draw significantly, while having minimal to no effect on performance.  

[bover21]

12 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

If power efficiency has the upmost priority

I wouldn't say it has the upmost priority, but it can't just be thrown out of the window.

 

19 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

So if you are serious about upgrading to 1440p, 16GB is the minimum size

Yeah, this is also what has been on my mind. 

 

It seems like there are some rumors of a RTX 4070 Super with 16 GB. Which kind of makes sense, it is weird that the 4070 (TI) doesn't just have 16 GB of memory. Given that I'm looking for this upgrade sometime this year, early next year (probably should have mentioned in that post) might be worth waiting this out and seeing what it does to prices (on both sides). 

 

Meanwhile, it looks like I need to do more research on AMD cards. I've been trying to find friends/family who have AMD cards, but so far, it is all NVIDIA. So nobody can tell me what their experience is like.

[QuantumSingularity]

4 hours ago, bover21 said:

I wouldn't say it has the upmost priority, but it can't just be thrown out of the window.

 

Yeah, this is also what has been on my mind. 

 

It seems like there are some rumors of a RTX 4070 Super with 16 GB. Which kind of makes sense, it is weird that the 4070 (TI) doesn't just have 16 GB of memory. Given that I'm looking for this upgrade sometime this year, early next year (probably should have mentioned in that post) might be worth waiting this out and seeing what it does to prices (on both sides). 

 

Meanwhile, it looks like I need to do more research on AMD cards. I've been trying to find friends/family who have AMD cards, but so far, it is all NVIDIA. So nobody can tell me what their experience is like.

As experiences go, they are extremely personal things, but here is mine. I've switched from EVGA GTX 1070 to RX 6900XT, bought 2nd hand for $500 back in March this year. At first i really was bumped i couldn't get an RTX 3000 GPU, because of how insanely expensive they were and still are btw, but thought to myself, "well, it is what it is". Initially there was some settling in time, but in less than a week i was already completely comfortable with all the menus and the settings. The experience with the AMD Adrenalin center VASTLY surpasses the one with the Nvidia Control Center. Especially when it comes to multi monitor configuration, driver updates and stability. No more game braking driver releases, which force me to roll back to 18 months old drivers, no more random screen flickers or turning a random monitor off and on again w/o reason, messing with my entire desktop setup. The last time i used DDU was when i switched the GPUs and wanted the old Nvidia drivers completely gone. So for more than 8 months now, i've been only updating drivers with performance only getting better, never for once going backwards or using DDU. With my Nvidia GPU every 2 months or so i'd have to uninstall the "new" driver via DDU, because it broke one of my games (most often ETS 2 or Cities: Skylines), install some older version which i know works fine and do all my desktop and monitor arranging again.

I also build PCs as a side-job and in 99% of the cases the all AMD systems i've built require basically no further interaction from me, while with the Nvidia GPUs, there is always something which granted is minor, but still needs me to spend 30 mins traveling to the client, fixing it in less than 5 minutes (like NVCP deciding that the 165Hz they have no longer can display more than 100Hz) and traveling back home for another 30 minutes, only to repeat that for the same or similar issue in 2-3 weeks. I am now at this point where i actively refuse to build a system with an Nvidia where the person who is gonna use it, doesn't know how to deal with the basic GPU settings like DDU, driver rollback and NVCP settings. 

The only negatives i have against the AMD software is the lack of HDR capture, which forces you to use programs like OBS and the lack of AV1 encoding for the older than the 7000 series GPUs. Other than that, it's been absolutely buttery smooth experience.