Upgrading scrapyard PC GPU

[InkyAdventurer]

Budget (including currency): €400,-

Country: Netherlands

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Cities Skylines 2, Manor Lords, PoE2, Forza games, UE5, dev work

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Current parts:

Motherboard: Asus Prime A320M-K

CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X (just upgraded from 2400G)

PSU: Corsair RM1000X (2021)

RAM: 32GB 3200MHZ CL16 Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro

Storage: 1TB 990 Evo M.2, 1TB 5600RPM WD (don't know exact spec) cached with PrimoCache and a 128GB Adata sata SSD

GPU: MSI GTX970 (4GB) 

 

I'm currently looking to achieve a playable state in PoE2 and Cities Skylines. PoE2 started stuttering at times at the end of act 3/6 and on maps, Cities Skylines 2 drops below 20-25FPS on 1600x900 with pretty low settings when my city hits around 100k. For both games a CPU percentage seems to be available so I've narrowed it down to upgrading the GTX970, but am unable to find the best GPU for my monitor set up. (2x MSI G2712F 1920x1080 180hz) 

 

My options I've found (new and secondhand):

- Intel B580 (12GB from Sparkle)

- Nvidia 2080TI  (11GB)

- Nvidia 4060TI (8GB)

- Nvidia 3070TI (8GB)

- Nvidia 2080 Super (8GB)

 

Currently leaning towards the B580 (sealed), or the 2080TI, but I haven't built a system in quite some time and the GPU market is confusing me after watching a few hours of comparisons. 

 

Thanks in advance for your opinion/advice  

(My first time using the forum, been watching since way before the all room water cooling days)

 

 

[Bitter]

 Does your motherboard support Resizable BAR? If no the then Arc is out.

[InkyAdventurer]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

 Does your motherboard support Resizable BAR? If no the then Arc is out.

Had to update my bios, but the option to resize is there.

 

Does that mean the B580 would be the best bet for an upgrade though? The 2080 Ti is €5,- less if it makes a difference.

[Bitter]

That I'm not sure.

[BahnStormer]

RTX2080Ti wins by about 30% in most benchmarks (30%-40% depending on which comparison sites you use).... RTX3080Ti is a better card in every way apart from power efficiency, but even then it's not terrible (250W v 190W) as the Turing architecture was actually quite low clock speed and just relied on memory bandwidth and sheer number of cores. 

 

I'm not sure how reliable this site is, but it's a start: https://technical.city/en/video/GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-vs-Arc-B580

 

Also given that the A320 chipset is going to cap your PCI x16 to gen 3 speed, I think it is probably a safer bet to stick with the RTX2080Ti: I think that the B580 only has an 8x PCIe connector, so really relies on gen4 connectivity... I've not seen any benchmarks with this as a bottleneck, but from memory, it can get pretty ugly when AMD and nVidia did that (lower bandwidth PCIe) on their entry level GPUs when used on much older motherbaords. 

[InkyAdventurer]

6 hours ago, BahnStormer said:

RTX2080Ti wins by about 30% in most benchmarks (30%-40% depending on which comparison sites you use).... RTX3080Ti is a better card in every way apart from power efficiency, but even then it's not terrible (250W v 190W) as the Turing architecture was actually quite low clock speed and just relied on memory bandwidth and sheer number of cores. 

 

I'm not sure how reliable this site is, but it's a start: https://technical.city/en/video/GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-vs-Arc-B580

 

Also given that the A320 chipset is going to cap your PCI x16 to gen 3 speed, I think it is probably a safer bet to stick with the RTX2080Ti: I think that the B580 only has an 8x PCIe connector, so really relies on gen4 connectivity... I've not seen any benchmarks with this as a bottleneck, but from memory, it can get pretty ugly when AMD and nVidia did that (lower bandwidth PCIe) on their entry level GPUs when used on much older motherbaords. 

According to videos and charts, the fps difference with 8x 3.0 vs 8x 4.0 would be like 5-6% on most games. It's apparently just the resizable bar which isn't supported by all 3.0 mobos, but I checked mine for it.

 

I'd also be upgrading the mobo soon in order to make use of the 4.0 SSD speeds and add bluetooth/wifi

[BahnStormer]

You're right: REBAR is the deal-breaker (50% reduction).... PCIe3 is probably fine (1%-6% reduction, likely on the lower end of that for 1080P).

6 hours ago, InkyAdventurer said:

According to videos and charts, the fps difference with 8x 3.0 vs 8x 4.0 would be like 5-6% on most games. It's apparently just the resizable bar which isn't supported by all 3.0 mobos, but I checked mine for it.

 

I'd also be upgrading the mobo soon in order to make use of the 4.0 SSD speeds and add bluetooth/wifi

Okay, so the difference would be about 40% in favour of the RTX2080Ti in a PCIe4 motherboard, rather than a 40-45% in your current PCI 3.0 motherboard.

 

I'm trying to provide balance and information, not force your decision.... there ARE downsides to the RTX2080Ti:

• age / reliability (new retail product vs 2nd hand, with likely reduced or no warranty)
• power consumption (roughly 30% more peak power) - for 40% more performance though
• thermals (more power = more heat)
• packaging (likely a larger unit for the RTX2080Ti compared to the B580?)

 

To answer the question about which I would buy for 180Hz 1080P gaming on a Ryzen 7 3700X CPU: it would be the generation-appropriate GPU that is going to be at least 30% quicker - the RTX2080Ti or more likely a RX6000 series AMD card.

 

Make sure you compare 1080P data: the B580 is a very impressive ~€300 card.... but it's main feature is that it scales VERY well to 1440P, but most cards are significantly faster when you drop to 1080P.... the B580 does improve, but not to the same extent.

 

The only real argument against the RTX2080Ti would be the warranty. This is a very valid concern.

 

Just some other ideas to address this, sorry if I'm adding to the range of choices:

 

City Skylines reviewed very well on AMD cards (e.g. the RX7900XTX matches a RTX4090 in a lot of tests, but watch the full video):

 

The RX6800XT 16Gb is now approaching €400 NEW (I found €444 with 2mins of searching).... likely to fall more in the next 2 weeks as the RDNA4 generation are released at CES2025 this week.

 

This would be 60% faster than the B580! Yes, this is 30-40% more cost, but also a brand new 16Gb card.

 

https://technical.city/en/video/Radeon-RX-6800-XT-vs-Arc-B580

 

Or if that is stretching the budget too much, <€400 for a NEW RX 6700 XT 12Gb for a 30% boost.

 

Or <€300 2nd hand... but now we've got the same problem as the RTX2080Ti being 2nd hand.... and it is slightly slower than a RTX2080Ti in a lot of tests.

 

https://technical.city/en/video/GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-vs-Radeon-RX-6700-XT

 

If I had €400 to spend on a new GPU and it had to be new... it would be the 16Gb RX 6800 XT. If you can't find that <€400 now, I'm sure you will in a few weeks!

[InkyAdventurer]

54 minutes ago, BahnStormer said:

You're right: REBAR is the deal-breaker (50% reduction).... PCIe3 is probably fine (1%-6% reduction, likely on the lower end of that for 1080P).

Okay, so the difference would be about 40% in favour of the RTX2080Ti in a PCIe4 motherboard, rather than a 40-45% in your current PCI 3.0 motherboard.

 

I'm trying to provide balance and information, not force your decision.... there ARE downsides to the RTX2080Ti:

• age / reliability (new retail product vs 2nd hand, with likely reduced or no warranty)
• power consumption (roughly 30% more peak power) - for 40% more performance though
• thermals (more power = more heat)
• packaging (likely a larger unit for the RTX2080Ti compared to the B580?)

 

To answer the question about which I would buy for 180Hz 1080P gaming on a Ryzen 7 3700X CPU: it would be the generation-appropriate GPU that is going to be at least 30% quicker - the RTX2080Ti or more likely a RX6000 series AMD card.

 

Make sure you compare 1080P data: the B580 is a very impressive ~€300 card.... but it's main feature is that it scales VERY well to 1440P, but most cards are significantly faster when you drop to 1080P.... the B580 does improve, but not to the same extent.

 

The only real argument against the RTX2080Ti would be the warranty. This is a very valid concern.

 

Just some other ideas to address this, sorry if I'm adding to the range of choices:

 

City Skylines reviewed very well on AMD cards (e.g. the RX7900XTX matches a RTX4090 in a lot of tests, but watch the full video):

 

The RX6800XT 16Gb is now approaching €400 NEW (I found €444 with 2mins of searching).... likely to fall more in the next 2 weeks as the RDNA4 generation are released at CES2025 this week.

 

This would be 60% faster than the B580! Yes, this is 30-40% more cost, but also a brand new 16Gb card.

 

https://technical.city/en/video/Radeon-RX-6800-XT-vs-Arc-B580

 

Or if that is stretching the budget too much, <€400 for a NEW RX 6700 XT 12Gb for a 30% boost.

 

Or <€300 end hand... but now we've got the same problem as the RTX2080Ti being 2nd hand.... and it is slightly slower than a RTX2080Ti in a lot of tests.

 

https://technical.city/en/video/GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-vs-Radeon-RX-6700-XT

 

If I had €400 to spend on a new GPU and it had to be new... it would be the 16Gb RX 6800 XT. If you can't find that <€400 now, I'm sure you will in a few weeks!

This was actually quite helpful, I didn't know AMD scaled so well. I might have found an amazing deal on a GPU. I'll keep you guys updated on what I pick in the end

[BahnStormer]

3 hours ago, InkyAdventurer said:

This was actually quite helpful

Keep researching.

 

Better to make an informed decision than rush in and regret it for the next 2-3 years, which is likely what one of those GPU's will last... possibly longer!

 

If you can find a RX6800XT for ~€400 I think that's a no-brainer.... if your budget isn't going to quite reach, then look out for the RX6750XT, but don't pay a premium for it over the RX6700XT (if I couldn't get the RX6800XT, I think I'd be tempted by the RTX2080Ti TBH).

 

 

[InkyAdventurer]

7 hours ago, BahnStormer said:

Keep researching.

 

Better to make an informed decision than rush in and regret it for the next 2-3 years, which is likely what one of those GPU's will last... possibly longer!

 

If you can find a RX6800XT for ~€400 I think that's a no-brainer.... if your budget isn't going to quite reach, then look out for the RX6750XT, but don't pay a premium for it over the RX6700XT (if I couldn't get the RX6800XT, I think I'd be tempted by the RTX2080Ti TBH).

 

 

I'm in the talks for a 6950 instead, hoping to cut a half decent deal (500,-) and sacrifice some budget for my other free time. 

[InkyAdventurer]

23 hours ago, BahnStormer said:

You're right: REBAR is the deal-breaker (50% reduction).... PCIe3 is probably fine (1%-6% reduction, likely on the lower end of that for 1080P).

Okay, so the difference would be about 40% in favour of the RTX2080Ti in a PCIe4 motherboard, rather than a 40-45% in your current PCI 3.0 motherboard.

 

I'm trying to provide balance and information, not force your decision.... there ARE downsides to the RTX2080Ti:

• age / reliability (new retail product vs 2nd hand, with likely reduced or no warranty)
• power consumption (roughly 30% more peak power) - for 40% more performance though
• thermals (more power = more heat)
• packaging (likely a larger unit for the RTX2080Ti compared to the B580?)

 

To answer the question about which I would buy for 180Hz 1080P gaming on a Ryzen 7 3700X CPU: it would be the generation-appropriate GPU that is going to be at least 30% quicker - the RTX2080Ti or more likely a RX6000 series AMD card.

 

Make sure you compare 1080P data: the B580 is a very impressive ~€300 card.... but it's main feature is that it scales VERY well to 1440P, but most cards are significantly faster when you drop to 1080P.... the B580 does improve, but not to the same extent.

 

The only real argument against the RTX2080Ti would be the warranty. This is a very valid concern.

 

Just some other ideas to address this, sorry if I'm adding to the range of choices:

 

City Skylines reviewed very well on AMD cards (e.g. the RX7900XTX matches a RTX4090 in a lot of tests, but watch the full video):

 

The RX6800XT 16Gb is now approaching €400 NEW (I found €444 with 2mins of searching).... likely to fall more in the next 2 weeks as the RDNA4 generation are released at CES2025 this week.

 

This would be 60% faster than the B580! Yes, this is 30-40% more cost, but also a brand new 16Gb card.

 

https://technical.city/en/video/Radeon-RX-6800-XT-vs-Arc-B580

 

Or if that is stretching the budget too much, <€400 for a NEW RX 6700 XT 12Gb for a 30% boost.

 

Or <€300 end hand... but now we've got the same problem as the RTX2080Ti being 2nd hand.... and it is slightly slower than a RTX2080Ti in a lot of tests.

 

https://technical.city/en/video/GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-vs-Radeon-RX-6700-XT

 

If I had €400 to spend on a new GPU and it had to be new... it would be the 16Gb RX 6800 XT. If you can't find that <€400 now, I'm sure you will in a few weeks!

Picking up a used 6750XT for €275,- instead, don't need the 4k performance and this allows me to get a pci gen4 motherboard as well.

[BahnStormer]

Nice.... that would be a great option... not that a 3700X is a "low end" CPU, but it seems that with some older systems, the B580 does seem to have the same sort of CPU overhead issues that RTX CPUs have (i.e. where a RTX4080 is slower than a RTX4070 if a slow CPU is used).

 

Tests are being done with older chips (R5 2600 or i5 9600K).

 

Still breaking news, but certainly worth being aware of!
 

 

[Bitter]

9 hours ago, InkyAdventurer said:

Picking up a used 6750XT for €275,- instead, don't need the 4k performance and this allows me to get a pci gen4 motherboard as well.

Excellent pickup, you'll be plenty happy with that upgrade, it'll be a huge rise in performance for you. I recently moved from a Vega56 to a 7900GRE so I'm feeling it too!

[InkyAdventurer]

5 hours ago, BahnStormer said:

Nice.... that would be a great option... not that a 3700X is a "low end" CPU, but it seems that with some older systems, the B580 does seem to have the same sort of CPU overhead issues that RTX CPUs have (i.e. where a RTX4080 is slower than a RTX4070 if a slow CPU is used).

 

Tests are being done with older chips (R5 2600 or i5 9600K).

 

Still breaking news, but certainly worth being aware of!
 

 

That's good to know, I'm just hesitant to upgrade to a 5800x3d because I only recently upgraded from 2400G to the 3700X and might want to go AM5 as time goes on since it'll be supported for another 2 years.

 

My financial situation makes it hard to upgrade several items at once, so I'm used to living with secondhand parts, my previous CPU was a (way overclocked) 2500k until recently I had the opportunity to purchase a 2400G + 970 in a complete system for €50,-

[InkyAdventurer]

4 hours ago, Bitter said:

Excellent pickup, you'll be plenty happy with that upgrade, it'll be a huge rise in performance for you. I recently moved from a Vega56 to a 7900GRE so I'm feeling it too!

I can't imagine, I recently tried my brother's pc with a 3060ti and was blown away, so I stoked to try my favorite games on my first AMD GPU (I did run ATI cards back in the day)

[Bitter]

49 minutes ago, InkyAdventurer said:

That's good to know, I'm just hesitant to upgrade to a 5800x3d because I only recently upgraded from 2400G to the 3700X and might want to go AM5 as time goes on since it'll be supported for another 2 years.

 

My financial situation makes it hard to upgrade several items at once, so I'm used to living with secondhand parts, my previous CPU was a (way overclocked) 2500k until recently I had the opportunity to purchase a 2400G + 970 in a complete system for €50,-

I've been in that boat before too, I'm still stingy with my money on PC parts but I'm finally getting things together. I bought a nicer monitor a while back and wow that was long long overdue, I got a nicer keyboard and mouse and that was also amazing. I've got a 5700X3D and new motherboard I need to swap in when I get around to it. It's nice to be able to finally afford things but I miss getting the old junk to run at 120% and having to spend time tweaking and overclocking and messing with stuff to squeeze out that last few frames to play games, that was a lot of fun too.

[InkyAdventurer]

16 minutes ago, Bitter said:

I've been in that boat before too, I'm still stingy with my money on PC parts but I'm finally getting things together. I bought a nicer monitor a while back and wow that was long long overdue, I got a nicer keyboard and mouse and that was also amazing. I've got a 5700X3D and new motherboard I need to swap in when I get around to it. It's nice to be able to finally afford things but I miss getting the old junk to run at 120% and having to spend time tweaking and overclocking and messing with stuff to squeeze out that last few frames to play games, that was a lot of fun too.

I loved the tweaking, my first "home pc" as a kid had a geforce MX 2 and I think a pentium 4, I've been squeezing every single bit of performance ever since. That machine ran Skyrim at one point with a 6600GT or something, which was smoking after a long sessions

[InkyAdventurer]

Update, I installed the 6750x and it seems to be living up to the expectations except for some pretty hefty dips in Skylines 2 which is a bit sad. I did install drivers from the AMD website including their overclocking/overview application, but drops happen every so often down from 70-90 to 10-20

[Bitter]

8 minutes ago, InkyAdventurer said:

Update, I installed the 6750x and it seems to be living up to the expectations except for some pretty hefty dips in Skylines 2 which is a bit sad. I did install drivers from the AMD website including their overclocking/overview application, but drops happen every so often down from 70-90 to 10-20

Are you using monitoring software? I've read about some issues with those and AMD CPU's something about interrupts. The AMD monitoring is fine honestly, ctrl+shift+O to bring it up, you can customize what it displays in the settings.

[InkyAdventurer]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

Are you using monitoring software? I've read about some issues with those and AMD CPU's something about interrupts. The AMD monitoring is fine honestly, ctrl+shift+O to bring it up, you can customize what it displays in the settings.

I'm using AMDs monitoring, tried several of the presets but keeps happening. I'll await my pci-e4.0 motherboard which I can get in a week or two to see if that's the bottleneck.

[Bitter]

19 minutes ago, InkyAdventurer said:

I'm using AMDs monitoring, tried several of the presets but keeps happening. I'll await my pci-e4.0 motherboard which I can get in a week or two to see if that's the bottleneck.

Is resize bar on? That helps with some games using very large amounts of data between the GPU and system memory.

[InkyAdventurer]

12 hours ago, Bitter said:

Is resize bar on? That helps with some games using very large amounts of data between the GPU and system memory.

Yup it's enabled, I've pretty much checked all BIOS settings, I'll try and see if using DDU and a clean install will fix it, not much more I can think of doing. Cities II is the only game showing issues, PoE2 and Manor Lords both run 100+ fps on max settings, so it might just be the game still not being optimized too much

[BahnStormer]

I've not played CitySkylnies2, but I've heard that parts of the game are very poorly optimised.

 

Glad you're happy with the choice of GPU.

 

I always like the idea of removing all the drives and re-installing Windows on a spare drive to see if you still have the issues.... that way you can remove the spare drive and just put your old storage back in if it doesn't improve things.

 

That said - the issue could just be with your City once it gets to a certain size, so you'd need that save-game.

[InkyAdventurer]

On 1/6/2025 at 2:21 PM, BahnStormer said:

I've not played CitySkylnies2, but I've heard that parts of the game are very poorly optimised.

 

Glad you're happy with the choice of GPU.

 

I always like the idea of removing all the drives and re-installing Windows on a spare drive to see if you still have the issues.... that way you can remove the spare drive and just put your old storage back in if it doesn't improve things.

 

That said - the issue could just be with your City once it gets to a certain size, so you'd need that save-game.

It's a clean windows install (fully formatted new out of box SSD), I tried using DDU and reinstalling the drivers but to no avail.

 

I find it weird neither CPU nor GPU goes above 80% when the stutters happen, they hover around 60%

[Bitter]

It's probably just CS2 being CS2, I remember CS1 being pretty bad a while back too.