upgrading to 3060

[strange13930]

I have a rx 6500 xt, Ryzen 5 5500, and a 600w power supply(I don't now the brand or model but it is in a cyber power prebuilt.) my plan is to upgrade to the 3060 12gb vram, I am hopping to find a deal on a used three fan model. any ideas on where to look I have check Facebook, eBay, and offerup.

[emosun]

5 minutes ago, strange13930 said:

any ideas on where to look I have check Facebook, eBay, and offerup.

so all of ebay didn't have a single 3060 that you wanted?

[strange13930]

Just now, emosun said:

so all of ebay didn't have a single 3060 that you wanted?

there where all bids or near full price and I'm still saving up the money.

[emosun]

Just now, strange13930 said:

there where all bids or near full price and I'm still saving up the money.

so you're looking for a 3060 that is priced below it's actual value

[strange13930]

I just didn't think they would be so expensive still as they where released in 2021 and Nvidia has released two new generations of cards.

[dizmo]

Depending on where you live, might be smarter to look in other countries. For example if you live in the US, see if you can find a Canadian buyer willing to send you the card from there. It'll likely work out to be much cheaper. US pricing on the cards is pretty off.

[strange13930]

ok

 

[ewitte]

1 hour ago, strange13930 said:

I just didn't think they would be so expensive still as they where released in 2021 and Nvidia has released two new generations of cards.

3000 series was the beginning of cards that were nearly unobtainable at MSRP, factoring in the 3060 12GB is abnormal for Nvidia to have a budget card with adequate VRAM.  Are you dead set on Nvidia?  I used a Arc B580 in my TV computer and it runs quite a bit better than the 3060 12GB I have in another machine.  AMD has some similar cards in that range as well.  None of them do RT all that great.

[strange13930]

I want to experience ray tracing as I currently have amd

[ewitte]

20 minutes ago, strange13930 said:

I want to experience ray tracing as I currently have amd

All three do RT just not all that great.  B580/3060 are similar, AMD lags a bit.  TBH being your only card I probably would stay away from the B580 just because of driver maturity and DLSS works really well with 4.0.  Just throwing out as an option.  What price range are you looking for?  I see them running 250 up to 320ish on Ebay.  Also, I see 299 in stock at Best Buy (new).

EDIT: Local Microcenter has one openbox for 239.96

[Ha-Satan]

2 hours ago, strange13930 said:

I just didn't think they would be so expensive still as they where released in 2021 and Nvidia has released two new generations of cards.

Yes, but unfortunately, the new cards in this price range haven't improved in price-to-performance much since 2021, which means that the price of used cards stays high. Used prices for the 3060 won't come down until there is meaningful value improvement for new cards in the $200-$300 range.

 

The best value improvement over the 3060 in this price range is indeed the B580, presuming you can find it at MSRP (which you probably can't), but even if it were at MSRP I don't think enough people would be willing to take the plunge on Intel's driver situation in order to meaningfully reduce the demand for Nvidia cards like the 3060. We're going to need to get cards that are quite a bit better value in the $250 range before the 3060 will start really dropping in price.

 

EDIT: And I should say, you really shouldn't pair a B580 with an older lower-mid-range CPU like the 5500, due to the well-document driver overhead issue with Battlemage cards.

[ewitte]

1 hour ago, Ha-Satan said:

EDIT: And I should say, you really shouldn't pair a B580 with an older lower-mid-range CPU like the 5500, due to the well-document driver overhead issue with Battlemage cards.

True even going from 12600k to 14700k I saw a fairly sizeable increase.  I probably wouldn't want to main that card.  There are some things I run directly, the rest I do sunshine/moonlight and stream off the main PC.  It has very good encoding/decoding capabilities.

[hollyh88]

On 2/13/2025 at 7:51 PM, strange13930 said:

I want to experience ray tracing as I currently have amd

DO NOT BUY NVIDIA CARDS FOR RAYTRACING AS EVEN THE 5090 IS NOT GREAT AT IT. 

dont ever buy an nvidia card simply because you want to experience raytracing. especially not when searching at the low end. Throw raytracing out the window because you wont be getting good rtx performance with a 3060. unless your willing to turn everything to low and upscale to the max. its a waste of your money and time. Look for a card that is great at raster perf. 

[strange13930]

do you think a 7600 xt will be better.

[Chree]

3060ti or 4060ti should be ur minimum right now anything less and ur gonna regret it.

[strange13930]

I need vram as well as I am getting into game development

[hollyh88]

1 hour ago, strange13930 said:

do you think a 7600 xt will be better.

in raster maybe a little. however it might be better for you to either save up and get a 7700x as for 60~ more dependent on where you live. you can get it with 30 ish % higher raster perf over the 7600xt. the only downside is ofc it has 12gb of vram and not 16gb. but the raster more than makes up for it. 

however, if you dont mind secondhand you can also definitely look around for something like a 2080ti. as you can find those for roughly 300 bucks if your system can handle the wattage etc. however it only has 11gb of vram. but if you absolutely want a card that can barebones raytrace you could do that too. but in reality i wouldnt bother with raytracing. it really isnt that worth it. Maybe in the future when gpus can do it without upscaling. and when raster is no longer the norm over raytracing. but that will still be a while from now. and should not affect your purschasing decisions of now a days

[strange13930]

vram is my main thing i want