Is it curretnly the worst time to upgrade a GPU?

[Brezzels]

Hello LTT Community,

i am planning to upgrade my GPU because my R9 290 is about to die on me. However since a few Weeks i was hoping for the green goblin to launch something for me, of course it's the 1070ti. But because of the really bad pricing i have doubts on upgrading on a highend card in general. First of all let's compare the 1070ti vs. 1080, sure the 1080 has a better Value in general, because they are priced almoust the same here in germany. However the 1080 is allready one and a half year old, so probably in a couple of mounth there will be something else, priced the same and probably faster. Also important to notice that my current AMD r9 is about 4 years old at this point, which means pretty much it was a 100€/$ per year of use while playing every Game still on at least high setting with about a hundret frames even in the newest games. I feel like being robbed  now, when upgrading my system ,knowing that there will be a much better gpu soon and that even current fresh release migh be outperformed really soon. I don't know what to do and i need your help finding the best card for gaming and budget (600€), is there even a card which will age as well as my current one or is it truely the worst time to upgrade?

 

 

[asand1]

2 minutes ago, Brezzels said:

my R9 290 is about to die on me.

 

Why do you say this? Overheating? Artifacting? R9 290 IIRC is a really decent card and probably not worth getting into the horrible GPU market currently.

 

 

[samcool55]

The r9 290 performs similar with RX 580's and GTX 1060's. Those things aged REALLY well.

I wouldn't upgrade unless you really have to tbh. Depending what its dying, give it a good service and just keep using it.

[SerumZero]

I'd recommend an RX 580 if the prices didn't skyrocket recently due to miners. I was in the same situation as you, was stuck with an old gpu, waited too long and suddenly the prices were all 100+ euros more. I personally opted for a second hand founders edition 1070 (it was 11 days old and had 3 years of warranty left) for 400 euros which I found acceptable since you couldn't buy the FE anymore and I really like the way it looks. But yea this might be the worst time to be looking for an upgrade. I'd say try to find a decent 2nd hand deal for a 970 or something if you want to keep costs low. 

[Brezzels]

The coils are starting to make really weird notices and I fear that it will die soon, sorry my bad to not mention. Thanks for the answers. If I wrap it up all of you pretty much say that it's tough right now on upgrading. 

[Trulop]

the 290 is a little bit behind the RX580, and the RX580 is juuuuust a tad less overall compared to the GTX 1060 6GB. Since they are all so close to each other, spending 250+$ on a new GPU only for it to be closer to similar than outstanding difference would be sort of a waste. Your GPU should do perfectly fine on 1080p (may have to adjust a few settings in certain games to meet target FPS) and as long as its not actually dying (not sure if you mean its actually about to not work, or being finicky, ETC) id say dont upgrade now. If it is dying however and you must upgrade, i would definitely recommend the GTX 1080+ range to ensure you wont have to upgrade for a long time. Even a 1080 on 2k settings should last for years to come so at 1080P id say it should do an even better job at keeping up. Sure, when new stuff comes out it will most likely be "Better", but that really doesnt matter. All that matters is that you get a GPU that does exactly what you want if not more. You could go with the 1070 range, but depending on how long your wanting to keep it before upgrading again, you may have to decrease settings over time after a while, which really isnt too big of deal in my opinion.

Overall, you wont be unhappy if you buy something new now. In terms of new products from nvidia, it sounds like its gonna be a while anyways, unless Radeon puts out something for them to be afraid of and forces them to release things earlier.

[samcool55]

3 minutes ago, Brezzels said:

The coils are starting to make really weird notices and I fear that it will die soon, sorry my bad to not mention. Thanks for the answers. If I wrap it up all of you pretty much say that it's tough right now on upgrading. 

That's just coil whine, nothing to worry about. My RX 480 does that sometimes since it was brand new.

If it annoys you, you can always put a bit of hot glue on them, the whining is because they basically vibrate on a very high frequency, with a bit of glue the vibration stops, problem solved

[Princess Luna]

Depends on what you're buying, a GTX 1050 Ti ~ GTX 1060 6gb is still priced fairly alright and it is available, the RX580 also has started being more available all around for decent pricing again.

 

Now the Vega cards and 1070, 1070 Ti, 1080 indeed are very inflated in pricing... not the best time to get one of those, if you're aiming all the way up to a 1080 Ti though those are fairly normal in offerings and pricing as well.

 

Do not get in the "wait for Volta" idea as Volta might not even release in 2018.

[asus killer]

it's my guess that it's not all about the miners, production is kept low to keep prices up. A one and a half year old card should not more expensive than when it came out, production costs usually go down with time.

And Vega really not being much of a competition did nothing for the market. The GPU market needs the same treatment that the CPU market got from Ryzen, all of a sudden Intel can sell cheaper and with a lot more cores and threads. When for years the evolution of almost laughable.

It's really hard to believe that Intel released 8th generation abandoning the traditional core/tread in i3/i5/i7 just as Ryzen came out and just in a couple of months, this things take time to engineered and develop, it's almost like we would never got this was it not for Ryzen even if they could have released it at any time.

[Brezzels]

41 minutes ago, asus killer said:

It's really hard to believe that Intel released 8th generation abandoning the traditional core/tread in i3/i5/i7 just as Ryzen came out and just in a couple of months, this things take time to engineered and develop, it's almost like we would never got this was it not for Ryzen even if they could have released it at any time.

Thats exactly what i think as well. Just when i look back ,befour i had my r9, i had   a 650ti for a hundret buck, sure it was not the best,however it managed to be a entry level friendly card, even further back in 2007 i had a 8600gt which costed 60€ it was able to play games the next 3 years. Competition is the problem here, AMD does not targed to beat the 1070 with the vega 56. If they had gone at least at a lower price than the 1070 which is allready avalible for 390 bucks, so even 110€ less than a vega. If they don compete it will take years to come to have a high improvement in general.

[Nup]

Rx 580’s seems to be coming back down to earth in terms of pricing. Still somewhat high. Though with a 290 it’s probably worth waiting it out.  

[asand1]

What PSU are you running? A low end PSU will send dirt power to a GPU and cause more whine than a better one.

[SteveGrabowski0]

6 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

Do not get in the "wait for Volta" idea as Volta might not even release in 2018.

I see it when Pascal is almost a year and a half old and is so expensive. Last gen the cutdown midrange die card (GTX 970) was $330 at launch, this gen it was $450 (GTX 1070) and it's still there. If I was the op I'd hold onto that 290 until it dies in the hope it survives until Volta.

[Brezzels]

On 3.11.2017 at 5:19 PM, asand1 said:

What PSU are you running? A low end PSU will send dirt power to a GPU and cause more whine than a better one.

Im using a bequiet Powerzone 750w silver cert. A bit overkill for a single gpu.

[Brezzels]

On 3.11.2017 at 5:30 PM, SteveGrabowski0 said:

If I was the op I'd hold onto that 290 until it dies in the hope it survives until Volta.

Yes, hopefully it will work however the coil whining is increasing daily and its geting nosier day to day.