PC GPU Help

Bombers,

In 2016, I built my first PC:

MSI Gaming Intel Skylake B150 LGA 1151 DDR4 USB 3.1 Micro ATX Motherboard

EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SC GAMING ACX 2.0

Intel Boxed Core I5-6500 FC-LGA14C 3.20 Ghz 6 M Processor Cache 4 LGA 1151

Looking to do a very incremental step-up in GPU with a budget of $200ish.

What should I do?

While gpu prices have come down quite a bit recently, still $200 isn't going to get something much better than your 970. I'd wait a year for the new gen's mid range cards to come out and drive prices down on the older ones some more.

Unfortunately, the GPU market has shifted. The biggest change was actually right after 970, which I would argue was the last 'great midtier card' that launched at $330 and was $250 pretty fast.

My short GPU advice would to always buy at least a **60 or an AMD *650. And those are currently more around $350. The drop-off in performance to the tier below that isn't worth it.

With the increase in VRAM, unless the DDR5 price drops it might be a while until a strong card comes in below $300.

That budget is, unfortunately, going to be very challenging. If you can manage an extra $50ish, I'd suggest going with an RTX 3050. Relative to the 970, it's going to be a huge step up in performance, especially since you'd be able to take advantage of DLSS for resolution upscaling--on games that support it, of course. My assumption is that with your current build, you're likely targeting 1080p/60, and the 3050 will absolutely deliver that.

At the $250 price point, you're really looking at an AMD Radeon 6600. I'm seeing these available at Amazon and Microcenter. I can't think of any nVidia cards under $250 that aren't either side grades or downgrades from your 970. At $200, you're looking at marginal side grades at best - performance differences you can make up by moving a slider in MSI Afterburner up a few ticks.

The 6600 is a sizable boost in performance over your 970 at the same wattage. It has 8GB of VRAM. It's more than an incremental upgrade over your 970.

But, it's not fast enough to be cranking all the bells and whistles on the newest titles. Ray tracing? The only ray tracing this card will realistically do is playback some MP4 of someone playing a raytraced game on a 3080 or faster. (As an owner of a 3060, 3070, and 3080, I'd only even try turning raytracing on on the 3070/3080 and on the 3070, you're trading off a bunch to make it happen.)

If you're looking at playing last console generation era titles, the 6600 will do well. If you're looking about titles going forward, you're probably going to have to give up graphical fidelity to keep 1080/60 on more demanding titles.

The biggest thing against using AI upscaling is it uses the source image to generate a final frame. A 3080 generating 4k from a 1440p source is going to look much better than a 3050 generating a 1080 image from a sub 720p source since it'll have a much better reference point. At 1080p resolution, I think you'd be hard pressed to spot a difference in DLSS and FSR as both will be "meh".

My only caveat on the 6600 is if you plan on gaming and streaming it. The encoding on it is garbage.

Since you won't find a 3050 for under $250, I'd recommend a 3050 if you could get one under $250. It trails the 6600 in gaming performance, but you gain an NVENC encoder for streaming, get maybe some better Adobe CC performance, and get some funky DLSS. But at the $300+ I often see it for, it makes absolutely no sense when a -much faster- 3060 TI can be had for $399 from Best Buy.

I just helped a friend build his first PC and we stuck an RTX 3060 in there, which will be plenty sufficient for him upgrading from a 960 mobile chip on his now dead laptop. It was selling at the time for $350 and frankly, if you are going with nbidia, I wouldn’t recommend anything less than that as the older stuff has such a drop off in performance comparatively, and isn’t really any cheaper. $200 for a GPU kind of just isn’t a thing anymore, other than maybe a used card on Craigslist.

Thanks all - Is there no real upgrade going to a 1660? I know that is pushing closer to $300 and it sounds like a 3050 would be similarly priced and, assuming it’s compatible with my motherboard, better performance wise.

End of the day I do most of my gaming on Xbox Series X, but some of the PlayStation games on Steam and other PC games have caught my eye.

@skuski: If you have a 1080p monitor, then getting a GTX 1660 might be an upgrade. But you'd have to either get the Super edition or the Ti (Titan) edition to see any real improvements in terms of graphic settings. Actually, the RX 6600 would be the better upgrade, again if you're gaming at 1080p. Sadly, to really get the upgrade you probably want, you have to at least spend close to 500 dollars. 250 is really cutting it close. And you also have to make sure the power supply you're currently using is powerful enough to handle the new card, and that your case is big enough to fit it, as a lot of recent cards, even the budget ones have gotten bigger.

What resolution are you playing at? At that budget, running everything at 1080p60 Medium/High settings, no raytracing, should be do-able between 2 and 300$. A used 1070ti or 1080 could do that, though I don't know how much they cost. Anything 3060 and up is, and I'm ballpark guessing here, probably a little overkill for a 1080p monitor.

If you want to play at 1440P High/Ultra at 60+ FPS you're going to need to spend a fair bit more. No current $200 GPU is really going to be able to keep up with that.

I have a hard time believing a GTX 1660 wouldn't be much of an upgrade over a 970, and a GTX 1660 ti definitely would be.

Your processor is also getting to be a bit long in the tooth. A quick Google search says that the i5 6500 launched in late 2015. That's a seven year old processor. It's probably still doing pretty well, but if you were to pair it with something like a RTX 3060, it might be enough of a bottleneck to cause issues (stuttering or something).

How is the RX 580 doing these days? Those have 8GB of VRAM, are more powerful than a GTX 970, and aren't very expensive at all. It might be worth looking into, though those are a few years old at this point. It might be worth buying a 580 to hold you over and then just saving up for the next two or three years for a new build.

Honestly, I forgot the 6600 existed. That is the better option for raw gaming performance at 1080p. There seem to be a few to be had for the $230 - $250 price point right now, and a couple vendors have deals that include "up to two games," with purchase of a 6000 series card. The promotional art includes Dead Island 2 and Calisto Protocol, though I can find nothing that gives solid details on what is included, and if the number of games offered is based on the tier of card.

Here's the rub - at $300 for a 3050, you can get a Radeon 6700 with 10GB of VRam that is much faster than a 3050. If all you're looking to do is game, then unfortunately nVidia's low/medium end isn't priced well in comparison to what AMD offers at the same price point.

Both the 3050 and 3060 are too slow to add ray tracing without compromising elsewhere.

A vanilla 1660 or 1660S would be a decent performance boost, raw raster performance close to the 3050, but at the $200 price point is that Radeon 6600, which does unkind things to the 3050 and 1660S. Then at the 3050 price point of ~$300, the 6650xt is there, and the 6650xt is another step up from the 6600.

When it comes to the Sony titles on PC, it looks like the Radeon 6600 takes a commanding lead over the 3050.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTrlJ-jsDRY

Some youtuber's comparison of a 3050 vs the 6600.

Really, my only caveat on the Radeon cards is that the NVidia encoder is miles ahead, but that'll only matter if you want to stream to say Twitch.

I think you're getting led astray a bit here with all the talk about ray tracing which no budget card can reasonably do anyway. If you're just gaming at 1080p and really don't want to spend more than 200 bucks, get an RX 6600. The GTX 970 is an eight year old video card, an RX 6600 is gonna be almost twice as performant. The RX 6600 is about 200 bucks and is a huge step up from your 970. Unless you absolutely need an nvidia gpu, get the 6600.

You can look up comparisons yourself, but the 970 is roughly equivalent to an RX 570, actually a little worse. And if you go through the review below, you can see a 6600 is about twice as performant as a 570.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/radeon-rx-6600-review,1.html

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-rx-6600-rx6600-cld-8g/p/N82E16814930066

I would look for the best (and newest) used cards you can afford off eBay or the like. So, don't buy new - buy used. Certainly you can find something at your budget that will improve upon that capabilities of the 970.

I think every telling you to go with RX 5700 XT or RX 6600 for your price point or below are right. You can get one used easily, and it will give you the upgrade to performance you want.