Looking to Do a Budget GPU Upgrade (if at All Possible)

LFlamo on 24/11/2017 - 17:49
Last edited 24/11/2017 - 18:48 by 1 other user

Hi all,
I've been using a Sapphire Radeon HD7750 for ages, and after recently rebuilding the PC I'm thinking of upgrading the GPU at some point in the near future. I see a lot of cards posted here on OZB that are $300-$600, which is more than I spent rebuilding the computer!

What I want to do is give the PC a bit of a bump up without breaking the bank. Planning on doing a bit of gaming and some graphic design work in Illustrator.

Looking at sub $200 cards, preferably AMD so I don't have to mess around too much with uninstalling drivers and such.

Current MB is an ASUS M5A97 R2.0.

Can anyone recommend a decent budget card that will give me improvement over the old one?

Cheers everyone and happy Friday!

Computing

Comments

  • Cheap Charlie on 24/11/2017 - 18:15

    Check out some of Brians videos on Youtube.
    He is based on the GC and has really enjoys buying GPU bargains.
    Going back over some of his content from the last 6 months would give you a feel for what to pay for a used GPU and he follows up his buying with benchmarking some of the GPUs as well.
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Tn-atYOt8qZP-oqui7bhw

  • xiabonan on 24/11/2017 - 18:21
    +2

    GTX 1050Ti. Although it's a bit more expensive than your budget but if you can get a good deal on eBay during this holiday season you can probably get one brand new for about 200. It's nvidia though but installing drivers these days is pretty much a breeze so don't worry too much. Depending on your CPU this card should give you pretty good performance at 1080P.

  • scrimshaw on 24/11/2017 - 19:13
    +1

    Definitely GTX 1050 Ti

    I did buy the GT 1050 2gb but found it's performance pretty underwhelming (but you may be happy with it if you can put up with low-resotion Texture quality settings).

    You'll want at least 4GB of Video memory nowadays.

  • airal3rt on 24/11/2017 - 20:32
    +1

    If power efficiency isn't too much of a concern and you're willing to buy used, best bang for your buck is picking up a cheap Radeon R9 290/290x from Gumtree or similar. If you want to buy new with a warranty, GTX 1050ti is the only realistic option at that price point.

  • vicosads on 24/11/2017 - 23:04

    if you're not scared of used 970s are pretty good value

  • Kangal on 27/11/2017 - 04:58
    +2

    Card Name - Overall Performance Figure - Actual Price / Worth USD - Kangal's Value Rating - …………………………………………….
    ………………………………………………………………………….. - Current Market Price (Q3 '17) - Expected Visual Fidelity in Gaming

    GTX 1080 Ti —- 400% - US $700 - 400% / US$700 x100 = 57.1 KVR - AU$1,000 - 4K Resolution, Ultra Settings, 50-60 Framerate
    GTX 1080 ——— 330% - $500 - 66.0 KVR - AU$700 - 4K, Ultra, 40-50fps
    GTX 1070Ti —— 310% - $420 - 73.8 KVR - AU$650 - 4K, Ultra, 35-45fps
    GTX 1070 ——— 280% - $380 - 73.6 KVR - AU$600 - 1440p, Ultra, 55-65fps
    GTX 980 Ti ——- 270% - $350 - 77.1 KVR - AU$600 - 1440p, Ultra, 50-60fps

    FuryX ————— 260% - $300 - 86.7 KVR - AU$600 - 1440p, Ultra, 40-50fps
    RX 580 ————- 255% - $240 - 106.3 KVR - AU$500 - 1440p, High, 40-50fps
    GTX 1060Ti ——- 250% - $250 - 100.0 KVR - AU$500 - 1440p, High, 40-50fps
    RX 390X ———— 225% - $200 - 112.5 KVR - AU$400 - 1440p, High, 35-45fps
    GTX 980 ———— 220% - $190 - 115.8 KVR - AU$350 - 1080p, Ultra, 50-60fps
    RX 570 ————- 215% - $200 - 107.5 KVR - AU$370 - 1080p, Ultra, 50-60fps
    R9 390 ————- 205% - $160 - 128.1 KVR - AU$360 - 1080p, Ultra, 45-55fps
    RX 470 ————- 200% - $170 - 117.6 KVR - AU$320 - 1080p, Ultra, 40-50fps

    GTX 1060 ——— 190% - $200 - 95.0 KVR - AU$300 - 1080p, High, 60-70fps
    GTX 970 ———- 185% - $160 - 115.6 KVR - AU$340 - 1080, High, 55-65fps
    GTX 1050Ti —— 165% - $140 - 117.9 KVR - AU$260 - 1080p, High, 50-60fps
    R9 380X ———- 155% - $120 - 129.2 KVR - AU$340 - 1080p, High, 45-55fps
    GTX 960 ———- 140% - $130 - 107.7 KVR - AU$200 - 1080p, High, 45-55fps

    GTX 1050 ———- 135% - $110 - 122.7 KVR - AU$170 - 1080p, Medium, 60-70fps
    GTX 950 ———— 110% - $100 - 110.0 KVR - AU$200 - 1080p, Medium, 50-60fps
    RX 560 ————— 105% - $100 - 105.0 KVR - AU$170 - 720p, Medium, 60-70fps
    GTX 750Ti ———- 95% - $80 - 118.8 KVR - AU$140 - 720p, Medium, 50-60fps
    RX 550 ————— 80% - $90 - 88.9 KVR - AU$160 - 720p, Medium, 40-50fps
    GT 1030 ————- 75% - $80 - 93.8 KVR - AU$110 - 720p, Medium, 30-40fps
    GTX 750 ————- 70% - $70 - 100.0 KVR - AU$100 - 720p, Medium, 30-40fps
    Intel Iris iGPU ——- 35% - $1 - KVR - AU$1 - 720p, Low, 25-35fps

    …Everything is relative, and the biggest factor is your Budget.

    vvv#Rant Start
    (The bolded GPU's are the elected best value in their weight-division)
    (GTX 1060 Ti is the full-card with the 9Gbps Boost. The GTX 1060 is the cut-down card with the slower VRAM and limited to 3GB)
    (List excludes GTX Titan, Quadro, and FirePro graph-ical cards for obvious reasons)
    (Also missing is Vega56, Vega64, and Vega64C due to no RRP, no availability, no AIB alternatives, practically vapourware for the public since time of writing. Hopefully, they succeed with Navi.)
    (Legacy cards from the Kepler family and the pre/early-GCN Radeon cards were removed due to list size and complexity)
    (Performance based on Notable Benchmarks such as "Future Indicators" like 3DMark FireStrike and Ashes of Singularity. Or "Current Market" such as WatchDogs_2, BattleField 1, Titanfall 2, Doom, Overwatch. And "Legacy Standings" such as GTA V, Crysis 3, Dirt 3, Skyrim, CS:GO)
    (Performance is "roughly", although some chips are better quality than others ie "chip lottery", and some PCB's are higher quality than others, and some Cooling Solutions are better than others. Drivers are unified, so little to no difference there. With that said, comparing a graphics card that has the worst in each field against another graphics card which has the best will net an observable difference. However, the difference is largely negligible and upto 15% or 5fps in severest scenario. Which is to say a perfect GTX 1080 will still be slower than the worst GTX 1080 Ti in performance)
    (Figures obtained from insight, trends, and a large collection of database. Of course it won't match a particular price you find, or a particular performance in a particular game title, it was intended more as a reference point as overall what one could expect. This is the best case we have in order to compare several cards in terms of price, performance, and value.)
    (Most games are designed from a reference point, so it means the performance scales exponentially rather than linear. In other words, law of diminishing returns applies in both the performance, and the perceivable improvements (ie Bumping Settings from High to Ultra may necessitate a 50% faster card, but visually the image won't be perceived as 50% better, but a smaller improvement).
    (So increasing budget nets you smaller and smaller visual fidelity improvements to games, perhaps best realised via VR use).
    (In previous generation (<2016), target was 1080p resolution, at 60fps framerate, High Settings by relying on Windows 7, DirectX11, 2GB GDDR5 VRAM, 8GB DDR3-2133 System RAM, and a 4GHz 4core/4thread Intel "Core i" CPU)
    (Current games are going through a transition as studios struggle to adapt to new software, and code for the PS4 Pro consoles, not to mention pricing problems which have forced more buyers to side-grade than anything else. Current titles (2016-2018) are targeting 1440p (with optional Checkerboard/resolution-scaling), at 60fps, Very High Settings by relying on Windows 10, DirectX12, 8GB GDDR5 VRAM, 16GB DDR4-2400 System RAM, and a 4GHz 6core/6thread AMD "ryzen" CPU)
    (Future games are going to push through the transition, with more mature software, less legacy-baggage, and better overall hardware to take advantage of. Future titles (>2018) are targeting 4K-HDR+ (with HighQuality textures), at 60fps, Very High Settings by relying on Windows 10 Pro, Vulkan, 12GB HBM VRAM, 32GB DDR4-3200 System RAM, and a 4.5GHz 8core/16thread AMD "ryzen" CPU)
    (Top partner systems for the bolded gpu's above are Ryzen 1700 with 32GB-3200, Ryzen 1600 with 16GB-3200, Ryzen 1400 with 16GB-2400, and Ryzen 1200 with 8GB-2400)
    ^^^#Rant Over

    • Kangal on 27/11/2017 - 23:03

      Alright, so the fine folks across the pond at Gamers Nexus just did a round-up like I did above.
      They didn't go into finer details, but have made the exact same recommendations I have. Here's a link to their videos:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YOQq5_bwHc

      • Flamo on 29/11/2017 - 07:48
        +1

        Wow, thanks Kangal, you really put in the hard yards there! Much appreciated :)

        And thanks everyone else that commented as well. I think with my current CPU (AMD FX6300) the 1050Ti makes the most sense. Cheers!

        • Kangal on 29/11/2017 - 07:50
          +1

          Hahaha all good. It did take several days to list it properly/accurately. Glad I saved it to a Note pad, as the PC shut itself and installed upgrades midway

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join