Budget Upgrade for 1080p? ( Current system 4690K / GTX 970)

13thShadow

13thShadow

13thShadow

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I had hoped to do a major system upgrade in the next couple of months, but unfortunately life has got in the way and I've found myself with a much more reduced budget than I had previously hoped.



I still want to do some sort of upgrade though but I intend now to remain at 1080p 60Hz for the foreseeable future ( I had hoped to move to 1080 144)



So I guess I need ideas or advice as to the best path to take. I have a budget of around £200 and I assume the best thing to do would be to look at some sort of GPU upgrade, but I'm really unsure of what to go for. I've always been team green, and I know the recent AMD cards have been a bit of a mess, but I'm open to an AMD card as long as the drivers are stable.



So is there anything that jumps out as being an ideal choice in this situation? It's hard to know exactly what to go for. I cant see me making any more upgrades for a while so I want to make sure I'm getting the best out of my money that I can!



Any help is much appreciated
 
Well, you need to be forewarned that if you upgrade GPU too much, your 4690K will bottleneck it in modern games. 4690K and GTX 970 are well-matched and ideally both would be upgraded at the same time. Though remaining at 60Hz (and using a 60 fps cap) will help it.

The good thing is you can carry a new GPU into a new system. But that begs the question, is it a wise choice to spend £200 on say a 1660 Super right now, when you are sticking with 1080p 60Hz for the foreseeable future and the 970 is still decent for that res/refresh?

If it was myself, I'd probably just carry on, save up more and upgrade the lot. Also, there should be new Nvidia cards April-June.

For example, if you had more to spend right now, you could get a Ryzen 3600, Tomahawk MAX and 16GB DDR4 for about £325, 1660 Super for £200, and then sell your old parts to offset some of that cost. Assuming you'd keep your PSU and drives.
 
Danny75 said:
Well, you need to be forewarned that if you upgrade GPU too much, your 4690K will bottleneck it in modern games. 4690K and GTX 970 are well-matched and ideally both would be upgraded at the same time. Though remaining at 60Hz (and using a 60 fps cap) will help it.

The good thing is you can carry a new GPU into a new system. But that begs the question, is it a wise choice to spend £200 on say a 1660 Super right now, when you are sticking with 1080p 60Hz for the foreseeable future and the 970 is still decent for that res/refresh?

If it was myself, I'd probably just carry on, save up more and upgrade the lot. Also, there should be new Nvidia cards April-June.

For example, if you had more to spend right now, you could get a Ryzen 3600, Tomahawk MAX and 16GB DDR4 for about £325, 1660 Super for £200, and then sell your old parts to offset some of that cost. Assuming you'd keep your PSU and drives.
Click to expand...
The 970 certainly does do an admirable job for a card of it's age!
 
ah ok, no need to budget for a cooler then.

the first worthwhile nvidia gpu to upgrade to, would be the 2060. something like this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/zota...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-11c-zt.html
reason being that you'd want at least a 50% performance gain, and only upgrading to the 2060 and above would provide that.
it's doable if you'd sell your 970 first and use the funds added along the £200 budget
 
3600x with b450 motherboard and not sure about gpu, it seems the new amd gpus are quite competitive though so probably go amd on that also or maybe if you really want nvidia something like a 1070.
 
A
tamzzy said:
ah ok, no need to budget for a cooler then.

the first worthwhile nvidia gpu to upgrade to, would be the 2060. something like this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/zota...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-11c-zt.html
reason being that you'd want at least a 50% performance gain, and only upgrading to the 2060 and above would provide that.
it's doable if you'd sell your 970 first and use the funds added along the £200 budget
Click to expand...
I probably should have mentioned that the £200 is including whatever I get for the 970!
 
Don't waste money on pointless upgrades then. 4690K will bottleneck the 2060 at 1080p. 1660 Super, why bother when 970 still fine for 1080p 60Hz. Save up more.
 
Agreed with those above. Just stick with what you have. I have similar specs with my 4770k being better than the 4690k but your 970 is probably better than my rx480 8gb but with a similar type of monitor I have no problem playing anything 1080p on max settings.
 
You might find more benefit upgrading your hdd to an ssd as this will improve loading time and smoothness in games.
 
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