Upgrade to a 970 that won't break the bank

bigbob1

bigbob1

bigbob1

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My son runs a 970 plays fortnight, beam NG and a few random more taxing games, if like to get him an upgrade that he will notice a jump in but that doesn't break the bank, ideally around £150 used or new, the rest if his machine is quote modern, he's got a ryzen 5 and DDR4 ram 16gb, I'll be adding a SSD for him too to bump a bit if speed up too there.

Thanks all
 
bigbob1 said:
ideally around £150 used or new
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you'd be looking at a gtx 1070 from the bay for that kind of money
it's a reasonable bump (40-50%) in graphics performance - which is normally what i'd suggest to aim at a minimum, when upgrading graphics cards
however, the gpu/architecture was released nearly 6 1/2 years now, so most of the cards you'd buy will have no warranty left (if that matters to you)
 
Would be helpful to have the full system specs , there are a few Ryzen 5 cpus so need to know which one it is to advise properly.

Like tamzzy says you can get a decent boost with a second hand card but some new cards are also good value and offer far better performance and features.

If you are looking at the new market then an RX 6600 is the best value card but it is only has x8 pcie lanes so if your Ryzen 5 is not a 5600 then it will only be PCIE 3 and will limit the performance in some siturations. After that you are looking at a 3060ti FE or a RX 6700 but they are over £350.
 
I do not see much value in jumping just 1 generation from 970 to a 1070/1080. I totally understand if someone wants to stick to a budget but sometimes it is best to just keep what you already have or to pay more for an option that will give you longevity and greater value by keeping the PC for many more years.

For a decade I played PC games and would buy cards in the £200 range. Unfortunately most of the options in that price bracket are not good or looking at the second hand market.

It is ultimately bigbobs choice what to buy, I am just highlighting all the options. I really wish there were better options closer to the £200 mark, in the US the 6600 is on sale new for just over $200 but thats not the case over here.
 
Haz123 said:
I do not see much value in jumping just 1 generation from 970 to a 1070/1080.
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it's a reasonable bump in performance
to enthusiasts with money it isn't ideal, but sometimes, it is what it is if there is no leeway in the budget and OP definitely wants an upgrade

Haz123 said:
I really wish there were better options closer to the £200 mark, in the US the 6600 is on sale new for just over $200 but thats not the case over here.
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yeah i totally agree lol. the low/low-mid end of the market has been neglected (+ the weakened £)
 
Really appreciate the advice guys thanks, I think a 1070 is the best idea and then maybe next Xmas if we've not all been nuked I'll build him a full on new gaming system.
 
bigbob1 said:
Really appreciate the advice guys thanks, I think a 1070 is the best idea and then maybe next Xmas if we've not all been nuked I'll build him a full on new gaming system.
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The 1070 is 50% faster than the 970 but the 6600 is 100% faster for £100 more and you'll get a 3 year warranty buying new.
 
bigbob1 said:
Is it only 100 % faster with a certain ryzen tho? I need to double check his system in the morning to confirm what cpu it is
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In most games the RX 6600 acts totally normal when in a PCIe 3 system but then you get an odd game like Doom Eternal and it loses 30% performance due to it only having 8 lanes. In general its a very good budget card but I do not like recommending something to someone without them knowing any potential downsides.
 
OK thank you, let me grab the full spec tomorrow and we can see if I need to spend the extra.

I'm. Still rocking a 1080ti from just after release and struggling to find anything of note to swap it for that isn't crazy priced, I used to upgrade mine and my sons yearly but recently things have gone a bit heywire, personally I'm rocking a 5600x, happy enough that it renders out 4k video in resolve in minutes and churns up photoshop and sim racing like a champ, I know one day soon I need to bite the bullet but I keep hoping prices will fall... They don't...
 
Well the perfect card for him to upgrade to is actually your 1080ti, it has very similar performance to an RX 6600 with no potential loses of performance.

You may want to wait a couple of weeks and see what the RDNA3 announcement does to prices and see whether the £ improves. My son gets my old gpus when I upgrade so he will be getting my 6800 to replace his 1080 when I get a new card, if prices remain idiotic that may be a while.
 
Interesting, what would you suggest a decent bump from my 1080ti is? I know this cards been lovingly cooled, not abused or ovedclocked and never mined, so it might actually be a good idea.

Depending on how much I'd be in the hole for...
 
bigbob1 said:
Interesting, what would you suggest a decent bump from my 1080ti is? I know this cards been lovingly cooled, not abused or ovedclocked and never mined, so it might actually be a good idea.

Depending on how much I'd be in the hole for...
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www.techpowerup.com

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Specs

NVIDIA GP102, 1582 MHz, 3584 Cores, 224 TMUs, 88 ROPs, 11264 MB GDDR5X, 1376 MHz, 352 bit
www.techpowerup.com
crude chart but anything that's ~140% and above would be my recommendation (my 50% rule) - so 3070ti and above

personally, i went 1080ti -> 6700xt (+20%) and was disappointed, so chucked that and got a 3080 instead lol
 
To get a decent step up over a 1080ti you are looking at a 6700xt 6800 or 3070 3070ti and thats upto or over £500 so nowhere near your budget. The 5600x is a very capable cpu and they are testing 4090s with it and very little bottlenecking at 4k, no rush to upgrade that imo and I will run my 5800x system for at least next 3 years.

Edit - tamzzy beat me to it and if he did the upgrade take his word for it. I went from 1080 to 6800 and that was huge improvement.
 
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It blows the budget out of the water but if he's getting a 1080ti and I'm. Getting 140% with a 3070ti then it's definitely something worth considering, I've been wanting to upgrade for a while but just never found anything that gave enough performance against the bat **** crazy prices.

I take it it's impossible to get a 3070ti for 400 notes though? (I'm from Yorkshire lads, tight as a Nats whisker)
 
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