Graphic Card advice

ninjag · 19 May 2025 at 10:11

Build my rig back in 2021 and it's served me well, but I think it's time to upgrade my graphics card as it's struggling a bit for PCVR now.

Current system (mostly bought from here):

AMD 5600X
MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk
Kingston HyperX Fury 32GB DDR4 PC4-28800C183600MHz (might need to replace this)
WD Black SN850 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME
Corsair RM750x
Nvidia 3060Ti FE

I'm not really wanting to go above £500-600 so the obvious choice is the RTX 5070 which seems like a decent jump in performance from my current card, but I do have a few queries on it if anyone could help please?

1. My current card is a Founders Edition and I've ran an undervolt overclock for years now without any issues that I can remember, whereas previous third party branded cards have given me a few issues (PALIT in particular, even when stock). Would sticking to FE be best, or should I explore the pre-OC cards from other brands?
2. Is my PSU suitable for the 5070?
3. Do some of the third party branded cards require more than two 8 pin connections?
4. Should I be looking at a totally different card or an AMD one? I've seen mention that the 5070 is pretty much the same as the 4070, but when taking into account the price would it not make sense to get the latest one?

Cheers!

mickyflinn · 19 May 2025 at 12:14

Hi.

750w is fine for a 5070 and will do up to a 9070xt depending on model. The 5070 at £500 seems a decent option which puts it against the more expensive 9070 so it's worth checking comparison and benchmarks.

ninjag · 19 May 2025 at 13:50

mickyflinn said:
Hi.

750w is fine for a 5070 and will do up to a 9070xt depending on model. The 5070 at £500 seems a decent option which puts it against the more expensive 9070 so it's worth checking comparison and benchmarks.

Thanks. It does seem pretty decent bang for buck when looking at the PassMark tables (which I only use as a broad reference), it's up there in the top 20 and from my little bit of research to get anything quicker would be a £300+ increase in cost?

I do find the results a little odd sometimes, as it shows the 7900XT as performing better than the 9070XT ?

PassMark Video Card (GPU) Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

Video Card Benchmarks - Over 1,000,000 Video Cards and 3,900 Models Benchmarked and compared in graph form - This page contains a graph which includes benchmark results for high end Video Cards - such as recently released ATI and nVidia video cards using the PCI-Express standard.

www.videocardbenchmark.net

mickyflinn · 19 May 2025 at 14:11

ninjag said:
Thanks. It does seem pretty decent bang for buck when looking at the PassMark tables (which I only use as a broad reference), it's up there in the top 20 and from my little bit of research to get anything quicker would be a £300+ increase in cost?

I do find the results a little odd sometimes, as it shows the 7900XT as performing better than the 9070XT ?

PassMark Video Card (GPU) Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

Video Card Benchmarks - Over 1,000,000 Video Cards and 3,900 Models Benchmarked and compared in graph form - This page contains a graph which includes benchmark results for high end Video Cards - such as recently released ATI and nVidia video cards using the PCI-Express standard.

www.videocardbenchmark.net

It's the £500 that makes it a easy choice as the Radeon GPUs are inflated ATM , the 12gb vram isnt great but it's an easy choice imo.

Tetras · 19 May 2025 at 14:14

ninjag said:
2. Is my PSU suitable for the 5070?

Yeah, though if you have an older model you'll need to use an adapter for the FE. I think most (all?) 5070s also use the 16 pin though (unlike the 4070, where AIB cards used the 8 pin), so I guess it is a moot point.

ninjag said:
4. Should I be looking at a totally different card or an AMD one? I've seen mention that the 5070 is pretty much the same as the 4070, but when taking into account the price would it not make sense to get the latest one?

I don't think you can buy a 4070 anymore anyway.

The 9070 is a good card, but probably have to pay £50-£100+ more for one. There's a thread about the 9070 in VR in the VR forum.

What resolution do you play at?

ninjag said:
from my little bit of research to get anything quicker would be a £300+ increase in cost?

9070 XT is faster than the 5070 and isn't £300. 5070 Ti would be around £200 (depends if you're comparing apples-to-apples models wise or not).

ninjag · 19 May 2025 at 14:34

mickyflinn said:
It's the £500 that makes it a easy choice as the Radeon GPUs are inflated ATM , the 12gh vram is great but it's an easy choice imo.

Ouch! Thanks, was there any reference to PCVR? I'm sure I've read that Nvidia have the edge with this.

ninjag · 19 May 2025 at 14:40

Tetras said:
Yeah, though if you have an older model you'll need to use an adapter for the FE. I think most (all?) 5070s also use the 16 pin though (unlike the 4070, where AIB cards used the 8 pin), so I guess it is a moot point.

I think my current 3060Ti FE has a funny plug going into the card, but it came with an adapter in the box for my 8 pin.

Tetras said:
I don't think you can buy a 4070 anymore anyway.

The 9070 is a good card, but probably have to pay £50-£100+ more for one. There's a thread about the 9070 in VR in the VR forum.

What resolution do you play at?

My current card is fine for my PC games, but it's PCVR where it's now struggling a little. I've got the Virtual Desktop settings at Medium for VR Graphics Quality and the VR bitrate at 90Mbps and only 72fps. I get Game Latency of about 15ms, the other three sit around 1-3ms. Overall Latency is usually around 30ms but it can rise in demanding situation. VR Resolution is 100% I've tried both SteamVR and VDXR runtimes, the various Codecs etc.

In game settings appear to make little difference to the latency, so I keep them at high usually. Networking etc is all fine,

Tetras said:
9070 XT is faster than the 5070 and isn't £300. 5070 Ti would be around £200 (depends if you're comparing apples-to-apples models wise or not).

Sorry, I meant the next level up Nvidia. Was only looking at the Nvidia store, as I'm still not sure about FE or third party.

Thanks

ninjag · 19 May 2025 at 21:50

Is it ok to use a pigtailed 6+2 & 6+2 for the 5070 FE?

Quartz · 19 May 2025 at 22:31

You might want to hold off a couple of days, just in case Intel launch a new gaming GPU at Computex. They launched business GPUs today.

Tetras · 19 May 2025 at 22:43

ninjag said:
Is it ok to use a pigtailed 6+2 & 6+2 for the 5070 FE?

It should be, 5070 uses around 230 watts on average (gaming), but I'd always use 2x independent cables if possible.

ninjag · 20 May 2025 at 00:13

Tetras said:
It should be, 5070 uses around 230 watts on average (gaming), but I'd always use 2x independent cables if possible.

Cool, that makes things a little easier as I won't have to pull apart the case PSU cover etc.

ninjag · 20 May 2025 at 00:15

Quartz said:
You might want to hold off a couple of days, just in case Intel launch a new gaming GPU at Computex. They launched business GPUs today.

I hope not, it arrives tomorrow! lol I've been mulling over a new card for a while now and figured I needed to just make a decision. Hopefully it will work out for me.

Quartz · 20 May 2025 at 00:18

ninjag said:
Is it ok to use a pigtailed 6+2 & 6+2 for the 5070 FE?

This depends upon the PSU. Your Corsair is single-rail with decent power cables so it should be okay, but using two cables is preferred. I wouldn't dare use a single cable on a low-reputation PSU. Having two cables will make later upgrades easier too

ninjag said:
I hope not, it arrives tomorrow!

Have fun with it!

ninjag · 20 May 2025 at 01:26

Quartz said:
This depends upon the PSU. Your Corsair is single-rail with decent power cables so it should be okay, but using two cables is preferred. I wouldn't dare use a single cable on a low-reputation PSU. Having two cables will make later upgrades easier too

Have fun with it!

Aw crap, looks like I'm going to have to crawl into the attic and find the original boxes for the extra cable lol

ninjag · 20 May 2025 at 14:35

Well, for the third time this month DPD have failed me.

The card should have arrived this morning, but there's yet another 24 hour delay. It needs a security pin to be provided by me so at least this time the driver can't change the delivery address to a local shop without my permission and then have their customer service agents lie about it and then their escalations team have clearly done nothing as well. Alas, because it was an FE card I couldn't buy it from here, but I notice OC use DPD as well and I simply can't trust them anymore.

Was really looking forward to it as well.

ninjag · 20 May 2025 at 21:34

Slight update for what it's worth. The supplier (who I don't think I'm allowed to mention) has jumped all over this and taken it far more seriously than I would have expected. Whilst it's a bit of a first world problem that I have to wait another day, three times in a row is frustrating and I'm glad they are stepping in because to DPD I'm insignificant, but this supplier will carry far more weight. I've been told it will arrive tomorrow morning, so at least I've got some time tonight to dig out the extra cable!

ninjag · 21 May 2025 at 11:59

Happy days, it's arrived safely! Looking forward to seeing how it performs. My son will be delighted as he'll be inheriting my 3060Ti FE, but it might be an anti-climax as I already know that the once epic i7-3770k which I passed on to him will bottleneck things. I'll be looking at a new CPU, MB and RAM though, everything else is new and modern in his computer.

As for DPD, apparently the hub that sorts things to go to Scotland has been experiencing problems over the last month and they are working on it. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but there's little else I can do but give them the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully enough fuss has been created that going forward I can still use suppliers who use DPD, including OCUK.

ninjag · 21 May 2025 at 19:33

Out with the old, in with the new!

Was thinking about my son's PC what with the i7-3770k that will bottleneck the 3060Ti FE. I don't use it on my computer, but I wonder if that Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling feature will help his CPU out a little?

Tetras · 21 May 2025 at 19:47

ninjag said:
but I wonder if that Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling feature will help his CPU out a little?

Would be interested to know your findings.

ninjag · 21 May 2025 at 21:24

Tetras said:
Would be interested to know your findings.

He plays Minecraft and I'm not sure how taxing it is, but I think I've still got some FPS monitoring software on that computer so I'll check before and afters.

The 5070 is doing wonderful things for my VR lol Fans are noisy though, I like to have custom fan profiles but they sit at around 1,800rpm minimum, which is audible. If I set them to auto then they drop to a silent 0rpm, although I've never been keen on letting fans go to zero rpm, I'm sure there's something about them getting stuck there. I guess if the card can do it then it must be designed to.