Is now a good time to buy low/medium end graphic cards

[Ripcurl330]

Hello all,
I have been saving up for XT6700RX for a long time as life wants to take more than I can save, so I am almost there financially but is now a good time to buy this level card as the market is being flooded with Chinese high ends, just looking for impartial honest answers/opinions as I have 1 shot at this and need it to be right. Before anyone wants to argue over this is a bad card etc. I feel I have done enough research to say it will suit my needs i.e only need it to play World of Tanks and Ark. on a basic monitor without the need to upgrade my PSU.
many thanks for reading in advance.

 

[Freddie1980]

Hello all,
I have been saving up for XT6700RX for a long time as life wants to take more than I can save, so I am almost there financially but is now a good time to buy this level card as the market is being flooded with Chinese high ends, just looking for impartial honest answers/opinions as I have 1 shot at this and need it to be right. Before anyone wants to argue over this is a bad card etc. I feel I have done enough research to say it will suit my needs i.e only need it to play World of Tanks and Ark. on a basic monitor without the need to upgrade my PSU.
many thanks for reading in advance.

I would try and buy one on the 2nd hand market if I were you. I'm guessing your budget is about £350ish? Intel's Battlemage is still a bit a way off imo so now is a good a time as any.

 

[Aretak]

It depends. Are you only interested in brand new cards, or are you looking at the used market? I think there are some good deals to be had when it comes to the latter, but pricing on the 6700 XT still seems crazy to me. It's a good card, but it shouldn't still be sitting at well over £300. Around Black Friday you could get one for ~£275, which is a more reasonable price, but they've shot back up. So in terms of it being a good time to buy that card, probably not relative to a couple of months ago.

 

[Tetras]

on a basic monitor

What resolution?

without the need to upgrade my PSU

What is the PSU?

The 67x0 XT was a solid buy not long ago, but that's around £300. When it gets nearer to £350, it is much less attractive.

The 3060 is often around £300 too, with the same memory capacity, but it is a big chunk slower, while the 4060 only has one thing going for it: low power consumption (similar to the RX 6600).

If you play at 1080p, a 6700 XT will still last you awhile and the 'cheap' 6800 (£400ish) seems harder to get hold of.

 

[TrojanWhore]

i.e only need it to play World of Tanks and Ark.

Ark: Evolved or Ascended?

I'm on a 7900XT and for the latter, it ain't great... Getting around 40fps on Epic settings at 1440p but setting things lower didn't seem to drastically change things fps wise, just didn't look as pretty.
You could lower the render resolution right down, but then it doesn't look very good at all.

I was previously on a 3060ti and for Evolved that was fine (60-100fps on high settings depending on map), 6700xt would probably be better still as I think VRAM was the limiting factor there.

As for you main question, as Tetras has said, you can't do much/any better at around £300, but nearer £350 for most models at the moment.
The cheapest one here (which is all we're allowed to directly link/reference!) is £320 on pre-order

Asrock RX Radeon 6700 XT Challenger D 12GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Order Asrock RX Radeon 6700 XT Challenger D 12GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

If you can find a 6800 for around £400 I'd go for that, 40% more shader cores and 16GB VRAM vs 12... Cheapest here is £420:

Gigabyte Radeon RX 6800 Gaming OC 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Order Gigabyte Radeon RX 6800 Gaming OC 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

(both on pre-order, so might want to give them a call and see when they're due!)

 

[Joxeon]

Its a terrible time to buy low end cards as the needle has barely move for the last 5 years, that said a 6700XT would probably be fine for 1080p gaming but if your paying above £300 then something like a used 3080/6800XT isn't much more and will be around 50% faster.

 

[Ripcurl330]

thank you for your responses shame about black Friday but no funds at the time it happens. ill check out 2nd hand but doesn't seem much price diff.but will persevere

Resolution is 1080 for the record - with 600w PSU and currently running NVIDEA 970 - so any upgrade for me will be amazing.

I will look into second hand 6800 as well as new will take me into next year for an upgrade at this rate.

You are all stars for responding and thank you for your views it is what I was after.

 

[g67575]

I would get a RX 7800 XT with 3 fans for ~£500, or not bother.

EDIT - misread sorry, thought you had a RX 6700 XT already.

Could be worth waiting for a price drop on the RX 7700 XT? They seem too expensive priced at >£400 right now. But these are about as fast as a RX 6800.

I think prices on the RX 7700 XT will come down a lot, once most /all of the 6700 series cards have sold out.

Overclockers have sold out of the 6700 series, which is probably a good sign:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-c...cs-cards/amd-radeon-rx-6700-xt-graphics-cards

If you can get a new RTX 3060 TI or RX 6700 XT for £300, might be worth it, especially if gaming at 1080p.

 

[Ripcurl330]

Sadly I only have enough money at this time for a card not a PSU as looking the 7700 needs 700w sadly but will look for any seconds in the mean time in case i can bag a better psu and delay the card, so bigger power bigger card options
i guess.
thank you for responce

 

[g67575]

I don't what know what power supply you have at the moment, but the card recommends a 550w power supply:

AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT Specs

AMD Navi 32, 2544 MHz, 3456 Cores, 216 TMUs, 96 ROPs, 12288 MB GDDR6, 2250 MHz, 192 bit

www.techpowerup.com

The card has a TDP of 245w.

Just 15 watts more than the 6700XT:

AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Specs

AMD Navi 22, 2581 MHz, 2560 Cores, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 12288 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 192 bit

www.techpowerup.com

I run a 7900 XT on 'just' a 650w Seasonic Prime power supply, with no issues at all.

The 700w PSU requirement on AMD's website seems like a mistake. Or maybe they are assuming very heavy CPU power consumption under load, from a high end CPU like the 12900K or 13900K.

 

[Ripcurl330]

i only have 600w but looking at the card in question it looks like 700 recommended but recommended vs what can be, is above my paygrade knowledge.
So places like this are awesome for knowledge. ty

 

[g67575]

Quality of the power supply matters. Do you know what the model is?

 

[g67575]

Just so you know, the peak power usage (for a short time interval) for this card is 296 watts:

The peak consumption is actually a bit lower than the RX 6700 XT's.

 

[Ripcurl330]

psu make is EVGA 600w

 

[g67575]

It's probably fine, but might be useful for you to know the precise model.

 

[Ripcurl330]

i will need to remove from case cage to see so may do that tomorrow so i can cover all bases for best educated view.
thank you for keeping this simple as I have very limited knowledge base so this is really helpful for me and not make my brain work to hard or explode with stuff i will never truly understand.
my next question/statement may open doors that i probably dont want to explore as per my previous brain matter statement, but as I only play WOT and my wife only plays Ark which looks like Minecraft with Dinosaurs on the GTX 970 currant card.
Do i need to explore rendering, layering and other stuff I dont know the meaning or purpose of or am I now overthinking this

 

[g67575]

Do i need to explore rendering, layering and other stuff I dont know the meaning or purpose of or am I now overthinking this

Not if you just want to play games.

 

[Tetras]

Do i need to explore rendering, layering and other stuff I dont know the meaning or purpose of or am I now overthinking this

Rendering: stuff like making 3d models (e.g. blender)?
Layering: you mean photography and animation? If so, that'd be e.g. photoshop, lightroom.

If you're not interested in it, don't worry about it.

 

[g67575]

There's a RTX 3060 TI elsewhere for £270, and you'd get a warranty with that. That seems like OK value to me.

Otherwise, I would wait for the RX 7700 XT to get a price drop, if you want something a bit more powerful + new.

The RX 7700 XT performs well in the most challenging games, like Alan Wake II:

Having said that, new features like frame generation are becoming more common now, with FSR3 being fully supported on the RTX 3000 series onwards, and RX 6000 series onwards, to get more performance at any resolution.

 

[G J]

I stayed clear of the 6700XT due to the power spikes and them being abit expensive second hand but manged to lucky get a 3060ti for a good price. I run the 3060ti on a 500w psu and its fine.