Low-Mid range GPU for 1440p gaming and Stable Diffusion

[Cern]

I'm looking for a GPU upgrade from my 1660 Super that ticks the following boxes:

* 1440p gaming on a 165 Hz monitor. I'm happy with settings on High, not obsessed about playing on Ultra. I mostly play MMOs (GW2 etc) and RPG titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, Witcher 3 etc.

* Stable Diffusion. I do a lot of work with AI art either natively in SD or in Midjourney and then upscaled in SD. So 12GB vRAM is pretty essential. Anything 8GB or less isn't really going to cut it.

* General art and graphics apps

* Max £400 budget.

I'm currently considering the Asus Rtx 3060 Dual OC 12GB as it seems to fit my needs:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-467-as.html

But I've read a few bad reviews about the poor and noisy cooling on this which has put me off a bit. So have been looking around at other options, but mostly keep coming back to a 12GB 3060 of some sort.

Any thoughts or recommendations?

 

[Cern]

I should stress that I don't need to play games at 165Hz, the monitor is Gsync / Freesync. So I just need a minimum of about 60 fps @ 1440p, High settings, when gaming to be comfortable.

And yep, unfortunately Stable Diffusion is better optimised on Nvidia for a number of reasons. I hadn't thought of the cloud possibility though. But I do use SD a lot so $1 an hour is going to add up fairly quickly.

 

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I think it'll be borderline even for that soon. With older MMOs you'll be fine, but newer games are going to be hard work. The 3060 was a 1080p card even when it was released and it is about to be replaced.

Yeah, good point, this had worried me a bit. The 12GB on the 3060 is reasonably future proof for gaming, but in other respects the 3060 isn't such a good investment for 1440p. But I currently game on a 1660 Super 6GB so ......

The problem for me is that I could wait for the 4060 to be released, but the heavily rumoured specs are 8GB vram (same for the 4060 Ti) and this seems seriously underspec for 2023, for gaming as well as other uses.

 

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Yeah, nvidias upsell strategy on vram is super annoying, but being locked into their cards cos of your work, I really think you're best off buying a 4070 for 1440p at this point. I know they're not every game, but in the results on hardware unboxed, hogwarts and last of us part 1 were barely hitting 60 fps at medium on a 3060, if that's the future for 1440p then I don't think something less powerful than a 6800 / 4070 is going to cut it anymore. It is true that for older or better optimised games a 3060 can do 1440p no problem, but do you want to buy a new card that's already struggling? It isn't that big a jump on a 1660 Super either, to be honest..

Yeah I guess a 3060 isn't going to wow me for the money. I kind of knew that would be the case, it was the 12GB requirement that lead me there. Not sure I can stretch to a 4070 but I do get the logic of it. What chance the price of the 4070 will drop to nearer £500 anytime soon? Rhetorical question of course, fat chance

 

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Are you using Stable Diffusion professional i.e. do you use it to make money or do you use it just a hobby/fun? If it's the former then get the 12gb 3060, Radeon cards don't work all that well with Diffusion and time is money.

At this point semi-professionally, but the intention is to use it professionally. I work in design and illustration and I'm experimenting with how AI tools can help with my existing workflow as well as exploring new possibilities that it opens up such as print on demand and other ideas. But I keep running into vram issues with SD on my 1660 Super, plus I've had to limit it to fp32 full precision mode because of the 1660's architecture, which slows things down. So a 3060 is going to bring a lot of improvements I expect.

 

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So did you eventually get the 3060? Was it worth it? I have a 1660 Super also. I have it running "decently" in Stable Diffusion with many config tweaks like you mentioned. I have an offer to get a used 3060 12 GB for just over 220$ Canadian (150 Euros). I'm likely just going to get it at this point. I also used Unreal Engine which will benefit greatly from it.

Sorry, I forgot to update the thread. Yes, I got a Asus Dual v2 3060 a couple of months ago. Generally very happy with it.

For Stable Diffusion it's made a big difference compared to the 1660 Super. Obviously most of the config tweaks are no longer needed, such as no-half, medvram and precision full, all of which speeds things up greatly. As well as speed, it's great to not be so restricted on the dimensions I can render / upscale to. Best of all is to be able to use ControlNet without any restrictions. Definitely feels like a game changer over the 1660 Super.

For gaming, it's a mixed bag. It's definitely a noticeable fps boost over the 1660 Super, about 30 fps on average in the games I play. Plus of course I can bump the textures up to High / Ultra on anything without worries thanks to the 12 GB. DLSS 2 is nice in the games that support it. But it does run noticeably hotter than my 1660 Super. Both are Asus dual fan models, but the 1660 Super has superior fans. I've had to throttle the 3060 to 75 fps in certain games, even though it can produce more, just to keep the fan speed down from max. I kind of expected this would be the case from the reviews of the Asus Dual, but discounted price was good and the 3-fan 3060s such as the Asus TUF were £50 more and would have needed me to reconfigure my case to fit. With hindsight, maybe I should have gone with this option though. But it's ok, it was a compromise I knew I was making.

If you have an offer of a 3060 for 220$ Canadian I'd say this sounds like a good deal and you'll definitely see a big improvement with SD. Only caveat is that if you have any cooling issues with your case, or are bothered about fan noise, be wary of the single fan 3060s.