Upgrade from R9 290

[Dandle]

My old pc is running an I7 [email protected] with 16gb of ram and a Gigabyte windforce R9 290 which has served me pretty well.

I'm looking to change my pc in the next month and give this one to my boy and thought that the CPU is still pretty fast but the GFX card could probably do with updating. The motherboard is a Gigabyte UD5H. I really don't know how well the newer cards fair against the R9 290 though so am looking for advice or recommendations. Budget is around the £250 mark.

 

[Gray2233]

If you intend the GPU upgrade to be specifically for the 3770K rig and not transferred into another build, I'd look at something along the lines of a 1660S. Maybe hit the members market and see if you can get a good deal on one, or something of similar performance.

 

[chipps101]

Hardware unboxed have a good youtube video about how the 290 fares with 2019 games and it can still do a job at 1080p, i would recommend giving that video a watch.

As for a recommendation for an upgrade for £250 or less i'd say a 1660 super would probably be your best bet.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Most of the new cards (RTX or XT) will be a big improvement (due to the what ~ 7 years in time passed) for power efficiency and various features. However as above said, if your only a 1080p person then its maybe not worth it for the outlay. The best jump you will see is moving over to 1440p with monitor and GPU that will handle that. Thing is you have to be careful it doesnt progress into an entire system upgrade lol.

 

[Dandle]

I've been playing 1440p with the setup since i built it in 2012/2013. I've had a look around and think the best bet as suggested would be a 1660 super, the TI is just a little bit more than I want to spend on this rig. I will be building a new setup for me over the next few weeks and will wait until the next gen cards for that one (i might even put the super in that to tide me over).

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

Do yourself a favour and get a 5700, it's about 50% faster or so, can be had for not that much more. It will age loads better than anything Nvidia out too as it's what the consoles are built with so it'll work with newer engines going forward where as Nvidia will abandon older cards. You only upgrade every 4-5 years, so get a 5700

BTW your CPU needs upgrading sooner or later. The lack of cores/threads will see it throttle in some open world games with loads going on.

 

[Dandle]

Do yourself a favour and get a 5700, it's about 50% faster or so, can be had for not that much more. It will age loads better than anything Nvidia out too as it's what the consoles are built with so it'll work with newer engines going forward where as Nvidia will abandon older cards. You only upgrade every 4-5 years, so get a 5700

BTW your CPU needs upgrading sooner or later. The lack of cores/threads will see it throttle in some open world games with loads going on.

This is only to refresh the PC for my son to use. The 5700 cost about 50% more than the 1660 super which can be had for just over £200.

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

This is only to refresh the PC for my son to use. The 5700 cost about 50% more than the 1660 super which can be had for just over £200.

Unfortunately there isn't any great deals for the 5700 right now. But you can get a 5600XT for £260, which is a cut down 5700 and 10%-5% slower, ie way quicker than a 1660 Super

 

[gpuerrilla]

Unfortunately there isn't any great deals for the 5700 right now. But you can get a 5600XT for £260, which is a cut down 5700 and 10%-5% slower, ie way quicker than a 1660 Super

5600XT is a good buy agreed especially if its not much more than the 1660s.

 

[VeNT]

it may be worth keeping an eye on the forums for something second hand.

 

[Trick]

Go second hand. I went from an R9 290 on an i5 3570k @4.3ghz to a Vega64 for £120 and it’s a massive bang-for-buck improvement

 

[merlin6r]

Go second hand. I went from an R9 290 on an i5 3570k @4.3ghz to a Vega64 for £120 and it’s a massive bang-for-buck improvement

As long as you have a very decent power supply! I'm not sure I'd put a Vega64 in a kids pc thats going to be gaming 12 hours a day!

 

[BigBANGtheory]

My old pc is running an I7 [email protected] with 16gb of ram and a Gigabyte windforce R9 290 which has served me pretty well.

I'm looking to change my pc in the next month and give this one to my boy and thought that the CPU is still pretty fast but the GFX card could probably do with updating. The motherboard is a Gigabyte UD5H. I really don't know how well the newer cards fair against the R9 290 though so am looking for advice or recommendations. Budget is around the £250 mark.

For £250 your best bet is a 2nd hand GPU maybe a 1080 but failing that a 1070Ti

Your purchase power really needs to go up to £320 for a 5700 XT would be my advice.

I went R9 290x > 980Ti > skipped Pascal > narrowly avoided a 1080Ti (cos the availability and prices went silly) > gave 2 fingers to Turing (as it was a **** take over Pascal) > will consider Ampere and Navi 2X but console if it doesn't improve

don't know if that helps but sharing in case it does

 

[Dandle]

Thanks for the replies. If i pushed to a 5700xt would the cpu not be a bottle neck on the system?

I'm keeping my eye out on the members market and the bay now. I really don't want to go above £250 as any more and it start eating into the budget of my next build. That said there isn't much around under that at the moment.

 

[Dandle]

Well I pushed the budget up and went for a Gigabyte RTX 2060 Windforce OC V2. From what I have seen it should pair pretty well with the [email protected] and will buy me some time with this pc to wait for the next gen Ryzen and AMD cards for my main build in a few months. Thanks for all the input.