Upgrade Recommendations from a 5700XT: 6800/XT/3080?

[RedMogg]

Happy New Year to you all,

My son would like to upgrade his GPU from his Red Devil 5700XT, which has been flawless for the two years it's been in his rig.
Budget is £420 (birthday & Xmas spends), but I could add another £50 if there's value to be had.

We're looking at a secondhand purchase from a retailer that offers a 2 year warranty, rather than risking a purchase from eBay/FB Marketplace.

Current contenders are a Sapphire Nitro 6800 (non-XT) for £420, or there's both ASRock Phantom & Taichi variants of the 6800XT for £475, all with 16Gb VRAM.

The best Nvidia cards available for his budget appear to be the Zotac Trinity or Gigabyte Gaming OC 3080 (10Gb), both at £460.

His current spec is:
3800X
32Gb 3200mhz
Asrock Steel Legend B450M
Superflower Leadex 3 850W
Lancool 2

He plays Fortnite (Ranked Elite, currently), Rocket League & Apex, using a 1440p 165hz monitor (which he's been running at 1080p to squeeze the most FPS out of his GPU).

He's not fussed by Ray tracing and creates YouTube videos of his competitive games, which I understand makes the Radeon cards with more VRAM more useful...

Happy for input.

 

[mickyflinn]

7800xt brand new 3 year warranty £500 is what I would get.

 

[RedMogg]

7800xt brand new 3 year warranty £500 is what I would get.

The Pulse or MBA version?
That throws a spanner in the works!

Will need to have a think (obviously the extra £40 over the 6800XT is a no-brainer), as we're trying to teach our son about financial discipline and budgeting. Was trying to limit the amount I'd top his funds up to £50, but it's hard to argue against getting the newer generation...

 

[mickyflinn]

The Pulse or MBA version?
That throws a spanner in the works!

Will need to have a think (obviously the extra £40 over the 6800XT is a no-brainer), as we're trying to teach our son about financial discipline and budgeting. Was trying to limit the amount I'd top his funds up to £50, but it's hard to argue against getting the newer generation...

Pulse.

You can always share your logic about it being a better choice due to being new and the 3 year warranty and totally understand about finance and budgeting as I do with my own son.

Give him the option to stretch to the 7800xt but then he would have to come up maybe half or all of the extra. Even if it's installments but keep him to it.

 

[G-Man]

Bit higher than your budget but I went for the Nitro 7800XT to replace my 5700XT.

Damned thing is barely warmer at full load than the 5700XT was at idle. Probably very much overkill for 1080p but YOLO and all that. Beast of a card size wise so might have fitting issues.

 

[JediFragger]

7800xt brand new 3 year warranty £500 is what I would get.

Yup, current champ at that price-point.

 

[RedMogg]

Man-Mathed it to the Boss. Just waiting for all the bills to come out and then hopefully order on payday (the 183rd of January).

 

[nutsnut]

7800xt is the minimum you should be looking at here.

That would be a good uplift from the 5700 and enabled you to buy new.

 

[Joxeon]

A 7700XT is an option if you wanted to stick to your £420 budget although the 7800XT is 20% faster so would offer slightly better price to performance at £500.

You can sometimes find 6800 cards new for £380 which would have better price to performance than either.

 

[phatboy]

another vote for the 7800XT here,

I have seem RX6800's go for the £300 mark new recently and that would still be a pretty decent jump in both performance and 100% extra VRAM

 

[JediFragger]

(the 183rd of January).

That's a ways off dude

 

[RedMogg]

That's a ways off dude

We were supposed to have Xmas in Egypt, by the pool - all 15 of our family, to commemorate my Father-in-law who died in March last year. But the travel agent cancelled plans at the end of October (too close to conflict zone).
Normally we'd have started buying for Xmas in August, to spread things out, but instead we had October's income to cover our three kids.

Managed to stick within budget, but definitely feeling the pinch this year; January's pay seems that much farther away. My pension is paid quarterly, which makes things slightly more challenging

 

[Finners]

The Pulse or MBA version?
That throws a spanner in the works!

Will need to have a think (obviously the extra £40 over the 6800XT is a no-brainer), as we're trying to teach our son about financial discipline and budgeting. Was trying to limit the amount I'd top his funds up to £50, but it's hard to argue against getting the newer generation...

Maybe "loan" him the extra and trade in the 5700xt for ~£100 to the place with the 2 year warranty and sort it out like that.

I wouldn't touch an Nvidia card from that place as it was highly likely to have been mined on.

 

[RedMogg]

Maybe "loan" him the extra and trade in the 5700xt for ~£100 to the place with the 2 year warranty and sort it out like that.

I wouldn't touch an Nvidia card from that place as it was highly likely to have been mined on.

That was the initial plan, until my 9 year old daughter asked for a PC for her birthday in February...

Thankfully got a good few spare components to put together the majority of a system for her - just need case/Mobo/PSU/NVME & keyboard.

 

[RedMogg]

Sapphire 7800XT Nitro ordered.

Also, Asrock B550M Steel Legend, 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB, Fractal Pop Air Mini, MSI MAG A850GL & 2Tb Crucial P3 Plus - a little over-specced for a piddly 2600X, but I'm keeping an eye out for 3700X/3800X bargains...

Expensive morning

 

[marinersfan]

Don't fancy buying me a new card whilst you're feeling frivolous
I've been looking for months, but literally vomiting at some of the prices.

 

[RedMogg]

Don't fancy buying me a new card whilst you're feeling frivolous
I've been looking for months, but literally vomiting at some of the prices.

If I had the ££££ spare, I'd upgrade my 2080Ti first
I didn't want to spend £540 on a GPU, but considering a secondhand 6950XT is even more, as was a 4070Ti or 3080, then the "next one down from an £1100, 7900XT" started to make the most sense.

I could have spent £489 on a Speedster version, but 10% more to get the best (I rate the Nitro over the Red Devil, and I've not found a Toxic version) was a no-brainer.

 

[mickyflinn]

Sapphire 7800XT Nitro ordered.

Also, Asrock B550M Steel Legend, 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB, Fractal Pop Air Mini, MSI MAG A850GL & 2Tb Crucial P3 Plus - a little over-specced for a piddly 2600X, but I'm keeping an eye out for 3700X/3800X bargains...

Expensive morning

You should ideally looking at a 5000 series CPU, this will also give your pcie4 for your b550 motherboard.

 

[RedMogg]

You should ideally looking at a 5000 series CPU, this will also give your pcie4 for your b550 motherboard.

Just trying to find an m-atx B550 board with an USB-C front panel header at the moment. Choice is extremely limited.

 

[mickyflinn]

Just trying to find an m-atx B550 board with an USB-C front panel header at the moment. Choice is extremely limited.

Have you found anything?

You can get internal usb header to front panel type c