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Graphical card : performance and longevity

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torriep

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Hello,

Sorry for my bad English (I'm French).
I need some help to find a new graphic card after my 7 years old “Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 7950 950 Mhz 3 Go PCI-Express 16x” just died (artifacts on the screen each time I boot) :

- Case Fractal Design Define R4 - Black Pearl
- Motherboard MSI Z77A-G45 (ATX/Intel Socket 1155)
- CPU Intel Ivy Bridge CPU Core i5-3570K / 3.80 GHz 4 cores Socket-LGA1155 6 Mo Cache
- DEAD Graphical card Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 7950 950 Mhz 3 Go PCI-Express 16x
- 16Go Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 XMS3 8GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1333 Mhz CL9 (changed 2 years ago)
- Power supply EVGA 100-W1-0600-K2 Alimentation PC 600 W. (changed 2 years ago)

I prefer to keep my “old” configuration for the moment as my motherboard and CPU are still functioning. I know that DDR3, the socket of my motherboard and the CPU are way too old, but for the moment, it doesn't stop me to play latest games on medium medium/high quality because with a 7 years old graphic card, I knew I couldn't have better.
I also know that my CPU will be limit the performance of my new graphic card but I know that, when my CPU and/or motherboard will die, I will enjoy the full capacity of my graphic card. (and with a 7 years old CPU/motherboard, if they don't die alone, I might change them in 2 years).

I didn't follow news about hardware recently, so I need some help to find the best graphical card for my budget, please.

To know what I'm looking for my new graphical card, I think you might know what I use it for : the last 7 years, I play the most of the time to sports games (FIFA, NBA 2K, Football Manager, Rocket League, F1, etc.), but also games like “Call of Duty” or “Assassin's Creed”. What I liked with my actual dead graphical card is that 7 years later, I still could play games like FIFA in high resolution/details, and medium medium/high with other games.
For my new graphical card, this is what I'm looking for : performance and longevity.

I don't have a preference for AMD or NVidia.
My budget is around 500€ (I'm from France), I could raise the budget a little if I'm winning in longevity with.

Thank you a lot for your help.

Goodbye
 
That CPU is a limiting factor, i would not go for a card above 200-250 Euros. I would get a GTX 1660 if i were you, and save the money to upgrade to a modern platform in the future.
 
Go for a 2070 Super, 2060 Super or RX5700XT.
 
With that setup you may wanna postpone the upgrade a bit, and replace the whole rig at once.
In the meantime, you may wanna look at used GTX1060 6GB for comfortable 1080p gaming.
I'm not sure about France, but in general you can get a decent card in good condition around $150 (135EUR) or cheaper.
And if you really want a brand-new card, then you should go with something relatively cheap, like GTX1660Ti.
Save the remaining cash towards future upgrade.

BTW, the modern performance equivalent of your old 7950 is an RX560, which is super-cheap and easy to find nowadays. If you were happy with your old GPUs performance, I'd go with that to keep the cost to a minimum.
 
silentbogo said:
With that setup you may wanna postpone the upgrade a bit, and replace the whole rig at once.
In the meantime, you may wanna look at used GTX1060 6GB for comfortable 1080p gaming.
I'm not sure about France, but in general you can get a decent card in good condition around $150 (135EUR) or cheaper.
And if you really want a brand-new card, then you should go with something relatively cheap, like GTX1660Ti.
Save the remaining cash towards future upgrade.

BTW, the modern performance equivalent of your old 7950 is an RX560, which is super-cheap and easy to find nowadays. If you were happy with your old GPUs performance, I'd go with that to keep the cost to a minimum.
Click to expand...

sounds like a good idea to me, i feel like gfx cards will be getting WAY better next year, they dont even have hdmi2.1 yet :O here i have purchased a few 1060's to give away and they work really well (100$ or less) If i bought new i would grab a 2080 openbox (i did try to see if they had lifetime warranty cards but have given up the search) they are about 550Euro's looks like. ;/
 
Thank you for all your advices.

Just to know : if I spent X € in a graphical card today, that won't mean I couldn't spend Y € for a new graphical card next time. Let's say that I have a budget for every components of my computer.
You're making me doubting that it is the right time to buy a graphical card nowadays because of the imminent technologies that will be releasing.

On my side, it was the 2070 Super that I thought to be the choosen one, but I need to consider your advices now...
 
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In the end you'll still be limited by your old platform running on 3570K with DDR3 1333. Your GPU is dead, buying an overkill like 2070 Super makes no sense to me. It will be underutilized and you'll end up spending 500€ on a card that runs at 40% load tops, unless you're running heavy OC on that CPU and have a high refresh rate monitor. You might as well spend 135€ now, save money and build new PC in a year or so.
 
Thank you for these informations.
Thinking about it, if I listen all of your advices, I begin to doubt about upgrading the other components. I already have the case, SSD + HDD and power supply, so I need to find motherboard, DDR, GPU and CPU.
How much do you think it will cost me for an upgrading, please ?
 
Your CPU is not that bad, but without it being overclocked fairly high (lets say 4.2GHz+) its going to hold back the high end cards.
That doesn't mean its wasted money, it just means you may not see 100% of its performance until your next upgrade.

If you upgrade you need motherboard, CPU and RAM, SSD if you dont have one (grab an m.2 NVME if you do need one)

Depending on how good a deal you get, a 1060, 1660 or 2070 would be ideal for Nvidia, while on AMD the prices are lower so a 5700xt might be an awesome grab. It really comes down to local prices for you and what you can afford.
 
Thinking about it, one of the scenarios would be that I could spent 800-100€ max to replace CPU, GPU, MB and DDR.

GPU : AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT or GeForce RTX 2070.
CPU : AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core I5-9600k.
MB and DDR, I will spend the remaining budget in it.

(my monitor is currently with an 1080 resolution but with a good sale or offer in the next months/years, I might change it too)
 
I don’t know why everyone is saying you’re wasting your money on a new GPU. You need one, as your old one has died.

If it doesn’t perform to its fullest potential just yet, who cares? It’ll be a huge step up regardless, and it will also perform at its best when the time comes to upgrade your motherboard, CPU and RAM.

I really do wonder about the logic behind some of these thoughts. I’m not seeing any...

Grab yourself a card within your budget, and game on, brother!
 
Glad to see we're on the same page maddutch, like oh no its only running at 70% usage... and 70% of the power, heat, noise... for now
 
I guess buying a used 1060 would be a very nice upgrade from the HD 7950 that died. The 3570 CPU is getting a bit old though. I had one in my last rig and it was holding my 980 Ti back. If you are looking at an upgrade on CPU, mobo and RAM in the near future then a 1080 would be a better choice perhaps.
 
Thank for your advices.

I think I might choose this configuration (choosen with the actual sales in France and with some of your advices) :

CPU -> AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (3.6 GHz)
MB -> MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX
DDR -> DDR4 HyperX Predator RGB, 16 Go (2 x 8 Go), 3200 MHz, CAS 16
GPU -> Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT PULSE, 8 Go
 
the ryzen 5 3600 is a fine choice!
but i would kinda go with ryzen 7 3700x because of ps5 launching next year and i believe having those extra cores and threads
would benefit you in the long run. Pretty sure games released 2020 onward will probably utilize 6 cores or more but it is indeed a $120 upgrade, however judging from how long you keep your pc. $120 is not a bad investment over 7 years. $17.20 a year over 7 years.
 
Yes that's true, I could be upgrade with this Ryzen 7 3700x.
But the question will also be : is the RX 5700 XT PULSE a good choice too, in comparaison to 2600 Super (with RT and CUDA) ?
 
It comes down to personal preference at that point. RTRT is going to be dreadfully slow on that GPU, and I would honestly go down the AMD route in this instance. If the budget was there for more power, it would be another story.

I would swap to a 5700XT if I didn’t have a G-Sync monitor and my loop configured for this card.
 
torriep said:
Thank you for all your advices.

Just to know : if I spent X € in a graphical card today, that won't mean I couldn't spend Y € for a new graphical card next time. Let's say that I have a budget for every components of my computer.
You're making me doubting that it is the right time to buy a graphical card nowadays because of the imminent technologies that will be releasing.

On my side, it was the 2070 Super that I thought to be the choosen one, but I need to consider your advices now...
Click to expand...

- 2070 Super is a decent buy - its equivalent to 1080ti which absolutely destroys most things on the planet, gaming wise. Goes very well up until 1440p at max settings today and for the coming few years.
- Longevity = cooling and holding off on your OC for a while until you really feel you need it. Not much more you can do. If you're not using water cooling (custom or AIO), you'll want to look for a solid aftermarket cooler, like MSI Gaming X/Z, Ventus, Asus Strix, EVGA XC. Avoid blowers. No need to shoot for the absolute top-end model though, they don't add much if anything.

Time is not on your side because you've got a dead GPU now. Can you really afford to wait? The 2070S does have RT already so you won't miss out on that (for now) but its easy to predict this first round of RTX cards will go obsolete (in the ray tracing department that is, not in raw performance) faster than you'd want.

If you want my two cents. Its either 2070 Super and having great performance now and being stuck with it for longer; or move down to 5700 XT to save money and sell that card when 7nm Nvidia GPUs come out. Selling 2nd hand GPUs 1-1,5 year (just within warranty period!) down the line is pretty good business, it may cost you 50-75 EUR bottom line for 'using the card' because they resell quite well with warranty on it. The advantage then is that you've got time to see whether you really need more performance, you can see how ray tracing evolves and jump on it when you feel its good enough. Because today, it is really not.

torriep said:
Thank for your advices.

I think I might choose this configuration (choosen with the actual sales in France and with some of your advices) :

CPU -> AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (3.6 GHz)
MB -> MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX
DDR -> DDR4 HyperX Predator RGB, 16 Go (2 x 8 Go), 3200 MHz, CAS 16
GPU -> Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT PULSE, 8 Go
Click to expand...

Decent setup!
 
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From Amazon.fr youll get good offers. Take your time and follow preisjagger.de or something similar if you know such site in France.
 
for gpu if you go with 5700, 5700xt, 2060 super and 2070 super will be great picks, after 3 years id say sell the card and use the money towards a new mid range gpu to keep up with the games.
 
I really hesitates between the RX 5700 XT pulse and the 2070 Super.
Let's say I don't care of Ray Tracing technology for the next years, is the 2070 Super still the better choice for longevity and performance, please ?
 
If you can find one, grab the 5700xt pulse and save yourself some money.
I got a 2070s and I feel like the 7-8% performance increase wasnt worth the price difference in the end.
Probably gonna wait for the 3000 series launch rumors to start and sell it early enough to be able to get a good amount of my money back before upgrading to the next series.
 
Nvidias RTX will be just like PhysX, a few titles support it and useless the rest of the time
 
torriep said:
I really hesitates between the RX 5700 XT pulse and the 2070 Super.
Let's say I don't care of Ray Tracing technology for the next years, is the 2070 Super still the better choice for longevity and performance, please ?
Click to expand...

I would say yes, but it might not be worth the price diff to a good 5700XT. It really depends on whether you want to hold on to the card longer and if you do, definitely get 2070 S.
 
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