We’ve had threads like this before, but the market seems to be in constant flux.
Anyway, my video card is one of the oldest components in my desktop PC. It’s an NVidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 3 GB. And it’s definitely showing its age: while most of the games I want to play are okay, both Baldurs Gate 3 and Palworld get super-stuttery when the screen gets busy.
I’ve been holding off on buying one until they get cheaper, figuring the crypto market would collapse–but AFAICT, the AI market also uses video cards heavily? In any case, I’m getting impatient.
But I don’t want to spend a bajillion dollars on a card. Something that’ll be a significant upgrade, but not anywhere near top-of-the-line, is what I’d like.
The best “bang for your buck” line from Nvidia would be the x60-x70 range. Right now a 3060 will run you about $250-300, a 3070 will be about another $100. You might be able to find the AMD equivalents for a little cheaper (RX 6600/RX 6700 XT). 3060ti would work too but those tend to be as much or more than 3070s.
This is my philosophy. If you want what is considered the current top of the line card you, for all intents and purposes, pay a “luxury tax”. In other words, the extra hundred bucks or so is not worth the difference in performance, at least in my opinion. Of course, you always have the, “hey, look at what I’ve got!”, guys who will pay that extra money just so they can say, “Mine is bigger is yours.”
I’m in a similar boat (I have a 1070) and last I checked something like the 3060, while available, doesn’t benchmark much higher than what I already have.
What’s your screen resolution? There are different answers if you play 1080p versus 1440p.
Also, would you be interested in AMD or Intel video cards, or are you locked into Nvidia? Being locked into Nvidia isn’t great, but I admit I personally am locked into Nvidia so I would totally understand.
I’m going to assume you’re not planning on doing any locally run AI stuff such as Stable Diffusion or LLMs. If you are, you should look at Nvidia since most AI leverages the Cuda cores unique to those cards. I’ll also assume you want to buy new.
For gaming, I’d answer in the AMD RX 6650 XT to RX 7600 XT range, which should get you 3-4x your current performance in most games for $260-$340. You could get an RX 6600 for a little cheaper but you are looking at ~2x performance at that point so go up the extra step to make your money worth it. The Nvidia card in this range, the 3060, can’t really compete except for ray-tracing and maybe DLSS, but I don’t think RTX 3060 level ray-tracing is worth the overall drop in general (“rasterization”) performance.
If you really wanted the best value, it’s probably in the Intel ARC cards but they have hit-or-miss driver/game support so some titles are “I can’t believe I got this for only $200!” and others are “Holy shit, I paid $200 for 17 fps…”. You also need some tweaking (rebar enabled, etc) to get them working correctly so it’s not a great mass market suggestion.
After a bit of research it looks like you can currently get a 4060 for about the same price as a 3060, but a 4070 is still way more than a 3070 (4070s appear to start at $550).
Oof. I was hoping to stay below $200, but it sounds like that’s not really worth it–is that what I’m hearing? Is there any place with regular sales, or with reliable refurbished cards that are worth considering?
Thank you–that’s helpful, and sorry I didn’t give a dollar amount earlier.
I’m definitely not locked into NVIDIA; I’m happy to go with whatever’s gonna be my best bet. I do want to make sure that it’ll fit my motherboard & case, and am not entirely sure how to check on that. Am I right in thinking that the rise of Skynet, coupled with crypto’s refusal to die, means video cards aren’t likely to get cheaper in the next six months or so?
Edit:
Well, like I said, it’s in the past few months I’ve started noticing problems: Baldurs Gate 3, and Palworld are the first games that have been giving me problems. I’m definitely not a competitive online player, but I enjoy some casual co-op gaming (7 days to die, Palworld, Valheim, etc.). And I expect that the problems I saw with BG3 and Palworld will only get worse as new games are released.
Prices have more or less plateaued except at the very high end, but still, inflation and all, prices are unlikely to significantly drop.
As far as fit, the measurement that generally matters most is length. Most non-high end cards will fit in most machines unless you’ve got a tiny case or an unusual setup.
Don’t forget that a generational jump in video AIB may also require a power supply upgrade.
For instance, NVidia’s upper RTX 4000 cards require a relatively new power input which may be satisfied from your current power supply with an adapter, or maybe not. Not to mention possibly that a newer high-end card may need more power than your current PS has available.
But if you’re coming at the market with affordability in mind, this more exotic power requirement might not apply. (For instance the RTX 3000 card family still uses 1-3 of the classic 8-pin PCIE power connections.)
Not like that one; that one specifically. (ASRock Challenger D Radeon RX 6600 XT) That one costs $230, while the next cheapest alternative on pcpartpicker is a whopping $370! Check out the price list:
That 6600 XT should blow the doors off anything else in that price range. Reviews seem positive, despite being from 2022 and people having paid $400 - $500 for one.
Regarding fitting into your case, it’s a dual fan design instead of triple fan, meaning it’s not very long. 269 mm according to Newegg’s spec sheet. That should probably fit any normal case, even a micro-ATX. (Maybe not some of those exotic small form factor cases, though.) Some of the reviewers describe it as “fat”, though.
As for the power supply issue, the 6600 XT draws 40 W more than the 1060 you’re looking to replace. (160 W vs 120 W.) Google says that the recommended PSU for a 1060 is 400 W and for a 6600 XT it’s 450 W, so that checks out. Hopefully your PSU isn’t 400 W, but instead has a little head room?
EDIT: You should expect your FPS to double going from a 1060 to a 6600 XT. That sounds great, but speaking from experience, I doubled my FPS by upgrading from a 1050 ti to a 3050. Granted a 6600 XT is half again faster than a 3050, but so too is a 1060 vs a 1050 ti. So our relative upgrades would be similar.
After two years of having my 3050, it’s fine. It plays every game I’ve tried well enough to be very playable, but it’s not great. I wish I’d gotten something better instead, but it’s definitely way better than what I had.
This thread makes me more confident in my current plans, to hold off for a couple more years and get something really nice that will keep me happy for another decade.
My 1070 does OK with Warhammer 3 and Baldur’s Gate 3, and that’s about as graphically demanding as I’ve gotten so far.
Anecdote, but when I replaced my PC in December of 2022 it came with an AMD Radeon RX 6600. Which worked quite well, although it took a small hit when I upgraded from a 1080 monitor to a 29" 1440.
For purposes of gameplay, I can play Cyberpunk 2077 on what I’d call “medium-high” settings with no appreciable issues. Medium high being using the default “medium” settings and turning up character and world textures up a notch.
So I’d say it’s good for the price, the “cheapest video card worth buying” but it’s probably minimally future proofed. A supplemental question is how long you expect it to LAST giving ongoing changes.
I’m guessing I’ll get another 2 years tops out of mine, so if others agree, it may be worthwhile to squeeze out a bit more cash for a more medium to long term fix.