1070 vs 1060 8gb

Sep 4, 2018
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Im on a pretty tight budget but want/need to upgrade my whole lot. The only thing im stuck on is the GPU.

Is it worth it to spend the extra 160~ on the 1070 to give some future proofing to the system, or does the 1060 have a decent life ahead of it.

Im mostly building for gaming, so maybe see if i can shortcut to reduce the price somewhere else?

CPU: I3 8100
RAM: 8 gb 2400MHz
MB: MSI H110M

I also have a 600watt power supply form corsair that i really dont want to replace, is that enough power for the 1070?

Thanks for any replies, i know there where a few questions riddled in here for added confusion.

 
Solution
That i3, being much like a 7th gen i5 with less cache and no turbo speed function, is highly likely to hamstring a GTX 1070.

What is your budget for the entire build, what parts (Exact model numbers) do you already have and what country are you in (Or where can you purchase from)?

You may wish to stay with what you already have picked out, but it couldn't hurt to take a second look and see if there could be improvements made that might allow for better performance in some areas that might currently not be particularly strong. Never hurts to get a second opinion.
That i3, being much like a 7th gen i5 with less cache and no turbo speed function, is highly likely to hamstring a GTX 1070.

What is your budget for the entire build, what parts (Exact model numbers) do you already have and what country are you in (Or where can you purchase from)?

You may wish to stay with what you already have picked out, but it couldn't hurt to take a second look and see if there could be improvements made that might allow for better performance in some areas that might currently not be particularly strong. Never hurts to get a second opinion.
 
Solution
Sep 4, 2018
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Oh wow thanks for the heads up, that wouldve been unfortunate.
 
Sep 4, 2018
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So,
PSU: Corsair Builder Series CX 600 Watt ATX/EPS 80 Plus (CX600)

Thats all im keeping really besides my hard drive/ssd and case
(its an old FX system so if i want to upgrade everything has to)


i dont have a strict budget, but id like to stay under 1000 CAD/ 760 USD

What would you suggest for the cpu if the cap was raised, something like an 8350k? or even more than that.
(Motherboard has been changed to a MSI B360M PRO-VDH)


 

In practice, an i3-8100 should perform very similar to an i5-7500. The 8100 might not boost, but the 7500's all-core boost is the same 3.6GHz as the 8100's base clocks, both processors have the same cache sizes, and performance has been nearly identical in all benchmarks I've seen. I wouldn't say that either would significantly limit performance in most of today's games. That said, I suspect games will increasingly benefit from having access to more threads in the future, so from a "future proofing" standpoint, moving up to a 6-core i5-8400 or Ryzen 2600 is likely to keep performance smoother for longer. Of course, if there's a limited budget, that does need to be balanced with the cost of a graphics card.

If you're considering a GTX 1060 6GB, you might also want to consider the AMD RX 580, which offers very similar overall performance and recently can often be found at lower prices. For example, going by US pricing on PCPartPicker, the lowest-priced 1060 6GB cards are currently $270, while there are some RX 580 8GB cards for just $230 (Canadian pricing appears to show a similar difference as well). About the only real downside to the RX 580 is that it's less energy-efficient than a 1060, requiring more power and in turn putting out more heat. Any semi-decent 600 watt PSU should be enough to handle it though (or the GTX 1070, for that matter). Also note that the 1060 3GB, in addition to having half the VRAM, also has 10% of its graphics-processing cores disabled, in case you weren't aware of that.

The 1070 could be considered a decent option that provides more performance than the other two cards, but when do you intend to build this system? The current generation of graphics cards is over 2 years old at this point, and Nvidia will be launching a new generation of cards over the coming the months, with the higher-end models launching in a matter of weeks. It's likely that a 2060 will be out within two to three months, and my best guess is that it may offer performance comparable or better than a GTX 1070 at a lower price (though it's difficult to say for sure what pricing will be like due to Nvidia's questionable pricing of their higher-end cards this generation). In any case, I suspect that the price of the 1070 will drop further over the next couple months, barring something unexpected occurring.
 


Yeah, I was going to point that out too. Part of the reason why I said perhaps a second look would be a good idea. Good show going to it right away though, just in case they didn't answer back.

And looking more closely, they actually have the same cache, which is probably why there aren't significant performance differences. I'll retract the opinion that it might hold that card back significantly, although it might, on some titles or applications that see significant performance advantages with the presence of additional cores or at least additional hyperthreads.

Even so, putting an i3, even one with four cores, in this day and age where the four cores on an i5 needed to be increased to six for obvious reasons, doesn't seem like a good pairing. I guess if ALL you are going to do is browse the internet, run basic applications and game with no overlays, recording, streaming or other heavy multitasking, then it would be ok. If you are going to do any of those types of simultaneous multi tasking, it's probably going to be a bit much for that sku.

Also, don't be surprised if you need to replace that builder series CX unit before long if you run it with that card. Clearly the capacity is high enough, but that is not one of the newer CX units, it is an older one which means it likely already has some miles on it, and those units have a clear and easily pointed to history of early failure when paired with gaming cards or when used on any system that is going to consistently be under demanding loads of any kind for sustained periods of time. They were built using a rather poor capacitor selection and we've seen them fail time and time again when used with any gaming card that pulled enough power to require supplemental six or eight pin power connections.

Use it if you wish, but expect to replace it before long. If you don't end up having to, great, you'll be one of the few. But if you do, at least it won't come as a surprise. And it shouldn't.

Is there anyplace specific you need to, or prefer to, purchase your parts from, or are any of the common vendors in Canada all good for you?