[SOLVED] 4k 2160 for less than £500?

[Amddefector]

After my purchase of a rtx 2060 super oc edition 60fps on my 60hz 4k TV isn't smooth! Or at 60fps! Well not on the games I wanna play anyway. So now I'm asking myself do I just give up and buy the next gen Xbox when it comes out or is there a card for me for the same price or am I just dreaming?

 

[Eximo]

Not really sure what you want to hear. 4K is still a little on the bleeding edge of PC gaming. The consoles use various methods to achieve 4K, some simply run at 30FPS, or upscale lower resolution rendering. Most often they aren't running true 4K as on a PC.

The new consoles probably will though, at least in some titles, the GPU specs are pretty high end and represent a good chunk of silicon. However, there is always the caveat that the consoles are effectively 'mobile' parts and will run at lower power and frequencies then their PC counterparts. And give it a year or two and the consoles will once again lag behind.

Nvidia just announced the 30 series cards. RTX 3070 at $500 in mid-October is supposedly intended to directly compete with the RTX 2080Ti. Which is more then twice as fast as an RTX2060.

RTX3090 is set to take on 8K graphics, at least at 30FPS, if not 60FPS in some titles.

Used 2080Ti should be hitting the market in droves, that will probably less than 500 pounds. I imagine the 3070 is probably going to be well above 500 pounds due to VAT, but still in that range.

Also make sure it isn't something else in your system causing the slowdown. Check your CPU and memory usage. Quite typical to sacrifice a few quality settings to gain FPS at 4K.

 

[Amddefector]

Not really sure what you want to hear. 4K is still a little on the bleeding edge of PC gaming. The consoles use various methods to achieve 4K, some simply run at 30FPS, or upscale lower resolution rendering. Most often they aren't running true 4K as on a PC.

The new consoles probably will though, at least in some titles, the GPU specs are pretty high end and represent a good chunk of silicon. However, there is always the caveat that the consoles are effectively 'mobile' parts and will run at lower power and frequencies then their PC counterparts. And give it a year or two and the consoles will once again lag behind.

Nvidia just announced the 30 series cards. RTX 3070 at $500 in mid-October is supposedly intended to directly compete with the RTX 2080Ti. Which is more then twice as fast as an RTX2060.

RTX3090 is set to take on 8K graphics, at least at 30FPS, if not 60FPS in some titles.

Used 2080Ti should be hitting the market in droves, that will probably less than 500 pounds. I imagine the 3070 is probably going to be well above 500 pounds due to VAT, but still in that range.

Also make sure it isn't something else in your system causing the slowdown. Check your CPU and memory usage. Quite typical to sacrifice a few quality settings to gain FPS at 4K.

Thanks for the reply. I have been looking at 3070's there's evga standard ones for around £460 or palit oc version for the same sort of price. That's including tax. I'm unsure what the difference is between the 2 different companies? I was running rdr2 @ 1440 with the settings on high, was getting around 30 FPS with 99% GPU 60% CPU and 60% memory usage that's with a ryzen 7 2700x and 16gb 3200 memory. I would be happy with around 30fps on ultra settings on the higher resolution. If I send back the ryzen 9 that don't want to work with my b450 motherboard I'll get just under £500 back for that.

 

[Eximo]

Anything labeled an RTX 3070 is going to have the GPU coming from Nvidia (via Samsung fabs). Three brands of GDDR6 out there last I checked, Micron, Hynix, and Samsung? Doesn't really matter unless you are into overclocking, and even then, that would lead you to the more expensive offerings.

Nvidia's founder's editions will have the choice chips, ones that perform the best 'out of the box' but this is easily made up for with better cooling or custom overclocks from the factory. All cards will operate within their boost range as long as temperature allows, so again, not a huge difference between cards.

Keep them cooler, they will run faster. Or you can opt for quieter operation. But even with something like water cooling all the GPUs will more or less reach the same average speeds.

Nvidia's founder edition is a new type of cooler, remains to be seen how that will go, I imagine it will be fine. I would wait for independent reviews before selecting a specific GPU/cooler. Usually someone screws up or just releases an old cooler for new cards because it is 'good enough', and these are going to be some fairly warm cards based on the power requirements (and raw size of the GPUs) Competition for these things will be fierce though, so if you wait, you might be waiting a good while before they are in stock again.

For example I 'purchased' my GTX 1080 at launch four times before finally catching one in time to actually get it. EVGA has been my brand of choice for a while because of the warranty policy. They let you take the card apart as long as you return it to them as it was sent to you. Never come up, but I like knowing that is there for the first few years in case it randomly dies. Also their tendency to release a reference design with decent coolers on them is good for selecting water cooling block.

 

[Amddefector]

Anything labeled an RTX 3070 is going to have the GPU coming from Nvidia (via Samsung fabs). Three brands of GDDR6 out there last I checked, Micron, Hynix, and Samsung? Doesn't really matter unless you are into overclocking, and even then, that would lead you to the more expensive offerings.

Nvidia's founder's editions will have the choice chips, ones that perform the best 'out of the box' but this is easily made up for with better cooling or custom overclocks from the factory. All cards will operate within their boost range as long as temperature allows, so again, not a huge difference between cards.

Keep them cooler, they will run faster. Or you can opt for quieter operation. But even with something like water cooling all the GPUs will more or less reach the same average speeds.

Nvidia's founder edition is a new type of cooler, remains to be seen how that will go, I imagine it will be fine. I would wait for independent reviews before selecting a specific GPU/cooler. Usually someone screws up or just releases an old cooler for new cards because it is 'good enough', and these are going to be some fairly warm cards based on the power requirements (and raw size of the GPUs) Competition for these things will be fierce though, so if you wait, you might be waiting a good while before they are in stock again.

For example I 'purchased' my GTX 1080 at launch four times before finally catching one in time to actually get it. EVGA has been my brand of choice for a while because of the warranty policy. They let you take the card apart as long as you return it to them as it was sent to you. Never come up, but I like knowing that is there for the first few years in case it randomly dies. Also their tendency to release a reference design with decent coolers on them is good for selecting water cooling block.

Ok that makes sense, thanks for the heads up, I've always preferred Asus or gigabyte but this 2060s has put me off Asus as the build quality isn't what I'd expect from Asus! I might try a evga in the near future then. Thanks again.

 

[Eximo]

Interesting, ASUS and Gigabyte trade places for top producer of completed PCBs in the world. I know ASUS has automated a lot of their production, so I would almost expect quality to be up. You may have simply chosen a cheaper model, if it is one of the dual fan models I found under that name. If it wasn't Strix or one of their other high end models, that would make some sense.

I pretty much stuck with ASUS motherboards until my most recent build. They started losing all the round ups on performance, even with their high end stuff. Seems like they got complacent and were trading on their brand name more then engineering skills. Been a while since I took a deep dive though, most of what gets reviewer attention are the really high end boards that are sent out to them. Harder to get good mid-range data. But I haven't had issues with my two more recent Gigabyte purchases. Be aware they are quite new to the GPU game with their Aorus lineup, only last generation I think? I haven't heard anything bad yet. so that is a good sign.

Last ASUS GPU I bought was probably a HD6670 and before that my massive GTX580 DCUII, which were amazing. GTX580 simply became obsolete, the HD6670 had issues outputting 4K properly, so I replaced it with a 750Ti, then a 950, and finally a GT1030. (Trading down is weird, but my budget conscious friends got some sweet deals. passively cooled HTPC GPU, always good)

 

[Amddefector]

I've always rated Asus as one of the best but this graphics card has been nothing but hassle. I've had to under clock it which was suggested by another user to make it run better. Also the heat pipes from the heatsink aren't copper although I could be wrong they may be coated? I don't know. Also my old gigabyte graphics card was pretty much encased in plastic with most of the heat being exhausted out of the pc out of the back. This Asus card is open so most of the heat is exhausted into the computer case which makes everything else run hot! It's got a big aluminium plate on the back which may help cool the GPU but again transfers most of the heat onto the cpu and vrm. I was gonna get a gigabyte 2070 graphics card but the Asus card boasted the same performance for a £100 less. Now I really regret not getting the 2070.

 

[Eximo]

Generally copper subject to heat cycles will turn an ugly dark brown through oxidation, so most copper heatsinks are nickel plated at the least. Also hides the solder joins and color mismatch between copper and aluminum.

Every vendor sells blower style cards, they are useful in some situations, particularly small form factors with few fans. The become part of the exhaust system. Also useful when you tightly pack multiple GPUs in the system.

Axial cooled cards generally perform better, and much quieter, but, yes add to the computer case internal heat. Requirement for them is good case airflow. Don't worry too much about the 'hot' air making a huge difference. That just sets the absolute floor your cooler can reach, as long as the air still has capacity to pick up additional heat other heatsinks will still be effective. The key is to get the warm air out of the chassis and fresh air constantly coming in.

Backplates are a bit controversial, and a lot depends on the design of the card. Some cards don't have that much on the backside to get warm, others have memory and VRMs. With larger cards they are really there for stiffness, a sagging card looks bad, and overtime through many heat cycles, may lead to premature failure. Components in a constant state of stress, getting heated, then cooled, something will give. Generally not before the card is obsolete, but any small defect in the card could be amplified in this manner. As above, don't worry too much about the heat coming off the back of the card, the fans will do far more to heat up the general area.

Not all gloom and doom though, it really depends on how much you spend what cooler quality you will get. Custom solutions from all the top brands should be decent enough.

1. Custom (HOF, Kingpin, EVGA Classified, etc) (And hybrid water cooled cards as well, generally reference boards)
2. Reference board with custom axial coolers (30 series reference designs are different from Founder's Edition this time around)
3. Blower/Reference (30 series Nvidia Founder's Edition are axial/blow through coolers, 20 series were all axial)

These will be the ones that look 'all plastic' Actually just a vapor chamber and aluminum finstack usually (only copper base plus aluminum finstack for lower wattage parts)

You can also get pre-installed water block cards for full custom water cooling, they are basically economically identical to getting the water block of your choice. But then you need several hundred dollars in additional parts to make a water loop.

 

[Amddefector]

Ok that's some very useful information thank you.
I purchased a water cooling kit for my current build just for the cpu. A cooler master ml120l v2 i though I'd give it a try for the price as it was cheap but my cpu seems to run hotter when everything is upto temperature, then I guess you get what you pay for.

I have 3x 120mm intake fans at the front and 1x 120 at the back and 1x 120mm at the top exhausting, im still trying to figure out the settings in the bios as they don't seem to be running at full speed ever but I'll figure it out.

I have been on the Nvidia site and they are advertising rtx 3070 founders edition starting from £479 do Nvidia make there own cards still or just sell the gpus to other vendors like asus, gigabyte etc...

 

[Amddefector]

Oh I just see that is the founders edition.

 

[hang-the-9]

After my purchase of a rtx 2060 super oc edition 60fps on my 60hz 4k TV isn't smooth! Or at 60fps! Well not on the games I wanna play anyway. So now I'm asking myself do I just give up and buy the next gen Xbox when it comes out or is there a card for me for the same price or am I just dreaming?

2060 is not a 4k level card, and TVs won't run games very smooth due to input lag and the fact the refresh rate response time is higher than on a gaming monitor, as well as the refresh rate.

 

[animekenji]

2060 is not a 4k level card, and TVs won't run games very smooth due to input lag and the fact the refresh rate is higher than on a gaming monitor.

He said the refresh rate on his TV is 60hz, so how do you figure that is higher than a gaming monitor? I have yet to see a gaming monitor with 60hz refresh. If your "gaming monitor" is only 60hz refresh, you didn't buy a gaming monitor, you bought a business monitor.

 

[Eximo]

He said the refresh rate on his TV is 60hz, so how do you figure that is higher than a gaming monitor? I have yet to see a gaming monitor with 60hz refresh. If your "gaming monitor" is only 60hz refresh, you didn't buy a gaming monitor, you bought a business monitor.

I think he just wrote that incorrectly and meant the opposite like you are saying.

He is right about the input lag, in general, for TVs. Some TVs get decently close to average monitors with the their 'gaming' modes. Turns off all post processing and particularly gets rid of frame interpolation.

There are some decent 60hz gaming monitors, a lot of 4K models come to mind which is quite relevant. 120hz 4K monitors are quite recent, and still ludicrously expensive. Wasn't that long ago that anything above 60hz out of an LCD was unheard of.

 

[Amddefector]

Maybe it's time to dig out the old 24" CRT I'm sure it was over a 100hz.

 

[hang-the-9]

He said the refresh rate on his TV is 60hz, so how do you figure that is higher than a gaming monitor? I have yet to see a gaming monitor with 60hz refresh. If your "gaming monitor" is only 60hz refresh, you didn't buy a gaming monitor, you bought a business monitor.

Did not mean to put in refresh rate but response time.