Question [ADVICE NEEDED]

[Rossvanwyk]

Hi all

I'm looking for some advice on my upgrade path.

I'm running an i5 8600, 16gb RAM

I currently have a GTX 1050 Ti card and a Samsung 27" 60Hz monitor.

I have been wanting to get a 144Hz monitor and have been looking into options and all that goes with that.
My question is, I've seen a GTX 1660 Ti on sale at the moment, am I better off grabbing that first and a monitor later or the other way around?

My end game plan is a 144Hz monitor and a new GPU this year, I just don't know which one to go with first. Likely the 2nd purchase will only happen toward the end of the year.
Also, have been looking at some of the AMD GPU options which look very appealing, so am I better off grabbing monitor now and then perhaps a good AMD card later or even another Intel card if I can find a good price?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers

Ross

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Get the card first.

 

[Rossvanwyk]

Thank you so much for the speedy reply man.

I thought that would be the answer. Could I ask on your opinions on AMD vs Intel, specifically the 1660 Ti, if the AMD equivalent could be a decent option?
It also plays into the fact that the monitor I get will likely be Freesync, even though a lot are Gsync compatible, I'm not sure if Gsync compatible with an intel card is as good as a freesync monitor with an AMD card?

Thanks again.

 

[ElectrO_90]

You keep saying Intel, but I guess you mean nvidia.
No one knows at all what the AMD new cards will be like, NAVI is a mystery, just like Zen2 right now. Without reviews, it's anyones guess.
1660ti is a decent card, you wouldn't regret it over a 1050ti, that's for sure.
1xxx series from Nvidia support Freesync in a lot of monitors now.
Get the 1660ti, enjoy the extra smoothness, and get freesync monitor later on. Monitors improve every few months, GPU's every 2 years. 1660ti is new, and is good.

 

[Rossvanwyk]

My apologies, yes I meant Intel, I wasn't thinking.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I'm sure the upgrade of the 1660 Ti will be pretty massive over the 1050 Ti, no question.

I appreciate the input, I think I'll go with this card as it's on a pretty big sale here in my region at the moment.

Cheers.

 

[ElectrO_90]

My apologies, yes I meant Intel, I wasn't thinking.

Nvidia

 

[geofelt]

I faced this decision some time ago.
I bought my 4k monitor first.
That allowed me to better assess what kind of a graphics card I needed.

OTOH, 1660ti is a very nice upgrade so if it is truly a bargain, you could just buy it first.

Possibly, your processor will be the limiting factor if you upgrade graphics.

Try this test:

Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

 

[g-unit1111]

I faced this decision some time ago.
I bought my 4k monitor first.
That allowed me to better assess what kind of a graphics card I needed.

OTOH, 1660ti is a very nice upgrade so if it is truly a bargain, you could just buy it first.

Yeah 1660TI is an excellent price / performance card and you can't beat getting one at the ~$250 price point.

 

[cryoburner]

Personally, I would wait a few weeks to see what AMD has to say about their upcoming graphics cards at Computex. Depending on how they are priced, when they are scheduled to come out and what sort of performance they provide, it might potentially be worth waiting for them. I suspect they probably won't be released for a couple months though.

 

[g-unit1111]

Personally, I would wait a few weeks to see what AMD has to say about their upcoming graphics cards at Computex. Depending on how they are priced, when they are scheduled to come out and what sort of performance they provide, it might potentially be worth waiting for them. I suspect they probably won't be released for a couple months though.

I don't know, AMD hasn't exactly had the best track record on graphics cards lately. The Radeon VII was hit or miss (mostly miss) and the RX 580 / 590 are several years old. Unless they have something really dramatic in store, I would expect NVIDIA to still remain king.

 

[cryoburner]

I don't know, AMD hasn't exactly had the best track record on graphics cards lately. The Radeon VII was hit or miss (mostly miss) and the RX 580 / 590 are several years old. Unless they have something really dramatic in store, I would expect NVIDIA to still remain king.

Nvidia's cards this generation have been quite mediocre, at least in terms of performance gains over their previous 10-series. A GTX 1660 is only around 20% faster and priced slightly lower than the GTX 1060 6GB from almost 3 years ago, and the 1660 Ti costs a fair amount more, starting around $280 for roughly GTX 1070-level performance. Compare that to the GTX 1060 6GB, which offered performance nearly on par with a GTX 980, a card that launched less than 2 years prior for double the price. The 10-series cards were rather impressive at launch, the 16 and 20-series, not so much, especially considering how long it was since their predecessors came out. They're decent cards at their price points, but that's probably largely due to us being in a brief window where AMD isn't offering anything directly competitive in most of that price range.

I agree that the RX 590 and Radeon VII launches were arguably even more mediocre, though they are probably not indicative of what AMD's next generation of cards will be like. The RX 590 was a 12nm RX 580 refresh that should have happened earlier, or for a lower price, and the Radeon VII was a quick port of Vega to 7nm that required an excessive amount of expensive HBM2 to achieve much of its performance gains, which in turn priced it mostly out of the market as a gaming card. Even prior to its announcement, there was a leak suggesting that the Radeon VII was the result of a particular Radeon executive that AMD apparently got rid of after less than a year, shortly following the RX 590 launch. It's also possibly worth pointing out that executive was a former Nvidia employee. : P The impression I get is that they might have been making some poor business decisions leading to the RX 590 and Radeon VII not being particularly competitive, and AMD got rid of them as a result, even if that wasn't what they officially said.

While nothing is known for certain yet, it's been suggested that AMD's upcoming cards might bring some stiff competition to Nvidia's mid-range offerings in the coming months. At the very least, it might be worth seeing what AMD has to show at that event in a few weeks if one isn't in a hurry to buy a new graphics card right away.

 

[g-unit1111]

Nvidia's cards this generation have been quite mediocre, at least in terms of performance gains over their previous 10-series. A GTX 1660 is only around 20% faster and priced slightly lower than the GTX 1060 6GB from almost 3 years ago, and the 1660 Ti costs a fair amount more, starting around $280 for roughly GTX 1070-level performance. Compare that to the GTX 1060 6GB, which offered performance nearly on par with a GTX 980, a card that launched less than 2 years prior for double the price. The 10-series cards were rather impressive at launch, the 16 and 20-series, not so much, especially considering how long it was since their predecessors came out. They're decent cards at their price points, but that's probably largely due to us being in a brief window where AMD isn't offering anything directly competitive in most of that price range.

The 1660TI is essentially the same processor as last year's 1070 but offered at a much lower price point. To me that makes it attractive for people building in systems costing less than $1K. The thing that is making it hard for me to recommend AMD GPUs currently is that they offer NOTHING in this price range and unless they do have a big reveal in store for us, I'd expect more of the same. The RX580 and 590 can't last forever.

I agree that the RX 590 and Radeon VII launches were arguably even more mediocre, though they are probably not indicative of what AMD's next generation of cards will be like. The RX 590 was a 12nm RX 580 refresh that should have happened earlier, or for a lower price, and the Radeon VII was a quick port of Vega to 7nm that required an excessive amount of expensive HBM2 to achieve much of its performance gains, which in turn priced it mostly out of the market as a gaming card. Even prior to its announcement, there was a leak suggesting that the Radeon VII was the result of a particular Radeon executive that AMD apparently got rid of after less than a year, shortly following the RX 590 launch. It's also possibly worth pointing out that executive was a former Nvidia employee. : P The impression I get is that they might have been making some poor business decisions leading to the RX 590 and Radeon VII not being particularly competitive, and AMD got rid of them as a result, even if that wasn't what they officially said.

I wanted to like the Vega cards, the Vega 56 was a solid offering and probably could have competed with the 1070 when it was new. But then we had that whole GPU shortage with Bitcoin miners and the Vega 56 and 64 both got lost to time and demand. Hopefully we won't go through that kind of demand ever again with the Radeon VII, but that was a poor offering. The 2070, 2080, and 2080TI destory it on every level.

While nothing is known for certain yet, it's been suggested that AMD's upcoming cards might bring some stiff competition to Nvidia's mid-range offerings in the coming months. At the very least, it might be worth seeing what AMD has to show at that event in a few weeks if one isn't in a hurry to buy a new graphics card right away.

I certainly hope so. The whole industry needs a kick in the ass. The RTX are strong cards, but they need some competition. Not having any allowed NVIDIA to get the upper hand and AMD to go quietly, but they need to bounce back strong. They did with Ryzen, hopefully they can pull the same magic with their GPU department.

 

[cryoburner]

The 1660TI is essentially the same processor as last year's 1070 but offered at a much lower price point.

Actually, the 1070 came out nearly 3 years ago, so that level of performance should be expected at a lower price point by now. And I'm not sure that a 25% lower price than that card launched for back in 2016 can really be considered as that big of a price reduction, especially considering the new card also has less VRAM. The 1660 Ti seems like a fine enough card, and has some other improvements that could potentially give it an edge over the 1070 in future titles, but after 3 years it should have been priced around $250 at most, not $280.

I wanted to like the Vega cards, the Vega 56 was a solid offering and probably could have competed with the 1070 when it was new.

Yeah, Vega launched shortly after mining started really picking up, which more or less instantly priced those cards out of the gaming market for their first year of release. And by the time those inflated prices really started to subside, many people were already waiting for the next generation of cards on the horizon. While I don't think the 20-series was all that impressive in terms of pricing, the 2060 was enough of an improvement to put pressure on Vega. Unfortunately, much like the Radeon VII, Vega required expensive HBM2 memory, which made those cards impractical to sell in the sub-$300 price range. The Navi cards coming this summer shouldn't have that problem though, so I expect them to provide at least Vega-level performance for around $200-$250.

Hopefully we won't go through that kind of demand ever again with the Radeon VII, but that was a poor offering. The 2070, 2080, and 2080TI destory it on every level.

That's not quite accurate, as it generally performs roughly in between a 2070 and a 2080 in games, and at many compute tasks it will outperform a 2080. Unfortunately, it's priced about the same as a 2080, largely due to that 16GB of HBM2, and it doesn't really offer much over its competitor aside from the extra VRAM, which won't likely be utilized by games for years to come. The bundled games might make it a somewhat better deal for anyone planning on buying them, but I think the card would need to be priced $100 less to be a competitive option for most of those shopping for a card in this range. As it is, it's more a card for professional content creators who can utilize that extra VRAM than it is a gaming card.

When AMD launched the RX 480 in 2016, it was quite impressive compared to existing cards in terms of value for what had previously been considered relatively "high-end" levels of performance, which is likely why Nvidia had to price their 10 series competitively in the months that followed. The RX 480 offered average gaming performance above that of a GTX 970, but at a $200 price point, or $240 for a version of the card with double the VRAM. And the RX 500 series was a slightly improved refresh of those cards. For their next generation, AMD decided to wait for 7nm though, which is why Nvidia hasn't needed to be nearly as competitive with their 16 and 20-series cards so far. They're only competing with AMD's nearly 3 year old mid-range offerings, and some higher-end models that are too expensive to manufacture at competitive price points.

All indications so far are that Navi should once again bring competition to this space though, and it wouldn't surprise me if we end up seeing performance better than 1660 Ti for a considerably lower price, and probably performance better than a 2060 for under $300 as well. But again, the details of these cards are not yet known for certain, though hopefully we will learn more about them within a few weeks.

 

[g-unit1111]

Actually, the 1070 came out nearly 3 years ago, so that level of performance should be expected at a lower price point by now. And I'm not sure that a 25% lower price than that card launched for back in 2016 can really be considered as that big of a price reduction, especially considering the new card also has less VRAM. The 1660 Ti seems like a fine enough card, and has some other improvements that could potentially give it an edge over the 1070 in future titles, but after 3 years it should have been priced around $250 at most, not $280.

It's seriously been 3 years since the 1070 was released? Man it feels like one.