[SOLVED] Advice on replacing GPU on an old 2014 build ?

[Muckster]

I'm curious about my options for upgrading the GPU on an old 2014 build. The PC and GPU I'm using now are good, but I'd like to try Stable Diffusion with Torch which needs an Nvida GPU. Anyway, please suggest compatible Nvidia cards for this old build. Probably won't be worth the cost, but I'm interested in my options.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/c6Ws89

Using Windows 10

Thanks for your help!

 

[Lutfij]

How much have you allocated towards your GPU purchase? What are your preferred sites for purchase? If your PSU is as old as the system, then I wouldn't rely on a near 10 year old PSU to power that system with a new GPU, regardless of how much power the new discrete GPU might draw.

 

[Muckster]

How much have you allocated towards your GPU purchase? What are your preferred sites for purchase? If your PSU is as old as the system, then I wouldn't rely on a near 10 year old PSU to power that system with a new GPU, regardless of how much power the new discrete GPU might draw.

I wouldn't want to spend a lot on the GPU but it doesn't matter to me where I buy it from.

The PSU is a quality brand and I haven't had reason to believe it's failing. Still, I'm glad you mentioned it. I guess I could test it or something, but rather than get into that I was hoping to first get a better idea what a new card would cost. More than likely it won't be worth upgrading.

The main reason I'm posting is this forum has always been great about knowing what's compatible. Could you give me 2 or 3 of the cheaper (older?) Nvidia options just so I can get an idea what the upgrade cost would be?

 

[pete_101]

I'm curious about my options for upgrading my vid card on an old 2014 build. The pc and vid card I'm using now is good, but I'd like to try Stable Diffusion with Torch which needs a Nvida GPU. Anyway, please suggest compatible Nvidia cards for this old build. Probably won't be worth the cost, but I'm interested in my options.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/c6Ws89

using windows 10

Thanks for your help!

The Nvidia options of similar or better performance to your R9 290, starting with the old GPUs first, would be the GTX 970, GTX 1050/ti, GTX 1060 (not the 3GB version) and GTX 1650. Then the newer GPUs with Raytracing, the bottom 2, which are still way more powerful are the RTX 2060 and RTX 3050.

 

[Muckster]

The Nvidia options of similar or better performance to your R9 290, starting with the old GPUs first, would be the GTX 970, GTX 1050/ti, GTX 1060 (not the 3GB version) and GTX 1650. Then the newer GPUs with Raytracing, the bottom 2, which are still way more powerful are the RTX 2060 and RTX 3050.

Thanks Pete. That gave me something to look at.

So all those you mentioned would be compatible with my build?

Seems it's pretty hard to even find those older cards unless they are refurbished and I'm not sure I want to go there. I wanna say the GTA 780 was about the equivalent of my R9 290 back when I did the build and I'm seeing that for $99, refurbished. These things hold their value more than I expected.

I did a build in 2019 with a RTX 2080. I paid $750 on Amazon. Now, 4 years later, that exact same model is selling for $850 on Amazon! Is this some kind of bitcoin phenomenon driving up card prices or am I just not seeing the big picture?

 

[DSzymborski]

Thanks Pete. That gave me something to look at.

So all those you mentioned would be compatible with my build?

Seems it's pretty hard to even find those older cards unless they are refurbished and I'm not sure I want to go there. I wanna say the GTA 780 was about the equivalent of my R9 290 back when I did the build and I'm seeing that for $99, refurbished. These things hold their value more than I expected.

I did a build in 2019 with a RTX 2080. I paid $750 on Amazon. Now, 4 years later, that exact same model is selling for $850 on Amazon! Is this some kind of bitcoin phenomenon driving up card prices or am I just not seeing the big picture?

No, that was a few years ago. That's just someone fishing for suckers. You can mostly find those for $200-$350 used.

You can find people trying to sell a 1050 Ti for more than $400. Or if that doesn't float your boat, there's always the $4400 RX 470.

Unless it's from the company itself, I wouldn't bother with a refurbished GTX 780 because if it's not from the company, it's typically "refurbished" which quite often means some dude brushed some dust off the card and checked if it was working and called it refurbished. You can get used GTX 780 Tis for $50-$75 on eBay now.

 

[stonecarver]

Could you give me 2 or 3 of the cheaper (older?) Nvidia options just so I can get an idea what the upgrade cost would be?

There is a GTX 1070 $ 60.00 . Private seller

GTX 1080 $100. Private seller

1660 Ti $ 100. Private seller

I know if you wait to long being as xmas is here there going to be gone and all the cheap used deals won't come back till February 2024. That's about the time everyone who got new PC toys start selling there old just replaced gear.

It's game over when we hit thanksgiving all prices get jacked up through the roof used and new.

Not sure your location just what I see where I am.

 

[Hollander Lawn]

I would say, if your using Quad Core Intel Xeon-E series Processors, I'd recommend you to use a Workstation card by Nvidia. The card I would recommend will be the Nvidia RTX A5000 or A4500 if you don't have so much budget. It has ray tracing, recent, compatible.

 

[Hollander Lawn]

Thanks Pete. That gave me something to look at.

So all those you mentioned would be compatible with my build?

Seems it's pretty hard to even find those older cards unless they are refurbished and I'm not sure I want to go there. I wanna say the GTA 780 was about the equivalent of my R9 290 back when I did the build and I'm seeing that for $99, refurbished. These things hold their value more than I expected.

I did a build in 2019 with a RTX 2080. I paid $750 on Amazon. Now, 4 years later, that exact same model is selling for $850 on Amazon! Is this some kind of bitcoin phenomenon driving up card prices or am I just not seeing the big picture?

It is because of Bitcoin mining. That is how the RTX 30 series cards got driven up from around $800 to now, an RTX 3090 is worth more than an RTX 4090 at ~$2788

 

[DSzymborski]

It is because of Bitcoin mining. That is how the RTX 30 series cards got driven up from around $800 to now, an RTX 3090 is worth more than an RTX 4090 at ~$2788

I would say, if your using Quad Core Intel Xeon-E series Processors, I'd recommend you to use a Workstation card by Nvidia. The card I would recommend will be the Nvidia RTX A5000 or A4500 if you don't have so much budget. It has ray tracing, recent, compatible.

So, your recommendation to someone looking for a used, older, inexpensive Nvidia card to play around with Stable Diffusion is...a nearly $2000 GPU? Oh, wait, you added in a recommendation for if they "only" wanted to spend 10 times their budget or so rather than 20.

 

[USAFRet]

It is because of Bitcoin mining. That is how the RTX 30 series cards got driven up from around $800 to now, an RTX 3090 is worth more than an RTX 4090 at ~$2788

"to now"?

RTX 3090, $1400.

https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-geforce-rtx-3090-gv-n3090aorus-m-24gd/p/N82E16814932341

 

[Hollander Lawn]

"to now"?

RTX 3090, $1400.

https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-geforce-rtx-3090-gv-n3090aorus-m-24gd/p/N82E16814932341

I got the prices from Amazon.com Newegg sells it slightly cheaper. However, Amazon is still the most common way I get prices since it is more commonly known.
Also, the site you directed me to said out of stock.

 

[USAFRet]

I got the prices from Amazon.com Newegg sells it slightly cheaper. However, Amazon is still the most common way I get prices since it is more commonly known.

From Amazon, $1600

Amazon.com

 

[Hollander Lawn]

From Amazon, $1600

Amazon.com

I say, it can vary from region to region. I am in Singapore and you can be somewhere else. So, they are not very accurate but a good place to start thinking on your budget.

 

[USAFRet]

I say, it can vary from region to region. I am in Singapore and you can be somewhere else. So, they are not very accurate but a good place to start thinking on your budget.

In any case, USA or Singapore, the RTX 3090 is not more expensive than an RTX 4090.
(unless, of course, you find one weird outlier from a clueless seller)

 

[thestryker]

I'm curious about my options for upgrading my vid card on an old 2014 build. The pc and vid card I'm using now is good, but I'd like to try Stable Diffusion with Torch which needs a Nvida GPU. Anyway, please suggest compatible Nvidia cards for this old build. Probably won't be worth the cost, but I'm interested in my options.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/c6Ws89

using windows 10

Thanks for your help!

I think it really depends on your long term goals with the machine. A GTX 1080 Ti or TITAN Xp should be the best VRAM capacity/performance, but if you don't need performance a TITAN X would be a solid choice. There are cheap enterprise level cards with more VRAM but I've seen people have lots of random problems getting them to run properly.

If you needed something with newer features the RTX 3060 12GB would be your best choice $/capacity.

 

[Muckster]

First, thanks for the discussion! Good points about avoiding refurbished items, being aware of Amazon price gougers, getting a card before Thanksgiving, and I now better understand the nature of Lutfij's question about merchants. I'm an American buying from the usual US markets.

Someone mentioned "private" sellers of cards, but I wasn't sure if these were new or not or where those were found.

Let me ask a better more specific question.

I'm looking for a new, not refurbished, video card that is compatible with my build. If I could find an Nvidia around $50-$75 that at least matched the performance of my R9 290 Tri-x (which is factory overclocked), I would do it. I'd be willing to spend maybe up to $150 if I can be convinced the performance gain is worth it. However I think that's unlikey because other aspects of the build, CPU, sys Mem, bus speed, etc.. are likely going to serve as bottlenecks.

As I mentioned, a Tom's hierarchy chart from 2014 showed my R9 290 on par (or slightly better than ) a GTX 780. That and a few "levels" of hierachy above that (perhaps with more vram) would be the target zone.

My guess is that my budget is too low to find anything, but I'm having a hard time determining that becuase I'm having such a hard time finding prices on anything new. Of course that's not surprising being I built this thing 9 years ago.

So a big part of my question isn't just what to get, but where, specifically to get it.

I'm pretty sure you'll tell me my budget is too low or that cards that old can't be found. That's okay. It's good information and will let me move on to other options (like planning my next $1500-$2000 build in 2024).

Again, sorry I wasn't more specific about what I wanted at the start of the post. I was still working it out in my head and your responses helped me get there.

 

[thestryker]

First, thanks for the discussion! Good points about avoiding refurbished items, being aware of Amazon price gougers, getting a card before Thanksgiving, and I now better understand the nature of Lutfij's question about merchants. I'm an American buying from the usual US markets.

Someone mentioned "private" sellers of cards, but I wasn't sure if these were new or not or where those were found.

Let me ask a better more specific question.

I'm looking for a new, not refurbished, video card that is compatible with my build. If I could find an Nvidia around $50-$75 that at least matched the performance of my R9 290 Tri-x (which is factory overclocked), I would do it. I'd be willing to spend maybe up to $150 if I can be convinced the performance gain is worth it. However I think that's unlikey because other aspects of the build, CPU, sys Mem, bus speed, etc.. are likely going to serve as bottlenecks.

As I mentioned, a Tom's hierarchy chart from 2014 showed my R9 290 on par (or slightly better than ) a GTX 780. That and a few "levels" of hierachy above that (perhaps with more vram) would be the target zone.

My guess is that my budget is too low to find anything, but I'm having a hard time determining that becuase I'm having such a hard time finding prices on anything new. Of course that's not surprising being I built this thing 9 years ago.

So a big part of my question isn't just what to get, but where, specifically to get it.

I'm pretty sure you'll tell me my budget is too low or that cards that old can't be found. That's okay. It's good information and will let me move on to other options (like planning my next $1500-$2000 build in 2024).

Again, sorry I wasn't more specific about what I wanted at the start of the post. I was still working it out in my head and your responses helped me get there.

You're not going to find anything new it's all going to be used/refurbished or way outside of your price range.

 

[Hollander Lawn]

You're not going to find anything new it's all going to be used/refurbished or way outside of your price range.

I say, you could go with a AMD Radeon Card instead as although the 7900XTX has 5% less performance than the RTX 4090, it is 60% cheaper at ~$900.

 

[Muckster]

You're not going to find anything new it's all going to be used/refurbished or way outside of your price range.

I'll be checking back on this thread for several days just to see if someone comes up with something, but I suspect you'll ultimately be right.

If it's not too much trouble, could I get:

• A couple specific links to prices for cards that meet my criteria above (post #18) without a $ limit?

• A couple specific links to prices for cards that meet my criteria above (post #18) but change the criteria from new to "used" or "refubished"?

 

[Muckster]

I say, you could go with a AMD Radeon Card instead as although the 7900XTX has 5% less performance than the RTX 4090, it is 60% cheaper at ~$900.

Beside the high price and my criteria for an Nivida GPU, wouldn't that card be severely bottle necked by other hardware aspects of my 9 year old build?

 

[boju]

Your cpu is equivalent to i7 4770. I used to run a 1080Ti with 2600k at 4.5 and the card ran quite well in 1080 and 1440p. 10~15fps less compared to benchmarks using 8700k, not too shabby.

3060/3060Ti level should be fine.

 

[thestryker]

• A couple specific links to prices for cards that meet my criteria above (post #18) without a $ limit?

The least expensive new card which would be worth considering is an RTX 3060 because it has 12GB VRAM. If you're in the US these will start around $250.

Pretty much every new nvidia card with minimum 12GB VRAM: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/v...9,551,555,528,529,530,531,504,435,417,375,393

• A couple specific links to prices for cards that meet my criteria above (post #18) but change the criteria from new to "used" or "refubished"?

This is much harder to do given the way prices fluctuate, but GTX 1080 Ti (11GB), TITAN X (pascal) (12GB) and TITAN Xp (12GB) should all be $125-200, and a TITAN X (maxwell) (12GB) should be cheaper but those are getting harder to find.

 

[Nathkrul]

I say, you could go with a AMD Radeon Card instead as although the 7900XTX has 5% less performance than the RTX 4090, it is 60% cheaper at ~$900.

That's shear nonsense btw.

UserBenchmark: AMD RX 7900-XTX vs Nvidia RTX 4090

 

[DSzymborski]

I say, you could go with a AMD Radeon Card instead as although the 7900XTX has 5% less performance than the RTX 4090, it is 60% cheaper at ~$900

I suppose you can also go with the Radeon RX 7600 which is lower spec and will less likely be bottlenecked by your 9 year old build.

Since you haven't bothered to read a single post that the OP has made and keep giving them things that have nothing to do with what they asked for, you're done in this thread. We're here to help people, not to just go on about whatever. People should be able to leave this threads *better* informed about what they need for their issue, not less informed.