[SOLVED] are there gpu card brands that should be avoided when upgrading?

[Deepwaterlife48]

i currently have an asus rog strix 1660 super paired with a ryzen 3700x.
i have been considering upgrading the card to either something along the rx6600 or the rtx 3060 because i was told to completely skip the nvidia 20 series as apparently they cant utilize dlss and ray tracing properly and that their prices have not diminished as much.

i see amd, asus, aorus, evga, zotac, msi, gigabyte. power color, power color hell hound.

i watched jayz two cents video from 9 months ago.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJlEDiCnq0c


said gigabyte was bad.

asus was mixed but still trustworthy.

amd can be trust

msi was mostly good but apparently there was a scalping issue.

watched a couple other videos, seems like in generation that say most 2060's or 3060's amongst their competitors are within in like 20% as in msi 3060 vs aorus 3060 is close.

 

[Lutfij]

I'd place my hard earned money on EVGA, though you won't be able to get RTX4000 series cards from them since EVGA announced they wouldn't be doing Nvidia for this series or probably future series. Gainward, KFA2, Galax and Palit are some other names you could look into.

Powercolor, XFX and Sapphire are exclusively AMD, mind you.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

alright well as far as the amd brands. should i avoid any of them?

 

[Math Geek]

i have never seen anything that says any specific brand is just awful. everyone has their own opinion and you can hear horror stories about literally every brand.

but in the end there is no evidence i have seen that leads me to avoid a brand outright. i know some brands have lousy customer service which makes many avoid them. Asus is one a few here have some serious hate for. but others will swear by them and never buy anything else.

in the end i look at some reviews for what i am looking at and make an informed decision based on price/features and build quality. ignore amazon reviews and such as rarely are they worth the time to even read it. user error is the main issue people have and they love to scream and holler about not doing their homework and buying something they can't use or don't know how to use.

look at true professional reviews that include teardown and analysis of the parts.

picking the right chip is more important to me rather than the brand/model. differences between models performance wise is very close and rarely is it worth paying extra for the "super ultra gaming oc" model vs the much cheaper model based on the reference design. cooling and noise is more important to me and that's a big thing i consider while shopping

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

alright. so if i was looking in the sub 500 sub 400 category. say the radeon rx 6600 xt vs like the 2060/70/80 vs like the 3060.
are they going to be about the same value for performance? a lot of recent reviews say to skip the 20 series entirely and get say a 3060 or 3060 ti.

i noticed on say the asus rog strix 1660s i have vs the 6600 the 6600 has a smaller memory bus and a smaller bandwidth, which seemed odd.

is that just a difference between nvidia and amd nvidia uses 192 bus with 336gb while amd uses 128 and 256gb?

according to different comparison websites, the rx 6600 and rx 6600 xt both have the small bus and bandwidth but still outperform the 1660s?

is that accurate?

 

[Eximo]

There are usually a few specific models to avoid in every generation. Either a subpar cooler, or just general features.

Poor thermal pad placement, recycled designs that don't really fit new boards. Was it the the Thicc or Fat card RX580, something like that, Just had the heatpipes miss the GPU, so it was poorly cooled for no good reason.

Lack of thermal pads. (EVGA 1080 and 1080Ti ACX models for example) No pads on the rear of the card lead to overheating on the VRMs (They released a free upgrade kit)

30 series cards that were susceptible to bricking. POSCAPs or MLC caps used on the back of the GPU (sort of), but also a software problem that let the card boost too much (Many models, fix was a vBIOS update) Also some thermal pad issues on some models, replacing them decreased memory temperatures by a lot.

AMD used graphite thermal pads instead of thermal compound on their HBM equipped GPUs Vega and Fury line ups. This lead to excessive temperatures.

Now you have power cables in the 40 series. So depending on who the supplier is, maybe good, maybe bad. Verdict is still out on that one.



Bus width is a cost thing. More width, more cost as you need more silicon to handle the width. Also tends to increase the number of memory chips (though that depends, as you can also increase the chip density)

RX6600 and RX6600XT are two years than the 1660 Super. You would expect architectural improvements and general memory speed increases. So memory channel width can be down, but memory bandwidth can go up. 1660 Super was more of a high end GPU than the RX6600 is today. The same die size would be more in keeping with the 6700 or 6700XT in size.

1660 Super : 192bits, 336GB/s bandwidth (14000MT/s memory) 6GB

RX6600: 128 bits, 224GB/s bandwidth (14000MT/s memory) 8GB

RX6600XT : 128 bits, 256GB/s bandwidth (16000MT/s memory) 8GB

 

[Math Geek]

the 3060 is between the 6600 and 6600xt yet it costs more than both. the 6700xt is around the same as a 3060ti, again for less money.

the AMD cards take the bang for the buck award right now and where i'd spend my money if i as looking at that range of card.

look at reviews of the cards to see how they perform rather than the spec sheet. for a quick reference when looking at cards check out tom's chart with the relative performance of every card from the last 10 years or so

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

couple % here or there is pretty much the same performance.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

i wish i had gotten a degree in computers rather than the useless degrees in aeronautical engineering, social science and business i got. cuz having to learn all the new tech through forums and youtube videos is exhausting. thank all yall for the help.

it seems like while the rx 6600 and rx 6600 xt and the 3060 would all be upgrades, from what you guys are saying and some comparison sites im looking at, a 6700 xt vs 3060 ti might be better bang for the buck.

 

[Math Geek]

the 6700xt is a great buy right now. not much more than the 6600xt and much cheaper than the 6800.

and it's about $100 cheaper than the 3060ti.

so yah, for around that $350-400 mark, it is the winner in my book at this time. and it is a pretty big upgrade over the 1660 super for sure.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

does the fact that im using an amd ryzen 7 3700x make any difference between the 6700 xt and the 3060 ti? will it run more smoothly with double amd vs amd and nvidia?

i wouldnt think it makes a huge difference and im looking at getting the 6700 xt, i think.

 

[Math Geek]

nope, amd or nvidia makes no difference. the gpu is not dependent on the brand of the cpu and vice versa.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

aight. didnt think so. i think the 6700xt is going to be the best value for the buck i can get without breaking my budget. as said above theres not a huge difference between specific models of a gpu, so i just have to find one that suits my tastes.

looking at this one. however i might wait a couple days to see if any black friday/cyber monday deals drop.
https://www.amazon.com/PowerColor-F...mzn1.fos.c3015c4a-46bb-44b9-81a4-dc28e6d374b3

 

[Math Geek]

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#c=501&sort=price&page=1

here's some options by price. they start at $350 and go up from there. none are very power hungry so massive cooling is not really needed.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

good looking out brother. didnt think of using pc part picker to narrow it down.

 

[John Chesterfield]

XFX, garbage products.