Buying new card with GTX 960 budget

[Boot Room]

Thinking about buying new card after 2 years with gtx 960. amd or nvidia, don't care

Whats the best bang for the buck card right now? should be 230$ budget at most. heard gtx 1060 ones are good. is there any amd equivalent for this?

 

[Barty1884]

At the budget, a 3GB 1060 is about all you can do...... Unfortunately even the 4GB RX 580 from AMD is $250 (8GB variant is $300).... at the $250 pricepoint a 6GB 1060 is available.

Within your budget, you're only really left with a selection of 3GB 1060 models..... and I'd suggest looking at the Gigabyte Windforce OC version, just because it's a dual-fan model. I have one, it's a solid card. The others in the pricepoint (from EVGA and MSI etc) are all single-fan designs, and run quite loud.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB Windforce OC Video Card ($219.88 @ OutletPC)
Total: $219.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-10 18:22 EDT-0400

The 6GB (dual fan) 1060's are available around $260, which I'd suggest giving some decent consideration to, if you can possibly squeeze together a bit extra.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB ARMOR OCV1 Video Card ($259.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $259.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-10 18:25 EDT-0400

Unfortunately the 3GB Variants cut down more than just the VRAM, and you'll see the difference in benchmarks.
Whether that'll matter to you, depends entirely on the titles you play,

 

[R_1]

equivalents yes, at that price no.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/7bL7YJ/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-windforce-oc-video-card-gv-n1060wf2oc-3gd example of dual fan card
get the cheapest dual fan card you can. the cards are mostly the same all within a few FPS of each other.
I could not find any 6GB cards for the budget but if you can get another 30 dollars you can get a 6Gb variant that will be relevant longer than the 3GB
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/jW98TW/msi-geforce-gtx-1060-6gb-6gb-armor-ocv1-video-card-geforce-gtx-1060-armor-6g-ocv1 dual fan 6 GB

ninja'd exact same advice though what does that tell you

 

[SBMfromLA]

Thinking about buying new card after 2 years with gtx 960. amd or nvidia, don't care

Whats the best bang for the buck card right now? should be 230$ budget at most. heard gtx 1060 ones are good. is there any amd equivalent for this?

Perhaps you should just wait a couple of months and see what prices will be like during the Year-End Clearance.

 

[photonboy]

First off, I'm assuming that's BEFORE tax/shipping.

PCPARTPICKER (make sure USA or country of origin is selected)
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/

Filter by price. Here's $200 to $299: (went higher to see if it's worth WAITING to save money for better card)
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#X=20012,29984&sort=name&page=1

Look at benchmarks (average of games): https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_64/31.html

As said above, the GTX1060 3GB is the only card that makes sense:
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/HWtWGX/evga-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb-gaming-video-card-03g-p4-6160

I recommend the GTX1060 6GB strongly if you can save a LITTLE more due to the extra memory (3GB isn't quite enough for some games and this will only get worse in the future):
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/tJyxFT/evga-geforce-gtx-1060-6gb-sc-gaming-video-card-06g-p4-6163-kr

(I'd get a quality 2-fan card but it's even more money)

*My strongest advice is to wait for an RX-580 8GB (with good cooler) to drop in price, or find one on EBay since the cryptomining thing seems to be winding down so we may be FLOODED with cheaper cards on the USED market:
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/6ZmxFT/msi-radeon-rx-580-8gb-gaming-x-video-card-rx-580-gaming-x-8g

I checked EBay and there are no good deals yet. I wouldn't consider used unless it's 80% of the real price or cheaper. I saw some "BUY NOW" cards for about $300 that were used but a new card can be found for as little as $310 maybe cheaper.

SUMMARY:
It's still a bad time to buy a new card. A GTX960 isn't too bad as I had a similar card just a year ago. You'll go a long way with carefully tweaking the game settings. Maybe use Adaptive VSYNC (turns VSYNC off automatically so for 60Hz monitor tweak so you get drops less than 10% of the time which then causes screen tear but not worse stuttering).

I'd WAIT until maybe Christmas/Boxing Day for prices to drop AND scour for deals on new or used. Use a composite benchmark like the above.

A GTX1060 3GB might only be 40% to 60% performance boost depending on your CPU and the game used. I would recommend saving up for a bigger jump that this.

The RX-580 8GB will perform better than a GTX1060 6GB in future games as its architecture is more optimized for. It's arguably the better card assuming a similar price and same quality card/cooler. (video drivers matter too and NVidia is a bit better on average, so pros and cons but I own a GTX1080 and love it but if I had a choice between 1060 and RX-580 I'd go with the RX-580 8GB)

(GTX960 is roughly GTX1050Ti performance)

 

[Boot Room]

Thanks for help guys. shouldn't the 3GB card enough for 1080p gaming? not looking beyond that resolution.

Currently getting bit of lag with gta 5 ,witcher 3 and fifa 18. even tiny lags annoys me. heard 1060 cards give 80% more performance of 960 cards. So can play gta or fifa/pes in peace.

 

[Barty1884]

The 3GB 1060's are great 1080p cards in general, yes - BUT, when you consider the price difference between it and the substantially stronger 6GB variants (again, it's not just VRAM that's cut down), it's a little tough to justify.

What CPU are you pairing your 960 with? Witcher3 could be GPU, but GTAV and Fifa are a little surprising to hear...... your CPU can potentially be just as much of an issue (or moreso) in those titles....

 

[Boot Room]

Using amd 8350. fifa lags are during replays.

if there is such a big difference between 6gb and 3gb 1060 card as you say. then maybe i'll wait till holiday season for good offers.

 

[Barty1884]

In CPU intensive titles... which those 3 titles can be looked at as, in certain scenes.... The 8350 could be a bit of a limiting factor.

I'm not convinced a GPU upgrade is going to fix the issues you're seeing (at least not 100% of the time).

Are you monitoring your CPU/GPU/RAM usage? Can you identify whether any component is maxing out at/near 100% utilization (on a per core basis for the CPU), at the time you experience lags?