[SOLVED] First build gpu advice

[GreenMadman]

Hello, I'm planning my first build and I'm looking for some advice.

First off the more general question : How do you decide which model of a certain card to buy? Do you always go for the cheapest one, the one priced in the middle, do you stick with a manufacturer/model or do you try to thoroughly go through model reviews and find the best option?

Second question : The upcoming 5700XT custom models will cost less than a 2070 and have more or less similar performance, but they won't have ray tracing support. Now my friend has told me that once ray tracing gets going and developers start implementing it in games, hardware that doesn't support it will take a big hit in performance. I'll be honest, I know nothing about ray tracing and that is kind of why I'm here. Basically, does what my friend say make sense, or is he talking rubbish? And no he isn't an Nvidia fanboy, he has an RX 580.

Final question : GPU prices here are massively inflated, pretty much $250 more than if I ordered one online. How safe is it to buy GPUs online, or to put it differently, has a GPU you got online arrived with problems that required you to return it? I'm asking because returning products would be a massive pain where I live.

Thank you very much to everyone who reads all this, especially to those who also reply, much love to all of you!

 

[LordVile]

Hello, I'm planning my first build and I'm looking for some advice.

First off the more general question : How do you decide which model of a certain card to buy? Do you always go for the cheapest one, the one priced in the middle, do you stick with a manufacturer/model or do you try to thoroughly go through model reviews and find the best option?

Second question : The upcoming 5700XT custom models will cost less than a 2070 and have more or less similar performance, but they won't have ray tracing support. Now my friend has told me that once ray tracing gets going and developers start implementing it in games, hardware that doesn't support it will take a big hit in performance. I'll be honest, I know nothing about ray tracing and that is kind of why I'm here. Basically, does what my friend say make sense, or is he talking rubbish? And no he isn't an Nvidia fanboy, he has an RX 580.

Final question : GPU prices here are massively inflated, pretty much $250 more than if I ordered one online. How safe is it to buy GPUs online, or to put it differently, has a GPU you got online arrived with problems that required you to return it? I'm asking because returning products would be a massive pain where I live.

Thank you very much to everyone who reads all this, especially to those who also reply, much love to all of you!

1: You can look at performance, aesthetics and price. A cheap, dual slot card with 1 fan or a blower will not be able to boost or OC as high as one with a head sink that’s 3x heavier with a triple fan setup.

2: do not buy into tech that’s not implemented yet. RTX has been out over a year now and from what I know the games that currently support it can be counted on one hand. DXR is a thing and it’s not Nvidias property nor is ray tracing. He’s talking rubbish. Plus when RTX would be fully supported on more than a handful of titles the current gen wouldn’t be capable of running it. The 2060
Struggles as is.

3: I’ve had to return GPUs, only one of which was actually broken to an extent where it was unusable. I’ve returned them for LEDs not working and coil whine but the only one that wasn’t usable was a 1070 FE that ranked up to 100% fan for no reason at idle no matter what I did. You should be fine.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

Ray Tracing will be an option you can enable in-game. I don't see it becoming an all or nothing feature anytime soon. Even the RTX series takes a big hit right now when enabling ray tracing, and a lot of people say that the 2080 Ti is the only card for ray tracing because of such little performance the other cards have with it enabled.

When choosing a card, there is a combination of things I consider in roughly this order (everyone will probably be different):

1.) How's the model's reputation? Some are known for being better quality cards than others. This sort of includes everything from cooling to durability.
2.) How's the manufacturer's warranty? Some are longer than others and some include more coverage.
3.) Do I like the look of the card?
4.) Is the price reasonable?

I've ordered almost all of my GPUs online. I've not had to return any of them.

 

[GreenMadman]

1: You can look at performance, aesthetics and price. A cheap, dual slot card with 1 fan or a blower will not be able to boost or OC as high as one with a head sink that’s 3x heavier with a triple fan setup.

2: do not buy into tech that’s not implemented yet. RTX has been out over a year now and from what I know the games that currently support it can be counted on one hand. DXR is a thing and it’s not Nvidias property nor is ray tracing. He’s talking rubbish. Plus when RTX would be fully supported on more than a handful of titles the current gen wouldn’t be capable of running it. The 2060
Struggles as is.

3: I’ve had to return GPUs, only one of which was actually broken to an extent where it was unusable. I’ve returned them for LEDs not working and coil whine but the only one that wasn’t usable was a 1070 FE that ranked up to 100% fan for no reason at idle no matter what I did. You should be fine.

The aesthetics don't really concern me since the card will be in the case and I won't see it. As for performance, cards in the same group pretty much have the same performance in terms of average fps, but differ in temperatures, noise levels, overclocking potential and durability. The problem is that most benchmarks that compare models only show fps comparisons, and thermals are only shown between different card groups, like 2060 vs 2070, which is useless to me, and I don't recall seeing any discussions on model durability, and while that would be anecdotal evidence it would still help in making a choice (though the fault there probably lies with me). For rtx, I have to agree with you, and for online shopping, I hope you are right. Thanks for the advice!

Ray Tracing will be an option you can enable in-game. I don't see it becoming an all or nothing feature anytime soon. Even the RTX series takes a big hit right now when enabling ray tracing, and a lot of people say that the 2080 Ti is the only card for ray tracing because of such little performance the other cards have with it enabled.

When choosing a card, there is a combination of things I consider in roughly this order (everyone will probably be different):

1.) How's the model's reputation? Some are known for being better quality cards than others. This sort of includes everything from cooling to durability.
2.) How's the manufacturer's warranty? Some are longer than others and some include more coverage.
3.) Do I like the look of the card?
4.) Is the price reasonable?

I've ordered almost all of my GPUs online. I've not had to return any of them.

Ray tracing is pretty much meaningless to me since I can barely tell the difference between having it on and off, the thing that worried me was what my friend said about the performance hit, glad to hear he was wrong about that. As for choosing the card, I think I found 1, maybe 2 discussions on that topic, but that's on me to find. The warranties on the cards I've looked up are either 36 months or aren't even specified, so that doesn't really help me at all. The aesthetics also don't matter, since the card will be in the case and I won't be looking at it much. And price is really the toughest thing to measure for me, since I can only base it around the average fps marks they hit in various benchmarks. Glad to hear about online shopping, that helps a lot!