[SOLVED] GPU upgrade from older PC

[Mayonnaisu]

Hi,

Id love some help on a GPU upgrade for my gaming PC. Its pretty old, i got it back in 2014.
Is there a good upgrade that will boost performance without getting a bottleneck?
Specs:
Mobo: ASUS Z97-A - ATX / Z97
CPU: i5-4690K 3,5GHz Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
GPU: Sapphire Radeon TRI-X R9 290 4GB
Ram: Kingston HyperX FURY Black Series 16GB (2x8GB)
PSU: Corsair CX 750M
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 2TB
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 - Pearl Black

Thanks!

 

[Dj0gany]

Sadly,i wouldnt get a GPU right now.
They are either way overpriced or out of stock.
Your R9 290 is still capable of gaming most of the titles at 1080p,thats the main reason i keep my R9 380.
The prices are excepted to go back to normal around April.
Also what games do you play?
Some games wont benefit from a newer GPU,since your cpu only has 4 core's and 4 thread's.

 

[Mayonnaisu]

Ah i see, makes sense to wait then.
Tbh i dont play a lot of newer games. I did play Cyberpunk and it ran soso-poorly. A little better after the newer patches at lowest settings.
Otherwise at this moment i play some BDO and i get weird graphical errors (been like that for a long time).

The r9 290 seems to heat up quite fast which makes the fans go pretty high.

Would you say there would be a reasonable upgrade in this case? Waiting until april or later is fine as im not in a rush but have no clue if there is a good upgrade since my pc is quite old

 

[sizzling]

Modern AAA games are going to struggle on an older 4 core/thread cpu. My old 4670k @ 4.3 GHz was struggling 2 years ago and it’s basically the same cpu. A gpu upgrade may let you run higher game settings but your cpu will limit what FPS you can achieve. I remember trying Gears 5 on it and struggling to keep above 30 FPS, it was basically unplayable.

 

[Ash95]

Honestly i don’t think you’d be able to go anywhere above 1070 without bottlenecking (or AMD equal)

 

[Dj0gany]

I think your best bet is to sell your 4690K/r9 290x rig,and build a new one.
Keep the PSU,Storage,case,cpu cooler is awesome no need to change that,everything else,i would swap out.
Sell it part by part.
4690k/Asus z97/16gb of ram can easily go for 200e on used market,atleast in my country.
The GPU is 50e.

 

[Mayonnaisu]

Aaah i see, thanks a lot for the replies guys!
Then i can leave the thought of upgrading GPU only and hopefully be able to upgrade everything else that you guys mentioned.

So is the PSU actually poweful enough for eventually newer GPUs?

 

[Dj0gany]

Aaah i see, thanks a lot for the replies guys!
Then i can leave the thought of upgrading GPU only and hopefully be able to upgrade everything else that you guys mentioned.

So is the PSU actually poweful enough for eventually newer GPUs?

Yes you have a solid psu

 

[Ash95]

You may want to invest in a 500gb m.2 also

 

[RTX 2080]

You may want to invest in a 500gb m.2 also

Why would he? He already has a 860 Evo 2 TB and a nvme ssd usually has very little impact compared to a SATA SSD where gaming is concerned.

 

[RTX 2080]

Modern AAA games are going to struggle on an older 4 core/thread cpu. My old 4670k @ 4.3 GHz was struggling 2 years ago and it’s basically the same cpu. A gpu upgrade may let you run higher game settings but your cpu will limit what FPS you can achieve. I remember trying Gears 5 on it and struggling to keep above 30 FPS, it was basically unplayable.

This 100%.

If your CPU was only like 2 years old, then you could upgrade your GPU to something new and fast without any issues, but you're at the point where your CPU is too out of date for a GPU upgrade to have the desired affect. If anything, upgrading your CPU but not your GPU would probably make a bigger impact than upgrading your GPU but not your CPU.

 

[spentshells]

Your machine would benefit from an upgrade to a 4790k
Looks to be around 140 USD delivered, it's cheaper than an entire system upgrade, it's not the best idea, but if you wanted more performance in games, you'll see it for sure.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core...430282&hash=item1cffa938c4:g:zzYAAOSwcSlgEjSh

you could save 20 bucks going with a 4770k but I don't think it would be worth it.

Then when gpu prices normalize you could get a better gpu without worry of bottleneck, this upgrade would be a smart move. 4 core 8 threads with a high clock speed will be a nice step up in performance. It still does in my opinion very well it's not modern hardware, but it can keep up with better gpus

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9HV9V5nzOc


If you want to push the cpu you could see very acceptable performance.
I think maybe these are cherry picked games but look at 4k performance with a rtx3080

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSWXSbT1rnU

 

[Ash95]

Why would he? He already has a 860 Evo 2 TB and a nvme ssd usually has very little impact compared to a SATA SSD where gaming is concerned.

OS and other programmes that benefit, from the speed increases of m.2.

 

[Dj0gany]

OS and other programmes that benefit, from the speed increases of m.2.

Not really,you wont see a major difference in those tasks taht are worth payimg for a m.2.
In normal usage like booting,gaming,browsing,extracting files,just operating on your system,you wont see a big difference between a good sata ssd and a m.2

 

[RTX 2080]

Not really,you wont see a major difference in those tasks taht are worth payimg for a m.2.
In normal usage like booting,gaming,browsing,extracting files,just operating on your system,you wont see a big difference between a good sata ssd and a m.2

Yeah, unless you're copying large amounts of files, most people can't tell much difference between an nvme SSD and a SATA SSD. If you already have a good SATA SSD, there's little reason for the average user to upgrade to a nvme ssd unless they need to upgrade to a larger one anyway or have a specific use case that benefits a lot from higher sequential speeds or reduced latency.

 

[Mayonnaisu]

Yes you have a solid psu

Awesome!

You may want to invest in a 500gb m.2 also

Oh will it perform much better than a SSD?

So i had time to take the GPU apart today and dust off everything and re-apply thermal paste and holy <Mod Edit> theres a big temp difference.
When playing BDO before i had to keep the fans at around 48-54% to keep the temps around 75 degrees.
Now it seems to be at around 68-70 degrees at 38% fan speed (auto). It seems a lot more silent. Fans used to go crazy when it started going above 70 degrees.

 

[Dj0gany]

Awesome!


Oh will it perform much better than a SSD?

So i had time to take the GPU apart today and dust off everything and re-apply thermal paste and holy <Mod Edit> theres a big temp difference.
When playing BDO before i had to keep the fans at around 48-54% to keep the temps around 75 degrees.
Now it seems to be at around 68-70 degrees at 38% fan speed (auto). It seems a lot more silent. Fans used to go crazy when it started going above 70 degrees.

Welp that the whole point of repasting.
If you have it in your country,grab a piece of thermal pad,and place it around the gpu die,where the previous thermal pads were.
Since in a GPU,gpu die is not the only thing thats heating up,VRAM is and there are ussually thermal pads on that,that ofcourse over tome lose their function and need a replacement.

Edot: Vram especially gets hotter once you overclock your card.

 

[Mayonnaisu]

This 100%.

If your CPU was only like 2 years old, then you could upgrade your GPU to something new and fast without any issues, but you're at the point where your CPU is too out of date for a GPU upgrade to have the desired affect. If anything, upgrading your CPU but not your GPU would probably make a bigger impact than upgrading your GPU but not your CPU.

Aah i see, it seems smartest to just wait and eventually buy new parts then

Welp that the whole point of repasting.
If you have it in your country,grab a piece of thermal pad,and place it around the gpu die,where the previous thermal pads were.
Since in a GPU,gpu die is not the only thing thats heating up,VRAM is and there are ussually thermal pads on that,that ofcourse over tome lose their function and need a replacement.

Edot: Vram especially gets hotter once you overclock your card.

Oooh yeah those pads seemed to be pretty worn. I should maybe buy new ones and replace the old ones then? Currently the Vram temp is around 57 degrees

 

[Dj0gany]

Aah i see, it seems smartest to just wait and eventually buy new parts then


Oooh yeah those pads seemed to be pretty worn. I should maybe buy new ones and replace the old ones then? Currently the Vram temp is around 57 degrees

Thats pretty chill for Vram,they can get up to 120C.Vram temps are ussually 20C above the die temp,also anything below 105C on Vram is considered normal.
But i assume your on idle.
Anyhow,see if you can find those pads and replace them.

 

[Mayonnaisu]

Thats pretty chill for Vram,they can get up to 120C.Vram temps are ussually 20C above the die temp,also anything below 105C on Vram is considered normal.
But i assume your on idle.
Anyhow,see if you can find those pads and replace them.

Oh that limit is pretty nice! Currently with having BDO on and chrome with many tabs open the Vram temps shows 59 degrees in TriXXX,
GPU temps did go up though (sadface), and goes between 73-78. But the fans dont have to works as hard as before luckily. So sound wise it is a lot better

GPU idle temp did go down tho from around 52 to 43 after removing dust+repasting

Ah nvm, temps were same on both softwares, i was just blind