Question Help with intel/Nvidia Gaming PC upgrade please

[Thunderballs]

I would appreciate opinions.

I am trying to work out what is the most sensible graphics card upgrade to do on my Gaming PC in order to remain competitive in Overwatch 2 and the Battlefield series games for the next 12 to 18 months.

I am aware OW2 won't support SLi

Ideally I want to be able to run 1440p at 144 FPS and have some headroom to turn up the eye candy from Low settings

I could sell my current GPUs and perhaps now is the time to do it with the Etherium Proof of Stake coming later this year and Nvidia price drops. Could sell cards now and buy another GPU later I n the year (as I am sadly too busy to game (I know!) for the next 8-10 weeks

I am happy to buy second hand including ex miners card

My PC case is big enough and equipped with plenty of Noctua fans and a decent Corsair power supply and I built the PC myself. Would consider pulling the motherboard but suspect replacing the mainboard , CPU and ram(?) is going to get silly (and riskier) for this particular upgrade.

Don't really want to spend more than a few hundred $

I am likely to want to do a complete new gaming PC in 12 to 18 months and I am lucky enough that I will probably want to build a upto date medium to high end rig for gaming (I dont stream or do video editing etc)


These are my basic System Specs

CPU
i7-2600k
Motherboard
Asus Maximum Hero VIII Hero
RAM
32GB DDR4
SSD
Samsung 950 Pro 256GB

Screen
Asus RoG PG279Q - G-SYNC 144hz 1440p

GPU
GTX 1080p in SLi - EVGA Founders

So......
Do I try buy a GTX 1080 Ti - if so what price range
Do I try buy a RTX card (new or second hand incl ex miners)
Do I buy an AMD card (new or second hand)

I have an eye on what sort of second hand price i can get for components (both now and in 12 to 18 months) as I dont like wasting too much cash by not reselling some of my hardware but I am also not so short of funds that I have to try and squeeze ever $ (or in my case £)

Thanks in advance.

 

[warriorlax1234]

Tough situation. If I were you, and 1440p gaming is your goal, the RX6600 is a solid card for a little more than 300.00 A new RTX card, I have the RTX 2080, will defiantly put you over your budget of 300.00 Not to mention if you upgrade to a current gen card, your CPU will likely need an upgrade to avoid a bottleneck. I myself want a RTX 4090 but I have an i5 10600k that will also, for sure, need an upgrade. To me, it seems like you're currently rocking a 1440p medium to low settings type rig (to hit 144 fps). When you want to shoot for high settings @ 1440p. My RTX 2080 can handle that currently but I like DLSS and Ray Tracing etc. I really like the eye candy. I would almost suggest you deciding if you want to be competitive (which in most cases graphic settings are turned down to stay competitive) or you want eye candy plus being competitive, I think you're looking at a new CPU, MB, and GPU. I would hold off on doing anything right now, save your money, and then go all out with a 13 series Intel CPU, RTX 4000 series GPU. Then you'll be all set for current and future titles. I always look at upgrading as future proofing. Go balls to the wall with new hardware to get 3-5 years out of your PC VS. upgrading to prior gen hardware in which you're always behind the 8 ball. Unreal engine 5 is the next evolution in graphics. That will be the standard moving forward for future titles. We will all need beast PC's to take advantage of all the new eye candy.

 

[KyaraM]

With a 2nd gen i7, a GPU upgrade is wasted considering that chip will limit them at 1440p. You need a better CPU, RAM, MB, PSU and GPU, so essentially an entirely new system for it to make sense...

 

[TheWorkingNerd]

Upgrade your CPU, that's your current bottleneck. While they make a much bigger difference on a 1080p benchmark, CPU still has an effect on your framerate for 1440p gaming (especially if high refresh rate is the goal).

I got 1440p/120Hz no problem on an i7-7700 and GTX1070 for years on OW. With some minimal tweaking, a decent CPU paired with the GTX1080 will likely do that just fine for OW2. Battlefield may be a different story, I don't have much experience with it.

My 12600k has been fantastic paired with a GTX1080. I'd upgrade your CPU to something decent and spend some time on optimizing graphics settings.

 

[Thunderballs]

Thanks everyone. Much appreciated.
I can play OW on ultra settings and get 144 plus FPS with Sli
I think given I am more likely to play OW2 as opposed to Battlefield 5, I will probably buy a second hand 1080ti (OW2 doesnt support SLI) and sell my 2 1080s.
If i have to play at 1080p and low, so be it as I cant see myself being happy to spend $500 plus for an interim solution involving replacing Motherboard and CPU.