Question I'm looking for a new GPU for 1440p @ 60fps ?

[stknk]

Hi!

A few months ago, I started researching (fortunately not in vain) as I wanted to buy an RTX graphics card. I have always played in 1080p, but now I have switched to 1440p and I want to replace my 8-year-old Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 with an RTX 3070 or 4070. For me, a stable 60fps is perfect, I'm not really concerned about anything beyond that.

My CPU is an i5-11600K, and I know that the 3070 would not cause any bottleneck (most sources I've checked say it's the best pairing), but since there isn't a significant price difference and it's important to me not to have to buy another card for the next 5-10 years, I am leaning towards the 4070. However, in this case, there would be a 10% bottleneck due to the CPU.

The question is, does it matter to have 8GB+ VRAM for high/ultra settings at 1440p, 60fps, or is 8GB sufficient even in the future (although I know no one can predict this)? I am considering the 4070 for future-proofing because of its 12GB VRAM.

Additionally, which manufacturer would you recommend for either the 3070 or 4070? I have been satisfied with my Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 for the past 8 years. It has a "normal" noise level, but it doesn't exceed 34 degrees Celsius at idle and only reaches 79 under heavy load. I have never replaced the thermal paste or the fans, I have only regularly cleaned it from dust, and I am happy with its performance. So a not too loud, but stable price/fps card is what im looking for.

Right now i’m not interested in AMD.

So, here are the specific questions:

- Which card would be advisable to buy for my CPU?
- Which brand can achieve the quietest results?
- Is it worth buying a card with 8GB+ VRAM for 60fps at 1440p?
- The options I have considered are:
- Gainward RTX 3070 8GB Phoenix
- Inno3D RTX 4070 12GB Twin OC
- But other suggestions are welcome.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z590 GAMING
CPU: INTEL Core i5-11600K 3.9GHz
Memory: Kingston Fury 2x16GB DDR4 3200 MHz
PSU: Coolermaster V850 SFX Gold 850W

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Viking2121]

Depends on your budget, If Nvidia is a must, the 4070 is an awful deal right now, If Nvidia is a must, I'd go for the 3070.

If you don't mind AMD, the 6700xt is a pretty decent card, its cheaper, more Vram, roughly matches the 3070 performance wise, though AMD ray tracing performance isn't great on them. Some RX6800's can be cheaper at some palaces and its right around a 3070ti performance with more vram.

Good Luck!

 

[ilukey77]

6800xt is quite cheap and much better than the 3070ti ..
6950xt over a 4070 for sure ..
Unless RT is your thing but im assuming at 1440p 60fps RT isnt a huge factor !!
That said depending on money and if the price is right the 7900xt is a champion with it 20gb v ram giving it years of life span for the extra money !!
the only Nvidia card i would even bother with is either super expensive or the older 3090 , 3080 12gb

 

[IDProG]

does it matter to have 8GB+ VRAM for high/ultra settings at 1440p, 60fps?

Yes, it absolutely does, especially if you don't want to upgrade for a long time.

Resident Evil 4 Remake outright crashes if you try to play it at 1440p with an 8GB VRAM card.

although I know no one can predict this

This is actually false. It's actually easy to predict this. PS4 and Xbox One support will inevitably be dropped, meaning that they will stop designing their game around 8GB VRAM and start doing so around 16GB VRAM that the next-gen consoles have.

I am considering the 4070 for future-proofing because of its 12GB VRAM.

12GB is sufficient for now, but it's a stretch if you think that you will future-proof with 12GB VRAM.

Right now i’m not interested in AMD.

Well, that's unfortunate, because Nvidia is terrible this gen. If you want to future-proof, wait for a 16GB variant of the 4060 Ti, but even that card sucks because it's relatively too expensive. OR, you can buy a 3060 12GB, then save money for 2 years to wait for RTX 50 series.

 

[5900x]

One thing I want to mention is if you intend to put any GPU as 5+ years of use, you would eventually have to upgrade your CPU and things, since in 5+ years the current set what you have might not be sufficient for what is offered then. And as much I would want to say for such a long haul, you would need closer to the higher end GPUs from AMD/Nvidia with enough VRAM to sustain the longevity but they all come with a hefty price.

In your current query, I would forego the 30 series completely. They are completely bad value for money both in age and features, not to say the new gen is any good for value, but the new gen gives you things moving forward that old won't. Also, DLSS3 with frame gen will keep you afloat with the bottlenecks of your CPU and it is here to stay. So, I would say get the 4070 where your money sits and probably Asus Dual is better than the Inno3D. I don't know much about Inno3D but I would not buy this brand, I think this is a bottom feeder brand with cheap materials and quality assurance. Even their 4090s are way cheaper than any other brands.

I was in the same situation as you except I have a 5900x with same GPU and other specs. For my needs and things after a bit of research, I settled on the Intel Arc A770 16gb with its cheap price and first gen value as I didn't want to spend on Nvidia and AMD doesn't have the feature-set that I need. This is however a know-what-you-are-doing sorta thing, as not everyone is adept to handle the first gen things as a daily driver.

Bottomline, I would take the 4070, somewhere between Asus or MSI or maybe even Gigabyte if you have used the brand.

 

[ilukey77]

One thing I want to mention is if you intend to put any GPU as 5+ years of use, you would eventually have to upgrade your CPU and things, since in 5+ years the current set what you have might not be sufficient for what is offered then. And as much I would want to say for such a long haul, you would need closer to the higher end GPUs from AMD/Nvidia with enough VRAM to sustain the longevity but they all come with a hefty price.

In your current query, I would forego the 30 series completely. They are completely bad value for money both in age and features, not to say the new gen is any good for value, but the new gen gives you things moving forward that old won't. Also, DLSS3 with frame gen will keep you afloat with the bottlenecks of your CPU and it is here to stay. So, I would say get the 4070 where your money sits and probably Asus Dual is better than the Inno3D. I don't know much about Inno3D but I would not buy this brand, I think this is a bottom feeder brand with cheap materials and quality assurance. Even their 4090s are way cheaper than any other brands.

I was in the same situation as you except I have a 5900x with same GPU and other specs. For my needs and things after a bit of research, I settled on the Intel Arc A770 16gb with its cheap price and first gen value as I didn't want to spend on Nvidia and AMD doesn't have the feature-set that I need. This is however a know-what-you-are-doing sorta thing, as not everyone is adept to handle the first gen things as a daily driver.

Bottomline, I would take the 4070, somewhere between Asus or MSI or maybe even Gigabyte if you have used the brand.

good work on the ARC770 its a great little gpu ive got one paired with the 5600x ( soon to be a 13600k ) for a all intel build..
im really not sure why people keep supporting Nvidia ( if the OP was going a 4090 then 1000% behind him amazing card) but Nvidia's low Vram rubbish is exactly that RUBBISH !!
when more games are coming out with more and more demands on Vram im just dont understand the logic ..
The ARC770 is actually better ( ive read ) than even Nvidia in some production work and apart from the pathetically disgusting 7600 ( no gpu in 2023 should come with 8gb vram) AMD is really crushing it in life span of their cards!!
Unless the its the BS about bad AMD drivers again!!

 

[stknk]

Depends on your budget, If Nvidia is a must, the 4070 is an awful deal right now, If Nvidia is a must, I'd go for the 3070.

If you don't mind AMD, the 6700xt is a pretty decent card, its cheaper, more Vram, roughly matches the 3070 performance wise, though AMD ray tracing performance isn't great on them. Some RX6800's can be cheaper at some palaces and its right around a 3070ti performance with more vram.

Good Luck!

My budget is between 600-650$. I understand that a 4070 is an awful deal right now, but given that I have a 970 GTX, it is still a ~300% boost from where I come from. You're right that it doesn't have a great price/value so I maybe wait a little bit longer till new cards can push down its price a little bit more. Thank you for your opinion!

the only Nvidia card i would even bother with is either super expensive or the older 3090 , 3080 12gb

Yeah, but its a little bit too much for my budget right now. Also my CPU is not that powerful to handle all those cards, and it would be an overkill I think for 1440p. But yeah, If I want to keep playing on high/ultra for 5 years, I should consider a more higher rate card right now, to fall into the sweet spot after a couple of years. Thank you!

Yes, it absolutely does, especially if you don't want to upgrade for a long time.

Hmmm... sad to hear that, but you're probably right. 🙁

This is actually false. It's actually easy to predict this. PS4 and Xbox One support will inevitably be dropped, meaning that they will stop designing their game around 8GB VRAM and start doing so around 16GB VRAM that the next-gen consoles have.

I never thought about this before. This makes sense...

12GB is sufficient for now, but it's a stretch if you think that you will future-proof with 12GB VRAM.

A more or less future-proof tbh. I don't mind to bring some settings down later on. But it would be nice to keep it as high as possible.

Well, that's unfortunate, because Nvidia is terrible this gen. If you want to future-proof, wait for a 16GB variant of the 4060 Ti, but even that card sucks because it's relatively too expensive. OR, you can buy a 3060 12GB, then save money for 2 years to wait for RTX 50 series.

Unless the its the BS about bad AMD drivers again!!

My problem with AMD is basically my bad luck pretty much. I adored AMD cards for the price/value they bring to the table and I wanted to start with 6700xt. I ordered an Asus 6700xt, but the coil whine was off the charts and it also started to push itself to 85-90 degrees. I send it back and it turned out that the one I get has a fan issue. Ok, no probs, change it and I got another one. This new version of the card started to freeze every title after 30-40 min when I started to play on 1440p High without RT, but the temp was around between 67-75 degrees with the same Asus card. I sent it back and it turned out this version has a memory problem. Ok, no probs, I asked for a Gigabyte version. This one provided with a black screen from time to time, it's like I turned out the monitor and back on. I sent back that version, the store said they don't know what happened with that, but they see the issue. At this point, I asked for my money back, and now I only focus on the Nvidia only, because I never had issues with any Nvidia card since I started to use them, but yeah in the older AMD-s got several driver issues, this is why I switched to Nvidia around 10 years ago. It is probably the most unfortunate selection of what I get, but I bought everything from the same store in the last 16 years without an issue. Only the AMD cards that I choose had problems. Maybe they had a bad stock, or I have bad luck, at this point, I don't really care anymore. Maybe later on I try another one, but not this time.

I was in the same situation as you except I have a 5900x with same GPU and other specs. For my needs and things after a bit of research, I settled on the Intel Arc A770 16gb with its cheap price and first gen value as I didn't want to spend on Nvidia and AMD doesn't have the feature-set that I need. This is however a know-what-you-are-doing sorta thing, as not everyone is adept to handle the first gen things as a daily driver.

I thought about the A770, but I'm not that confident at the moment with this card even tho I see that it can bring some good value on the table for its price. I still keep my eye on it.

One thing I want to mention is if you intend to put any GPU as 5+ years of use, you would eventually have to upgrade your CPU and things, since in 5+ years the current set what you have might not be sufficient for what is offered then.

Yeah, this is why I switched my CPU 2 years ago to my i5-11600k, but now I'm happy with that one and I don't want to spend on that as well, because my motherboard only supports LGA-1200 so that would be a complete rig change right now. In the future I will change it most likely, because I have to but this CPU stays with me for a couple years I think.

 

[stknk]

My conclusion right now is that I'm going to wait a little bit more, to see if there is any other price drop around the corner for a 4070 or a 4070ti, maybe a for a 4060 ti for a good price. The most compelling thing to me on the 40x series is that a little bit less power consumption and the DLSS3 support. I'm not really into RT so I would mostly play on 1440p, 60fps with DLSS3 and without RT (it depends on the value it brings to the game).

I also render videos and do game dev on my PC. So it would be a good update some day.

Thank you for the help. If you still have anything in mind, please bring it to me! You guys are awesome.

 

[Viking2121]

My budget is between 600-650$. I understand that a 4070 is an awful deal right now, but given that I have a 970 GTX, it is still a ~300% boost from where I come from. You're right that it doesn't have a great price/value so I maybe wait a little bit longer till new cards can push down its price a little bit more. Thank you for your opinion!

Then I'd honestly wait, the 970 is still ok, yeah not great, but like I said, on a budget, look on the second hand market for a 3070 or even 3080, But if you want to waste your money on a 4070, not sure why you'd even make a post about asking, just buy it, its your money, Wont hurt anyone else spending more money on something than its worth right now.

Shame you wont look at AMD though, considering a 6800xt does beat the 4070 often, so 300% faster could be 350 - 400% faster for cheaper and then use the extra money to buy a cheap SSD, good prices on them currently, just trying to help ya know.

Good Luck though!

 

[stknk]

Then I'd honestly wait, the 970 is still ok, yeah not great, but like I said, on a budget, look on the second hand market for a 3070 or even 3080, But if you want to waste your money on a 4070, not sure why you'd even make a post about asking, just buy it, its your money, Wont hurt anyone else spending more money on something than its worth right now.

Shame you wont look at AMD though, considering a 6800xt does beat the 4070 often, so 300% faster could be 350 - 400% faster for cheaper and then use the extra money to buy a cheap SSD, good prices on them currently, just trying to help ya know.

Good Luck though!

Yeah, you're right about what you say, and thank you for the input. I still don't throw away completely the AMD, but now I think I just don't want another fail with that one. I don't want to waste my money on the 4070. That is why I said I would love to wait if the price is good enough. But if it would be ~300$ I would buy it I guess.

And because I wasn't sure if it is worth it, that is why I wanted another opinion about this and to share my experience as well.

Again, I'm grateful! It helps me a lot. Also an SSD is not a bad idea either.

 

[ilukey77]

Yeah, you're right about what you say, and thank you for the input. I still don't throw away completely the AMD, but now I think I just don't want another fail with that one. I don't want to waste my money on the 4070. That is why I said I would love to wait if the price is good enough. But if it would be ~300$ I would buy it I guess.

And because I wasn't sure if it is worth it, that is why I wanted another opinion about this and to share my experience as well.

Again, I'm grateful! It helps me a lot. Also an SSD is not a bad idea either.

only other idea is wait and save and see what the 7800xt is like or 7700xt then make a decision ..
the flip side to coil whine is random ive currently got 4 AMD cards 7900xtx 6900xt 6700xt and a 6650xt all powercolor and yes i get a small bit of coil whine from the 6900xt red devil and the 7900xtx red devil in FFXIV menus due to high FPS otherwise in game its fine no noise !!

I also wonder if coil whine is relative to the game youre playing i dont play games in the 400 or 500 plus fps marks most of them are 1440/4k 60 to 200 alot of the times i see people complaining about coil whine its the super high fps games !!

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

Hi!

A few months ago, I started researching (fortunately not in vain) as I wanted to buy an RTX graphics card. I have always played in 1080p, but now I have switched to 1440p and I want to replace my 8-year-old Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 with an RTX 3070 or 4070. For me, a stable 60fps is perfect, I'm not really concerned about anything beyond that.

My CPU is an i5-11600K, and I know that the 3070 would not cause any bottleneck (most sources I've checked say it's the best pairing), but since there isn't a significant price difference and it's important to me not to have to buy another card for the next 5-10 years, I am leaning towards the 4070. However, in this case, there would be a 10% bottleneck due to the CPU.

The question is, does it matter to have 8GB+ VRAM for high/ultra settings at 1440p, 60fps, or is 8GB sufficient even in the future (although I know no one can predict this)? I am considering the 4070 for future-proofing because of its 12GB VRAM.

Additionally, which manufacturer would you recommend for either the 3070 or 4070? I have been satisfied with my Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 for the past 8 years. It has a "normal" noise level, but it doesn't exceed 34 degrees Celsius at idle and only reaches 79 under heavy load. I have never replaced the thermal paste or the fans, I have only regularly cleaned it from dust, and I am happy with its performance. So a not too loud, but stable price/fps card is what im looking for.

Right now i’m not interested in AMD.

So, here are the specific questions:

- Which card would be advisable to buy for my CPU?
- Which brand can achieve the quietest results?
- Is it worth buying a card with 8GB+ VRAM for 60fps at 1440p?
- The options I have considered are:
- Gainward RTX 3070 8GB Phoenix
- Inno3D RTX 4070 12GB Twin OC
- But other suggestions are welcome.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z590 GAMING
CPU: INTEL Core i5-11600K 3.9GHz
Memory: Kingston Fury 2x16GB DDR4 3200 MHz
PSU: Coolermaster V850 SFX Gold 850W

Thanks in advance for your help!

12GB is essentially a requirement now for the most recent AAA games at 1440p, if you want future proofing there are only 3 GPUs to consider. 4090, 7900xt, or 7900xtx. Anything 16GB or less will be relegated to low-medium setting in 2 years or less.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Out of the two that you've presented, there's no question that I would choose the RTX 4070 for the 12GB of VRAM if you want to play at 1440p. It has been demonstrated over and over that 8GB is only enough for now if you're willing to turn settings down from day one.

I don't think that this is a concession that you should have to make considering how expensive video cards are in that range, especially GeForce cards. There's no question in my mind that the RTX 4070 is by far the better of the two cards you've listed.

 

[stknk]

only other idea is wait and save and see what the 7800xt is like or 7700xt then make a decision ..
the flip side to coil whine is random ive currently got 4 AMD cards 7900xtx 6900xt 6700xt and a 6650xt all powercolor and yes i get a small bit of coil whine from the 6900xt red devil and the 7900xtx red devil in FFXIV menus due to high FPS otherwise in game its fine no noise !!

I also wonder if coil whine is relative to the game youre playing i dont play games in the 400 or 500 plus fps marks most of them are 1440/4k 60 to 200 alot of the times i see people complaining about coil whine its the super high fps games !!

I decided to wait a little bit more for some new card to show up, and push the prices a bit more lower on the 4070 series. I only considering buying an AMD card, if I absolutely must buy a card (eg.: mine became unusable).

Yeah, probably coil whine is only for the extreme fps. Probably that wont be an issue.

thank you for the input.

 

[stknk]

12GB is essentially a requirement now for the most recent AAA games at 1440p, if you want future proofing there are only 3 GPUs to consider. 4090, 7900xt, or 7900xtx. Anything 16GB or less will be relegated to low-medium setting in 2 years or less.

Thank you. That is good to hear. Maybe a wait for a 4090 massive price drop can make a lot of difference in the future (if it ever happens). Hmmm... I'll think about that.

 

[stknk]

Out of the two that you've presented, there's no question that I would choose the RTX 4070 for the 12GB of VRAM if you want to play at 1440p. It has been demonstrated over and over that 8GB is only enough for now if you're willing to turn settings down from day one.

I don't think that this is a concession that you should have to make considering how expensive video cards are in that range, especially GeForce cards. There's no question in my mind that the RTX 4070 is by far the better of the two cards you've listed.

Yes, I like to think like that as well. But if I buy the 4070, I will gravitate toward the Gigabyte Eagle OC from now on I think. Thank you!

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yes, I like to think like that as well. But if I buy the 4070, I will gravitate toward the Gigabyte Eagle OC from now on I think. Thank you!

Whatever makes you happy, go for it. Personally, I don't care about brands at all. I've had so many cards from so many brands already that it doesn't matter to me. 😊