Question Is GPU upgrade worth it?

[veterangamer8000]

Hi all,

With the upcoming Diablo 4 launch I am coming back to gaming.
I tried the D4 beta during this weekend, but faced a lot of lag even after adjusting the graphic settings to low.
Diablo 3 runs perfectly fine (70-100 FPS).
Diablo 2 resurrected is almost unplayable as the frames are very low even in town.

My monitor is a 32" 1440p.

Is it worth upgrading the GPU? And will a GPU upgrade fix the lag issues? I have been looking at a RX 6650 XT that is priced pretty fair.
The alternative option is to buy a brand new PC, but I am not that much into gaming anymore so it feels like a bit of waste to buy a totally new rig.

What do you think? Are there any other GPUs or parts that would be worth upgrading to?

My current setup:

Corsair VS550 v2 (2018) power supply
Kingston A2000 M.2 NVMe SSD
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Wraith Stealth CPU
G.Skill TridentZ Neo DDR4-3600 C16 DC
MSI B450 GAMING PLUS MAX
Geforce GTX 980

Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[DSzymborski]

You should wait until Diablo IV is actdually released so that there's data on the performance. You don't want to be buying equipment based on experience in a beta three months before release.

An RX 6650xt would be a significant upgrade. However, I would not with that power supply; it's already a real stretch to be running a cheap, double-forward, group-regulated PSU with a GTX 980 and it certainly doesn't make sense to continue doing it with new equipment.

 

[veterangamer8000]

Thanks for the reply.
Yeah, it is probably a good idea to just wait for the final game.

Can you elaborate on what the issues are with my power supply?

 

[DSzymborski]

Thanks for the reply.
Yeah, it is probably a good idea to just wait for the final game.

Can you elaborate on what the issues are with my power supply?

Well it uses an extremely out-of-date design that's not intended for PCs that use almost entirely +12V power, more fitting for Pentium III-era PCs. And since it's not intended to have a strain on it, it has cheap parts everywhere. It's a good office PC or for a light gaming rig with a GT 1030, but it's miscast as something in a gaming rig with a GPU that uses supplementary power.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I agree with DSzymborski. A beta test is never a good way to decide if your video card is suitable or not because it might be the game that's causing the problem.

Personally, I would have a hard time believing that a GTX 980 isn't enough for a game like Diablo because it doesn't look like a game that uses 3D acceleration (or if it does, it's extremely limited).

I think that the problem is the game itself at this point. If I were you, I wouldn't do any upgrading to my video card until Diablo IV goes live. In the meantime however, I also agree with DSzymborski that you should upgrade your PSU. That PSU is from a time when the 5V rails were important whereas now, they're almost never used for anything as pretty much everything now uses 12V.

I would recommend this PSU because it's an amazing deal for the price and has a 5-year warranty:
Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 600W 80+Gold-Certified: $55

If the GTX 980 proves to be insufficient, the good news is that for a game like Diablo IV, you'd be fine with something like an RX 6600 which is only $225 on Newegg. Even better would be the RX 5700 XT because at $230, it's only $5 more than the RX 6600 but is about 7% faster.

You'd be very happy with the RX 5700 XT. This is because I personally went from your GTX 980's direct rival, the R9 Fury to an RX 5700 XT and the performance increase was amazing. I still have my RX 5700 XT as a backup card in case anything bad ever happens to my RX 6800 XT. I like it that much.

Anyway, you probably don't need it because beta testing often sucks with nothing being optimised for anything else. I believe that with proper optimisations, Diablo IV will run just fine on your GTX 980.

 

[Joseph_138]

Do what I did. Get a Dell/Alienware OEM RTX 3070. It only requires a single 8-pin power connector, so it will work with 500-550W power supplies. Make sure you get a Dell, though, as the HP OEM card has nVidia's wierd 12 pin connector that requires 2 8-pin connectors on your PSU and an adapter. It's highly doubtful that one will work with less than a 650-700W PSU. Any other OEM cards that may be floating around out there, may have their own requirements, I only know about the Dell and HP cards. I'm also going to agree about the power supply possibly becoming an issue in the future. Cap rot may already be setting in on a 2018 PSU, and the technology has changed since then.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

I will simply back up that which has already been said.
Wait until the official release, and even then, maybe wait a little for the first patch to release to see what performance is like as it most likely is due to it being a beta.

Also upgrading the PSU.
The one linked is a great option on the cheaper side. Thermaltake is reliable enough for any budget to mid range card you upgrade to, or even just to keep using the 980. at 1440p with a game like Diablo, I would think that the 980 would still be fine for 60fps.
So only time will tell right now.
For now, you can assume the 980 would be enough and just upgrade the PSU to start then consider a GPU upgrade once you can confirm it just isn't a poorly optimized and coded beta.

 

[veterangamer8000]

Hi all,

Thanks a lot for all the useful answers. That is much appreciated.
I was not aware that a PSU was such important factor, as I just focused on the watt that it can provide.
As you all have suggested I will wait for the final release and hopefully the 980 will do the job just fine, so I can avoid any upgrades. Only time will tell

Once again thanks a lot for all the inputs.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Hi all,

Thanks a lot for all the useful answers. That is much appreciated.
I was not aware that a PSU was such important factor, as I just focused on the watt that it can provide.
As you all have suggested I will wait for the final release and hopefully the 980 will do the job just fine, so I can avoid any upgrades. Only time will tell

Once again thanks a lot for all the inputs.

You might want to take a look at this because Diablo 4's beta test has been literally KILLING video cards:
Discussion - Another game blowing up NVIDIA GPUS?? Here we go again! | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

 

[dellmonitor27]

I tried the D4 beta during this weekend, but faced a lot of lag even after adjusting the graphic settings to low.
Diablo 3 runs perfectly fine (70-100 FPS).
Diablo 2 resurrected is almost unplayable as the frames are very low even in town.

My monitor is a 32" 1440p.
Geforce GTX 980

There were some problems with lag in the Diablo 4 beta, even on way better systems and graphics cards. Anecdotal, but out of 3 friends, 2 of us had problems that were not due to hardware limitations. I eventually got it working totally fine. There was a GeForce driver update, at least one Diablo hotfix patch on Saturday. And messing around with settings: click Low FX on, disable DLSS and lower resolution %, and set a reasonable framerate cap. Between those things something was fixed and instead the game visually stuttering or freezing every 5-10 seconds, it suddenly played perfectly normally for me.

You should be able to play on low/medium at 1080p with your GTX 980, but yea for 1440p and/or with good quality settings that's not gonna be ideal. I was looking up the same questions you were asking in the past few days and this was the most helpful post I found for deciding on video card upgrades for Diablo 4: https://daydull.com/reviews/diablo-4-video-card-recommendations-the-best-value-gpu-d4-budget/

There are enough benchmarks from open beta now to make an informed decision. I don't think there's any reason to wait for retail release; nothing graphically is going to change much at this point. All the stuff about Diablo 4 killing gpu's is a bit overblown, can be prevented by setting a framerate cap, and everything I've seen about it points to the GPU's themselves just having issues and the only problem Diablo was causing was pushing them a bit more than most games did. (Again, setting a framerate cap would prevent this.)

Anyway, final note, like someone else mentioned, your power supply could limit you, but you wouldn't want to upgrade too far without upgrading the rest first anyway. I think you'd be fine upgrading to a 2000 series RTX card with that system.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Another upgrade on a budget to check on, more than likely your board would have a bios update available and you could also pick up a zen 3(5000 series) cpu such as the 5600,5600x etc. Or if you wanted it to last a bit longer and not upgrade everything you could look at the 5800x3d depending on how much gaming you start doing.

 

[veterangamer8000]

Hi all,

Sorry for coming back to this topic, but I am know considering to upgrade the PSU and see if the 980 performs any better after a PSU upgrade. If not, then maybe get a RX 6650 XT to boost the GPU as I feel that my CPU is doing just fine at the moment.

I checked if the PSU that was recommended in #5 is available, but unfortunately it's not available in the country that I live in.
Can you recommend any other PSUs that are good, fits my build and not too expensive?

What about Cooler Master MWE Gold 650 V2? Is that any good?

​

 

[DSzymborski]

The PSU is not a performance issue, it's a safety issue. Your 980 won't perform better after a PSU upgrade beyond there being a much lower chance of it not dying.

The linked PSU is decent. Can't say what else is available in your country as I do not know what country you live in.

 

[ssmokeyy]

U could get a great psu for not much money if u go to evga and either buy new or refurbished 10 year warranty. Also check there refurbished list of gpus they have in stock. Great deals from a company u can trust. On the gpu list might be a good time to look at a intel gpu. Good cards for a great price. They will age amazing over time Also.
If u start to think about motherboard and cpu good option would be 15-13600k cheap on price but amazing for games. Ddr5 is pretty cheap now aim for 6000mhz speed. On the psu front it should be one of the best parts in your system.

 

[veterangamer8000]

#13 and #14 Thanks a lot for the clarification. I get it now that a new PSU will not improve performance but it is merely a for safety. It might also be good to consider if I upgrade the GPU.

#13 I live in Denmark, and it seems like PSUs are quite expensive here compared to the US.
But actually this PSU "Corsair RM750x 750W PSU" is on a nice discount this month. Would that be a better option? I assume that it fits in my current setup.

​

 

[Vic 40]

That is a great option for a psu.

 

[veterangamer8000]

Thanks a lot. That is much appreciated.

So my initial idea based on your feedback was to get the Corsair RM750x PSU and upgrade the GPU to a RX 6650 XT. However, that will cost equivalent to 440$ (if I calculate the price in my country to USD).

Then yesterday I came across the following setup on sale where I can get the same PSU as mentioned above (it is not build by the vendor, but I need to build the PC with the components if ordering them):

• AMD AM4 Ryzen 5 5600 CPU
• ASUS TUF GAMING B550-PRO motherboard
• Kingston KC3000 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD 1TB
• Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3600MHz 32GB
• ASUS Radeon RX 6700 XT DUAL GPU
• Corsair RM750x 750W PSU
• Phanteks Eclipse G360A Mid Tower

For a total price equivalent to 1080$.

And then I can sell my old PC to compensate a bit.

It is also possible to upgrade the GPU to a ASUS Radeon RX 6750 XT Dual OC for 40$ more. Or to go nuts and a XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT MERC 319 for 200$ more.

How does the build above sound? As mentioned earlier I primarily game Action RPGs on a 1440P monitor.

 

[Vic 40]

Just a question, how much ram in your current pc? Trying to get a bigger picture.

Think if you can afford it the RX 6800 XT is worth it.

Wondering what you pay if you upgrade what you have with a new cpu/gpu and psu. The old cpu could still be sold, but maybe a complete pc goes better where you live.

 

[veterangamer8000]

Thanks Vic.
My current PC just holds 16GB. However, it would not be that expensive to upgrade another 16GB if that is the case. But it will probably require that it is okay to run RAM of two different brands.

Is it even worth it to upgrade the old 3600 CPU to a newer version like the 5600? The performance gains does not seem to be that big.

 

[KyaraM]

But actually this PSU "Corsair RM750x 750W PSU" is on a nice discount this month. Would that be a better option? I assume that it fits in my current setup.

​

One of the best PSUs on the market. Go for it.

16GB RAM should be okay for most things. 32GB is better.

 

[Vic 40]

Thanks Vic.
My current PC just holds 16GB. However, it would not be that expensive to upgrade another 16GB if that is the case. But it will probably require that it is okay to run RAM of two different brands.

Mixing ram would already be a mis or hit situation, would try to get same ram or get a new 32gb kit.

Is it even worth it to upgrade the old 3600 CPU to a newer version like the 5600? The performance gains does not seem to be that big.

No the 5600 is a better cpu no doubt, would myself go for the 5700x but cannot look in your pockets. The next shows what progress you would make per cpu mentioned,

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X Review - Finally an Affordable 8-Core

With the Ryzen 7 5700X, AMD is finally offering a more affordable 8-core processor. In our review, we take a close look at how this $265 CPU performs against the Ryzen 7 5800X, and also compare it to Intel's Alder Lake lineup, including the i5-12600K and i7-12700K.

www.techpowerup.com