Question looking to upgrade my 3050

[Heff_]

Hello my 3050 has been struggling recently with the newer titles coming out and an upgrade is needed. My budget including selling the 3050 itself is around £500 but I could go higher if the upgrade is really that substantial. My own research has been either a new 4070 or a used 3080 with similar performance on both but the 3080 being massively cheaper. I am looking for some suggestions as maybe I might have missed a GPU. My other parts like the CPU RAM ETC are fine and capable so no need to go for those. Thanks in advance.

 

[Eximo]

PSU is the most important thing here. Even the biggest 3050 is a very low power card compared to where you are shopping.

The 4070 Super would be good, but over budget. Used 3080 sounds good on paper, but it has roughly the same performance as 4070 and the 40 series cards have features like DLSS 3.0 and even better RT cores. I would rather have the lower power and newer warranty.

RX6800 / 7800XT are in budget:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...orce-rtx-4070-12-gb-video-card-zt-d40700e-10m

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/GYfxFT/xfx-speedster-qick-319-core-radeon-rx-7800-xt-16-gb-video-card-rx-78tqickf9

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...-fighter-oc-video-card-axrx-6800-16gbd6-3dhoc

4070 Super are pushing closer to 600.

 

[ilukey77]

If RT and DLSS is something your after 4070 ..
BUT
16gb 7800xt is the better option in my opinion
or the 6800xt if it can still be found ..
just check you PSU specs if going better GPU too !!

 

[Heff_]

PSU is the most important thing here. Even the biggest 3050 is a very low power card compared to where you are shopping.

The 4070 Super would be good, but over budget. Used 3080 sounds good on paper, but it has roughly the same performance as 4070 and the 40 series cards have features like DLSS 3.0 and even better RT cores. I would rather have the lower power and newer warranty.

RX6800 / 7800XT are in budget:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...orce-rtx-4070-12-gb-video-card-zt-d40700e-10m

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/GYfxFT/xfx-speedster-qick-319-core-radeon-rx-7800-xt-16-gb-video-card-rx-78tqickf9

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...-fighter-oc-video-card-axrx-6800-16gbd6-3dhoc

4070 Super are pushing closer to 600.

Thank you for the response. My PSU is a SeaSonic CORE 650 W 80+ GOLD which I got a good deal for so thats why the wattage is so high. I was worried about the used 3080 too considering it's a card with no warranty that has been used for over 3 years now but I guess the price being much lower accomodates this. I have never used AMD cards and if i'm being honest over the years I have heard mostly negative things about them. In the modern market are AMD as good as NVIDIA or better plus would going from a NVIDIA GPU to a AMD one be a hassle? £600 is over the budget i'm afraid.

 

[Heff_]

If RT and DLSS is something your after 4070 ..
BUT
16gb 7800xt is the better option in my opinion
or the 6800xt if it can still be found ..
just check you PSU specs if going better GPU too !!

Thanks for the response. My PSU is 650 W and using pcpartpicker both of the GPU would be well under the wattage used so not a problem on that end. I am mainly looking at longevity as I would want something that would last longer. Would the 16GB of VRAM be better for this or DLSS?

 

[ilukey77]

Thanks for the response. My PSU is 650 W and using pcpartpicker both of the GPU would be well under the wattage used so not a problem on that end. I am mainly looking at longevity as I would want something that would last longer. Would the 16GB of VRAM be better for this or DLSS?

look a budget is a budget but without seeing your whole system specs the 7900xt with its 20GB of Vram would be ideal for life span BUT at a cost ..

I believe 16gb of Vram should in modern GPU's should be the lowest not 8 gb .. AMD has FSR which while not as good at DLSS its still upscaling that if you start playing demanding games at 1440p and 4k high settings you will need ..

Still check the manufactures web site of the specific GPU in question and what the recommended PSU is i wouldnt go under a 750w to 850w for anything 4070 7800xt .. ( i like to over kill a bit in case of spikes etc etc !

so while a round about answer i think Vram will give you more life span as i see alot of new games either badly optimized games or just games that crave the extra Vram ..

 

[ilukey77]

Thank you for the response. My PSU is a SeaSonic CORE 650 W 80+ GOLD which I got a good deal for so thats why the wattage is so high. I was worried about the used 3080 too considering it's a card with no warranty that has been used for over 3 years now but I guess the price being much lower accomodates this. I have never used AMD cards and if i'm being honest over the years I have heard mostly negative things about them. In the modern market are AMD as good as NVIDIA or better plus would going from a NVIDIA GPU to a AMD one be a hassle? £600 is over the budget i'm afraid.

My personal opinion is stay away from used as much as you can .. not sure what problems you may be buying ..

Is AMD better than Nvidia with out the whole RED VS GREEN debate .. I like my AMD cards ive had the 5700xt 6900xt 6650xt 6700xt and my current red devil 7900xtx and ive had little no issues with the drivers or the card in general ..

I swear by powercolor cards ..

And so i keep buying what hasnt let me down ..

As for Nvidia ive not used Nvidia since my alienware R7 with the 1070

My issues with Nvidia because i cant actually say good or bad things about their drivers etc etc ..

Are

I think Nvidia are not very consumer friendly and in general over priced with stupidly low Vram ..

If your buying a 4090 over AMD yes 100% but every thing else i think is better value on AMD's side

the only time Nvidia is a much better option is if you going for the best of the best in RT and in which case 4090 or 4080 otherwise everything else comes down to compromise and cost !!

 

[Eximo]

With a 650W PSU I wouldn't go above the 7800XT (285W) / RX6800 (250W).
4070 (200W),
4070 Super (220W)
3080 (320W)

1440p, I'm still running a 12GB 3080Ti. Not much it can't do. The increased cache size of the 40 series does help. (Though the same is true of AMD, and they also have bigger memory capacity per pricing tier)

Nothing really bad about AMD their last major iterations. RDNA has proven to be quite good and the driver problems AMD was known for have mostly disappeared. Nvidia, on the other hand, has had a few hardware issues. Cards like the 3080/3090 bricking when running certain games (they basically boost clocked themselves to death) They did solve it at the driver level. Launching cards like the 3050 6GB, attempting to launch the 4080 12GB, and all around just over pricing their hardware. 4060Ti is an absolute joke of a price, both versions.

 

[Heff_]

Thank you for all the responses I ended up going for the 7800XT and am waiting for it to arrive shortly.