Question Recommendation to replace a Nvidia GTX 970?

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Kamihami

Kamihami

Sep 5, 2023
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Hi,

I had a old gaming set up (from around 2016) but my Nvidia GTX 970 burn out, a fuse have gone and my GPU too. So I wanted to ask if someone could recommend me a better Nvidia GPU, now that the old one is gone, for about 200-350€? I'm in Italy if it does matter, thank you in advance.

My specs are:

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU: Intel i5-4690k 3.90GHz
RAM: DDR3 16GB PC 1866 CL9
MOTHERBOARD: Z97S SLI KRAIT EDITION
SCHEDA VIDEO: GTX 970 4GB
SSD: 240GB
HARD DISK: 1TB WD10EZEX
POWER SUPPLY: PS 750w 80+ Bronze
MONITOR: Samsung LC27HG70QQUXEN
 
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Your power supply is beefy to handle any upgrade, but your computer is not. If you want just GPU upgrade, I recommend getting one of the cheapest budget GPUs, because anything powerful will bottleneck your CPU. I have similar CPU, i5-4670. My GTX 760 died and I replaced it with GTX 1060 6GB. That GPU puts my CPU at 100% in a lot of games and sometimes it is even bottlenecked by it.

So, the cheapest solution would be buy anything used. However, if you want a new GPU, I would recommend going for RX 6650 XT, because at the moment they are dirt cheap GPUs and you can't really use more muscle anyways without entire PC upgrade. If you are concerned about VRAM playing at 1440p, you could go for RX 6700 XT or similar models.

Here is my recommendation. First pick which brand you want to have. AMD at the moment has most valuable offerings. They give you the most performance per euro spent. If you want Nvidia, go for Nvidia. It has richest and best feature set. Any of these cards will bottleneck your system anyways. Performance here is largelly irrelevant.

RX 6600 - if you want the cheapest viable solution.
RX 6650 XT - if you want most performance per euro.
RX 6700 (RX 6700 XT if you want to spend little more) - if you want to not worry about VRAM bottlenecks and have amazing value card

RTX 3060 12GB - Good all rounder. Take this if you are concerned about VRAM.
RTX 4060 - Take this otherwise. Best feature set even if it is a disappointing card.


So, to recap.

1) Do you want a specific brand? If no, go for AMD.
2) Do you care about VRAM? If yes, pick an appropriate card. If not, you do not need to worry about. There are only select few games where this might be an issue which you can even run with your PC.


Personally, I would say that RX 6600 is plenty for you in terms of performance. You will be bottlenecked in a lot of games by CPU anyway. RX 6700 XT makes most sense to buy in general. Dirt cheap for what you get. The best value purchase you can make hands down. I do like RTX 3060 12 GB as it is a good all rounder of a card. It is not best at anything, but it isn't lacking either. I recommend you taking your pick from these three cards which I recommended.
 
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Thank you all for your recommendation and kind explanation, especially good to know the fire hazard. I'll go cheap for now with a RX 6600, as i need a fast solution, and build a new pc in the future.
Thank you all again and have a good day.
 
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The 6600 is ~75% faster than the 970, light on power requirements and double the VRAM. It is going to be an astounding upgrade to what you have in place. With that said, IMO the 6600 is not a strong enough card to run 1440 at high framerate. It would be far better suited to 1080 with high frames.
The 6600 and the GTX 1080 are very close in performance, and I see something in the neighborhood of 75 frames average on most recent-ish titles, high settings, 1440. (on a 1080). I have personally found that running it at 1080/120 on highest settings gives a very good performance.

In this case I honestly think it might be worthwhile to step up one tier or so into the XT or perhaps the 67xx.
 
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