Should I upgrade to RX 480, GTX 1060 or either GTX 1070?

nozuje

Commendable
Nov 27, 2016
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1,510
This is my build
CPU - Intel i5-3470 3,2 GHz
GPU - Sapphire Radeon HD7750 1GB
MOBO - ASRock H61M-HVGS
PSU - Seasonic S12II 620W
RAM - 8 GB RAM DDR3
HDD - 1 TB Hard Drive
Monitor - 1080p Samsung HDTV

I would like to upgrade to any of these GPUs. Which one of these would not bottleneck my build?
MSI Gaming X RX 480 8 GB - 312$ (comes with CIV VI)
MSI Gaming X GTX 1060 6 GB - 375$
ASUS Turbo GTX 1070 8 GB - 457$ (from 586$)

I am buying it exclusively for Overwatch (CIV VI too if I get the RX 480, love that game). I want rock solid 60 FPS+ performance, no drops below that, at the highest settings available.
 
Solution

t99

Honorable
Jul 16, 2014
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if you want 60+fps the 1060 or 480 is more than capable at 1080p with the exception of a few games. Witcher 3 and Ashes of singularity I believe were in the upper 40s range when maxed out. Pretty much all other games push 70+ maxed. I guess you have to weigh the extra 100-150 vs turning one or two settings to high instead of ultra in a very small amount of games. I own the msi gaming x 480 4gb and use an i5 4460, I have no issues when gaming. It runs everything maxed out and looks beautiful.Will you be upgrading you display to 1440 or higher at some point in the next 2 years? If yes, then get the 1070 because it is the card to get for ultra 1440p gaming and can even do 4k 60fps on custom settings. If not then I would say get either the 1060 / 480, whatever you prefer in the end really and then when you upgrade your display 3 years later just get a new GPU. If you look into benchmarks using the 4 vs 8gb 480 they basically perform the same. The only time you would really see a difference is going to be in resolutions above 1080p. If you choose the 480 and a 4gb is a good 50$+ less than it should be worth considering. The 1060 on the other hand is a different card altogether and while it is nearly identical in performance to the 6gb it is a little behind.

As far as Nvidia vs AMD.. Outside of the 1070 I think the 480 is a better option because when you look at certain games where AMD has the edge, it's a pretty big one. BF1 performs about 30% better with the 480 on ultra vs the 1060 and it's close to the same with DOOM. In cases where the 1060 wins, it's on average only around 5%. It all depends on what you think and feel comfortable with. I feel that it's worth taking a 5% loss in performance for the chance that more and more games come out that favor the amd card. Even if they favor NVidia, the difference is minmal, but if betting on AMD wins out the gaps are much much greater.
 

nozuje

Commendable
Nov 27, 2016
6
0
1,510


Will the GTX 1070 bottleneck my CPU/overall build? I might (MIGHT) get a 1440p monitor, but only mid-late 2017 (if not, Christmas 2017).
 

t99

Honorable
Jul 16, 2014
756
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It's a bit tricky because you have to look at how much you gain vs how much of a bottleneck you might face. I don't think the bottleneck would be huge, but there would be one on more cpu intense games. How much more do you gain from a 1070 with a small bottleneck vs a 1060/480? I don't know.. If your goal is to push 1440p @ 60fps eventually then I want to say you will be fine as far as bottleneck issues. The issue is going to be if you want to run 120/144hz display at 120/144fps. The CPU is going to bottleneck up much more then. moving up the FPS to double pushes the CPU more than raising the resolution. You can run a higher resolution with the same CPU much easier than trying to double your fps. I could be mistaken, but I believe it's only a minimal increase on the cpu when raising the resolution, it's almost all gpu.

Depending on how much you have budgeted for cpu upgrades I would consider the 1060/480. Save the money and then eventually move to 7th gen or newer i5. If you got the 1070 you could always upgrade to one of these later on, but I'm not sure how efficient this is long term.

http://www.pricewatch.com/price/cpu/i7-3930k 159$


 
Solution

nozuje

Commendable
Nov 27, 2016
6
0
1,510


Going with a GTX 1060. I bought the above build in late 2012, and this is my first upgrade in 4 years. Thanks, happy holidays and I wish you the best.