Question Upgrading from a 960

[muhrm22]

So I have a birthday coming up and the only thing I can really think of to ask for is a new graphics card. I'm getting a bit overwhelmed at all the options so a little help whittling them down to two or three options would be greatly appreciated.

I'd like to keep things under a thousand dollars and preferably Nvidia as my monitor supports G-sync though other than that I don't really have a preference. I don't really play games that are too graphically intensive nor do I really care about 4K but I would like something that I can run Monster Hunter World/Rise, PSO2NGS or Nioh 2 comfortably on high settings with no overclocking. I'd like the minimum Memory to be 8 GB. Something that caught my eye from my local Best Buy was a NVIDIA Geforce GTX 3060 Ti for about four hundred.

Here's my current system. It's not listed on the site but I believe I have a Wraith Stealth CPU Cooler. It was whatever came with the CPU itself. Everything other than the case and the graphics card should be under or about two years old. The graphics card itself is...about six years old.

 

[punkncat]

With a grand to put towards this upgrade?

R7 5800X3D and a 3060ti/3070 level would be a darned nice bump for years to come.

 

[Why_Me]

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1700891-REG/msi_g306tv2x8cl_geforce_rtx_3060_ti.html
MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti VENTUS 2X OC 8GB Graphics Card $449.99

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZPLM1R1
Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3600 32GB (2x16GB) CL18 $99.99

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PCWK7SP
DeepCool AK400 CPU Cooler $34.99

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VCHQHZ6
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X $227.99

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr5V1lgctYw

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Alternatively….

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16824012047?item=N82E16824012047

https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-7-5700x-ryzen-7-5000-series/p/N82E16819113735

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-rx-6700-xt-rx6700xt-cld-12g/p/N82E16814930056

https://www.newegg.com/team-32gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820331618?item=N82E16820331618

That should put you right at 1000. Gets you a 5700x, 32gb ddr4 3200, an rx 6700xt , AND a 32 inch 1440p monitor.

I can tell you from experience, I just got this monitor and installed it Thursday night. That monitor may be a budget unit, but I was using a 1080p 144hz 27 inch screen before, and wow! The size seems overwhelming at first but with the curved screen it really pulls you into the game more and the bump to 1440p is nice and is a HUGE upgrade in visuals from 1080p to my eyes. Picture playing world of warships and looking at your battleship and being able to see the rifling inside the cannons.

Plus that monitor has freesync premium, nvidia now supports freesync, so if you go with an nvidia card you can still use the freesync features. If you wanted to save you could go for a higher gpu and keep the 3600. Especially as you go higher in resolution your cpu shouldn’t hold you back as much.

However as I said for me, the jump from 1080p to 1440p was huge. A friend of mine tried to tell me that for years. I think if you go to 1440p with a decently powerful gpu you won’t regret it.

Edit: just realized you would need a cooler. Maybe pick up the one recommended above. Also another observation even though I also mentioned 32gb ram, you can stick with 16gb if you need to save some, but ram is cheap right now. I can say since I went to 32gb if I’ve got the amd overlay up you can see it sometimes using 8-10 easily in games.

 

[muhrm22]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll be picking up a 3070 and a cpu cooler then. I had a feeling it was time for a new cooler anyway so having a recommended is nice.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

If you go 3070 I’d definitely recommend going 1440 a 3070 is almost overkill for 1080 imo.