Question Upgrading GTX 1070 on a $450 budget ?

[Dip2023]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: within the next month
BUDGET RANGE: (e.g.: USD $400-450) After Rebates

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: moderate gaming, programming, running stable diffusion is also priority (so only Nvidia for now)

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1070 and cooler master 650W PSU

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS:

1. i7 8700
2. Gigabyte B360M D3H-CF
3. DDR4 16GB 1499 MHZ RAM
4. Gigabyte gtx 1070 (almost 5 yrs old)
5. 650-watt PSU
   
   stock case and common CPU cooler (can't remember)

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Not sure (maybe Amazon India, but their prices are higher I think)

Best Online Computer Store in India| Mdcomputers.in

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mdcomputers.in

www.vedantcomputers.com

Online store in India for graphics card, motherboard, processor, solid state drive, gaming cabinet, keyboard, mouse, power supply, gaming accessories etc. at best price.

www.vedantcomputers.com

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: India

PARTS PREFERENCES: RTX

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe
SLI OR CROSSFIRE: No

MONITOR RESOLUTION: widescreen 2560x1080

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Should be at least 2-3 years future-proof.
Another thing is I can find second-hand cards (1-2 years old) at much lower prices on the Facebook marketplace. Shall I consider a second-hand GPU? What about packed/sealed OEM cards? I have not bought any second-hand parts before so if you can give me some pointers on that, will be very helpful.

 

[Avro Arrow]

There's nothing that I can recommend because I have no faith that any nVidia card in that price category (RTX 3060 Ti / RTX 4060 Ti) will be future-proof for 2-3 years because they only have 8GB of VRAM.

The only cards in that price category that will be future-proof for 2-3 years at that resolution are Radeons.

 

[Dip2023]

There's nothing that I can recommend because I have no faith that any nVidia card in that price category (RTX 3060 Ti / RTX 4060 Ti) will be future-proof for 2-3 years because they only have 8GB of VRAM.

The only cards in that price category that will be future-proof for 2-3 years at that resolution are Radeons.

thanks a lot for your reply. What AMD cards do you have in mind? I do not need the cards to run games in max setting. I know that with such mid/low mid-range cards new AAAs will have to compromise.

 

[thestryker]

The question you're going to want to answer is what's more important gaming or stable diffusion. The Radeon 6700XT/6750XT are much better than the nvidia alternatives in the same price range for gaming, but from what I've gathered due to CUDA acceleration nvidia is just much better for stable diffusion (and probably most other consumer level AI stuff). It looks like the best nvidia choice available in your price range is the 3060 Ti.

 

[Dip2023]

The question you're going to want to answer is what's more important gaming or stable diffusion. The Radeon 6700XT/6750XT are much better than the nvidia alternatives in the same price range for gaming, but from what I've gathered due to CUDA acceleration nvidia is just much better for stable diffusion (and probably most other consumer level AI stuff). It looks like the best nvidia choice available in your price range is the 3060 Ti.

Indeed, I am interested in the cuda level AI stuff and from what I gather from different forums is that Radeon does not support them yet (not with any kind of efficiency at least). Hence I am willing to sacrifice some of the gaming powers for the AI. Now, what about 4060 Ti? Isn't that supposed to be better than 3060 Ti? cause here the price difference is around 30-40 dollars only.

 

[Eximo]

Right now there is one 3070 Ti under $450

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Vq6p99/zotac-gaming-geforce-rtx-3070-ti-8-gb-video-card-zt-a30710q-10p

3060Ti and 4060Ti have extremely similar rasterization performance. 4060Ti only pulls ahead because it has DLSS3, which will not work in most games.

Not sure about AI performance, one would imagine the next generation cores are better than the previous ones at those tasks, but the 4060Ti has slightly less tensor cores than the 3060Ti. 3070Ti has quite a few more.

 

[Avro Arrow]

thanks a lot for your reply. What AMD cards do you have in mind? I do not need the cards to run games in max setting. I know that with such mid/low mid-range cards new AAAs will have to compromise.

Well, the thing is, I'm not sure. The reason is that you want to run Stable Diffusion and, yeah, I've heard that nVidia is better for that workload. Having said that, I haven't heard that Radeons can't do it, they're just a good deal slower.

I saw that Stable Diffusion performance is more important to you than gaming performance. The problem is, with you being in India, I'm not 100% certain what things cost there.

The only place that I know of where I could check Indian pricing is flipkart and so I took a look there. I also converted your $400-$450USD budget to rupees and got an average of about ₹35,000 ($426.75USD). On flipkart, you'd be looking at a couple of RTX 3060 cards.

If you have room in your PC for 3 fans: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming OC LHR 12GB - ₹35,999
If you need a smaller twin-fan card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Eagle LHR 12GB - ₹35,499

 

[thestryker]

Indeed, I am interested in the cuda level AI stuff and from what I gather from different forums is that Radeon does not support them yet (not with any kind of efficiency at least). Hence I am willing to sacrifice some of the gaming powers for the AI. Now, what about 4060 Ti? Isn't that supposed to be better than 3060 Ti? cause here the price difference is around 30-40 dollars only.

I was only looking in your price range so I filtered by that, but yes the 4060 Ti is slightly better across the board. Though the percentage uplift tends to vary a lot from +/-10% or so depending on resolution and title. The biggest advantage the 4060 Ti has is DLSS 3 and lower power consumption I'm not aware of any acceleration differences unless there's something made specifically for 40 series.

 

[Dip2023]

Well, the thing is, I'm not sure. The reason is that you want to run Stable Diffusion and, yeah, I've heard that nVidia is better for that workload. Having said that, I haven't heard that Radeons can't do it, they're just a good deal slower.

I saw that Stable Diffusion performance is more important to you than gaming performance. The problem is, with you being in India, I'm not 100% certain what things cost there.

The only place that I know of where I could check Indian pricing is flipkart and so I took a look there. I also converted your $400-$450USD budget to rupees and got an average of about ₹35,000 ($426.75USD). On flipkart, you'd be looking at a couple of RTX 3060 cards.

If you have room in your PC for 3 fans: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming OC LHR 12GB - ₹35,999
If you need a smaller twin-fan card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Eagle LHR 12GB - ₹35,499

Thanks for all the trouble indeed the budget comes to around 35000Rs, but I can go up to 40k if the improvement is much better. My PC has room for 3 fans, is that better for cooling the card?

 

[Dip2023]

I was only looking in your price range so I filtered by that, but yes the 4060 Ti is slightly better across the board. Though the percentage uplift tends to vary a lot from +/-10% or so depending on resolution and title. The biggest advantage the 4060 Ti has is DLSS 3 and lower power consumption I'm not aware of any acceleration differences unless there's something made specifically for 40 series.

Thanks a lot for your recommendations.

 

[Dip2023]

Well, the thing is, I'm not sure. The reason is that you want to run Stable Diffusion and, yeah, I've heard that nVidia is better for that workload. Having said that, I haven't heard that Radeons can't do it, they're just a good deal slower.

I saw that Stable Diffusion performance is more important to you than gaming performance. The problem is, with you being in India, I'm not 100% certain what things cost there.

The only place that I know of where I could check Indian pricing is flipkart and so I took a look there. I also converted your $400-$450USD budget to rupees and got an average of about ₹35,000 ($426.75USD). On flipkart, you'd be looking at a couple of RTX 3060 cards.

If you have room in your PC for 3 fans: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming OC LHR 12GB - ₹35,999
If you need a smaller twin-fan card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Eagle LHR 12GB - ₹35,499

I gave links to two Indian Distributors in the main post and they are much cheaper generally than Flipkart or Amazon India.

 

[ilukey77]

Im going to say wait till the 7800xt ( with some rumours saying its going to be called the 7900 ) if it comes at a decent price and with 16gb that may be a far better purchase ..
I wouldnt be surprised if the 7900 is the answer to the 16gb 4060 due out soon !! ( im not sure the 4060 16gb is going to be much chop with its low bus speed anyway )
steer clear of anything 8gb and even 12gb is not much future proofing really !!

 

[Avro Arrow]

I gave links to two Indian Distributors in the main post and they are much cheaper generally than Flipkart or Amazon India.

Excellent! It's always good to know more sources because I can help more people that way. However, my recommendation of the RTX 3060 12GB remains. This is because every RTX 3000 card between the RTX 3060 and RTX 3080 only has 8GB of VRAM and that will be a serious limiting factor. To get more than 8GB of VRAM from an RTX 4000 card, you'd need to get at least an RTX 4070 which is completely out of your budget (it's $600USD in the USA, let alone India).

Since the brand doesn't matter and you don't need a 3-fan cooler for an RTX 3060, I recommend this one:
INNO3D GeForce RTX 3060 Twin X2 12GB LHR - ₹26,789

 

[Avro Arrow]

Thanks for all the trouble indeed the budget comes to around 35000Rs, but I can go up to 40k if the improvement is much better. My PC has room for 3 fans, is that better for cooling the card?

Kinda sorta, but not significantly so. Having three fans is mostly about keeping the card quiet because three fans spinning slowly moves as much air through the cooling fins as two fans spinning faster but makes less noise. It's great if you have a big enough case for it (I do) but there's a good number of PC cases in which a triple-fan card is too long to fit. For a high-end card, three fans are often a must but low to mid-range cards can all happily get by with just two fans.

 

[Nighthawk117]

You might want to wait for the 4060 Ti with 16GB VRAM.

 

[Avro Arrow]

You might want to wait for the 4060 Ti with 16GB VRAM.

Only the most dyed-green-in-the-skin nVidia fanboys would touch that card. It will make the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB look GOOD (which might be its purpose in the first place).

At $500USD, it's going to have to deal with the RX 6800 XT, a card that also has 16GB of VRAM, double the VRAM bandwidth (256-bit vs 128-bit) and 32% more performance.

The RTX 4060 Ti 16GB won't be DOA because it's already DBA.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Only the most dyed-green-in-the-skin nVidia fanboys would touch that card. It will make the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB look GOOD (which might be its purpose in the first place).

At $500USD, it's going to have to deal with the RX 6800 XT, a card that also has 16GB of VRAM, double the VRAM bandwidth (256-bit vs 128-bit) and 32% more performance.

The RTX 4060 Ti 16GB won't be DOA because it's already DBA.

I'm not necessarily condoning it, but the OP wanted Nvidia for it's AI support. The 4060 is the only card that's relatively affordable from the new bunch, even if it is priced like garbage. It's either that or the 3060 with 12GB.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I'm not necessarily condoning it, but the OP wanted Nvidia for it's AI support. The 4060 is the only card that's relatively affordable from the new bunch, even if it is priced like garbage. It's either that or the 3060 with 12GB.

Oh I realise that, I just thought it would be pertinent to point out to him that he'd just be going from bad to worse. The reply was more for the OP to read than it was for you. I've seen you post before and you know your stuff. I didn't think that I needed to tell you, I figured that you were just playing Devil's Advocate and throwing out options because you can never have too many options.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Oh I realise that, I just thought it would be pertinent to point out to him that he'd just be going from bad to worse. The reply was more for the OP to read than it was for you. I've seen you post before and you know your stuff. I didn't think that I needed to tell you, I figured that you were just playing Devil's Advocate and throwing out options because you can never have too many options.

Fair enough, thanks, it wasn't so much to be devils advocate. I think the 4060 with the extra VRAM is a viable option. It's a little faster than the 3060 Ti, has some extra toys like DLSS 3.0 and it's better at ray tracing. I know it's bad value and has a capri sun straw for a memory interface. I'm just assuming the OP will need more than 8GB VRAM long term, so options are few it's either the 3060 12GB or the 4060 Ti 16GB. I think your suggestion of the 3060 12GB is probably the best, it's quite cheap now and comes in under budget. I wasn't sure if the 3060 was a big enough upgrade but it could be twice as fast, it's very difficult to tell without running the OP's workload.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Fair enough, thanks, it wasn't so much to be devils advocate. I think the 4060 with the extra VRAM is a viable option. It's a little faster than the 3060 Ti, has some extra toys like DLSS 3.0 and it's better at ray tracing. I know it's bad value and has a capri sun straw for a memory interface. I'm just assuming the OP will need more than 8GB VRAM long term, so options are few it's either the 3060 12GB or the 4060 Ti 16GB. I think your suggestion of the 3060 12GB is probably the best, it's quite cheap now and comes in under budget. I wasn't sure if the 3060 was a big enough upgrade but it could be twice as fast, it's very difficult to tell without running the OP's workload.

Well yeah, I don't think that the RTX 3060 is all that great, far from it. I was just trying to navigate that minefield of nVidia cards for the OP. Since they're all so overpriced right now, I wasn't looking for "Good", but "Good Enough for now" so they won't go broke on it and be able to upgrade it when they need to.

 

[Dip2023]

okie, after carefully considering my budget and available options and reviews, I agree that 8 gb vram is not enough for future games and plan to settle for Radeon RX 6750 XT. I know the AI software will not be fast enough for this, but I would be happy with it as there are some wonderful deals from ATI including the premium edition of Starfield. Thank you, everyone, for your help.