Question What Graphics Card Should I Get

chrisc1690c

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Aug 26, 2018
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what gpu do you think I should get for 1440p 1440htz gaming do you think a 1080ti like the one I left the link for would do or do you think I would be better waiting as ive heard about the rumoured gtx 1660
 

Barty1884

Retired Moderator
Depends on your expectations. I run a 1070 for 1440p/144Hz, but I only play one title & I'm happy to mess around with in-game settings to find what works.

For 1440p/144Hz, I'd say absolute minimum, 1070TI. Preferrably 1080, 1080TI or 2080

As for the 1660TI, it's essentially confirmed at this point. However, expect it to perform similarly to a 2060 but with no Ray-Tracing support. So, that puts it in the same ballpark as a 1070.
 
As for the 1660TI, it's essentially confirmed at this point. However, expect it to perform similarly to a 2060 but with no Ray-Tracing support. So, that puts it in the same ballpark as a 1070.
The RTX 2060 performs more like a 1070 Ti, which offers performance closer to a 1080 than a 1070. In addition to lacking the new RTX hardware, the 1660 Ti will also apparently have 20% fewer processing cores than the 2060, making it slower than that card, and probably roughly comparable to a 1070. It's also rumored that there will be a 1660 (non-Ti) that has fewer cores still, with performance likely in between a 1060 and a 1070. Either of those probably wouldn't be enough of an upgrade over what you have to be considered worthwhile. Upgrading from a 1060, you would probably want at least the performance of a 1070 Ti or 2060.
 

Barty1884

Retired Moderator
@cryoburner Agree to disagree on the 2060 = 1070TI. It's marginally better than a 1070 most of the time, from what I've seen. Occassionally it will rival a 1070TI.
Regardless, we're in agreement here. You're really looking at a minimum 1070TI to be a worthwhile upgrade and, even then a TI might be underwhelming for the money
 
@cryoburner Agree to disagree on the 2060 = 1070TI. It's marginally better than a 1070 most of the time, from what I've seen. Occassionally it will rival a 1070TI.
While this will depend on what games you are looking at, overall, at least among newer titles, it seems to be quite similar in performance to the 1070 Ti, being a little faster in some games and a little slower in others.

TechPowerUp tested across 23 games, and found frame rates of the 2060 to be about 3% faster than a 1070 Ti on average...
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_RTX_2060_Founders_Edition/33.html

Tom's Hardware tested across 12 games, and found the 2060 to be about 2% faster...
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-ray-tracing-turing,5960-10.html

Techspot / Hardware Unboxed tested across 36 games, and similarly found the 2060 to be about 4% faster...
https://www.techspot.com/review/1781-geforce-rtx-2060-mega-benchmark/page5.html

Many of these reviews likely tested against a reference 1070 Ti, but I think it's clear that even comparing it against factory-overclocked models, the 2060 and 1070 Ti should perform pretty close to one another. Another thing worth noting is that these reviews also show the 2060 as performing within about 15% of the 2070, which is priced over 40% higher. Is it worth paying 40% more to get just 15% more performance? The 2060 is clearly the best value among the RTX cards in terms of price for performance, and it's arguably the best value card overall for 1440p gaming right now, at least when it comes to buying cards new. Certainly, it's not going to be maintaining 100+ FPS at ultra settings in some of the most demanding games at that resolution, but the frame rates should be quite good overall, and likely around 50% higher than a 1060 6GB in graphics-limited scenarios.

And then there's the new hardware features like the RTX and Tensor cores, that the 10-series cards don't support. Currently these are not being utilized by more than a couple games, but it's likely that they will provide at least some additional benefit in the future.
 
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Barty1884

Retired Moderator
@cryoburner, you're right, my bad. I hadn't taken a second look at a lot of benchmarks since launch. Definitely much closer to a 1070TI than I recalled.

That being said, I haven't seen any aftermarket benchmarks as of yet, I'll take a look in a bit. Nvidia have been pretty notorious in keeping the better binned cards for their FE models recently (see 2080TI Lightning from MSI), so I'd expect aftermarket offerings to perform slightly worse.
Should still be in 1070TI territory though.
 
The benchmarks from the Hardware Unboxed review linked above are actually for an aftermarket card, since Nvidia decided to not send them a Founder's Edition 2060 for the launch, likely because they were not entirely pleased with their prior coverage of the RTX lineup, which included a detailed analysis of how badly RTX effects killed performance in Battlefield V, and lukewarm reception of the cards in general. They did include Founder's Edition results in later benchmarks though, and in general I think the card they tested in that review performed slightly better than the Founder's Edition. I suspect there will be some that perform slightly behind the FE though.