What's the best upgrade GPU card for my build with an i7 4790K without bottleneck problems?

[nwgilbert]

I used to have an AMD R9 390 Graphics Card and it broke on me a couple of months ago. After thorough testing I have found it is definitely the graphics card so I am looking for a replacement.

I understand that my build is quite dated now but I would prefer to keep it for a good couple of years (if I can) considering I do not play any high-end games. I only play games such as CSGO, Rocket league, Valorant. I would like to be able to play Escape From Tarkov smoothly as well.

So far I've done quite a bit of research of which would be the best graphics card to go for based on my build but I'm still stuck for what to go for – please see my options and where I am below:


- 1080ti ? Costs around £450 second hand – cannot buy brand new any more.
i7-4790K with 1080ti comparison link - https://www.cpuagent.com/cpu/intel-...vidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti?res=1&quality=ultra


- 1660ti ? - Costs around £380 brand new
i7-4790K with 1660ti comparison link - https://www.cpuagent.com/cpu/intel-core-i7-4790k/bottleneck/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-ti


- 3060ti ? – Costs around £550 brand new
i7-4790K with 3060ti comparison link - https://www.cpuagent.com/cpu/intel-...vidia-geforce-rtx-3060-ti?res=1&quality=ultra


Or should I look at AMD based on the build I currently have?

My old card costs around £160 second hand, and that's for the slight upgrade from R9 390 to R9 390X. Worried this will struggle with running Escape from tarkov on high frames though and I want the pc to last me a good couple of years at least.


This is the current build and I run on 1440p :

[CARD DIED – LOOKING FOR REPLACEMENT] - MSI Radeon R9 390 GAMING AMD Graphics Card 8GB
Intel Quad-Core i7-4790K
EVGA Super NOVA 850W PC Power Supply – Gold
Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 Intel LGA1150 Z97 ATX Motherboard (4x DDR3, 6x USB3.0, 6x USB2.0, HDMI, DVI-I, DSUB)
Crucial BX100 250 GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal Solid State Drive
WD 1TB 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drive - Caviar Blue
Alpenfhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler 120 mm
NZXT H440 Mid Tower Case with Side Window and 4 Quiet Fans for PC - White/Black
Team Group TLRED316G2400HC11CDC01 - TeamGroup Vulcan RED 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual
ASUS MG278Q Gaming Monitor - 27" 2K WQHD (2560 x 1440), 1ms, G-SYNC Compatible, up to 144Hz, FreeSync


From my research (partially based on those comparison links above with an i7 4790K) it seems that the 3060ti would give me best performance and the price difference is not huge compared to the other options out there which are available today.

However, I am wondering if those comparisons are based on running at 1080p (I will be running 1440p) which I have gathered means more load on GPU, but no more load on CPU for 1440p compared to 1080p - would this mean the bottleneck won't be that bad with 3060ti + i7-4790K?

I am also open to exploring upgrading the CPU as well but I think I am limited with this due to my old motherboard. It also gets to the point where if I am upgrading multiple parts, I may as well start looking at a new build but that’s not really what I can do at the moment.

Anyways I'm just exploring all options so I'd appreciate if any of you have a suggestion based on the above. Many thanks,

 

[turbot1984]

3060ti, then go Alder Lake in a few months

 

[nwgilbert]

Alder Lake means I have to upgrade motherboard too right? Then I start questioning whether it should be an entire new build

 

[turbot1984]

Alder Lake means I have to upgrade motherboard too right? Then I start questioning whether it should be an entire new build

True, but your 4790K is 7 years old now and 4 core so bound to have an impact at 1440, not so much at 4K. Even so a 3060ti will be a MASSIVE boost over your old R9 390, but give cpu a max overclock 4.6ghz+?

 

[ASMB]

If you get a 3060ti, then it will be ready for when you do decide to upgrade the rest of your PC. Just don't worry about the bottleneck as you know that there are newer and better cpu out there but you simply don't want to upgrade it yet, which actually is a good thing for the environment as it cuts down on electronic waste

P.S. If you did want to upgrade your cpu & MB then now is actually a good time IMO, this MB is amazing price at the moment ▷ MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX II (Socket AM4) DDR4 AT… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk) and a AMD 3600 is back down to a more reasonable price ▷ AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4)… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)

If you sell your existing cpu to CEX, you would end up paying around £190 for a new cpu & MB which have warranty

 

[turbot1984]

Alder Lake means I have to upgrade motherboard too right? Then I start questioning whether it should be an entire new build

Gibbo had a 3060ti on at £420 a couple of day ago.

 

[man_from_uncle]

I am in almost exactly the same boat (also on a 4970k) except my current card is a gtx970 and it is still working. I'm probably going to go for 3060ti as well when I can find one for less than £400. That or a second hand 2070S/2080.

 

[alec]

There was some noise in youtubes about AMD Radeon drivers having less CPU overhead than Nvidia. Might be relevant for CPU this old.
So keep an eye out for used 5700XT or new 6600/6600XT coming out

 

[Ben Campbell]

I've looked at the specs for EoT, and really you don't need an RTX card to run it well. While the 3060Ti is a massive upgrade (and is the card I have ordered) if you only want to run those games, you shouldn't really need more than a 1660 or a 1080 or equivalent. The AMD Radeon RX 590 is also a good shout, and I've seen them go for quite cheap. One thing to not is that as your PC has previously used an AMD GPU, switching to NVIDIA can lead to some driver conflicts. These aren't too difficult to deal with, but if you want to save yourself the hassle, I'd recommend an AMD card. Mainly though for Escape from Tarkov, you need to make sure you have plenty of fast ram to allocate. Maybe would be better to buy a cheaper card such as a 1660 or an RX 590, and use the rest of your budget to buy an M.2 SSD and some 3200mhz ram. Your motherboard can support any DDR3 sticks and an M.2 drive up to 10gb/s, so you could definitely upgrade your storage speeds, though ddr3 ram is quite hard to come by these days. Alternatively you could look into getting a liquid cooler for your CPU so you can more comfortably overclock and get past that CPU bottleneck. Plenty of great options for you from what I can tell. Another reason to go for an older GPU at the moment is because new cards are rare and very expensive, so you might be waiting for a long time for a new card. I've been waiting almost 3 months to upgrade my GTX 750Ti, so be warned. Good luck.

 

[g67575]

Use the CPU and RAM for as long as they give you sufficient performance (it makes sense to upgrade them after the GPU). Right now is a pretty bad time to upgrade these parts, with Alder Lake and Zen 3 refreshes available probably 5-6 months from now.

If you can buy a new graphics card at RRP thats better than what you had before, go for it. You will likely be able to get most your money back if you sell it in a year or 2. If the card isn't much of an upgrade vs the r9 390, I wouldn't worry.

In terms of the CPU, you are gonna be bottlenecked whatever GPU you use, for most games it probably won't be noticeable (or matter at all), as they will still run at 60fps or above.

The RX 480 is being sold for £160 (used) at CEX if you just need a cheapish replacement / stopgap for a year or so. It's a lower power card (150w tdp, better performing) than the r9 390, so probably a better lifespan too (my brother has had one for many years now).

I look at the Nvidia graphics cards, and even the older used GPUs are really expensive, imo not worth it.

Note -I haven't been paying attention to the Founders Edition / Nvidia reference model drops for some time, I got a RTX 3070 FE for £470, but I don't know if using an app like telegram to track and buy one would still be a good option, as the time window to buy one was already quite narrow (20-30 mins tops). For top end cards like the RTX 3080 FE, these were gone in seconds or a couple of minutes.

 

[rumple9]

Those chips go for about £200 on eBay. Sell it and get a Ryzen 3600 for the same price

 

[Grim5]

i wouldnt buy anything faster than a 1080ti until you upgrade the cpu

 

[Rroff]

i wouldnt buy anything faster than a 1080ti until you upgrade the cpu

I'm running a 3070FE on a slightly older CPU - at 4.4GHz and 1440p or above it isn't hugely bottlenecked by the CPU (though the Ryzen 5xxx series have hugely higher minimums even at 1440p). For games like CP2077 the uplift over a 1080ti is fairly big even with this CPU.

 

[g67575]

It depends on the budget. I still think most new graphics cards priced at RRP are 'affordable' (excluding the RTX 3080 and above, since it's close to £200 more than the RTX 3070) at RRP prices, particularly if you haven't upgraded in years and have saved some money for one. I can't comment on AMD graphics cards, hardly seen anyone who has managed to buy one at RRP / reference model price. The money isn't really wasted, as you will likely be able to sell it in 2-3 years for a good price anyway.

I went from a R9 390 390 to RTX 3070 and it's a massive upgrade, if you want to play at 4K (about 3x the framerate). I sold my R9 390 for £100 so it was reasonably affordable to upgrade.

'Slow' DDR3 is probably more likely to effect your minimum / 1% framerate than the CPU in many games, compared with DDR4 3600 /4000mhz RAM.

 

[nwgilbert]

Thanks for all the replies.

True, but your 4790K is 7 years old now and 4 core so bound to have an impact at 1440, not so much at 4K. Even so a 3060ti will be a MASSIVE boost over your old R9 390, but give cpu a max overclock 4.6ghz+?

Is it simple to OC my cpu? I've never done it before and wonder if it's save to do so with the basic cooler I have in my build?

Gibbo had a 3060ti on at £420 a couple of day ago.

Best price I've found searching over the last week was £550.00 - is this expensive for 3060ti?
What is gibbo?
I've been using PartAlert notifications to find releases but there's been nothing going less than 550 and I'm not sure there will be any time soon either...

I've looked at the specs for EoT, and really you don't need an RTX card to run it well. While the 3060Ti is a massive upgrade (and is the card I have ordered) if you only want to run those games, you shouldn't really need more than a 1660 or a 1080 or equivalent. The AMD Radeon RX 590 is also a good shout, and I've seen them go for quite cheap. One thing to not is that as your PC has previously used an AMD GPU, switching to NVIDIA can lead to some driver conflicts. These aren't too difficult to deal with, but if you want to save yourself the hassle, I'd recommend an AMD card. Mainly though for Escape from Tarkov, you need to make sure you have plenty of fast ram to allocate. Maybe would be better to buy a cheaper card such as a 1660 or an RX 590, and use the rest of your budget to buy an M.2 SSD and some 3200mhz ram. Your motherboard can support any DDR3 sticks and an M.2 drive up to 10gb/s, so you could definitely upgrade your storage speeds, though ddr3 ram is quite hard to come by these days. Alternatively you could look into getting a liquid cooler for your CPU so you can more comfortably overclock and get past that CPU bottleneck. Plenty of great options for you from what I can tell. Another reason to go for an older GPU at the moment is because new cards are rare and very expensive, so you might be waiting for a long time for a new card. I've been waiting almost 3 months to upgrade my GTX 750Ti, so be warned. Good luck.

This is why I was questioning the 1660ti in comparison but performance is whack compared to 3060ti, but we are talking almost double the price from 1660ti to 3060ti.

Thanks for all the comments feel like I'm moving somewhere in the right direction but the ideal scenario would be to pick up a bargain on a 3060ti and run with that until I get a new build.

 

[g67575]

I wouldn't bother with overclocking the CPU with a high end cooler, you are unlikely to get much more than a 10% performance boost, if it's already running at 4.4ghz.

There's no harm in doing this with the cooler you have, if the temps and voltages can be kept at reasonable levels. Going over 1.3v Vcore is probably a bad idea with a Haswell chip.

The main thing that will hold it back is core count. There's also other factors like CPU cache amount, that can also have a large impact in games.

The RTX 3060 TI is an excellent graphics card, especially if you can buy one at RRP. It handles even the most challenging games at 60 FPS (like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Watch Dogs: Legion at 1080p Ultra settings.

I'd make do with something on par or slightly better than the R9 390 if you can't get a 3060 TI for a good price.

 

[nwgilbert]

I wouldn't bother with overclocking the CPU with a high end cooler, you are unlikely to get much more than a 10% performance boost, if it's already running at 4.4ghz.

There's no harm in doing this with the cooler you have, if the temps and voltages can be kept at reasonable levels. Going over 1.3v Vcore is probably a bad idea with a Haswell chip.

The main thing that will hold it back is core count. There's also other factors like CPU cache amount, that can also have a large impact in games.

The RTX 3060 TI is an excellent graphics card, especially if you can buy one at RRP. It handles even the most challenging games at 60 FPS (like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Watch Dogs: Legion at 1080p Ultra settings.

I'd make do with something on par or slightly better than the R9 390 if you can't get a 3060 TI for a good price.

Thanks for this. I'm really out of sync of market prices with graphics cards - what would you say is a "good price" for a 3060ti? Is £550 too much to the point where if I want to use it in this build (obviously losing a lot of its full potential) and sell in 2-3 years when I get a new top of the range build, it's maybe not worth it? I don't know.

How does a 3060 compare to 3060ti? May this likely be no different in performance to each other in my build? At the moment i can pickup 3060 for £436, that's why I ask!


And onto your second point, what would be a slightly better option than the R9 390, ideally something that works with the rest of the build to full potential? It would be good to do a price comparison on a couple of options.

Please note, if the item is purchased brand new from an online company I can get the vat back as I can put through my own company. Whereas buying second hand card, the price is the price.

Thanks again for all the replies, feel free to add your input if anyone has further thoughts.

 

[RipGroove]

980ti is a good pairing with 4790k.

 

[g67575]

@nwgilbert -

Even used cards like the RX 480 (8gb) are selling out fast on websites like CEX, unfortunately. I notice that some 4gb cards are still available on auction websites, presumably because the GPU miners need 8gb of vram to mine with. You will need to keep an eye on the prices / availability of graphics cards like the rx 480.

The scalpers are going nuts on auction sites, I saw one r9 390 (8gb) listed for £549.99

A quick google search for '8gb graphics card', sorted by price reveals how bad the market is for GPUs right now.

If you can get a RTX 3060 or RTX 3060 TI at RRP, I'd say they are worth it. The reference model prices are £300 and £369, respectively. People have spent a lot of time waiting to buy one of these cards, or researching how to buy one, but, maybe it just isn't worth the faff??

The funny thing is, Series S consoles are readily available for £250 and are more than capable of playing games at 1080p.

EDIT - I would be tempted to go with a used 4gb RX 480 or GTX 970 4gb from CEX for £160-£165 in your position, you do at least get a warranty if you buy from them.

I suppose a RTX 3060 for ~£400 is an OK price (this depends if you are willing to pay a premium of £100 or more vs the reference model price, I don't think you'd be disappointed by the performance, especially since you can use DLSS to boost performance further. Is it the 12gb or 6gb VRAM version?

 

[Protoype]

980ti is a good pairing with 4790k.

my 980ti just decided to poop itself. Now it is a posh paperweight. Also in the same situation as the OP and looking at my options. Holding out before doing a full system upgrade as the refresh isn't too far away.