My PC is getting on a little, it’s running on an i7-4790k, 16gb ddr4, and a GTX 970. right now, it’s struggling some in most games even though I don’t play any triple A titles. What would be a sensible upgrade that wouldn’t get totally bottlenecked by the CPU?
In most games I’m playing the CPU is pinned at around 25% while my card is maxed at 100% 3d and vmem usage so I’m fairly sure it’s just my card that’s the main limiting factor.
Don’t worry about getting bottlenecked by the CPU. If you’re using maximum capacity, you’ll always be bottlenecked by something.
Not that I’m worried at all, I understand you’ll never get anything perfectly balanced. I’m more concerned by trying to closely match price and performance. I could buy a top of the range graphics card for £800 but it won’t even sweat at the CPU desperately trying to keep up. I’d rather buy a cheaper card that’s going to let me stretch my CPU without breaking the bank
I know I can get a better card that will let me better utilise my CPU and that my card is what’s limiting me right now so as long as I can bridge that gap as best I can I’d be very happy
I wouldn’t worry too much about going overkill on the GPU. You could go for a $200-400 GPU and be in a great place for when you decide to upgrade the CPU. I wouldn’t go crazy and get something like a 4090, though.
Maybe a GTX 1660-Ti if you can find one for a good price?
Edit: An Intel Arc A750 might be the better value if you’re buying new, though
Or even see if you can find an RX 6600. Around US$200 right now, and should give decent performance without being horribly bottlenecked
Can confirm. Had the same CPU, and a rx6600 without xt. Cyberpunk ran at 50 FPS in high details. At 1080p.
Great value card for this processor.
Yeah i agree with this.
The RX 6600 is a good new budget upgrade, though the 6650 XT and 7600 project to last longer as viable upgrades. the 6600 is slightly weaker than the 5700 XT which is still a valid card today
In that same vein; a 2060 super was what I recently upgraded an older ryzen system with. Completely worth it considering I got it for $140.
Gtx 3060 is a good card to run most games these days. If you’re trying to upgrade on a budget.
You are me 1 year ago.
I have a 4790k w/16GB ddr 4 and I upgraded from a GTX 970 to a RTX3060 and had a lot of luck.
Something in that range would probably work well.
That 3060 will work great in your next pc that has pcie4 or 5
So I thought about that, which was why I got it actually. An upgrade for that PC that would be a good stopgap on my next.
I just ended up giving that PC to my son and building a new one entirely, bought another 3060 for it as a good stopgap LOL
If you’re looking second hand :
Nvidia: 2060 or better
AMD : 6600xt or better.I wouldn’t bother with older generations at this point, I’d also be a touch hesitant to go with much newer, unless you’re willing to bring the GPU forward to your next build.
Had a 2060 and 4790k, ran most games fine, and only in cyberpunk was i stuck with 40fps because of the cpu. Otherwise its a good combo
In terms of value for money try last gen AMD, I have a 6700xt and it runs well on my 6 year old system. My bottleneck is mostly CPU now until I upgrade
Do you have an upgrade budget?
With a 4790k You’re looking at PCIe 3.0,a Radeon RX 6600, 6650 XT, or 7600 are all good 8GB VRAM cards for under $250 that will last for a long time at 1080p.
VRAM concerns really only occur at higher resolutions, so for you any modern card (2022 or newer) will be a massive upgrade. The 6600 can be had for $180 these days
But even you’re not planning to upgrade CPU right now, i would just buy the best GPU you can fit in your budget, and do worry about bottlenecks. One day you’ll upgrade CPU/MB/RAM and the GPU will fit right in.