Gtx 970 given up the ghost.

[oj113]

So, my 970 has died. And seeing as I'm in lock down hell need to replace it. Looking to get something that's a step or two up but on a budget so a 2080 is way out of the question.

Budget of around £250 (yeah I know it's tight). Don't mind second hand (fully accept the risk), so any suggestions?

[devnull]

250 puts you into GTX1060 / 1660 territory, which is considered low end gaming thesedays.

If you can, save and get one of the RTX cards (i.e. a RTX2060), which is a good step up in terms of generations.

[Shadow R1]

What's the rest of the system the card is going in ?

It's funny, saying £250 is a low budget.
God I'm old in the past the top cards were £300, it's only recently people must spend £1k to get a top one.

Andtech bench can be useful when comparing cards.
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2148?vs=24...

[oj113]

It's a Ryzen 5 3600, 16gb Ram

[snuffy]

I upgraded my GTX970 to an RTX2060 in Jan 2019. I bought a Gigabyte Windforce one for £360 and today the same one from the same place is £350. You would have thought they would have come down more than a tenner in 15 months.

[Pachydermus]

+1 for the 2060. Works nicely for iRacing @ 4k if that's your thing.

[Taff107]

I went for a Radeon RX 5700 XT due to the cost of Nvidia cards and to be honest, haven't had any dramas at all with it (There was a drama with drivers initially but it seems fine now)
Plays all games I have tried on it effortlessly.

[FourWheelDrift]

oj113 said:

Budget of around £250 (yeah I know it's tight). Don't mind second hand (fully accept the risk), so any suggestions?

Check out the clearance/deals sections of online retailers, they often have "opened box", unused display and "not in original box" but perfectly good as new cards up for less than their retail price.

Scan, Box.co.uk, Ebuyer, CCL, AWD IT, Overclockers and others.

[oj113]

Taff107 said:

I went for a Radeon RX 5700 XT due to the cost of Nvidia cards and to be honest, haven't had any dramas at all with it (There was a drama with drivers initially but it seems fine now)
Plays all games I have tried on it effortlessly.

Yeah i think budget wise this is the best card I can look to get. Ignore the driver drama stories and pop one of these in.

[rxe]

Depends what you want to do with it.

First rule of graphics cards is to buy what you need now, rather than try and future proof yourself.

As an example, I'm using a 1660Ti to play Doom Eternal in 4K - works perfectly. Given that this was released 2 weeks ago, I suspect it is as demanding as anything out there. If I'm being very honest, I can see sod all difference between 4K and 1080p when shooting demons. Rest of the system is an old i7 and 64 GB of memory.

If you really, really need a high end card for something specific - get one. Most people don't.

Edited by rxe on Wednesday 1st April 11:47

[Type R Tom]

£250 would put you at an RX5600xt if going down the AMD lines, cheaper than a 2060 and broadly the same.

[snuffy]

rxe said:

As an example, I'm using a 1660Ti to play Doom Eternal in 4K - works perfectly.

Think Doom Eternal must be exceptionally well coded because I have other far less graphically demanding games where the temp will hit 70 and the fans will be spinning like a jet about to take off but with Doom that's not happening at all.