Hardware & Technical Decisions, decisions!

[Dyafinkhesaurus]

Oldie but Newbie here! So I have a dilemma and looking for some ideas. I have around $200-$250 burning a hole in my pocket and I'm looking for a nice shiny new video card. However, there's a problem. My PC is now 7 years old. When I built it, I installed a Core 2 Q9550 with 8GB of RAM and an ATI 4870 video card (yep, this was before AMD bought ATI!) and frankly, the system still holds its own. I'm not a 'gamer' anymore and pretty much limit my gaming activities to ED and LOTRO. Now I can play both of these just fine. In ED, there's no noticeable processor lag in combat, suns have a square outline, I can't read Station names and people at stations have no faces (they have eyes, hair and clothing but no face!) but nothing that really stops the playing of the game - except for Horizons. I can't play Horizons because my video card specs are too low and I really, really want to play Horizons.

My PC will keep me going for another 12 -18 months before I'll build a new unit and convert this one to another purpose. However, I want to play Horizons now! Hence the desire for a new video card.

My dilemma is this - do I spend $250 on a GTX1060 with a view to transferring the card to the new PC when I build that? Do I spend $175 on say an RX 570 and not move the card over and save the extra cash for the new build? Or do I go with a lower spec card like the GTX 1050 for $120 that will still allow me to play Horizons and save even more cash?

A couple of points to note here: My motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P, which has been rock solid but only has PCIe 2.0 slot so a lot of throughput will be lost. To my mind this also makes buying a unit that can be overclocked somewhat pointless for the same reasons, so I was looking for a stock card. Also, my PSU is 650W and while adequate for both cards, the additional power draw of the AMD card is of some concern.
I'm leaning in one particular direction (I know you can't see it but trust me, I'm leaning!) but I would appreciate any ideas, thoughts and insight anyone has here.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

You've left out the most important piece of information that everyone leaves out in questions related to graphics card and system upgrades - what is the native resolution of your monitor?

Also, are you planning to upgrade later to a monitor with a higher resolution? Thinking about VR?

If you are playing at 1920x1080 or less either the 1060 or RX 580/480 will cope easily and you'll be able to play at Ultra settings. Actually the same might apply for a 570 - would be great if a current RX 470 owner could chime in. I don't know much about the 1050 but I suspect you'll have to turn a few settings down. You can probably get a 480 at a decent price now that the 580 is out. But I would read reviews and choose wisely with the AMD cards and make sure you get a cool-running one (well, cool by AMD standards anyway, I believe the ASUS Strix runs the coolest). And I say that as a current AMD GPU user. The 1060 will probably run slightly cooler depending on model, it just depends if you want to pay the extra.

I don't see the point of buying something now and then upgrading a 2nd time - the cards in your price range are here to stay for a while (nvidia might do a Pascal refresh with higher clocks like AMD have just done but don't expect huge performance increases) but it depends what you are going to use your current build for.

The PCIe 2.0 slot will be fine.

As for PSU - 650W will be fine for the cards you've mentioned (unless you have a whole heap of power-hungry drives and peripherals) so long as it's a decent make - actually, number of amps delivered by the 12V rail is usually the most important consideration. http://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

 

[MickyG1982]

Oldie but Newbie here! So I have a dilemma and looking for some ideas. I have around $200-$250 burning a hole in my pocket and I'm looking for a nice shiny new video card. However, there's a problem. My PC is now 7 years old. When I built it, I installed a Core 2 Q9550 with 8GB of RAM and an ATI 4870 video card (yep, this was before AMD bought ATI!) and frankly, the system still holds its own. I'm not a 'gamer' anymore and pretty much limit my gaming activities to ED and LOTRO. Now I can play both of these just fine. In ED, there's no noticeable processor lag in combat, suns have a square outline, I can't read Station names and people at stations have no faces (they have eyes, hair and clothing but no face!) but nothing that really stops the playing of the game - except for Horizons. I can't play Horizons because my video card specs are too low and I really, really want to play Horizons.

My PC will keep me going for another 12 -18 months before I'll build a new unit and convert this one to another purpose. However, I want to play Horizons now! Hence the desire for a new video card.

My dilemma is this - do I spend $250 on a GTX1060 with a view to transferring the card to the new PC when I build that? Do I spend $175 on say an RX 570 and not move the card over and save the extra cash for the new build? Or do I go with a lower spec card like the GTX 1050 for $120 that will still allow me to play Horizons and save even more cash?

A couple of points to note here: My motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P, which has been rock solid but only has PCIe 2.0 slot so a lot of throughput will be lost. To my mind this also makes buying a unit that can be overclocked somewhat pointless for the same reasons, so I was looking for a stock card. Also, my PSU is 650W and while adequate for both cards, the additional power draw of the AMD card is of some concern.
I'm leaning in one particular direction (I know you can't see it but trust me, I'm leaning!) but I would appreciate any ideas, thoughts and insight anyone has here.

Between the 1060 & the 580/480 I'd still chose the 1060, the two cards do trade some blows but the 1060 is less power hungry than AMD's offerings, meaning your current PSU would more than likely still manage to do it's job without issue. In DX 11 games (such as this one for example) the 1060 will outperform both the 570/470 & 580/480 with ease, in DX 12 the 580/480 will match it in most cases however.

The 1050/1050ti is more or less equal to the 960 in terms of performance. From my own experience the 960 can run ED & EDH well at high settings - the 1050ti & 960 should manage Ultra at 1080p in 4Gb guises too, at around 60fps (expect closer to 40/50 on planets at that resolution).

The 2Gb 1050 & 960 models will only really manage high settings however due to memory constraints, with similar performance - for instance I play in Ultra at 720p (due to my screen) on my 2Gb Asus Strix 970 & it uses up a maximum of 1850Mb of VRAM on Ultra at 720p (according to MSI Afterburner). Ultra would exceed that by a large amount & cause graphical issues.

 

[Dyafinkhesaurus]

You've left out the most important piece of information that everyone leaves out in questions related to graphics card and system upgrades - what is the native resolution of your monitor?

Also, are you planning to upgrade later to a monitor with a higher resolution? Thinking about VR?

If you are playing at 1920x1080 or less either the 1060 or RX 580/480 will cope easily and you'll be able to play at Ultra settings. Actually the same might apply for a 570 - would be great if a current RX 470 owner could chime in. I don't know much about the 1050 but I suspect you'll have to turn a few settings down. You can probably get a 480 at a decent price now that the 580 is out. But I would read reviews and choose wisely with the AMD cards and make sure you get a cool-running one (well, cool by AMD standards anyway, I believe the ASUS Strix runs the coolest). And I say that as a current AMD GPU user. The 1060 will probably run slightly cooler depending on model, it just depends if you want to pay the extra.

Appreciate the feedback. Monitor is a Dell U2415 1920 x 1200. I have no plans to upgrade that for the time being and no plans for VR in the immediate future. Part of the issue is I don't know what I don't know... at the moment the graphics are lower than low so even with a 1050 with settings turned down it's probably going to be infinitely better than what I have now. What I'm not sure about is whether or not it is worth paying an extra $100 for the 1060 over the 1050 especially if it is for just 18 months or so. I was leaning towards the 1050ti 4GB version for that reason.