First time poster, long time lurker here.
I have an old i5-4690, 16GB ram (cheap stuff), SSD with no discrete graphics installed.
I'm after a GPU that will let me play modern games at med-high detail at 1080, but won't break the bank. I also would like to use this in a future build in a year or two. Was thinking of an RX6600 or GTX 1660ti.
I'm keen to hear it this would be suitable, or if there is a better alternative. Looking to spend around $300.
Let me know your thoughts.
How much did you pay for that whole setup?
Is this one of those Dell Optiplexes with a small form factor chassis or is this an ordinary ATX tower?
You may need to find a new case if you're on SFF, otherwise you are limited to low-profile GPU's.
It's an ATX case and MicroATX motherboard.
You should grab the RX 6600 then. Some stores may offer it for $299.
At this price point there's nothing else better, the RTX 3050 is still $400 and actually has worse performance (20% slower according to Steve @ HardwareUnboxed)
Personally, id be sticking to a used GTX10 series…
The GTX1080/GTX1080Ti could probably even push a lot of stuff at 2.5k on high (2560 x 1440p), which is great overhead even if you only want to run in 1080p…
Just had a quick squiz, theres severall negotiable 1080 and 1080ti's between the 350 - 500 mark on gumtree and facebook.
If you are in VIC theres a sweet gigabyte Aorus 1080Ti in parkdale negotiable at 450 on Gumtree… might be able to talk him down to 350ish?
Thanks for the info. I'm very nervous to buy second hand, heard and read some stories… So will be looking for a new card.
The way i calculate it usually for older gen cpus, is look at the date it came out, in your case the 4690 came out in may 2014, then goto 3 years in the future, and see the medium to good gen video cards that came out that are 2nd hand now and within your budget, they are usually up to twice the performance of the 2014 cards, so in this case i would get a 1070 or 2060. If you can find a 2060 in that price range that would probably be your best bet. an r6600 is pretty new, and you might have motherboard compatability issues with that, i would keep the video card pcie 3 to ensure less issues.
I'm trying to get a reasonably new card as an upgrade may be possible in a year or so. I've read that the PCIe standard is fully backwards compatible, so in theory should work, albeit at PCIe version 2 speeds.
I was on a 4690 until earlier this year, with a GTX 1060 3gb card. I replaced the CPU/Ram/etc but kept the GPU, and got a noticeable increase in frames, so the 4690 was bottlenecking even a 1060 pretty hard and was never enough for it.
You can get a 1060 for $100-150 on facebook marketplace by the looks of things, and it might just need replacing the thermal paste at this stage in its life (I did it earlier this year and brought temps down by ~30 degrees C). Any GPU higher than that will probably be unable to perform better anyway on that CPU. It's still the most popular GPU in the world according to steam's hardware survey, so you'd be in good company for what developers are probably aiming to keep compatibility with.
Admittedly I didn't compare a huge spread of games before and after, and mostly play Minecraft nowadays which is heavily CPU bound for performance, but I did notice that Rome 2 Total War which I tried a few times before but could never run higher than 20-40 fps on the old setup and required a lot of tweaked settings, now runs at something like 60-120 FPS on I think the highest settings
I set up a budget gaming PC for my nephew - same CPU as what you have, 12GB RAM, 1TB SSD. I went for a GTX 1650 Super back in the lockdown days when GPUs were $$$. Combo works fine for 1080 gaming and he's happy with it. I think you can't go wrong with a GTX 1660Ti. Just make sure your power supply can handle the 120W or so that the GPU requires.