Need advice on GPU's and possibly sourcing my own

[marvir]

As I've seen a lot of frustration on the price points of the RTX series, and a sort of "lack" of any real competition from AMD once you get to the mid-higher end of the spectrum, maybe the 2070 upward, I was thinking on pulling the trigger on a new build with a 2070. I am however, not a real fan of the ASUS Strix.. I think it only worsens the overpriced-ness of the RTX cards, and on a personal level I don't like it coz it's huge. I would however like something in between that and the entry level Palit/Zotac cards, like an EVGA or MSI one perhaps.

Are there any big downsides to just buying my own card and getting the rest of the build from PCS? Am I able to send in my graphics card to them like you're able to with a case?

And I guess more importantly, is there a large or noticeable difference in performance/temperature/noise from the entry level cards to a 3rd party one, that's not the ASUS (noise being a pet peeve of mine and more importantly my partner's)?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[Oussebon]

Well as someone who recently bought an EVGA RTX 2060 XC Ultra (i.e. the twin fan one) for £350, £50 over the ~£300 baseline you can get the cheapest models for, I can't recommend that. Since quite a few EVGA cards with the twin fans suffer from a loud and very annoying click whenever the fans switch on/off. Bought the card because it has 0rpm idle fans unlike the cheaper, smaller EVGA cards and those from many other brands, and have to run it constantly at 15% fan speed anyway via EVGA's buggy Precision X1 software so I only get the clicks at Windows startup...

I'll have to RMA it at some point, but ofc the insured shipping costs will push the total price of the card up to the point that I really could have just bought a cheap Zotac RTX 2070 that was on sale for £410 at the time....

If I could do this over, I'd have just bought the cheapest RTX 2060 I could find.

This is my 7th EVGA product and will likely be my last.

Now, I've had this experience with EVGA, but it doesn't mean there aren't similar issues with other cards/brands.

The performance difference between models of 2060 is barely worth blinking at. And none of them are supposed to be extremely loud.

Also an RTX 2070 gives ~10-15% more performance than a 2060 and costs ~50% more, depending on the model.

If it's not an urgent purchase, wait for mid-July.

AMD are releasing Zen 2 CPUs and Navi GPUs on 7th July, and Nvidia are releasing refreshed GPUs shortly after than (the RTX 2060 being by far the biggest beneficiary of the refresh as far as the rumour go).

 

[marvir]

I just spent the last couple of hours watching videos about the 2070 and you're right -- the price for performance just really can't be justified. It looks like the 2060 is the only card that is actually worth it at it's price point. I think that if I were to pull the trigger now I'd actually go with the 2060 instead, but I'm in no rush and really hope that AMD makes Nvidia have to try again. I've actually been trying to look around for a new 1080 or 1080 ti but they're tough to find and because of that the prices that I do see are still too steep that I'd much rather wait it out.

Thank for the info, I'm looking forward to seeing the new AMD cards and the hopefully more worth-it Nvidia refreshes.

Edit: I've actually ordered myself another 8gb stick of some DDR3 ram, as I've found that it's likely been the source of my troubles in gaming as of late. When I ordered my PC I did it planning to get another 8gb of ram a couple of months after but just completely forgot about it, and have assumed for the past 2-3 years that I've been running 16gb haha. I've seen videos on Youtube of people still gaming with the GTX 970 getting much better performance than me and realized my ram is no longer quite enough.

 

[Oussebon]

Don't bother with a 1080 anyway, especially in light of the RTX refresh:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 SUPER series to launch mid-July | VideoCardz.com

GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER We have received more information on GeForce RTX 20 Super series, which are coming very soon. GeForce RTX 20 SUPER: Announcement next week? We cannot

videocardz.com

See the CUDA core and VRAM and memory bandwidth bump to the 2060.

It's a rumour. But it's the kind of rumour that's about 99% certain by now...

I've seen videos on Youtube of people still gaming with the GTX 970 getting much better performance than me and realized my ram is no longer quite enough.

The difference between 8gb and 16gb RAM most of the time in gaming is actually very small. It's not usually RAM that's the problem. What led you to the conclusion.

 

[marvir]

The difference between 8gb and 16gb RAM most of the time in gaming is actually very small. It's not usually RAM that's the problem. What led you to the conclusion.

I think it's that there's just not enough physical RAM. My framerates are generally consistent, and then they're not, and I've gotten a lot more stuttering and frame jumps with the games I've been playing lately, also a lot of crashes and the rare BSOD here and there. I've tested the RAM that I do have and it's fine and I don't seem to have any other problems outside of that. I also seem to get a lot less performance compared to Youtubers with comparable specs. My Battlefield V gameplay varies greatly. Sometimes it's fairly smooth then a couple of times here and there it just slows down to an unplayable crawl. Assassin's Creed Oddyssey (which is a horribly optimized game anyway) plays fairly consistent for me, but I'm getting a lot less FPS than what I *should* be getting, compared to other people's benchmarks.

Obviously the RAM might not help me the way I think it would, end of the day I don't next to nothing outside of basic troubleshooting but I'm hoping it'll just help make my everyday use a bit smoother. I feel like my PC at the moment should still perform more than decent, it's the PC in my signature.

 

[Oussebon]

THE BSODs indicate a problem that isn't the RAM (since you already tested the RAM, I assume with something like Memtest).

That's not to say you shouldn't buy more RAM. Depending on the price and how you use the PC (e.g. gaming, while having loads of browser tabs and other software open) it could be a quality of life upgrade. And some games may be sensitive to the difference between 8 and 16gb.

But if your gaming performance is suffering, RAM quantity won't be the primary issue most of the time:

How Much RAM Do Gamers Need? 8GB vs. 16GB vs. 32GB

Today we're looking into how much RAM you need to play the latest and greatest gaming titles. About this time each year we set on a memory...

www.techspot.com

You can sometimes see larger differences between 8gb and 16gb RAM with more powerful GPUs. But your GPU is much weaker than even the 1070.

And in any event, gaming on 8gb RAM shouldn't cause the PC to BSOD.

So regardless of RAM, there's at least one other thing you'll want to address to improve performance.

Others with more technical knowledge might see this post and advise, and if they don't you can always start a new topic.

 

[marvir]

Just as an update, I've added another 8gb of RAM and, at least in the case of Battlefield V I’ve had a much, much smoother experience. I used to run it on whatever that sort of adaptive setting is or medium and still get stutters. Now I can comfortably run it on high, and even ultra was fairly smooth, although out of my range FPS-wise. I think just having the ram dual channel really helped.

Overall it’s a quality of life upgrade that in quite happy with, especially now that I’ll be waiting a bit longer to get a new system.

Thanks for all the advice!