• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

GPU upgrade cycle: 2 or 3 years?

B

brncao

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 4, 2013
Messages
231
The GPU is that one hardware component that requires frequent upgrading (assuming you don't skimp out on other parts) than any other components in your PC. I have settled on a 2 or 3 year cycle, but can't decide which one. I did not pull those numbers out of my ass, so I'll explain why 2 or 3 years and not every 1, 4, or 2.5 years.

The best time to buy them is during the holiday season (i.e. Black Friday and Cyber Monday). I bought mine last year during that time. I prefer to buy it only during those times, so it has to be in 1 year increments, not 0.5 years.

I don't upgrade every one year because I'd be burning a lot of cash for just small improvements.

I time these upgrades based on console refreshes. I've looked at the history of console releases and it's usually 5 or 6 years on average with the exception of the 7th generation (7 years). 6 years can be divided evenly into factors of 2 or 3 while 5 years is a prime number; I'm not going to wait every 5 years to upgrade my GPU or upgrade every 1 year.

Therefore, I either upgrade every 3 times per console generation (every 2 years) or 2 times (every 3 years).

Another factor to consider is that I buy only the high-end series (i.e. HD 7950/7970, R9 290/290x, GTX 780/780 ti, etc.)

I can't make up my mind if I should do an upgrade cycle of 2 years or 3 years. So I need some experienced members who can tell me about their experiences.

Edit: Forgot to mention two important details. I game on 5760x1080 eyefinity on a single card. Microstuttering is a problem with Crossfire, but if it's resolved, I'm open to that possibility. Obviously, adding a second card will significantly extend the cards' usage, therefore requiring less frequent upgrades. But for now, I'm sticking with one card.
 
Last edited:
Still running dual 3gb 580's. They still run all the things I do really well. It also depends on vram needs.
 
Consoles aren't going to come out that consistently, nor do the Red/Green manufacturers care whether you can afford it or not when they release their new stuff.

Upgrading by die shrink seems like a decent rule of thumb, which is sorta a 2-year plan, but with Maxwell not going to be on a new node thanks to TSMC troubles, even that's thrown out of whack.

I would say don't really look at it in yearly increments, and always be open and willing to tear out/down and buy new. It's more fun that way :D
 
I upgrade when I want to, when the reviews tell me the stuff is better than what I have and if I have the spare monies to buy two, and watercool them.

Also, if you sell your current hardware, you can recoup some cash if the stuff isn't too old.

If you wait two years to try and resell your current GPUs they'll be worthless.:eek:

You're thinking too hard, and like the guy above said.....the vendors just don't follow any set time frame.
 
Attaching yourself to a number in a market that doesn't is inefficient to say the least. I used to upgrade my GPU's more than ocne a year during the 8800 heyday. Now I've had a single 7970 for almost two years, the longest I've ever had a video card. Why? No reason to upgrade. No new GPU's would give a substantial boost over my current 1.3GHz 7970, so I'm waiting for 20nm.
 
i game @ 1080p and had purchased a 7950 when they got really cheap late summer/fall and figured i was set for a couple years. Then the litecoin mining took over and my 7950 was worth about $50 less than what a reference 290 could be had for. So i had to wait a few weeks but was able to sell and upgrade for almost nothing.

now i'm expecting this 290 to last me quite a long time, i've never had a card this near the top of the food chain this early after launch. I can see me getting 3 or 4 years easy.
 
My rule of thumb lately has been to troll deal websites and take advantage of price mistakes when you can. My last 2 video cards have cost me a grand total of $40 combined after selling my old card. Granted, this is not something you can count on, but you can come fairly close just by waiting for great deals and selling your old card. If you do it once a year or so, your old card will still be worth something, so the upgrade won't cost as much overall. The way I see it, there is zero difference in spending $100 per year to keep your card up-to-date and spending $300 every 3 years. Obviously, this works best with the high-end cards since they tend to hold their value more (GTX 780, R9 290, etc).
 
noobthegreat said:
Upgrading by die shrink seems like a decent rule of thumb, which is sorta a 2-year plan, but with Maxwell not going to be on a new node thanks to TSMC troubles, even that's thrown out of whack.
Click to expand...


Don't know where you got this idea from. The high-end 800 Maxwell parts were designed specifically for 20nm. They will not function properly on 28nm as it wasn't designed for it according to Nvidia. Lower end parts may be re-branded 700 series or even modified low-end Maxwell parts with a bigger die than usual. Nvidia will not released half-assed 28nm Maxwell parts.

TSMC is ahead of schedule by 3 months for the first time since it was originally said to be delayed (1 1/2 - 2 years ago) significantly.
 
Upgrade for the games you play and want running at the fps you want to achieve. No need to keep upgrading a system if you don't play heavily demanding games.
 
On average took me 2-3 years to upgrade usually buying midrange cards (250+~) and game @ 1080p.
 
I would not do the upgrade based in years but in performance level. I recently upgraded to a R9 290 from 2-2gb Asus Eyefinity xfire setup. I could never justify the setup before now based on my FPS only. I purchased the 5870 cards for a little less than $300/each new when the cards were selling for $650/each because HP was going to void the warranty on one of their computers it those cards were installed so the company that originally bought the cards sold them to me for a bit less than 50% cost. About a year ago I upgraded to 2560*1440 monitors. But rather than upgrade to the AMD 7000 series(because it had been out a while) I decided to wait for the next generation of cards. I play Crysis and Farcry, along with Modern Warfare and other such titles.

You might want to consider SLI/Xfire first because that would be a much cheaper upgrade path if you need a few more FPS.

Another thing to consider is if you are buying a card at the beginning or closer to the end of its generational run.
 
This depends on how much you value other aspects other than pure performance such as feature set and efficiency. For example Nvidia introduced certain new features tied into Kepler such as Shadowplay. AMD has True Audio and crossfire changes (helping with latency/stutter) tied into its new architecture. These are improvements aside from performance. Whether or not they are meaningful is up to the end user.

The other consideration is resale and the actual cost of ownership with that in mind (efficiency plays partly into this as well such as electricity costs and PSU costs). If you find it easy to resell you might want to upgrade more frequently.

Also set sale events, like Black Friday, are not as good as you might think these days. . If you regularly follow prices for example you may be quite disappointed with these supposed sale events. If you ever browse deal oriented sites or forums you'll often find this sentiment since the audience there follows the prices more closely. Using a non-hardware example you can notice the sentiment towards the current Steam isn't very exciting in the "hot deals" section for example. With the ease of internet communication you simply can find deals rather often year round.
 
When the recommended requirements on the back of a box for a game or (or listed on steam) are higher then the card I have I kinda get worried.

Then I read about the 8800 GT being the most used card on steam a while ago and I figure I'm just a wuss for upgrading too soon.
 
Comixbooks said:
When the recommended requirements on the back of a box for a game or (or listed on steam) are higher then the card I have I kinda get worried.

Then I read about the 8800 GT being the most used card on steam a while ago and I figure I'm just a wuss for upgrading too soon.
Click to expand...

Wow.

That is nuts.
 
I usually skip a generation and upgrade to whatever is a step below the existing flagship when prices go from insane to more reasonable. Usually I get a GTX x7x model for around $300.

I'm skipping the current 770, as it's nothing but a refresh of the last gen 680, so it doesn't fit with my gen skip plan. Waiting patiently for a non-reference cooler equipped Maxwell GTX 860ti/870 with at least 3GB on board...
 
I upgrade when I can no longer run the games that I am interested in playing at near max settings (usually all max settings and SMAA injected for the AA) at 60 minimum FPS.

Currently all I play is BF4, DotA 2, and Guild Wars 2. I have a GTX 680 and it's still fast enough for BF4 at 1080p all ultra and SMAA injected for the AA.

The next real intensive game I see myself getting wont be until probably StarWars Battlefront or BF5. Or maybe Valve will surprise us with some Source 2. L4D3 or HL3 in 2015 or something.

Either way, I got this 680 on March 2012 and don't see myself replacing it until 2015 as that's when I'll be looking for a new game to play. I will still probably be playing Guild Wars 2 and DotA 2 then so I will just need a new FPS to replace BF4.
 
I'm a stickler for 60fps. As long as I can keep that up with at least most of the details cranked - I'm good to go.
In most instances that's 2 years or 2 video card generations. Sometimes I'll jump the gun early if there's a particular game or series of games that could use more horsepower, but I almost never upgrade sooner than 2 years.
 
I change cards every 6 months or so if something better is out that is at least 25% faster than existing setup. It hasn't happened in past 6 months though.
 
I change them whenever I get the urge to. That's probably every 4 to 5 months or so. Only problem is that my GFX power is starting to outrun my processor power, and my HDDs aren't fast enough to keep up with the games, either. It's time for a FULL rebuild with watercooling when Maxwell/Pirate Islands come out.
 
I game at higher res than 1080p, and with all the eyecandy ON, so I upgrade when new games start getting slow...
 
Unless you have a commercial refresh policy (I doubt it if it's gaming the GPU is needed for), component refreshes should come 'when the time is right', not after a set time period. New technology does not release on exact schedules, and neither do price drops or 'times of wealth' for you personally. I upgraded graphics 6 times between mid-2006 and early 2009 as I became more ambitious, but next month it'll have been 3 years since I upgraded my graphics, and I'm still not sure about it.
 
I upgrade "when the time is right" as far as my performance needs go, but at the same time I put a minimum upgrade limit on my purchase:

1. At least double the memory of my existing card
2. At least 60% performance improvement, but more is always preferred.
3. Under 150w average power usage in games (really hard to care for and feed high-end cards)
4. Under $250

But of course then there's the "when the time is right" rule, and for that I use this rule: I can't play a game I want to play at my native res on high smoothly.

I typically upgrade once every two years, but my GTX 460 1GB is going on 3.5 years at 1280x1024 - even though the R9 270X definitely fits the bill, I have yet to find a game I want to play that fails to impress. I'll bite when 20nm comes along.

These rules are never hard-and-fast though - if I eventually upgrade to 1080p, I will jump to a higher-powered GPU (and price bracket).
 
Last edited:
I'm still gaming on an unlocked, launch 6950 and typically look for a $300 double performance increase. The 290 non-X comes close to being that upgrade, but I'll have to wait for prices to fall out of orbit.

Or wait for the refresh.
 
Three years on average. 18 months minimum. 4 years maximum.

Currently on SLI 570's, first one bought in 2011, second bought in 2013.

Looking at non-reference cooler design R9 290 (single card) when prices fall back down to RRP. :(

Annoyingly, the Asus DirectCUII 290x doesn't have standard HDMI output, dammit.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Yeah, you make me feel better about my chronic upgrades. :p
Click to expand...
You are far worse than I am. Especially this year. I didn't even touch the 290s and you bought and sold them and are back on 780s lol. I think I mentioned somewhere here that 290s was a bad choice for you. :p
 
KickAssCop said:
You are far worse than I am. Especially this year. I didn't even touch the 290s and you bought and sold them and are back on 780s lol. I think I mentioned somewhere here that 290s was a bad choice for you. :p
Click to expand...

I think I one-upped that: From 290Xs to 780s, all along with the embarrassing name. Oh well, I'm hopeful for 390X, especially the 390X2.

I wonder if AMD will unlock 3 way CFX for 390X2.. then I can have 6 GPUs.. :eek::eek:
 
had a six year upgrade cycle when I had the Geforce2 GTS many centuries ago

(okay, not centuries, but years ago)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top