GPU Upgrade from GTX 670 worth it for Core i7 3820?

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manini

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 14, 2007
Messages
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Hey All,

As the title suggests, I need help determining if it's worth it to upgrade my aging GTX 670 to one of the current generation GPUs, given the rig that's in my signature. Is there any card that would help me achieve my goals without throwing money away due to bottlenecking?

I'm at a point where I feel like I'm ready for a completely new rig, but unfortunately can't afford it right now, so I'm hoping to do something to hold me over for another year or so.

I have dual 24" 1080p 60hz monitors, so I'm not looking at anything too crazy, but I'd basically like to be able to get a smooth experience on high settings for BF1, Wolfenstein II, and also be ready for Metro: Exodus when it comes out, and potentially another other big shooters coming out in 2018. My current card is really struggling with Wolfenstein II right now (thinking its the lack of video memory -only 2gb right now).

I unfortunately haven't been keeping up very well with all the latest products but historically I've been very happy with Nvidia cards and have typically gone for the ones in the $400-450 price range, but really just want the best bang for the buck given the fact that my CPU is a i7 3820.

Thanks in advance!
 
its overclocked your CPU? anything recent will be very with a good overclock on that CPU..

at that price range you can look for a GTX 1070 and you will be fine for the next couple do years at 1080P.. and it will be a gargantuan upgrade over your gtx 670.. it will be several times exponentially faster.
 
I don't agree that buying a card that bottlenecks on a CPU you already own is throwing money away, especially if you're planning to upgrade in a year. Get the best card you can comfortably afford now so that when you do upgrade you're not risking having to upgrade your card again. If you're budget is $400-450, and you like Nvidia, get a 1070. Or a 1070TI / 1080 if you can get a great deal on one.
 
Araxie said:
its overclocked your CPU? anything recent will be very with a good overclock on that CPU..

at that price range you can look for a GTX 1070 and you will be fine for the next couple do years at 1080P.. and it will be a gargantuan upgrade over your gtx 670.. it will be several times exponentially faster.
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Yeah, the CPU has a slight overclock to 4ghz. I suppose it might be time to squeeze more out of it.

ryan_975 said:
I don't agree that buying a card that bottlenecks on a CPU you already own is throwing money away, especially if you're planning to upgrade in a year. Get the best card you can comfortably afford now so that when you do upgrade you're not risking having to upgrade your card again. If you're budget is $400-450, and you like Nvidia, get a 1070. Or a 1070TI / 1080 if you can get a great deal on one.
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You are correct- I guess I should have clarified that in a year or so my plan is to get new monitors and go for 4k gaming- I kind of assumed anything available now in my price range probably wouldn't be that great by that time, requiring me to get the latest and greatest at the point, but I suppose we could wait and see.

I appreciate the input guys- I'll do a bit of research and see what deals I can find.
 
If you're going to upgrade to 4k gaming in the future, I'd wait and see what cards are available when you make the move. Realistically, the only card that is good for 4k is a 1080Ti and if you're not moving to 4k for 6 months to a year, I'd wait and see if there's a next gen product before spending the money on a 1080Ti now.
 
I wouldn’t go anything higher than a 1060/580 anything more WILL go to waste, even those won’t get fully utilized in most games. Its certainly worth upgrading from that 670 but Unless you’re upgrading the rest of the system within the next few months more than a 1060 or 580 would be a waste. Be sure to get the 6gb flavor of the 1060 if you go that route.
 
kirbyrj said:
If you're going to upgrade to 4k gaming in the future, I'd wait and see what cards are available when you make the move. Realistically, the only card that is good for 4k is a 1080Ti and if you're not moving to 4k for 6 months to a year, I'd wait and see if there's a next gen product before spending the money on a 1080Ti now.
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RamonGTP said:
I wouldn’t go anything higher than a 1060/580 anything more WILL go to waste, even those won’t get fully utilized in most games. Its certainly worth upgrading from that 670 but Unless you’re upgrading the rest of the system within the next few months more than a 1060 or 580 would be a waste. Be sure to get the 6gb flavor of the 1060 if you go that route.
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Perfect- this is exactly what I needed. Now to figure out which one I want...
 
It sounds like you would want the smoothness of freesync or g-sync. They weren't available when you made your rig. Or are you sticking with the monitors?

Would it always be a new card, or would you buy from the FS/FT forum?

HardwareCanucks made two videos about regular Sandy Bridge in 2017 with the 1070 or 1080 Ti, and then comparing to Coffee Lake... but the important part is you can look at some current benchmarks from last month. One is "i7-8700K vs i7-2600K Will A GTX 1080 Ti Make A Difference"
 
I upgraded from a 670 to a used r9 390 8gb a while ago and am happy with it for 1080p gaming, so really almost anything modern will be good.. even a 570 4gb
 
RamonGTP said:
I wouldn’t go anything higher than a 1060/580 anything more WILL go to waste, even those won’t get fully utilized in most games. Be sure to get the 6gb flavor of the 1060 if you go that route.
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Completely agree, this will tide you over very nicely until you decide to upgrade the whole rig and shoot for 4k gaming. No point in going any higher in the lineup.

My personal recommendation: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16814487275 simply for the warranty and customer support model.

Btw, there is a member on here selling (I think) the same 1060 model for like 230 or so, buying used off here could save you a bit more money on this "temporary" solution too.
 
singe_101 said:
It sounds like you would want the smoothness of freesync or g-sync. They weren't available when you made your rig. Or are you sticking with the monitors?

Would it always be a new card, or would you buy from the FS/FT forum?

HardwareCanucks made two videos about regular Sandy Bridge in 2017 with the 1070 or 1080 Ti, and then comparing to Coffee Lake... but the important part is you can look at some current benchmarks from last month. One is "i7-8700K vs i7-2600K Will A GTX 1080 Ti Make A Difference"
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In the future when I build a completely new rig, I will definitely upgrade the monitors, but for now I'm sticking with what I have. It doesn't matter to me whether its new or from the FS/FT forum- I've great experiences buying and selling there in the past. I'm aiming to pick something up after the holidays are over so I'll check the FS/FT forum around then and see what's available.

RamonGTP said:
Uhh, that's a horrible price on a 1060. Do NOT buy that!

https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GeF...=UTF8&qid=1511912668&sr=1-3&keywords=gtx+1060
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The card that AlphaQup posted was a 6gb version of the 1060, whereas the one you posted is a 3gb version, which I'm assuming is where the price difference is coming from...
 
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manini said:
In the future when I build a completely new rig, I will definitely upgrade the monitors, but for now I'm sticking with what I have. It doesn't matter to me whether its new or from the FS/FT forum- I've great experiences buying and selling there in the past. I'm aiming to pick something up after the holidays are over so I'll check the FS/FT forum around then and see what's available.



The card that AlphaQup posted was a 6gb version of the 1060, whereas the one you posted is a 3gb version, which I'm assuming is where the price difference is coming from...
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You’re right, my error on the link.

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1060 AMP Edition, ZT-P10600B-10M, 6GB GDDR5 VR Ready Super Compact Gaming Graphics Card https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01I5O5AP2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_zWMhAbC26X823

Still a horrible price
 
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I'd second a 1060. For the price its a great card. I used an EVGA 6GB (although I paid pre-mining craze prices of $229) for a long time with my 1440p 144hz screen and had no issue maxing out older games and running new games at high-ish settings that still looked great.

3820 is basically a 2600k with more cache, and it overclocks really well. All 3 of the ones I had hit 5ghz easily.
 
RamonGTP said:
I wouldn’t go anything higher than a 1060/580 anything more WILL go to waste, even those won’t get fully utilized in most games. Its certainly worth upgrading from that 670 but Unless you’re upgrading the rest of the system within the next few months more than a 1060 or 580 would be a waste. Be sure to get the 6gb flavor of the 1060 if you go that route.
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This is just simply false. Not sure how you could possibly claim anything more than a 1060 is a waste when 1. Whenever the day comes and he upgrades his CPU, he can STILL use the existing GPU and 2. The 3820 Is superior to the 2600K and we've already had countless discussions of how a 2600K can still adequately drive a GTX 1080 TI.

OP, at the end of the day, your GPU must be upgraded for gaming performance to improve even if you throw the fastest CPU money can buy. Your 670 is the only bottleneck here you should worry about. Buy the fastest GPU you can budget. Period.
 
FlawleZ said:
This is just simply false. Not sure how you could possibly claim anything more than a 1060 is a waste when 1. Whenever the day comes and he upgrades his CPU, he can STILL use the existing GPU and 2. The 3820 Is superior to the 2600K and we've already had countless discussions of how a 2600K can still adequately drive a GTX 1080 TI.

OP, at the end of the day, your GPU must be upgraded for gaming performance to improve even if you throw the fastest CPU money can buy. Your 670 is the only bottleneck here you should worry about. Buy the fastest GPU you can budget. Period.
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Very very easily, If he's not upgrading anytime soon, he’s better off waiting because there may be better cards available. Why waste money on a better card that will yield zero performance benefit if you don’t plan on upgrading the rest of the syatem in the near term?

It’s simply true. 100%

It’s easy to claim because I have a 1060 @ 1080p with a 2600k and a 1080ti at 1440p with a 3770k and I see how they perform. My 1060 breezes though games at 1080p my 1080ti breezes through games at 1440p and in most games it’s not even hitting 100% usage even though it’s pusing significantly more pixels.
 
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A 1060 may work for games of today at 1080P but will struggle with next generation titles at 1080P. It's a mid range card with marginally better performance than a non overclocked GTX 970.
 
I'm still running an r9 290 (which is similar in performance to a GTX 780 IIRC) and it plays everything fine at medium at 1440p. That said I don't bother with fps counters anymore I just know the games feel fine. They could be running at 40fps and as long as it feels fluid I wouldn't know.

I suspect a 1060, 1070, 1070ti, 1080, would all do you fine at 1080p for a while to come if you stay at 1080. If you really want to go 4k soon then I wouldn't consider anything less than a 1070.

"Next gen" games probably won't be significantly more demanding since we are stuck in a world with Xbox ones and Ps4s that need to play the games fluidly and they won't be replaced for a few years still.
 
FlawleZ said:
A 1060 may work for games of today at 1080P but will struggle with next generation titles at 1080P. It's a mid range card with marginally better performance than a non overclocked GTX 970.
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Define struggle?
 
RamonGTP said:
Define struggle?
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Maintaining 60 FPS or higher at maximum detail settings.

$449 gets you a 1070Ti which fits within the range OP mentions and provides solid performance that will last him much longer than a 1060 will.
 
Get the best card you can afford. SB-E CPUs are still great for gaming specially for 60FPS/1080p.

A GTX 1070 is plenty for 1080p gaming. You won't be dissapointed.
 
FlawleZ said:
Maintaining 60 FPS or higher at maximum detail settings.

$449 gets you a 1070Ti which fits within the range OP mentions and provides solid performance that will last him much longer than a 1060 will.
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I second this opinion. I researched whether to build a new system, upgrade my old 4.3GHz 2500k to a 3770k, or upgrade my GTX 680s to a new GPU. The most cost effective upgrade for gaming performance was to just upgrade the GPU and continue using my old system. At 1440p/1600p I can maintain ~90% FPS performance compared to the newest CPUs today. I ended up going with a 1070 TI FE because a blower cooler was a must for my particular use case and getting it at MSRP made getting a price inflated pre-overclocked 1070 seem kinda pointless. I overclocked it as much as I could without touching the voltage (2114Mhz core / 9100Mhz memory). If the old core system somehow manages to outlive the usefulness of an 8GB 1070 TI, I will be very much surprised. OP is in a similar situation to me but with a better CPU and an option to upgrade his monitors to 1440p in the future.

edit: sorry for the new account but I mainly lurk and forgot my old [H] acct is registered to an e-mail domain I gave up several years ago.
 
Love hearing everyone's viewpoints on the matter. Thanks guys. Now another question- I see a lot of discussion regarding a 1060. If I were to go down that price point ($200-300)- does that seem to be the favored card over a Radeon RX 580? Or is it just brand preference at that point? I assume anything past that price point would result in a 1070 or 1070 Ti over any AMD offering...
 
manini said:
Love hearing everyone's viewpoints on the matter. Thanks guys. Now another question- I see a lot of discussion regarding a 1060. If I were to go down that price point ($200-300)- does that seem to be the favored card over a Radeon RX 580? Or is it just brand preference at that point? I assume anything past that price point would result in a 1070 or 1070 Ti over any AMD offering...
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I'd go with the 580 unless the 1060 is cheaper.
 
If you are looking in that price bracket, I would recommend the 6gb 1060. The AMD cards can carry a bit of a price premium compared to their gaming performance because they generally are better mining cards. Everything I read when I researched my choice indicated that the 1060 was slightly faster at the time it was reviewed against the RX580. (Don't take that as gospel though because AMD has a habit of improving with age since their drivers usually aren't as well optimized at release as Nvidia.) I personally went NVidia's route because it was a known quantity to me in my system and it was generally more power efficient. I ruled out the 3gb 1060 and the 4gb RX580 because I was already running into VRAM issues with my 680s and wanted to get some more headroom for future titles. As it stands today, I have some titles that will use nearly 4gb on my 1070TI and I don't consider them particularly intensive.
 
If you want something to tide you over now until you make the jump to 4K, then I suggest a 1060 or R580. Otherwise, stick it out and get the absolute most GPU that your budget allows when you make the move to 4K.
 
FlawleZ said:
Maintaining 60 FPS or higher at maximum detail settings.

$449 gets you a 1070Ti which fits within the range OP mentions and provides solid performance that will last him much longer than a 1060 will.
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Budget isn’t really relevant. I have the budget for a Titan XP or a 2nd 1080Ti but my benefits would be nil so I don’t buy them.
 
RamonGTP said:
Budget isn’t really relevant. I have the budget for a Titan XP or a 2nd 1080Ti but my benefits would be nil so I don’t buy them.
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This isn't about you nor is that for you to decide. It's up to the OP and he already stated he's looking for bang for buck.
 
I think you guys are actually on the same side of the coin, but looking at it from two different angles- RamonGTP is saying spend a minimal amount now to get the job done for now since any extra power could potentially be wasted at 1080p given the rig I've got atm, and buy the latest and greatest available when it's time to build a new rig, where as I think FlawleZ is going with the approach of spend what is needed to get the job done now but even a bit more (as budget allows), which results in a little wiggleroom for the future, such that when I do build a new rig, if we're in the middle of or maybe towards end of a generation, the card will work for a bit in the new build until the next gen comes out shortly (or however long after) the new rig is put together. Did I capture that accurately?

You guys both have very valid points, however I think I'm leaning towards going on the lower side for now, and then buying the best single card solution available at <$700 upon rig building time. I'm just trying to determine how long I plan to keep this current system as a spare rig after the new one is built, because if I were to keep it for any decent amount of time, that would actually be a case for a getting a 1070...
 
I think another thing you are going to have to consider is what the current crypto currency mining coverage is doing to GPU prices again. I thought prices had settled a bit until I looked at Amazon and NewEgg tonight. Many of the Vega 56 or 1070/1070TI cards I was tracking prices on have gone up by at least $50 compared to when I ordered my card a week ago. It looks like prices aren't as bad on the 1060 and RX580 tier cards but I also don't know their old prices that well. The lead times appear to be getting longer with many 1070s and Vegas out of stock and 1060s/RX580s not coming in until early December. In the worst case, at least the Nvidia store provides reference card options close to or at MSRP for the 1060, 1070, and 1070TI. Regardless of brand, if you find a relative deal on a card that interests you, consider jumping on it because you might find that you are forced to either delay upgrading until the buzz dies down or pay premium prices for the card you want.
 
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FlawleZ said:
This isn't about you nor is that for you to decide. It's up to the OP and he already stated he's looking for bang for buck.
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Are you dense? I was using myself as an example because the same applies to OP. Not to mention 1060/580 are THE bang for the buck cards for 1080p gaming.

Furthermore, I'm not deciding anything, I'm providing my opinion, no different than you. You'll have to make friends with the fact people will disagree with you from time to time around here. This is one of those times.
 
RamonGTP said:
Are you dense? I was using myself as an example because the same applies to OP. Not to mention 1060/580 are THE bang for the buck cards for 1080p gaming.

Furthermore, I'm not deciding anything, I'm providing my opinion, no different than you. You'll have to make friends with the fact people will disagree with you from time to time around here. This is one of those times.
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I Have no issues with differing opinions and I understand yours very clearly. All I'm saying is the OP seems to be someone that looks to stretch out the lifespan of what he has until it's no longer adequate. This is evident given his older hardware still in use today. My point is I feel the 1070 TI is a better buy if your budget allows because it will last you longer.
 
The best user experience at 1080P?

4GB RX 580
6GB GTX 1060

Given the pricing lately, I'd take the RX 580 route. Plenty of 4GB models ~< $250.
 
FlawleZ said:
I Have no issues with differing opinions and I understand yours very clearly. All I'm saying is the OP seems to be someone that looks to stretch out the lifespan of what he has until it's no longer adequate. This is evident given his older hardware still in use today. My point is I feel the 1070 TI is a better buy if your budget allows because it will last you longer.
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Of course it will last longer. A 40oz big gulp will last longer than a 20oz big gulp, but it I only drink 16oz it doesn’t really matter, and most people would rather get a fresh one when they want or need more.

At any rate, OP knows pros and cons to both schools of thought at this point and appears to be fully capable of assimilating that information and making his own decision.
 
I'll admit I used to upgrade my graphics card every other generation prior to my current build, but unfortunately life and other priorities got in the way, and before you know it, time flies, and your graphics card (and rest of your PC) is ancient... :LOL:
 
It's not that bad of a market once the private sellers depreciate their 2015 cards, for a 60Hz 1080p monitor or two they're fine.
 
AlphaQup said:
No worries man, no one is winning right now on price :( bad time to be needing to purchase GPU's/memory.
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Not to derail the point of this thread, but on a side note- I understand why GPU prices are high, but what's driven up RAM pricing? I remember back when I built my rig I got my 32 gigs of DDR3 for about $160 bucks. What the heck happend with DDR4 that it's double/triple the cost?
 
manini said:
Not to derail the point of this thread, but on a side note- I understand why GPU prices are high, but what's driven up RAM pricing? I remember back when I built my rig I got my 32 gigs of DDR3 for about $160 bucks. What the heck happend with DDR4 that it's double/triple the cost?
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"Factory trouble" causing supply constraints...
 
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