GTX 1060/1660 in a 9 year old rig?

sportwarrior

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
309
Hey all, I've got a pretty straight forward question that probably doesn't have a straight forward answer. I built my current desktop way back in late 2010. The bones of the rig are:

Intel i7 960 @ stock
ASUS Sabertooth X58
12 gb G.Skill Triple Channel DDR3 RAM
ASUS GTX460 1GB TOP Edition

Obviously outdated stuff, but I've focused mostly on that old video card. It feels like it's my single biggest bottleneck. I'm not looking to game in 4k or anything, but I would like to have the ability to play modern games without dropping another $800-1200 on an entirely new desktop.

How feasible is it to just drop in a GTX 1060 or 1660 and extend the life of this rig a bit more?
 
Haha I should have known there was a tech site out there that would almost completely answer that question. Thanks a bunch, modi!
 
If/when you do upgrade I would love if you swung back and gave some follow up analysis.. ease of install, any hiccups, any noticeable speed upgrades, etc. Always nice for some 'boots-on-the-ground' updates.
 
A 1660ti might be overkill for that system, you're going to be cpu limited. Considered a lightly used GTX970/RX570 probably in the hundy range?
 
With a $20_50 processor upgrade a 1070 will be a strong card. Run 1440p and aim for 60hz. 1080p will limit due to processor bottleneck.. 1060 6gb at 1080p
 
Nehalem is good up to a 1070....

(I know from personal experience, trust me man.)

So yeah, 1060 is fine. 1160 will be bottlenecked a bit.
 
I'd say you'd be fine to drop that in. However I would HIGHLY suggest you consider overclocking your 960. Should be able to manage 4ghz fairly easily (assuming D0 model, C0 perhaps 3.8?). I ran my 930 for years at 4ghz 1.25v and was solid as a rock and good temps. The OC will definitely help alleviate a lot of your bottleneck.
 
A 1660ti might be overkill for that system, you're going to be cpu limited. Considered a lightly used GTX970/RX570 probably in the hundy range?

The card would also be used in the next system I build, so a little overkill might not be the worst thing in this case.
 
I appreciate all the help, guys. I've actually been lurking around these boards for like 15 years but my old screen name seems to be locked out for some reason.

Whatever card I settle on, rest assured that I'll be back to share results. It should be as simple as a drop in/drive update... My PSU has the juice to handle the increased power requirements and I think the rest of the build is healthy enough to handle the upgrade. Now I just have to settle on which card to get and resist the temptation to overshoot tooo much...
 
I appreciate all the help, guys. I've actually been lurking around these boards for like 15 years but my old screen name seems to be locked out for some reason.

Whatever card I settle on, rest assured that I'll be back to share results. It should be as simple as a drop in/drive update... My PSU has the juice to handle the increased power requirements and I think the rest of the build is healthy enough to handle the upgrade. Now I just have to settle on which card to get and resist the temptation to overshoot tooo much...

Goodluck! 1660 or Ti model should be fine if you're going to upgrade anyway. Sounds like you don't OC much anyway, so a good priced/reasonable upgrade path for you is probably an i5 8400 and a B-class board for Intel, or a Ryzen 2600(x if possible, as it will do the hard work for you) and again a B-class board to match.

Then again, just wait for Ryzen 2 (3000 series) to actually release later this year and maybe consider the rest of the rig then.. Just another thing to think about! :)
 
Goodluck! 1660 or Ti model should be fine if you're going to upgrade anyway. Sounds like you don't OC much anyway, so a good priced/reasonable upgrade path for you is probably an i5 8400 and a B-class board for Intel, or a Ryzen 2600(x if possible, as it will do the hard work for you) and again a B-class board to match.

Then again, just wait for Ryzen 2 (3000 series) to actually release later this year and maybe consider the rest of the rig then.. Just another thing to think about! :)

Thanks! I used to do a lot more overclocking back when I was building rigs regularly, but I've been out of the game since 2011 or so and would need to go through a refresher before attempting it again.

I'll definitely be checking back in with results and requests for more help when I get around to upgrading everything else!
 
High-end GeForce 9xx and 10xx cards are cheeeeap now that 16xx and 20xx cards are out. I picked one up on EVGA's b-stock site.
 
I wouldn't do that.
I believe its time for a new an up(to)dated rig.

the I7-960 is similar to the I3-6100 regarding performance.

At stock clocks, it's sort of a half truth. Benchmarks slightly edge an I3 in some cases ( IPC is greater ), but no way will a dual core I3 game as good as a 4 core or better. Just not happening. modern games use around 3 cores which makes a dual core a bottleneck and a 4 core 'adequate'. With an overclocked Xeon ( $20-$80 upgrade on a 960 ), the 1366 platform is much better
 
Sell your computer and take up golf.

If you dont then I'd see no problem running a 1060 on that CPU.
 
I wouldn't do that.
I believe its time for a new an up(to)dated rig.

the I7-960 is similar to the I3-6100 regarding performance.

Even if that were true (it isn't,) the request was "would a modern $250 video card work okay in this rig?"

"Time for a new setup" would cost way more than $250.

If I post asking if a $150 SSD would be a good upgrade for my old laptop, replying "you should buy a new $1000 laptop instead" is not a helpful answer.

If the requester could afford a whole new rig, I'm sure they would be discussing that, not just upgrading the video card in their current rig.

In raw single-core performance, a stock i7-960 would fall behind an i3-6100. With even a modicum of overclocking (which is easy on the older system) the 960 should be able to at least keep up. In multi-core performance, the twice-as-many cores plus HyperThreading will have the 960 blow the 6100 out of the water, even at stock speeds. An X58 system should be able to handle RAM speeds at least as fast as the 6100 is capable of, probably much faster. (6100 officially only supports DDR3-1333, X58 boards can usually handle 1600, and gaming-focused ones frequently 1866 or higher.)

Yes, in some games, the newer CPU may perform noticeably better than the old at some specific settings. But to be honest, if the requester is still rocking a 960, something tells me they aren't aiming for 200 FPS on the latest most demanding games. (In my house, my teenager has the Core i7-8700 with 1080Ti. I have the Core i7-960 with the Radeon R7 370. (Which plays the games I care about well enough.)
 
i sold a Very Nice 8gb xfx RX580 here for for like 110 shipped because i already got the vega64 but ill tell ya that rx580 got me very good performance with less head aches
Point being dont rules out 8GB rx cards
 
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