So, I swapped out one fan today and threw two more into the case (bringing me up to five total), and man, my Gigabyte RX 6700 XT is finally breathing again. Temps actually dropped from 74 down to 66 while playing Red Dead Redemption 2. I spent a little time messing with the fan curves in the BIOS too, and honestly? It’s smooth sailing now.
analogtiger19 said:What kind of issues are you even having at 1080p Ultra with an RX 6700 XT? What can't you crank up?
So, I tried cranking everything to the absolute max—including all those extra settings—at 1080p, but I ended up stuck at around 50-55 fps. I gave The Last of Us a shot too, and it runs pretty smooth at about 100 fps on Ultra, but if I bump it up to Ultra+, the performance just falls off a cliff. And man, turning on Ray tracing totally kills it, dropping me down to 25 fps. I'll have to check things out later; maybe I'll toss a couple more fans in my case or just grab a new one with better airflow. Either way, it's still a massive step up from my old RX 580.
wanderingbison9 said:I was actually eyeing the Eaglov ones because they seem like the absolute cheapest option out there... but I guess there might be a catch... hmm... did you pick one up at Micro Center?
Yeah, bummer, but there's barely any reviews for that specific model. Based on the one review I found, temps should be sitting around 63-65c. I just kept my old Seasonic S12 620w PSU in there for now and it's holding up okay. Honestly, once I scrape together some more cash, I'll probably try to grab a better case or maybe just toss in another fan.
So, I picked up an NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti today and honestly... I'm kind of underwhelmed, though I guess it was $1233. I really thought I’d be crushing Red Dead Redemption 2 on Ultra settings at 1080p, but man, it’s just not happening like I expected. Temps are hitting 74°C, too. I was totally banking on staying in that sweet 65-70°C range. I'm running a Cooler Master Hyper 212 case with one intake fan in the front and then one exhaust in the back and one on top.
So, I spotted an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 for $1283, but the specs say it needs a 650W power supply. I’m currently rocking a Corsair at 620W, so I'm wondering if that's gonna be an issue. Plus, honestly? That card feels like total overkill just for 1080p gaming. At 44, I'm basically ready to hang up the controller and enter my gaming retirement anyway.
Adam Moore3 said:Your GPU is definitely the bottleneck here, man. You aren't gonna see much of a jump just by swapping out the Processor. Especially if you're trying to chase those high refresh rates for competitive gaming. So yeah, I'd say skip the CPU upgrade for now and grab something like an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 or maybe a 3060 Ti.
BTW, how much RAM are you rocking and do you have an SSD? It sounds kinda weird when you say you play 'older games on mid-high,' because that setup isn't exactly ancient or anything.
I've got 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB and a 1TB Samsung NVMe. I was thinking about all the recent releases, but let's be real—I can't count on playing brand new titles on High settings with this GPU.
wiredotter14 said:What resolution and refresh rate are we talking about?
I’m rocking a Dell UltraSharp 27—1080p at 144 Hz. Honestly, I mostly just stick to single-player stuff, mainly RPGs, nothing super competitive. Right now, I can run older titles on mid-to-high settings without any issues.
So, I’m rocking an Intel Core i5-10400 and a GTX 1060 right now, but I finally scraped together enough cash for a new GPU. I'm eyeing the RX 6650 XT, though I've been seriously debating if I should upgrade my Processor too. The thing is, I have zero clue how much of a boost I'd actually see if I jumped to an Intel Core i5-10400. I've been scouring benchmarks, but honestly, everyone seems to be testing on stuff like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, which is totally out of my league. Like, if you can afford a 3090, you're probably just throwing a Ryzen 5800x or whatever high-end chip in there anyway.
wanderingbison9 said:I paid full price for my Radeon RX 580 $500 right before everything went crazy. Back then, you could snag one for like 1500-$667.
Man, me too, but like you said—that was "before the crisis." There was a time when mid-range gear would go for maybe 1500-$733, but nowadays? You're looking at 2300-$1167.
Looks like some leftover Radeon RX 580 8GB cards are finally popping up in stores over at $500. Honestly? Not a bad deal if you're just trying to scrape together an entry-level gaming rig.
Samuel Evans5 said:Look, I’m no hardware guru or anything, but I know enough to tell when things don't line up. I was just a bit confused because the numbers above seemed totally different—36MB at 4.2GHz—but then this one down here shows 32MB and doesn't even mention the clock speed. So I figured they weren't the same thing. 🤦
The Ryzen 5 5600 packs 32MB of cache, while the 5600G only has 16MB. Honestly? If the price gap is tiny, I'd definitely grab the 5600.
I'm actually in a super similar spot right now (Core i5-9600K, GTX 1060), and I just stumbled upon this RX 6650 XT that looks like a total steal: It’s like $30-$133 cheaper than an RTX 3060, and if you're looking at the next step up, the RX 6700 XT or a 3060 Ti are sitting around $1333. Prices might dip a bit more, but honestly, this feels like my best move. I really don't have the patience to wait around for new AMD cards to drop.
Lawrence Phillips said:Since I'm waiting on those mid-range cards coming out next year, I figured I'd ask for some advice on the best upgrade path.
Current setup: CPU - Core i3-9100 GPU - GTX 1060
Future plans: CPU - Core i5-11600K (ordering it in the next few days) GPU - I'm gonna hold off for a bit and just spend my time obsessively watching YouTube benchmarks to figure out the best option that isn't total overkill.
1080P gaming on a 144 Hz monitor. The more I read about this stuff, the more confused I get. I'm looking for that sweet spot where the CPU and GPU are balanced without wasting cash. As frame rates go up, the load shifts from the card to the processor, and you end up hitting a bottleneck. I'm no expert, but logic tells me that for 1080P, there's no point in buying a beastly card because the CPU will just cap the performance anyway. I get that bottlenecks mostly matter at high frame rates and won't ruin the experience, but I don't want to throw money away since I'm just a casual gamer. Plus, I'm basically handing the PC over to my son who just plays Minecraft anyway.🙄
My gut says I shouldn't aim for anything beefier than an RTX 3060 or maybe a RTX 3060
or even some used 5700 XT.
All I really want is to at least roughly "double" my frames compared to what my current GTX 1060 is doing.
Does it make sense to wait for the last generation of mid-range cards from Nvidia and AMD? The market is getting flooded with used cards, and prices seem to be dropping.
I'm in no rush. My GTX 1060 still holds its own if I tweak things a little.
What do you guys think I should pair with my Ryzen 3600? I'm looking at the RX 6600, 6600XT, or the 6650XT. There’s only about a $600-$233 difference between all three. I'm mainly aiming for solid 1080p gaming, but I also want something somewhat future-proof so it lasts me maybe 3 or 4 years. I might even jump up to a Ryzen 5600 down the road, since I heard somewhere that AMD has this feature where pairing 6000 series cards with 5000 series CPUs gives you a nice little performance boost.
What’s a fair price for an MSI RX 580 8 GB gaming x? It’s about 3.5 years old now and I've used it strictly for gaming. I'm noticing prices are tanking lately, so maybe it's time to just let this one go and grab an RX 6600.
Morgan Murphy5 said:He doesn't mention which gamma setting is the standard out of those three options. Anyway, my move is to just reset the monitor to factory defaults—basically sticking to sRGB specs so the colors stay consistent with what the devs intended for games and apps. Then I just tweak the brightness by maybe 10% or so, and honestly, that’s it. That’s my sweet spot. I don't mess with color profiles because I don't own a colorimeter to actually calibrate anything properly. By messing with the brightness outside of the factory settings, you're shifting the whole spectrum. Also, I always turn off light sensors and dynamic contrast. Give it a shot that way and see if it works for you. That milky look in dark scenes? Yeah, you can't really escape it because the backlight is still pushing through even when the crystals try to dim it down. If you drop the brightness too low, you just lose all the detail in the shadows.
So, do you have the exact same monitor or just some other AOC model?
Even with DCR turned off, I can still toggle between three different gamma settings, but yeah, the image looks pretty washed out when I do. I usually just stick to using the G-Menu app—it’s super handy for this monitor, kind of like how everyone loves it for the more popular 24G2. I caught this video yesterday about the 24G2 where they were claiming that they "secretly" swapped out the panels on the smaller model last year. Apparently, the brightness and contrast aren't quite as sharp as the original 2019 version. If that's true, maybe that's why I'm actually digging the panel on this bigger one, assuming they used the same tech.
Hey everyone, has anyone here actually used the Dell UltraSharp 27? I picked one up last year at Best Buy (the receipt says 27G2U, but the box just says 27G2, which seems right since there aren't any USB ports), and honestly, night scenes in games look pretty terrible. This might just be me being picky since my eyesight isn't the best. In Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Witcher 3, everything gets super dark and hard to see when it's nighttime. And don't even get me started on Cyberpunk 2077—you can barely see what's right in front of your face in those dark alleys. If I crank up the brightness or contrast, things look better, but then daytime scenes are blindingly bright. It’s such a pain having to tweak settings constantly depending on what I'm playing. For browsing or watching videos, I usually keep brightness at 70/100, contrast at 50/100, and colors on warm. But for gaming, I have to push brightness up to 90-100, and with Cyberpunk, I need more contrast too. I used to have an Acer G257hl and it was awesome, but I ended up giving it to my nephew to help him build his first rig, so I treated myself to this 144 Hz AOC instead. Thx
Dude, just hold onto your cash. You can't even find a 5600XT for under $100 right now, and honestly, who knows if it's even that much better than a 580... Prices are absolutely insane. With everyone mining Ethereum, new GPUs are basically non-existent. For real, they're still selling 1050tis in retail stores! In 2021? That's just pathetic.
haha, I wasn't even thinking about doing it right now, maybe in six months once things settle down or prices actually drop. I was putting together a budget rig for my niece late last year and grabbed a 1050ti $367 at Protis, but now they're going for like $667.