GPU Buying Guide - (Read first post)

If you ask me, you made a solid call. This is a great upgrade for $133
.

Honestly, I don't think swapping in a 1070 would actually bump my FPS any higher. My CPU is hitting a massive bottleneck at max settings, so that's definitely the next thing on my shopping list. For now, PUBG is holding steady at 60fps without those soul-crushing drops, and NBA 2K18 is running fine too. I'm about to download AC:Origins, so we'll see how much of a mess it is on this rig.

Yes, you made a sound decision there. Given how cutthroat the market is right now, having options feels more like a luxury of the past than a reality for the future. If you find that VRAM starts becoming an issue, my suggestion would be to slightly dial back the AA, depth of field, and render distance, and perhaps disable motion blur entirely. You might also consider capping your FPS to match your monitor's refresh rate without relying on Vsync. There are a handful of settings out there where the visual trade-off just isn't worth the performance gain, so it might be worth doing a little digging online to see which ones fall into that category. On the other hand, you can certainly experiment with various graphical settings; it isn't strictly necessary to disable everything or tank your settings just to get by. My main advice, however, is to avoid sacrificing texture quality and try not to drop below 1080p unless you absolutely have to. I would rather you focus on the aforementioned tweaks and look up the specifics of each setting online; that way, you will truly understand what to adjust depending on the situation you find yourself in.

Supposedly, we should see a massive reduction in bottlenecks once Vulkan and DirectX 12 are implemented, since they’re designed to take some of that heavy lifting off the CPU by spreading the workload more evenly across all the cores

I’m doing just fine, honestly. I picked up my 1070 a year ago for four grand, and it's served me well. But what we're seeing in the market today? It's pure insanity.

It’s honestly getting a little ridiculous out there; my 1080 is sitting at about $220 more than what I paid for it just five months ago 😲 If I had only realized I should have grabbed four of them back then, I could have basically walked away with one for free after reselling the rest 😁

Well, if biology worked differently, things would be a whole lot different. 😁

What was actually the lowest price you could find for a GTX 1060 with 3GB of VRAM?
With all this crazy crypto madness going on... I see they're hitting like $2,500 or something now, but I have a feeling they were way under $2,000 at one point...

At least 1600-$567

Ugh...😢

GTX 970 running Garry's Mod and maybe I'll try to strip away about 100-$67

That card is gone already. Unbelievable.

Hey everyone 😉

So, I’ve been dragging this https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Ca...-1GI-rev-10#ov weak little graphics card along for a few years now; it's only 64-bit, which honestly just
feels way too underpowered..
I don't really play many games, so it hasn't bothered me much, though I have occasionally dipped into some older titles here and there..

But now that everyone seems to be playing GTA IV, I’m starting to feel the itch to 😁 jump in too—I always thought Vice City and San Andreas were absolute classics ^^
That said, I know GTA IV is probably going to struggle on my current setup, even though my CPU and RAM should technically be fine for it

Here’s what I’m working with:

AMD Phenom 9500 quad Core 2.20 GHz
4 GB DDR2 RAM

I spotted this 128-bit card on Craigslist, and since the seller lives right here in San Diego, making the pickup would be pretty easy.

https://www.craigslist.org/offers/graphics-card-listing-24830833

It’s basically identical to what I have, except it’s 128-bit instead of 64-bit, but since GTA IV is such a demanding game, I suspect it might still chug along quite poorly; maybe it would be better if I
just looked for something a bit more powerful second-hand? Though that might just lead to another weak card, which feels a bit pointless -.-

I'm not looking to overhaul my entire rig because I'm on a tight budget and I'm not exactly a hardcore gamer; this computer is actually quite decent for my needs and I'm happy with it
I used to have an even worse machine, something straight out of a museum, but I actually built this one myself using parts I sourced separately.

Thanks for any help regarding the GPU; I wouldn't want to drop more than $117 on a used one, provided it gets GTA IV running smoothly, and that would be plenty for me. 🙂
I’d love to grab a brand new card, but then I’d have to shell out a whole lot more money than I'm prepared to spend.

I wouldn't touch that GPU with a ten-foot pole; performance-wise, it’s basically sitting in the same gutter as your current one.

Anyway, the selection here in San Diego is pretty pathetic, but if you absolutely have to buy locally, this is your best bet:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/graphics-card-listing-example

If you go for it, make sure there's still a warranty left. Also, try bluffing them with an offer of $200 or $83

If you aren't strictly tied to San Diego, you can definitely find much more powerful GPUs, but first, I'm going to need you to tell me the exact model of your power supply.

Otherwise, GTA IV is notorious for being one of the most poorly optimized games ever made. You won't be getting smooth 60 FPS regardless of what you buy, though it'll run well enough—just don't go expecting high details or massive frame rates.

Timothy Kim60 said:I wouldn't touch that GPU with a ten-foot pole; performance-wise, it’s pretty much in the same ballpark as the one you have now.

Anyway, the selection here in San Diego is pretty pathetic, but if you absolutely have to buy something locally, this would be a better bet.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/graphics-card-listing-example

If nothing else, you should check if it still has a warranty, and honestly, I'd try bluffing them with an offer of $200 or $83

If you aren't strictly tied to San Diego, we could probably find some beefier GPUs elsewhere, though I'd need to know the exact model of your power supply first.

Otherwise, GTA IV is notoriously one of the most poorly optimized games ever made, so you won't be getting smooth 60 fps regardless of what you buy—it'll run, just don't go expecting high frame rates or incredible detail levels.

Yeah, I figured that one was just as weak as mine, and it doesn't really have to be San Diego; I've ordered parts from all over the country before.

When I ran 'Can You Run It,' it told me my current card wouldn't even handle GTA IV, so I haven't even attempted to install it, haha.

Ah, I had read somewhere that the game is actually quite demanding...

I saw a Gainward card listed earlier, but I might only offer $83 for it, since that isn't anything special either. :/

I bought the power supply used about a year ago; it's working fine and seems reliable enough.

http://www.lc-power.com/en/product/a...p2-v22-80plus/

That's the PSU I'm using... my system has been stable with it.

I think I'll look around at what else is available for about $50 or $60 in other cities,
and then I'll make a decision on which one to grab.

Or maybe just go with that Gainward... 😉

https://www.craigslist.org/search/usa?query=hd7770
https://www.ebay.com/itm/graphics-card-listing-example-1
https://www.ebay.com/itm/graphics-card-listing-example-2
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/graphics-card-listing-3 https://www.amazon.com/graphics-card-listing-4

Timothy Kim60 said:https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=hd7770
https://www.craigslist.org/f/graphics-cards
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/graphics-cards

Thanks 👍

I think I’m probably going to end up pulling the trigger on this Zotac GTX.

That GTX 650 Ti I linked last should be the top performer here.

Check out my benchmarks using a beefier CPU setup (AMD Phenom 9500 quad Core 2.20 GHz 4 running at 2.6GHz and 3.1GHz, 4GB DDR2, plus an HD7850 2 which actually outperforms the 650Ti).

View on imgur

Benchmark for the biker expansion:

View on imgur

Tony Gay benchmark (this scene is a total resource hog):

2.6ghz - View on imgur
3.1ghz - View on imgur

When I upgraded to Ryzen, I saw a massive performance jump. You’ll likely run into some CPU bottlenecking with that card, but it's still definitely worth picking up.

if the GT 1030 is $200 and the GT 1050 is $500 then it really ought to be about 2.5x more powerful, but it's only hitting around 80% higher performance. this whole crypto mining craze has completely ruined things, and it's going to stay that way for a while...

I've been scrolling through Craigslist lately... looks like the market is tanking. People are trying to dump high-end GPUs, but nobody's biting. Prices are just insane...