Graphics Are there any graphics cards worth buying anymore?

I was running an ASUS GTX960 STRIX for some years until I got crashes and as I needed the PC for seriosu stuff, bought a passive GT 1030 to keep it going. Some folk suggested it may be a PSU issue which I hope to test if ever I get a chance.

But the question is, is there any sensible upgrade you can buy now?

What is the choice at £100, £200, £300?

My Daughter is after a graphics card so I'd like to get something and donate the passive 1030.

The CPU is an E3 1285 v2 (also the same for her) so they are old, if not that low-end.


thanks in advance for any help.

 

As the graphics card market is currently FUBAR due to pandemics, global warming, Greta Thunberg, Pizza boxes etc, your best bet is a 1050Ti for around £180 like this one:
https://www.cclonline.com/product/2...ccHAvO6SbbTIab9pEccIUfY0-5myHIXcaAlMjEALw_wcB

Apart from that, the used market or the marketplace on here is your best bet but prepare to pay way over the odds.

 

Just to give you an idea how bad things are, I recently purchased an Asus Strix RTX 3060Ti for £650 from PC World.
The UK RRP for that card is £369, so say around £420 for this souped up version.

 

Sorry, I'm gonna be nit-picky here...

The RRP for an Asus Strix RTX 3060Ti is whatever Asus say the RRP is. The RRP for an Nvidia Founder's Edition RTX 3060Ti is whatever Nvidia say the RRP is. Asus don't set Nvidia's pricing, and Nvidia don't set Asus' pricing.

I agree that £650 is an absolutely batshit price for a 3060Ti when Nvidia's FE is £370, I seriously doubt that Asus' card is worth an extra £280.

But yeah, the marketplace here is probably where you're going to get the best deals @Risky. The 'open' second-hand market on eBay and elsewhere is just as f'ed as the retail market. There are still regular FE drops on Scan, usually on Thursday and Friday mornings. If you can manage to get an RTX 3060Ti FE then that'll be a great card for a while, but it's nearly 25% over your top price.

 

I have a basic four core eight thread cpu (10105f) with this card and the usual 16GB of ram and get 75 FPS @1080P in Control with all settings maxed including ray tracing.
It runs around 60c and overclocks really well.
Still not worth anywhere near the asking price.

 

From the TechPowerUp review of this card:-

According to ASUS, the RTX 3060 Ti STRIX OC will retail for $500 (£369), which is a $100 increase over the Founders Edition MSRP price point.

 

Oh man..... I sold a 970 3.5GB mid 2020 for £80 posted. I also sold a 1070 Ti Sep 2020 for £220 collected.

I've got a 780 3GB if you want something more powerful than a 1030. It's a blower style one that thermal throttles slightly, looks like it operates JUST above thermal throttle temp, power only gets reduced slightly. If I turn the fan speed up from 30% to 50% it runs Heaven absolutely fine (for my testing, I'm sure it games fine), never thermal throttles, I saw temperature going 5c lower than thermal throttle before I closed it. So you'll need to set a custom fan profile with Afterbuner and you'll be golden.

 

I guess I don't need the biggest card given that my monitor was a high-end purchase....in 2010 (HP ZR24w) so I am playing 1920x1200. CPU is ancient, but again initially high-end ES chip. The only other requirement was to have a card that drops to 0dB when not loaded, but that may be more common these days.

I am thinking my first step may have to be to test the old 960 with another PSU. I have a lot of old PSUs that never had much work piled up in a box.

 

I've got 2x 980Tis with those closed loop liquid coolers to run my stuff at 1440p; the little 'un has 2x 670s that have no issue running SW Battlefront 2 at decent frames/settings (no on-screen counter so can't add a number) so maybe it depends what you want to play. From memory, when I had the 670s in my machine, it did struggle slightly with Ultra settings in Ryse, but I was using that to see exactly what they could cope with. Dropping some settings led to playable rates whilst still looking decent.

I suppose I'm after saying that if you're prepared to compromise on some things or if you only play less demanding stuff, in the current environment it might be worth not even looking at the traditional "must go one bigger than 960" upgrade route. I thought I had a 560Ti knocking about somewhere but can't remember if I donated it. If I can find it and you want to sort the return postage, you could borrow it as a loaner to tide you over until you find something more permanent - if you're like me and are playing games THAT far behind the release curve anyway, it should be fine!

Out of interest, what were the crashes you were getting? The kid's unit kept switching itself off and rebooting until someone on here suggested replacing the PSU, as you say. Have just done so and no crashes/restarts reported as yet (touch wood) so that may be a similar issue to that which you're seeing.

 

I can't quite remember, I did find the error in the logs but each time it turned off the display completely and needed a reboot so not very nice. I will have to make some hours and swap out the psu, but since it's in a mATX case with 2 SSDs and 3 hard drives, it is quite a bit of hassle!

 

Scan do still get the occasional drop of Nvidia FE cards at MSRP.

 

Now add 20% sales tax to the GBP price. It's normal for US prices to be listed without sales tax because it varies by state. By the time you convert to GBP and add 20% VAT you usually end up with something relatively close to the original USD price - a shade under £450, in this case.

 

So still £200 more than that currently.

 

Yes, and like I said you'll get no argument from me about whether that's good value or not.

My point was that Nvidia RRPs/MSRPs are for Nvidia FE cards only, and just because Nvidia's 3060Ti FE card sells for £369 doesn't mean that partner 3060Ti cards should sell for £369.

 

The RRP thing was a fallacy. Nvidia sell a few at that price just to keep their machine somewhat legit.

Secondly, we never ever get to pay the dollar amount. A lot of people forget that those are prices without state tax. Which is 7% in NJ and more pretty much everywhere else. DE has no state tax, but that is the only one of the lower 48. All of the rest are subject to tax. You used to be able to evade it online. Basically Newegg would set their warehouses up in different states, and then you wouldn't have to pay it. What you were supposed to do was receive it, declare it to the tax man and pay state tax on it which of course every one did.not.

Just before I left though that changed. They were taking your state rate and paying it directly to the IRS. So there was no getting away with it, unless you lived in DE (AKA Delaware).

 

Hence me going to have a read about and correcting my initial post.
There was an MSRP for the Asus Strix variant as per the info supplied to TechPowerUp, it's just higher than the FE etc editions.
Still a terrible rip at current prices.

 

All of a sudden I'm feeling not so bad about what I paid for my current (preowned) GTX1080. A non-Ti GTX1080 Strix sold yesterday for £445, and an AMP! Extreme version for about £375 including shipping.

Graphics card prices are well beyond batshit crazy now... the whole thing is just laughable. Here's me thinking I could suggest something similar to what I have, but nope.

@Risky there are a number of upgrade paths from a GTX960, but even a good card from the same generation will cost you a lot more than it's actually worth. I ran a GTX980Ti for a long time, and believe it or not that's still a very capable card... but you might have to pay quite a bit more than £200 for a preowned one on ebay.