All, Been mulling over a graphics upgrade for a while, currently have an evga gtx970 SSC ACX2.0, this drives a trio of monitors an LG 29UM68 ultrawide 2560 x 1080 and a pair of LG 24BK750Y-B 1920 x 1080 (almost precisely same screen height) to flank it, all via displayport. When gaming the main screen is what is used and the 970 does fine for me usually but is pegged to 60fps as it can't activate the freesync feature on the screen (I believe there is a convoluted workaround for this but i've never tried it as would prefer not to damage panel or card) to go to 75hz. Am considering an AMD 5700XT as a replacement on grounds it would 1) Allow freesync to 75hz 2) Give mixed resolution surround gaming (how well remains to be seen but would be nice to play around with a little for dirt rally etc.) 3) Similar power draw under load from my research (my 970 can pull a *lot* of juice) Given i have an i7-8086k (will go to 5ghz on all cores easily), 16gb of 3200mhz ddr3, 256gb Adata XPG SX8200 Pro NVME boot drive etc, 120gb SSD game drive should the fancy take me, running in a gigabyte Z370 Aorus gaming 3 board...... so nothing to bottleneck it afaik. Case is a Corsair 550D so space isn't really an issue, neither is cooling as it can be opened up. PSU is an EVGA 750 G2 so plenty of juice. Would this be a worthwhile upgrade or am I better waiting until big navi / rtx 3000 series comes out? I'd like to play Cyberpunk 2077 when its released with all the bells and whistles......... Am I insane? I have a birthday approaching and it's the only thing I can think to suggest to wife / siblings by way of combined present. Am happy to chuck money in addition to get something that will last another 4-5 years (I tend to skip 3 cycles of cards where possible) Opinions and suggestions welcomed
At the end of the day, these GPU's hold value 'fairly' well, so you could grab one now then when the new ones release sell it and grab something flashier I can't see a problem with what you've spec'd, other than prices being a bit inflated currently.
Bit-Tech suggests otherwise for power https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/evga-geforce-gtx-970-ssc-acx-2-0-review/8/
Been reading reviews of various versions of the 5700xt with double and triple fans - lots of reported failures on the amazon reviews across a range of cards from xfx, gigabyte, msi and even powercolor after a few days use, aside from the well reported driver issues - but they seem to have been resolved and possibly related to the windows 10 gaming mode Other option would be a 2060 super or 2070 super but wouldn't give me the full utility of the monitor....... would give me ray tracing but would cyberpunk 2077 hit 60fps or more if i figure out the nvidia trick on that panel with it turned on? Not a question that can be answered just yet....... Would also let my daughter try minecraft rtx as she's mad keen on minecraft.
Just FYI the forthcoming Navi cards are "Big Navi" and won't be £300 or so. They are likely to cost twice that. If you want Ray Tracing then wait. Apparently the 3000 series will be much better at it specifically (but only 15% or so faster in everything else) and are supposedly going to be cheaper. The latter remains to be seen, but apparently the production cost is much less. Then again it's Nvidia.... I really don't recommend buying anything Nvidia at all right now due to the price hikes. They were expensive enough before all this. The only reason Navi has remained reasonably cheap is because of the driver issues they had (being past tense now apparently) which dented their sales. Stuffing the prices up lots wouldn't go down too well, so the 5700 is still relatively reasonable compared to Nvidia's counterparts.
Apparently Nvidia (in a rare act of charitability) has enabled freesync on the 1000 and 2000 series cards - so stands to reason that the 3000 series will also have it enabled. Allegedly my ultrawide will work with this also according to a few sources as well but wouldn't know for sure until I tried it myself. So that swings me back more towards team green again. Am happy to wait if need be but out of the current gen cards only the 5700xt and 2070 super seem to fit the bill for my use case - that and the absolute necessity of 3 displayport outputs (although the pair of LG 24BK750Y-B has the ability to daisy chain via displayport 1.2 so dualrather than triple output on a card wouldn't be a deal breaker as they could be daisy chained in the absence of enough displayport outputs) Agree with vault-tec on pricing though - 2070 supers were £400 ish 8 weeks ago and I almost got one then, 5700xt had gone as low as £300! Will keep mulling it over rather than pay over the odds and as lockdowns are being lifted slowly in places they are manufactured supply might get better and prices fall soon enough.......
I've now ran three "non compatible displays" with no issues. Well, the only issue I had was that the Freesync range on one of them is pretty much pointless. But yeah, anything that is labelled Freesync (especially like newer stuff) should be absolutely fine. My Freesync is one of the first ones (the one that has a crap range). I had to use Displayport though. If you must have something *right now* then make it a 5700. https://www.cclonline.com/product/2...MING-X-8GB-Overclocked-Graphics-Card/VGA5676/ Not really gouged that badly. And yeah, it is more expensive than they were but it has the game bundle which they didn't have before. Just make sure to check reviews properly first to make sure it's not a stinker (looks nice though). I think we are most certainly headed for another recession, which will just make things even more expensive and taxes even higher.
