GTX 1060 3GB or RX 470 4GB?

Okay another question here, this time for another rig.

Last year I finally passed down my custom Core 2 Duo rig to my little sister so she could have a computer herself and at least do some gaming. Around that time I also got myself an extremely low budget workstation with an LGA 771 Xeon and a kick-ass Quadro so it seemed reasonable to pass down my old rig.

Before I passed it down I did a "mid-life refurbishment" to the rig so it can run for at least 3-4 years more. I've replaced the E7500 with a Q9650, upped the RAM from 2GB to 4GB (two RAM slots only, 2 x 4GB are too expensive), throughly dusted off the tower and rerouted the cables.

Now it has the following spec:

• Gigabyte GA-EG41M-US2H motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 3.00 GHz
• 4GB Samsung DDR2 PC2-6400 RAM
• Nvidia GeForce GT 730 2GB DDR3
• 3.5" 500GB Seagate SATA HDD
• 420W unbranded ATX PSU

I'm gonna replace the PSU with a quality one of 500W+ rating, once back to HK.

Now the problem is the graphics card, the GT 730 is too weak for decent gaming, though drains little power, cool and quiet, perfect for media playback... may go into my dad's office desktop. Anyway I'd like to upgrade the graphics card.

My budget is capped at HK$1500 (~US$195) and that puts me into two options: an Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB or an AMD RX 470 4GB, both are just within my budget. Tough decision... give up DX12 and get slightly better performance, or keep DX12 at the expense of a bit of speed?

Please note that, I'll not consider a new build even if I should, unless you can find a much better rig within my budget The money comes from my tiny savings so HK$1500 is already pushing me so I'm not gonna raise my limit at all, I wanna avoid being questioned by my parents as well. SSD is out of the question too, a new 512GB SSD will simply eat up most of my budget, be reminded there's no eBay or CL in HK.

 

Sorry, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I wouldn't even consider a 1060/RX 470 with that low-end CPU, only 4GB of DDR2, and no-name potential fire hazard PSU. The rest of the system would bottleneck it too badly and performance would be underwhelming. I'd go with a 1050 at most. With a low-end CPU, stay away from AMD cards because of their driver overhead.

 

4gigs only of RAM is a performance killer, with that cpu i wouldnt go for something higher than a 1050 is the max..
I don't know about the games you are willing to play.. but you are going to be extremely cpu limited..

 

Agreed with both above. 4GBs of RAM is a bit mediocre for gaming in today's standards, it may work fine, but you will see yourself running out of RAM.

I would save the money and get the GTX 1050, as your CPU will certainly bottleneck the GTX 1060, and use the rest of the money and get a smaller SSD (128/256GB or whichever size similar) for your OS, programs, and games.

 

Same here the CPU will bottle neck along with DDR2 tool old to handle the new Gaming requirements. Your better off building with a i5 or higher i7 and DDR4 of 16gigs would do your games better then you can go with the GTX1070 not a GTX1060. That will definitely improve your fps. Your pushing that old tech far beyond what it can do nowdays.

 

But can I build a gaming rig with an i5 and 16GB RAM for only $190? That's pretty much what I can spend. Now I don't have a stable income and I absolutely don't want to shell out my savings.

Yeah I'm pushing an old gear beyond what's it's supposed to do, but if you know me well that's what I always do.

 

I have to agree with everyone.. 4GB RAM is too little.. If you can get 8GB that will be better but still not great.. Alternative is to do a 2 stage upgrade.. Get a i3/i5+16GB RAM in the 1st round and then a RX470/1060 in 2nd round!

 

Doesn't it make more sense to buy a card first and look for other upgrades later? I'm pretty much forced to hold on this hardware for at least a year or two. Decent gaming on an old hardware is better than no gaming on a new hardware, from what I can see.

And take notice that it's not even my computer.

 

As others have mentioned the CPU and RAM will still be a barrier to good performance if you only upgrade the card, so you're not doing yourself many favors at the time of upgrade. That said if you are planning to upgrade more later then you'll already have a decent card when you do.

 

Okay I must use my old rig and game decently for the time being, that's not negotiable. However, if I can consider upgrading to newer platform but uses the same card after 1-2 years, and I'd like to use the card for 5 years at least, which graphics card do you prefer? GTX 1060 or RX 470?

Note: Me and my sister will be playing at 1080p at max, no plan to upgrade monitor.

 

You'll likely be more bottlenecked by the CPU than any of the GPU choices. That said, since the GPU power for either will far out-match your current system, I think I'd lean towards the extra 1GB of VRAM in the RX 470. That, and I suspect that it's a bit cheaper than the GTX 1060 as well.

1080p gaming isn't really all that demanding for modern-day hardware, and having the extra Vulcan capability could prove to be useful in the future.

 

Ah, I see OP got some typical NBR advice in here:
"I only have a hundred bucks to spend, need a GPU."
"Get i7, 32GBs of RAM, GTX1080 SLI, 512GBs SSD."

Anyway, how about getting a used GPU? How's second hand market in HK?

 

You will not be playing AAA games at 1080p 60 FPS maxed out, you have neither the CPU nor RAM for that, even before GPU is factored in. But if you insist on living with a massively bottlenecked GPU until funds become available to upgrade the rest of the system, get the GTX 1060 3GB.

AMD GPU is bad choice when the system has a low-end CPU. Both cards support Vulkan.

No, this is rational advice. Putting a Ferrari V12 inside a Honda ricer never ends well.

 

And that's why I suggested second hand.

 

That is an option too, but OP has budget of less than $200 USD so I doubt he/she can swing a modern platform upgrade and GPU upgrade within that budget, used or otherwise.

 

Uhmmm, why would he upgrade a system lol?
He should just grab a second hand GPU (and maybe some RAM) and that's it. $200 should be enough. If he will have some money left, he can put it towards saving on a new PC.

 

Because you haven't been paying attention to the responses in this thread. The entire system is a huge bottleneck for any modern $200 or even $100 GPU.

 

So he gets a used GPU which is better than his current one and doesn't bottleneck his CPU, but will be able to play some games. Leave the leftover money for a new system.

 

Again, the first 3 responses in this thread suggested exactly that, telling the OP to get a GTX 1050 instead.

 

Care to expand on your opinion? I've ran AMD GPUs on low(ish)-end CPUs just fine. The CPU would only be an issue for CPU-bottlenecked games (same for the GPU and GPU-bottlenecked games).

 

It is not my opinion, it is a fact. Unlike Nvidia, AMD's driver has high CPU overhead and is not multi-threaded (lacks support for DX11 driver command lists). You can check Digital Foundry's numerous investigations into this as well as 3DMark API Overhead Test results.

 

There should be a computer version of Top Gear for this.

"On today's episode, James uses too much thermal paste, Richard puts a GTX Titan in a Celeron computer, and Jeremy embarrasses himself in front of foreigners. "

That said, you're right, better to try and get a working configuration than one you have to worry about the good component getting bogged by older ones.

 

A link? I'm actually curious about this.

 

Well I personally don't give a truck whether my current rig is gonna embarrass myself, but unless someone is willing to donate a much better rig to me, I'll have to keep using mine for a while, period.

 

If you can live with it for a while until you're able to upgrade more, then you probably shouldn't have much of a problem installing a better GPU. Just don't get your hopes up with performance until you can upgrade more. A 1060 should fit in the budget.

 

7:16

Spoiler

Spoiler: Note frame time spikes on orange line

Spoiler

 

Thanks for posting that. Better to stick with NVidia in this case for sure.

 

What kind of games are you playing now, and want to play in the future?

Look specifically at benchmarks for those games with the video cards on your shopping list; some games will run better on AMD hardware, and vice versa. When you're buying at the low end, it pays to pay attention to those things, because you'll probably be on the edge of playability with the upper quality settings. One card performing 10-20 percent better than the other can be the difference between playable and unplayable.

If you plan to carry over the video card into another system, and want to play the latest games, look for a card with 4GB of video RAM or more. The higher texture settings in some games, like Rise of the Tomb Raider, require that much video RAM to run smoothly.

In your place I would first look on eBay for an older motherboard with first- or second-gen Intel Core i5/i7 quad-core support, drop in one of those CPUs, and get 8GB of RAM. It carries its own set of risks, but faced with having only 4GB of RAM in your system, it's one that might be worthwhile.

Charles

 

The real question is why is this 1060 3GB vs 4GB RX 470 instead of 1060 3GB vs RX 480 4GB?

If OP is considering the 1060 3GB (a 200$ card), then he should also consider the RX 480 4GB (also a 200$ card)

 

I don't know how's the prices in your place, but the cheapest RX 480 4GB is a bit over my ceiling (HK$1550-HK$1699), and I'm really squeezing every bit to make up the HK$1500 budget.

In fact some GTX 1060 3GB and RX 470 4GB are just within my budget, with only a few tenners to spare.

The problem is, my current budget doesn't allow such thing. It's either a new build but I can't game or an old build while I can still game decently. The choice is obvious to me.

And I'm not gonna build a Sandy Bridge rig only to be told it's obsolete after 2-3 years. Not matter how cheap I go, I require my rig to be used for 5+ years.

 

Ah, I was thinking you're in the USA. In the USA, 4GB RX 480 = 3GB 1060 in pricing.

I would imagine sandy bridge components would be fairly cheap, and it still is nowhere near tired. I think altogether, the IPC may only be 20-25% increase from sandy bridge to skylake, if that. A high overclocked sandy i7 would still be more than enough. My 2920XM certainly kills everything out there with little effort. I suggest to skip haswell/broadwell, either go sandy/ivy or skylake/kaby, whatever budget allows.

 

Sometimes you have to face what you're asking is too much.
The Intel Core 2-based rig + 4GB of RAM isn't going to make the requirements for many modern games.

Charles

 

A 1060 sounds like a bad decision in a psu like his seems to be as well. Gameplay in general is going to stutter pretty hard from ram bottlenecking or cpu bottlenecking.

You can't expect a 5+ year rig for 200 bucks. That cpu in your rig alone was 340 bucks new. That's why it's held up so long, but it's still 8 years old, it can't run modern games well unfortunately, a 1060 can help, but I'd recommend a weaker card because you'd be wasting a lot of it. A 1050 wouldn't be a bad choice or a 750 Ti.

 

Agreed, the OP wants to have the cake and eat it too, which is not going to happen due to the limited budget.. As I can tell from experience.. The 750ti or a 1050 is a good choice.. But still 4GB RAM is too little!

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

 

Some updates on this matter... though you probably don't care.

I made a mistake, the GT 730 is indeed the 128-bit version, meaning it's really a GT 430

Ultimately I've settled on an HD 5670 1GB GDDR5, which didn't cost me a penny as I swapped the cards with one of my dad's office desktop (upgraded 2 years ago with second hand parts), he doesn't need such card just to get 1080p anyway. GT 730 for office work and HD 5670 for budget gaming, seems much more appropriate IMO.

However, I did spend a large sum of my savings for other stuff (driving license + test, 16GB RAM for 2570p, a used HP ZR24w for the office desktop etc) and with me still without a job, I have to push my two Ryzen build to November or December, perhaps even next year. Looks like I'll have to be stuck with old gear for a while.

But if I can get rid of a few desktops in my storage for some cash