What Graphic card my computer can support if i want to upgrade it ?

[bobylouman]

My current GPU - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4GB
Motherboard - ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. ( Model M51AC )
Ram - 12 GB
PCU - Intel Core I7 4770 3.4 GHz

My goal is to be able to play Modern Warfare Warzone with a constant 60 fps and not have to play in window mode with 30 fps and drops from time to time ...

 

[Oussebon]

The two things that matter most, more than CPU, RAM, mobo, etc are the case and PSU.

It looks like your system is a prebuilt Asus one like this - is that right?

What power supply does it have? Can you take the side panel off and photograph it? It will usually have a label that lists all kinds of specs and values, which will help. Upload the photo to imgur and link here.

If you can see what PCIe connectors it has, that would be useful too. PCIe connectors look like this (click link)

That is a "6 pin" PCIe connector and a "6+2" pin connector. The cables often say PCIe on the connectors so you can distinguish them from others. What does your PSU have? A single 6+2 pin?

Your current GPU probably takes a 6-pin connector - check that to see if it's only 6-pin or if it's 6+2. Check for any other PCIe connectors your PSU has.

And lastly, what is your budget range?

 

[bobylouman]

The two things that matter most, more than CPU, RAM, mobo, etc are the case and PSU.

It looks like your system is a prebuilt Asus one like this - is that right?

What power supply does it have? Can you take the side panel off and photograph it? It will usually have a label that lists all kinds of specs and values, which will help. Upload the photo to imgur and link here.

If you can see what PCIe connectors it has, that would be useful too. PCIe connectors look like this (click link)

That is a "6 pin" PCIe connector and a "6+2" pin connector. The cables often say PCIe on the connectors so you can distinguish them from others. What does your PSU have? A single 6+2 pin?

Your current GPU probably takes a 6-pin connector - check that to see if it's only 6-pin or if it's 6+2. Check for any other PCIe connectors your PSU has.

And lastly, what is your budget range?

You are Right my Computer is a prebuilt but since I bought it I changed my PSU and my GPU.

My PSU is a EVGA 500 W --> https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=100-W1-0500-KR
there you can see all the spec but if needed this is some image image 2

and lastly my budget would be max 400$ CAD I am from Canada so that's why i have a rusty english

 

[nofearek9]

2060-2070 will be ok with such hardware,2060 more close to your budget.
what resolution do you play?

 

[bobylouman]

2060-2070 will be ok with such hardware,2060 more close to your budget.
what resolution do you play?

I play on standart 60Hz 21 inch monitor 1920x1080
Ive done some research but im lost why do you recommend the 2060 and not like the 1660 ? and how much GB is 2060 ?

 

[spvtnik1]

I play on standart 60Hz 21 inch monitor 1920x1080
Ive done some research but im lost why do you recommend the 2060 and not like the 1660 ? and how much GB is 2060 ?

Most, including my self, would recommend an RTX over a GTX simply because of the ray-tracing. However, with Ampere on the horizon, buying 2000 Turing series RTX right now seems like a poor maneuver. If you are hell-bent on obtaining ray-tracing powers, then the best bet is to wait for Ampere.

So that said, I would recommend to you the 1660 (Ti if you can find one). However, you're still slamming down cash on a brand new card that will mostly get bottlenecked by your proc now and lock you out of ray-tracing.

I know how it feels to have a new game to play and have your computer not be able to cut the mustard. If you had a 2GB 960 then I would say yes, totally 100% upgrade that. But since you have a 4GB model, the 960 is a fairly competent card. It's not an atom-smasher by any means, but the biggest thing holding me back with mine was the 2GB VRAM.

You would probably eke a lot more power out of your rig by upgrading the proc, but you'll need to be sure the socket and chipset of your mobo is compatible. If you really end up putting any cash in to that computer, that's where I would put it first.

Also perhaps try to find someone selling a used GPU that can beef up your rig for minimal cost. Maybe you can get your hands on a 1060 6GB, which would be a huge improvement over the 960 and they can be had for under $200 on the used market. I did something similar last year. I upgraded my proc to basically the highest model chip I could for my socket type (AM3+), then when Red Dead Redemption came out, I sprung for a 970 4GB. I ended up only really spending the difference in cost had I just initially bought a 970 over the 960, so I learned a lesson there, for sure. I wish I had just saved for the 970, but at the time I was actually dealing with a surprise GPU failure so that led to an impulse purchase. For me, personally, I was OK with a $160(in that range) purchase that would get me a solid year or two of gaming before a full upgrade. It will stay with the current rig for the rest of it's lifetime. The next build will be ground-up, so it's also an investment for the future. And now I have an auxillary card, the 960, leftover as a backup in case a primary GPU fails.

edit: If you are comfortable, you may also want to try experimenting with overclocking the 960. My 970 takes a very generous overclock, no extra voltage needed. Even an extra hundred Mhz is worth the experimentation.

 

[bobylouman]

Most, including my self, would recommend an RTX over a GTX simply because of the ray-tracing. However, with Ampere on the horizon, buying 2000 Turing series RTX right now seems like a poor maneuver. If you are hell-bent on obtaining ray-tracing powers, then the best bet is to wait for Ampere.

So that said, I would recommend to you the 1660 (Ti if you can find one). However, you're still slamming down cash on a brand new card that will mostly get bottlenecked by your proc now and lock you out of ray-tracing.

I know how it feels to have a new game to play and have your computer not be able to cut the mustard. If you had a 2GB 960 then I would say yes, totally 100% upgrade that. But since you have a 4GB model, the 960 is a fairly competent card. It's not an atom-smasher by any means, but the biggest thing holding me back with mine was the 2GB VRAM.

You would probably eke a lot more power out of your rig by upgrading the proc, but you'll need to be sure the socket and chipset of your mobo is compatible. If you really end up putting any cash in to that computer, that's where I would put it first.

Also perhaps try to find someone selling a used GPU that can beef up your rig for minimal cost. Maybe you can get your hands on a 1060 6GB, which would be a huge improvement over the 960 and they can be had for under $200 on the used market. I did something similar last year. I upgraded my proc to basically the highest model chip I could for my socket type (AM3+), then when Red Dead Redemption came out, I sprung for a 970 4GB. I ended up only really spending the difference in cost had I just initially bought a 970 over the 960, so I learned a lesson there, for sure. I wish I had just saved for the 970, but at the time I was actually dealing with a surprise GPU failure so that led to an impulse purchase. For me, personally, I was OK with a $160(in that range) purchase that would get me a solid year or two of gaming before a full upgrade. It will stay with the current rig for the rest of it's lifetime. The next build will be ground-up, so it's also an investment for the future. And now I have an auxillary card, the 960, leftover as a backup in case a primary GPU fails.

edit: If you are comfortable, you may also want to try experimenting with overclocking the 960. My 970 takes a very generous overclock, no extra voltage needed. Even an extra hundred Mhz is worth the experimentation.

I do get it now , but how do i check the compability with my motherboard for like the RTX2060 or the GTX1660 ?
Do i need to check the GDDR# <-- number ?
What else ?

 

[nofearek9]

I play on standart 60Hz 21 inch monitor 1920x1080
Ive done some research but im lost why do you recommend the 2060 and not like the 1660 ? and how much GB is 2060 ?

my mistake just saw the canadian prices ,i didnt knew canadian dollar is so weak compared to USD.
i would buy the best in my budget + my system can handle it.
so for your case is : 1660 super/ti ,you will be fine with 1080p

 

[Inspireless Llama]

I do get it now , but how do i check the compability with my motherboard for like the RTX2060 or the GTX1660 ?
Do i need to check the GDDR# <-- number ?
What else ?

I think there's a 99% chance that it's compatible. GDDR is the kind of memory that's being used on the GPU, that doesn't affect your PC.
The only thing that can differ is pci-e, new GPU's are either 3.0 or 4.0, while your PC might use 2.0. That's nothing to worry about, they're both backwards as forwards compatible.

There is a slight chance that your motherboard will bottleneck your GPU but I'm REALLY not sure about that because I don't know what pcie version your motherboard uses. 2.0 is slower than 3.0 but I don't know either how much that affects performance.

The main compability things you should check is if the card you want actually fits into your PC case and if your PSU is strong enough. Check lenght and width of the wanted GPU and I'd advice using a power calculator to see how much power they say you need.

 

[nofearek9]

his motherboard is UEFI .so should work with all cards.
pcie 2 Vs 3 not a big performance lost :

GTX 1080 Ti PCIE 3.0 x16 vs PCIE 2.0 x16 test in 8 games at 1080p

OK so it's me again :laugh: Today I will show you about PCIE 3.0 x16 vs PCIE 2.0 x16 with my 1080 Ti. Test system i7-8700K @ 5Ghz core & 4.8Ghz uncore ASRock Z370 Taichi P4.00 (set PCIE 2.0 mode in BIOS) 2x8GB DDR4-3500 16-18-18-36-2T EVGA GTX 1080 Ti @ 2126 core / 12474 mem Corsair HX 750W...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[FreezerBurn]

I would recommend a GTX 1660 and if you have any cash left grab a 144hz monitor.

 

[Oussebon]

Most, including my self, would recommend an RTX over a GTX simply because of the ray-tracing.

I wouldn't agree with that at all.

The most recent conversations on this forum I've seen came to similar conclusions, as I understand, too. i.e. that buying an RTX card now for raytracing is dicey at best.

This gen's RTX cards, especially at the RTX 2060 end of the scale, take a significant performance hit with the limited raytracing options available in most of the few games that offer it today, nevermind forthcoming games. It's very likely future generations of GPU from Nvidia and AMD will feature much beefier or at least different hardware features for raytracing. For most people, buying an RTX GPU now for ray tracing is a bad investment.

In fact, reading the rest of the post, I'm not sure I agree with much of it I'm afraid.

The GTX 960 is about equivalent to a GTX 1050 ti, so weighs in below the GTX 1650. An upgrade to the GTX 1660 / 1660 Super (for instance) would be substantial.

The i7 4770 is still a decent enough CPU, and in most titles you'd still be GPU-limited or FPS-capped most of the time. For Modern Warfare specifically, an Ivy/Haswell-era CPU does just fine, even at 1080p with a 2080 ti, and the game seems very happy as long as you have 4 cores and 8 threads.

There'd be almost no reason to get a 1660 ti instead of the cheaper and more available 1660 Super anyway.

Instead of a used 1060, you can get new 1660s for not all that much more, which offer more performance and a warranty. As for 2nd hand GPUs, It depends on local pricing and if you get super lucky with ebay, ofc.

Plus newer games / drivers optimised for Turing can deliver further performance gains. In Modern Warfare, a 1660 non-Super comfortably outperforms the GTX 1070, apparently, whereas in most games including older titles the 1070 still has a bit of an edge. So we do see Turing continue to make some gains vs Pascal GPUs as new titles come out.

I play on standart 60Hz 21 inch monitor 1920x1080
Ive done some research but im lost why do you recommend the 2060 and not like the 1660 ? and how much GB is 2060 ?

My PSU is a EVGA 500 W --> https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=100-W1-0500-KR
there you can see all the spec but if needed this is some image image 2

and lastly my budget would be max 400$ CAD I am from Canada so that's why i have a rusty english

I had a look on prices on Partpicker Canada. New 1660s seemed to be ~$300. Buy there were some new 1660 Supers for $330. For that kind of price difference, you may as well go with a 1660 Super.

 

[spvtnik1]

It's very likely future generations of GPU from Nvidia and AMD will feature much beefier or at least different hardware features for raytracing. For most people, buying an RTX GPU now for ray tracing is a bad investment.

Sure, buying RTX right now is a bad investment, but buying brand new GTX while we are on the horizon of the next round of RTX that fixes most if not all the things that make it seemingly not a great sell right now, is something to caution against. Think of it like this, though: if your GPU broke down today and you needed a (new) replacement, would you go GTX or RTX?

I was eyeing the 1660 as well and came to the conclusion that I could satisfy my needs (play RDR2, boost in all my other games) for half the price, because I know I want to do a whole new build within the next year or two. That was also just before the super came out some I'm glad I didn't invest in new tech that would be immediately replaced. That's exactly what happened to me when I bought my 960 2GB hot off the presses. The 4GB models rolled out maybe a month later. Pretty disappointing, and I would have been able to take advantage of EVGA's trade-up program but I would have been down a PC during the entire process.

You also have to consider that this is basically adding to the cost of the game. So, RDR2 wasn't a $60 purchase for me, it was a $240 purchase. Sure, CoD Warzone is free, but do you really want to spend $330 just because of it? These are matters of budget that only the OP can decide on. Yeah, you'll get a boost in all your other gaming, but if you're willing to spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade your PC for a particular game, there is a good chance you'll be playing that game almost exclusively for a while.

OP needs to determine how much longer they will go before the current rig must be replaced (and will they keep or sell the old one). That will inform their purchasing decisions so that they avoid overspending!

 

[Oussebon]

would you go GTX or RTX?

I'd get an RX 5700 or 5700 XT. Which has no dedicated raytracing capabilities.

Because the raytracing capabilities of current gen cards, especially in the RTX 2060 area, are best written off.

The only reason I have an RTX 2060 is that it was essentially GTX 1080 performance for a much lower price (solid 2019 1440p gaming performance), and the RX 5700 / XT didn't exist at the time. And Vega doesn't do well in Fallout 4 vs Nvidia GPUs (Navi does proportionately better as it happens), or it could have been a discounted Vega.

but buying brand new GTX while we are on the horizon of the next round of RTX that fixes most if not all the things that make it seemingly not a great sell right now, is something to caution against.

No. it really isn't. Reasons explained above already.

If it would be helpful, forget that current gen RTX cards have RTX in the name. Calling them RTX may lead to the false belief that they actually support a playable raytracing experience in most modern and future raytracing-capable games...

 

[spvtnik1]

If it would be helpful, forget that current gen RTX cards have RTX in the name. Calling them RTX may lead to the false belief that they actually support a playable raytracing experience in most modern and future raytracing-capable games...

I'm under the impression that DLSS 2.0 is already ironing out these problems, unless I'm mistaken and DLSS has no impact on ray-tracing. But I believe it does.

 

[Oussebon]

In the 2 games where that's implemented, it's doing well, yes.

However, we have to remember that these are only 2 of the (still very modest) number of games that support RTX features. And that the raytracing elements in those games are very limited, compared to what the scope of raytracing effects will eventually be (NB Minecraft RTX beta).

Moreover, if future generations of Nvidia RTX GPU sport beefier raytracing hardware - as in, proportionately beefed up even more than raw horsepower in games would be anyway - and if AMD have alternative hardware implementations and/or more powerful ones than the current RTX gen, the RTX 2060 level GPUs are still not going to do well.

Therefore, buy a so-called RTX GPU for raytracing (especially future raytracing) is a bad idea, plain and simple. Buying one because you want the horsepower it offers now (RTX or vanilla) is fine of course. I've got nothing against my RTX 2060.