Hi, with the upcoming CP2077 DLC increasing the system requirements I’m thinking of upgrading my system.
I was hoping you guys could give me some feedback on my plan, since my experience with building PCs is fairly limited.
My current setup: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (12) @ 3.967GHz GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB RAM: 16GB OS: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS (Kernel 6.2)
From what I’ve been seeing when monitoring load levels my biggest bottleneck right now is the GPU. I’m not too sure about the CPU either, but it seemed fine for now.
My plan is to buy an Intel ARC GPU. I’m thinking of getting a 770 (8GB) since those are around 280€. I was planning on waiting for the second generation Arc cards but those are still a year away. The 16GB version of the 770 is around 100€ more and I couldn’t find a reputable vendor (if anyone knows a good german vendor that carries it let me know) so I’ll probably not get that one. I also checked and the Ryzen 5 3600 should have support for resizable BAR, which is required for good performance with Arc cards.
Do you guys think this is a reasonable upgrade or will my CPU just create a huge bottleneck?
I think its a reasonable upgrade. There are people who ran a 3600 with a 5700xt back then, which the A770 would be in a ball park from (faster)
Thanks! I’m not dead set on an Intel card but I had trouble understanding which AMD cards are comparable. Can you suggest any AMD cards to look into around the same price/performance point?
The A770 is similar to a RX 6600xt/RX 6700 depending on situation. For the price point, a lot of people would look into the RX 6700 XT. It has the best performance of the <350$ gpus with a reasonable vram ammount (12GB)
Good point and thanks for the suggestion. I checked and there’s multiple different versions of the RX 6700 XT. Here’s some price data taken from the site I usually buy my hardware at:
- A750 254€
- A770 (8GB) 278€
- A770 (16GB) 385€ (different vendor than the rest)
- RX 6700 XT (2321 MHz) 339€
- RX 6700 XT (2457 MHz) 379€
Hard to make a decision since I’m not good at judging how certain performance metrics affect power. My thought process is this, please let me know if I’m misjudging something: A750 is out, 24€ more for the 8GB 770 is probably worth it. The lower clock RX 6700 XT looks like the best middle of the pack for this grouping. For the expensive cards the 4 GB extra VRAM of the 16GB ARC would probably be worth the extra 6€ compared to the high clocking RX.
I’m considering the RX for 339€ the most right now. I looked at some benchmarks and it’s really hard to tell which card is better. Most benchmarks are run using DX12 (or don’t specify) and the RX 6700 is decidedly stronger in that regard. I use Linux however so I’ll be running games exclusively with Vulkan not DX. In the few benchmarks I could find for Vulkan the A770 was generally stronger.
How much is an a750? If you’re going with 8gb anyway I’d save the money and get the a750. The 16gb variant of the a770 is the big draw of that card IMHO.
Thanks for the input! The A750 is 254€, the A770 (8GB) is 278€. The extra 24€ won’t break the bank so I thought I’d got with the stronger card.
I just managed to find a few reputable sites with the 16GB version starting at 385€. Not sure if the extra 8GB RAM are worth it though. I have no real concept of the power difference. It would make the choice a bit more future proof though. I tend to keep my cards for quite a while.
Do you have any good sources on benchmarks between the 8GB and 16GB versions? I’m not really sure which benchmarks to trust nowadays. I heard some of them skew results heavily in favor of certain vendors.
You should look at benchmarks in 2 weeks between the 770 and 4060 after it is released. Your 3600 is going to hurt performance if you buy really high end. In today’s money, the price of the 4060 matches the original price of the 1060 6GB.
Beyond a new GPU, I would suggest building a whole new computer. If I can partially guess, I would say the 4 core i3 121000 would beat your 3600. I do know that the 12100 matches the 6 core i7 8700K.
One option is buy the best GPU you have extra money to spend on, and then in a year buy build a Ryzen 8000 system when those get released and then put your new GPU in your next system.
To give you an idea about performance, the 4060 Ti beats the 1080 Ti.
Hi, thanks for the feedback.
When you say 4060 I assume you’re referring to an NVIDIA card? I’d like to avoid their products. The experience with their drivers on Linux has been absolutely horrible.
The CPU upgrade is a good suggestion, since it’ll most likely require a new motherboard as well I’d like to wait on it though. I’ve got about a year of Uni left so I’ll have a better salary after that. I really like your suggestion of building a Ryzen 8000 system next year for that reason.
I’d like to stay below 400€ for a gpu, here’s a list of prices I can get various cards at:
- A750 254€
- A770 (8GB) 278€
- A770 (16GB) 385€ (different vendor than the rest)
- RX 6700 XT (2321 MHz) 339€
- RX 6700 XT (2457 MHz) 379€
Going with the “best card I can afford” that would probably be the A770 16GB or the expensive RX 6700 XT. I’m not sure which is better though, most benchmarks I could find were done using DX11/12 in which the RX wins. I’m on linux though so DX games are ran using Vulkan and a compatibility layer. The few benchmarks I could find using Vulkan had the A770 outperform the RX. What is your opinion on that choice?
Do you have a link for that 4060ti V 1080ti benchmark? Is it a considerable improvement FPS wise?
Unfortunately I’m not able to advise, but I’ll keep an eye as I’m in a similar place!
I would be careful going for Intel Arc cards on Linux, check these benchmarks. It’s a bit out of date, and I’ve heard Intel’s working on some new performance improvements soon, but right now Arc is not as good as AMD on Linux. Hopefully that changes though.
