Upgrade from 780 to 1660Ti Overkill for my PC?

[Buztafen]

Back again for more free advice and crowd sourced procrastination!

This time its on upgrading my GPU. I currently have an EVGA 780 FTW paired with an i5-4760k running @ 4.2ghz with 16gb of Ram. SSD installed and the whole PC hasnt really skipped a beat since i built it some 4-5 years ago.

However, i recently changed the case from an ATX tower to a smaller HTPC box so it fits in the living room and the 780 is probably just a bit too big, hot and loud for the case/location. I want to upgrade it but not go stupid. I game at 1080p 60fps generally but i might be upgrading to a 4K tv in the future so will want the GPU to atleast be able to play movies and tv content at 4K happily.

(TLDR) - Would a 1660Ti be overkill/ bottlenecked by my current PC setup? Should I go for a different card? 1050Ti? 1060 6GB? 1070?

I'm thinking if i can sell my 780 for £70 and bag a deal on a 1660Ti for £300 it would be a nice little upgrade and save my pc from melting/driving the wife crazy!

Opinions???

Cheers in advance!

[AGTDenton]

I'd say the 1660Ti is going to be ok at 4K on med-high settings on AAA games out now but absolutely perfect for Movies & TV content.

You may find that not to be the case on future AAA games but you could be forever trying to plan for the future in computing.
Overall a great card - if you're striving for 4K @ 60hz you will have to consider 2070 RTX or better. Though the RTX range is something to do your homework on.

These may be of use

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqj22v1Lczs
https://youtu.be/hYWtoUWoU-4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCkg...g&pbjreload=10

[PC-LAD]

I'm thinking if i can sell my 780 for £70 and bag a deal on a 1660Ti for £300 it would be a nice little upgrade and save my pc from melting/driving the wife crazy!

Firstly the 1660 provays higher value over the the 1660ti with 10fps max difference in games, You can pick up a 1660 for £220 ish. However, the 780 is still a decent card that would put up some fight againt a 3gb 1060. I would personally keep the 780 untill it nolonger plays 1080p 60fps.

[Buztafen]

Thanks for the replies. Indeed though the 780 is still very capable, i fear with it now being in a much smaller case with more restricted air flow it may possibly be harming the GPU and my PC as a whole with the increased heat. As the old saying goes HEAT KILLS PC's!

Also there's the saving in power too.

[AGTDenton]

I fear with it now being in a much smaller case with more restricted air flow it may possibly be harming the GPU and my PC as a whole with the increased heat. As the old saying goes HEAT KILLS PC's!

Also there's the saving in power too.

Consider a blower type HSF if moving to a smaller case. An aspect I completely overlooked and now have a computer I can't put the side panels on until I address this.
Money not allowing for a while yet.

[Buztafen]

Cheers, i'll look into a blower type but im currently still hung up over which card to go for now ive had the chance to do a bit more research.

I cant pick between a 1660 Vanilla, 1660Ti and 2060.

Been looking at this 1660 for £210ish https://www.amazon.co.uk/EVGA-GeForc...ateway&sr=8-12

...this 1660Ti for £260 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-...UaAtP-EALw_wcB

and a 2060 Founders Edition for £329 https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce...ards/rtx-2060/

I think i should really be sensible and just go for the 1660 vanilla as its smaller, a lot less power hungry and can be give 1070 performance in some cases. But then i think for an extra £50 i can get 1070Ti performance in some games from a 1660Ti

...then if i bump up another £70 to the 2060, it's closer to 1080 performance and its future proofed for when i get a 4k tv...

[cptwhite_uk]

'1080' performance isn't good enough for 4K typically. You'd need 2080 / 1080 Ti for that.

I say this as someone who has tested my 1080 @ 4K

Honestly I'd be looking at Vega 56 too, which while more power hungry, performs better than the RX2060 for around £260-280 sell price. It also has 8Gb VRAM (+2Gb on all the nVidia options you listed), and currently comes with The Division 2 / Resident Evil 2 / Devil May Cry 5 for free

AMD cards also tend to scale better at 4K, so I can imagine the Vega 56 being 8-10% better than the RX2060 at 4K on avergae (best look at some actual results to confirm)

Even if you don't want these games, you can probably get £30-50 for them selling the codes

Also power consumption isn't too bad, you're looking at around 220W load for Vega 56, compared to 160W load for RTX2060. For reference the GTX 1080 falls somewhere half way between the two.

[DanceswithUnix]

'1080' performance isn't good enough for 4K typically. You'd need 2080 / 1080 Ti for that.

I say this as someone who has tested my 1080 @ 4K

Honestly I'd be looking at Vega 56 too, which while more power hungry, performs better than the RX2060 for around £260-280 sell price. It also has 8Gb VRAM (+2Gb on all the nVidia options you listed), and currently comes with The Division 2 / Resident Evil 2 / Devil May Cry 5 for free

AMD cards also tend to scale better at 4K, so I can imagine the Vega 56 being 8-10% better than the RX2060 at 4K on avergae (best look at some actual results to confirm)

Even if you don't want these games, you can probably get £30-50 for them selling the codes

Also power consumption isn't too bad, you're looking at around 220W load for Vega 56, compared to 160W load for RTX2060. For reference the GTX 1080 falls somewhere half way between the two.

Much though I like my Vega 56, I wouldn't go putting one in a small case.

[cptwhite_uk]

Ahh hadn't spotted that, I withdraw my Vega 56 recommendation. 1660 Ti all the way in the case, it consumes only 130W peak.

[smurfm]

If you have a small case, make sure you select a blower-type GPU card (as already mentioned by AGTDenton).
The key difference is that it removes the hot air at the back of your machine for you. So 100% of the heat is expelled directly.
It is very difficult to remove 200W of constant heat from the graphics + another 150W from the CPU/other components from inside a small case, and you end-up with the GPU/CPU throtlling down and slowing your machine. Even of you manage to remove the heat, you will need many fans and the machine will be very loud.
So blower is the way to go.

[thewelshbrummie]

I think i should really be sensible and just go for the 1660 vanilla as its smaller, a lot less power hungry and can be give 1070 performance in some cases. But then i think for an extra £50 i can get 1070Ti performance in some games from a 1660Ti

...then if i bump up another £70 to the 2060, it's closer to 1080 performance and its future proofed for when i get a 4k tv...

It's almost as if nVidia know what they're doing on the pricing front...

My concern with the vanilla 1660 is that it's about the same price and performance as the 1060 6GB was at launch and both cards don't always get to the magic 60fps at 1080p with fully maxed out settings.

I'm intending on swapping my 4 year old 970 (which can't always hit 60fps) for a 1660Ti on the same 4670K CPU as my 1920x1200 screen res means that extra power is helpful. I'm not convinced that the vanilla 1660 is good enough for maxed out 1080p with new games and the Ti seems like the better option - even a 10fps boost would be enough to tip it to the point that the 60Hz refresh rate on my monitor is the bottleneck.

I'll add that none of the cards you're considering would do 4K gaming (even the 2060, that would be sensible for 1440p but 4K is I think too much for that card) but all would happily decode 4K video without difficulty.