Upgrading from 1070

[Mr_Jon]

Now then. I have the sudden urge for an upgrade - one that won't be satisfied until I've thrown money away. I'm looking at you, GPU.

Had this card for maybe five years or so. It's now just straining to run games on max at a decent frame rate (@1440p). My usual upgrade strategy is go for a 50% improvement, which passmark tells me would be a 6750xt (at the high end of 50%), or a 6700xt. Price-wise I don't see much difference between the two, with the 6700xt from 390 and the 6750 from 430 at the chosen retailers (Amazon, Scan, OC). The prices do tend to be all over the shop though, with both over 600 for some models. Anyway - looking to spend under 500. This gives me a choice of around half a dozen 6700xt models and three or four 6750xt. Would either of these cards be a sensible/not completely idiotic upgrade right now? For example, if I'm throwing 500 at something I'd be pretty narked if there was a whole slew of better options at that price in a month or two.

The 1070 is the only high-power card I've had from new. I used to buy the top (ish) cards from previous gens after they'd been well and truly usurped - but I suspect buying any card second hand nowadays is a lottery, unless anyone has information to the contrary.

[AGTDenton]

From what I see the 3060 Ti & the 6750 XT jostle between them in terms of performance. Some games nVidia is better, some it's AMD.
However, the 3060 Ti does fair better on price overall.

I did spot these Amazon US imports, worth considering:

Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC LHR 8GB GDDR6 256-bit 14 Gbps PCIE 4.0 Gaming Graphics Card, IceStorm 2.0 Advanced Cooling, Active Fan Control, Freeze Fan Stop ZT-A30610H-10MLHR
@ £420.86
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B097YW4FW9

If you get lucky, Amazon UK will refund you the Amazon US import fee if the item isn't flagged, potentially working out as £345.67

XFX SPEEDSTER MERC319 RADEON RX 6750XT BLACK Gaming Graphics Card with 12GB GDDR6 HDMI 3xDP, AMD RDNA™ 2 (RX-675XYTBDP)
@ £463.53
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09ZHZZ6YH

And if you get lucky on the import fee here it would be £380.27

[Mr_Jon]

From what I see the 3060 Ti & the 6750 XT jostle between them in terms of performance. Some games nVidia is better, some it's AMD.
However, the 3060 Ti does fair better on price overall.

I did spot these Amazon US imports, worth considering:

Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC LHR 8GB GDDR6 256-bit 14 Gbps PCIE 4.0 Gaming Graphics Card, IceStorm 2.0 Advanced Cooling, Active Fan Control, Freeze Fan Stop ZT-A30610H-10MLHR
@ £420.86
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B097YW4FW9

If you get lucky, Amazon UK will refund you the Amazon US import fee if the item isn't flagged, potentially working out as £345.67

XFX SPEEDSTER MERC319 RADEON RX 6750XT BLACK Gaming Graphics Card with 12GB GDDR6 HDMI 3xDP, AMD RDNA™ 2 (RX-675XYTBDP)
@ £463.53
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09ZHZZ6YH

And if you get lucky on the import fee here it would be £380.27

Thanks, that's something to think about. Haven't ordered anything from Amazon US in a few years, there wasn't the deposit system then. Any idea how lucky one would need to be to get the deposit back?

I'm looking quite amourously at the ROG Strix version which is on ebuyer for 480. Leaning towards this one due to it's massive heatsink - what I've found through years of bodging bigger fans onto gpu's is that it the heatsinks are the limiting factor in thermal performance (and therefore fan noise) in that they're often simply not big enough. This one looks a stonker. https://www.ebuyer.com/1425173-asus-...xt-o12g-gaming

[[GSV]Trig]

I'd go down the 3060Ti route personally, having had one of them for a while as an upgrade to my RX580, stonking price/performance (at MSRP for an FE card).

I too was torn between AMD and NVidia, but, NVidia has additional feature sets that AMD doesn't, and while AMD has their versions of things the NVidia ones are a bit older and better supported so that kind of swung my choice at the time...

[Mr_Jon]

I'd go down the 3060Ti route personally, having had one of them for a while as an upgrade to my RX580, stonking price/performance (at MSRP for an FE card).

I too was torn between AMD and NVidia, but, NVidia has additional feature sets that AMD doesn't, and while AMD has their versions of things the NVidia ones are a bit older and better supported so that kind of swung my choice at the time...

I think the reason I've been looking at AMD more is because of my current card - the heatsink isn't up to it (even with two 140mm fans strapped on) and the stock fans are pitiful. Full speed tiny ear-bleeding fans and it'd still be over 80 degrees. There's an old prolimatech mk-26 cooler on there now which is great but won't fit on anything after the 1080. Plus, there's no aftermarket air coolers knocking about. Did confirm with Raijintek that the one of the Morpheus coolers (8069) will work with some 6750 models but I can only find it for sale in Germany for silly money, which means that it'll likely be a Macgyver job with the stock heatsink of the new card. Having had a good look through the 3060ti's they all appear to be two slot max with a slim heatsink. Some AMD ones push out further with the ROG one being 2.9 slots. I had a Vega 56 for a while and the heatsink on that was huge and allowed for effective bodging of big case fans onto it to replace the stock spinners. But yeah, never had a problem with it's performance or drivers - are AMD a bit sketchy with support, or is it just that Nvidia are on point?

Also: the 6750xt's are packing 12gb compared to 8gb on the 3060ti

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I upgraded to an RTX3060TI FE from a GTX1080 FE and it was noticeable. But my main concern is the lack of VRAM on it. The RTX3060TI does have much better Raytracing(RT) performance,but I am not sure how long RT will be playable on the card - even in Cyberpunk 2077 I needed upscaling to enable some RT effects.

A few months the RX6700 non-XT was around £300ish,but the RX6700XT AIB models are cheaper than the RTX3060TI AIB models. IMHO,only the RTX3060TI FE for around £370ish makes sense in terms of price/performance. If going for AIB cards,the RX6700 series is generally better value especially if you don't really care about RT in games.

RX6700 10GB ~£340ish:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-RADEON-...ps%2C86&sr=8-1

£60ish import fee deposit.

RX6700XT 12GB ~ £372ish:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/PowerColor-...s%2C86&sr=8-17

£66ish import fee desposit.

[Mr_Jon]

I upgraded to an RTX3060TI FE from a GTX1080 FE and it was noticeable. But my main concern is the lack of VRAM on it. The RTX3060TI does have much better Raytracing(RT) performance,but I am not sure how long RT will be playable on the card - even in Cyberpunk 2077 I needed upscaling to enable some RT effects.

A few months the RX6700 non-XT was around £300ish,but the RX6700XT AIB models are cheaper than the RTX3060TI AIB models. IMHO,only the RTX3060TI FE for around £370ish makes sense in terms of price/performance. If going for AIB cards,the RX6700 series is generally better value especially if you don't really care about RT in games.

RX6700 10GB ~£340ish:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-RADEON-...ps%2C86&sr=8-1

£60ish import fee deposit.

RX6700XT 12GB ~ £372ish:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/PowerColor-...s%2C86&sr=8-17

£66ish import fee desposit.

The 6700 does look good value at that price - all the cards look similar in terms of performance (within ~10% of each other) but that is significantly cheaper. I do think I'll defo want more than 8gb as I've already got that and I'd want to have this card a few years at least.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 6700 does look good value at that price - all the cards look similar in terms of performance (within ~10% of each other) but that is significantly cheaper. I do think I'll defo want more than 8gb as I've already got that and I'd want to have this card a few years at least.

OcUK has a wider range of different models:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-co...sort=price_asc

Not sure how much the RX7700 and RTX4060 will cost,so it might be worth waiting for those? But wouldn't surprise me if these are over £400.

[Percy1983]

I would wait a little longer as prices are falling and new models are potentially on the way.

I would go for the 6700 myself, it seems a great card and you don't have to give any money to nvidia which is always a bonus.

Used is an option but right now I would only buy from cex due to their 2 year warranty, so if you do end up with nearly dead mining card it will get replaced.

[DanceswithUnix]

Not sure how much the RX7700 and RTX4060 will cost,so it might be worth waiting for those? But wouldn't surprise me if these are over £400.

I'm expecting the price to be right, but to look at them and think "That's a 7600 and an RTX 4050" which is no better

Still, they might well be a better card than the ones they are replacing, just not what we are hoping for. After all, these new cards are coming out on a 4nm process which is notionally two processes on from 7nm and so a lot more transistors to play with.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm expecting the price to be right, but to look at them and think "That's a 7600 and an RTX 4050" which is no better

Still, they might well be a better card than the ones they are replacing, just not what we are hoping for. After all, these new cards are coming out on a 4nm process which is notionally two processes on from 7nm and so a lot more transistors to play with.

Well it seems confirmed that AMD is doing an Nvidia:
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-admi...-cpus-and-gpus

Basically BOTH Nvidia and AMD are essentially acting like an informal price fixing cartel IMHO.

Well technically the RTX4060TI looks more like its a tier of dGPU reserved for a 50 series class dGPU,so they can keep their Turing on steroids rubbish.

It appears many are doing the same - AMD reported a 51% decline in YoY consumer CPU sales and a 7% decline in dGPUs and consoles,with increased console sales.

Either way I can wait......a few years if needed.

[Mr_Jon]

Thanks for all the advice - I took it on board and went for the biggest and shiniest one I saw, the ROG Strix 6750XT. Looking through the options at the price point revealed a much of a muchness in regards to performance between a bunch of cards but wild price differences. The 12gb felt like an upgrade rather than sidegrade over Nvidia options at 8gb. I game @1440p and it seems AMD are better value there (and below), with Nvidia ruling at 4k. With this, the card I got performs really well there - beating out the 3060ti comfortably, on a par with the 2080ti and 3070, and not far off the 3070ti at all:



From this review. Which also reveals, on page 3, an extra set of goodies. Mounting holes less than the standard modern AMD 64mm. I've rough measured them at what are either 54 or 53.4mm square, which is the same as the Hawaii and Curacao mounting patterns and therefore will be able to take my aftermarket cooler as well if needs be. Not sure why these holes are there. Thoughts? There aren't many reviews of 6750xt's, let alone teardowns, but Techpowerup reviews of the 6750xt reveal the holes are on the pcb's of other manufacturers too. What really sold it to me though was it got described as "possibly even overengineered".

And first impressions certainly backed that up. Got it a last week. Weighs a ton. Massive heatsink and runs dead cool. Pretty much zero fan noise on the quiet curve, and temps in the 60s when gaming. It's doubled my fps in the game I'm currently playing (the excellent Hunt: Showdown) which I was surprised at. Went from 40-55 fps with the 1070 to 80-120 with the 6750xt. Scores 24k in passmark which is well above the 6750xt average of 21k. Impressed too with the adrenaline software which has come a long way since I last used it, with useful stuff like image sharpening. Overall I couldn't be happier with it, build quality is fantastic and it really is a premium card. I paid 470 for it. The 3070's on Scan to from from 520-700 (I can't believe the massive difference in price between brands for the same card) and the ti models are 650 to 780, neither of which I feel justify such a big jump in price.

Only thing I'm not thrilled about was the experience with ebuyer. Haven't used them in ten years since I got fobbed off with needless copy paste answers to questions regarding an order. Used them this time though through necessity due to the parcity of cards on Amazon (burned by double-dippers I guess). To set the scene, a few weeks prior I'd bought some case fans from Scan and they arrived in a box that would probably survive nuclear war. Ebuyer, however, send a near 500 quid gpu out in this wafer thin cack:



Luckily the inner air pockets did their job and the product box was unscathed. That's been underneath something heavy. Checked for footprints, but likely was at the bottom of a cage getting stuff lobbed onto it all weekend. Pointed it out to ebuyer customer service, but they're remaining on the naughty list.

[Jonj1611]

Have to agree with the packaging. I have suffered the same fate myself with them in the past

[ik9000]

Luckily the inner air pockets did their job and the product box was unscathed. That's been underneath something heavy. Checked for footprints, but likely was at the bottom of a cage getting stuff lobbed onto it all weekend. Pointed it out to ebuyer customer service, but they're remaining on the naughty list.

Last 3 transactions of mine with ebuyer have all been disappointing. I could give them benefit of the doubt for one but not three. Never again.