Upgrade advices from a 1440p spec pc

[Navoan]

Hello racers!

I'm in a dillema. I need to upgrade my 5 year old gaming PC to continue playing the new Assetto Corsa with max settings and +30 cars without lagging and dropping below the magic 60 FPS spot.

Currently i run with a Asus GTX 780 and I7-4770k on a 1440p monitor.

Where i'm confused on what to buy really..
My plan was, to wait for July, for the new AMD releases of CPU & GPU and pick both up with a new MOBO and DDR4 rams. But a few days ago i saw AMD release a new GPU called Radeon VII.
Does it make sense, in my case to buy either a I5 Intel or the 2700X AMD CPU with the new Radeon VII GPU?
Which of the 2 ideas should i go with, or can you guys help me with another solution?

-What i do know is, i dont want the new RTX cards, as i do not need those functions.

Hope you guys can help me settle on a decision

Regards.

 

[Miguel Batista]

Your cpu is still fine. The performance gains you would get from an 8th gen i5 or a ryzen are pretty negligible for gaming. I would upgrade GPU only. Radeon 7 is good and I am keeping an eye on it. The drivers apparently are or there yet so performance seems to vary wildly. It is a powerful beast though and can easily drive a 1440p panel. Alternatively you can grab a GTX 1080ti or an rtx 2080 for similar price points (the 1080ti is a bit cheaper) and similar performance. You can get a CPU and mobo further down the line imho. Heck, instead of a new CPU get some VR equipment. That is my advice.

 

[Navoan]

Your cpu is still fine. The performance gains you would get from an 8th gen i5 or a ryzen are pretty negligible for gaming. I would upgrade GPU only. Radeon 7 is good and I am keeping an eye on it. The drivers apparently are or there yet so performance seems to vary wildly. It is a powerful beast though and can easily drive a 1440p panel. Alternatively you can grab a GTX 1080ti or an rtx 2080 for similar price points (the 1080ti is a bit cheaper) and similar performance. You can get a CPU and mobo further down the line imho. Heck, instead of a new CPU get some VR equipment. That is my advice.

Hi Miguel!
Thanks for the feedback, i appreciate it.
Really interesting that you don't think i need to upgrade my CPU.
When we talk about the Radeon VII, which company should i pick? - What are the difference between them? - They have same specs, but is there a variance in the build quality?
I can pick: Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and Sapphire.

Alternative, where can you buy the GTX 1080 TI from new?
I can only find used one on Ebay etc. I live in Europe and truthfully. I don't think i risk buying a used GPU from a regular guy i dont know. Specially not in this price range.

 

[Miguel Batista]

Hi Miguel!
Thanks for the feedback, i appreciate it.
Really interesting that you don't think i need to upgrade my CPU.
When we talk about the Radeon VII, which company should i pick? - What are the difference between them? - They have same specs, but is there a variance in the build quality?
I can pick: Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and Sapphire.

Alternative, where can you buy the GTX 1080 TI from new?
I can only find used one on Ebay etc. I live in Europe and truthfully. I don't think i risk buying a used GPU from a regular guy i dont know. Specially not in this price range.

Amazon would be your best bet for a new 1080 ti. Your i7 is super good. Haswell was the culmination of the 22nm lithography.

I don't think there are aftermarket Radeon 7s yet so all brands are selling the reference model. That is something I would wait for. Also, Vega chips benefit from undervolting overclocking so make sure you read and watch a couple of YouTube videos on how to overclock a Radeon 7 should you go down that route.

 

[Case_]

I would also agree there's no real reason to upgrade the CPU just yet, especially if you overclock it (provided you already didn't). It's not worth the investment. And specifically the Ryzen 2700x would basically be wasted on simracing/gaming, unless the PC would also be used for some production work or streaming or something like that where those 8 cores/16 threads would actually be utilized. Current sims can't really take advantage of that many threads, 8 is still plenty (most sims still only really use 1-2 threads).

 

[maelstrom]

What i do know is, i dont want the new RTX cards, as i do not need those functions.

Even if you ignore its ray tracing ability, the RTX 2080 can be found for a similar price to the Radeon VII and offers better performance in almost every game: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_vii_16_gb_review,1.html

The review conclusion says "This card behaves well in the more high resolutions, but with some titles it can cave in back in-between an RTX 2070 and RTX 2080. So is that enough for those spending 699 USD on it? Personally, I do not think so, and don't get me wrong here as I really like the card, but I do feel this is a product for the 499 USD range."

 

[Miguel Batista]

Even if you ignore its ray tracing ability, the RTX 2080 can be found for a similar price to the Radeon VII and offers better performance in almost every game: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_vii_16_gb_review,1.html

The review conclusion says "This card behaves well in the more high resolutions, but with some titles it can cave in back in-between an RTX 2070 and RTX 2080. So is that enough for those spending 699 USD on it? Personally, I do not think so, and don't get me wrong here as I really like the card, but I do feel this is a product for the 499 USD range."

Well, AMD did release it too soon and the drivers are improving it at each iteration.

The other thing I would take into account is the aftermarket cards. Just wait a bit and see what comes out. Otherwise go with an RTX 2080... though that card is far too expensive atm. I am holding on to my 980ti for another year or so waiting for Navi and for this current GPU price inflation to drop a bit.

 

[Navoan]

Even if you ignore its ray tracing ability, the RTX 2080 can be found for a similar price to the Radeon VII and offers better performance in almost every game: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_vii_16_gb_review,1.html

The review conclusion says "This card behaves well in the more high resolutions, but with some titles it can cave in back in-between an RTX 2070 and RTX 2080. So is that enough for those spending 699 USD on it? Personally, I do not think so, and don't get me wrong here as I really like the card, but I do feel this is a product for the 499 USD range."

I believe that the AMD card will get improved by the future patches and also when aftermarket a cards lunches..

When can we expect the after market cards to come out, and how much improvement profotmence can we expect?

 

[Navoan]

I bought the Radeon VII, got it in my hands yesterday. Uninstall my Nvidia drivers etc, installed the new card and downloaded the lastest drivers..

BOOM!
40 FPS in GTA V, 50 FPS in LOL(Feels like 10) and ACC i had like 10-30 FPS.
I've sent it back on RMA.. I guess it was faulty

I found a guy on youtube, with similar driver, screen resolution playing BF V with 150 FPS with ultra graphics.
Guess i'm unlucky

 

[Miguel Batista]

I bought the Radeon VII, got it in my hands yesterday. Uninstall my Nvidia drivers etc, installed the new card and downloaded the lastest drivers..

BOOM!
40 FPS in GTA V, 50 FPS in LOL(Feels like 10) and ACC i had like 10-30 FPS.
I've sent it back on RMA.. I guess it was faulty

I found a guy on youtube, with similar driver, screen resolution playing BF V with 150 FPS with ultra graphics.
Guess i'm unlucky

Geez... that sucks. You would thing that wouldn't happen with a 600 bucks piece of hardware. Have you used ddu to uninstal the drivers? Also, sometimes some drivers don't play nice. Did you try to use the standard drivers in windows?

A tool like gpuz is also invaluable in seeing what is going on. Well, if you RMAd it hopefully new one should be in full working order.

 

[Case_]

I'd bet that was some software issue or hardware conflict, not the GPU being faulty.

 

[Navoan]

I'd bet that was some software issue or hardware conflict, not the GPU being faulty.

I got reply back from the company, the card is not faulty. They recommend me to do a clean installation of windows with the new card. I'm gonna try it tomorrow and see how it works
I'm crossing fingers!

 

[Case_]

@Navoan Not surprising, as stated above, but I certainly hope you have it up and running as soon as possible.

 

[Navoan]

@Navoan Not surprising, as stated above, but I certainly hope you have it up and running as soon as possible.

Hi Martin, Got the card today, and instead of a clean install of windows i tried this software called DDU, i ran it in safe mode, where it completely cleans all GPU drivers, AMD, Nvidia and Intel. Afterwords it shutdown, i install the card and go back into normal mode and install the latest AMD drivers.
That did the trick, i have the performance i paid for, and in Resident evil i have solid FPS in 1440p with everything on max.
Awesome!

 

[Miguel Batista]

Hi Martin, Got the card today, and instead of a clean install of windows i tried this software called DDU, i ran it in safe mode, where it completely cleans all GPU drivers, AMD, Nvidia and Intel. Afterwords it shutdown, i install the card and go back into normal mode and install the latest AMD drivers.
That did the trick, i have the performance i paid for, and in Resident evil i have solid FPS in 1440p with everything on max.
Awesome!

Yup. DDU is an amazing piece of software. Glad you got your problem sorted. Do let us know about the performance with new drivers. That card is set to be a beast imho. Watch some videos on undervolting. It might seem counterintuitive but graphics cards on the Vega architecture seem to benefit from an undervolt in order to overclock higher.

 

[dud]

You will get the best improvement for game performance by putting almost all your money into a new graphics card.

Review PSU and make sure you have enough RAM.

 

[Case_]

You will get the best improvement for game performance by putting almost all your money into a new graphics card.

That is certainly not true for sims, which are generally very CPU limited. In fact, you might get very little performance improvement by investing a lot of money unless you are currently using a resolution your GPU doesn't have the performance for.