Help Deciding on a GPU (& staged upgrades in the future)

[PuppyBoss]

Hello! I like PC gaming, but my knowledge in building a good rig is quite limited. I've been waiting to buy a powerful gaming rig which supports all the latest games in max settings for many MANY years, but was limited by my gaming budget. Having spent so much time waiting, I decided to buy a mid level card to play my favorite games (Witcher 3, GTA V, etc, all of which are sitting unused in my steam account because I got them at a sale & my current setup won't run them). I decided to buy & build the gaming rig I want in stages, or else end up spending a lot more time waiting to save up. The first step is always the hardest lol.

I initially thought I'd settle for a 1050 Ti (4GB) because I had enough more than enough money saved for that. Then I was suggested to buy a 1060 3GB card instead, as it performed better. I compared the 2 cards online and found out that the 1060 3GB version only marginally improved the performance & was not worth the extra cost for it, and realized that the 1060 6GB version was better & gave more bang for the buck. Now this card costs double my initial budget, and was undecided whether I should pay so much for it. Then I started thinking that if I'm paying so much, I could buy a NVidia 1070, then finally thought of a 1080 instead, provided I bought it in the USA, as the price is way too expensive in my country (I'll be paying $100 more here for a 1080). Obviously I can't afford a 11 GB Ti version, so I'll be buying a non-Ti 1080 with 8GB instead. But I have an ancient system, and don't know whether I can run the card well with my old CPU, RAM & motherboard.

My Current Setup:
MoBo: Intel DH67BL
Processor: Intel i5 2500K @3.30 GHz (4 cores)
GPU: NVidia GTX 460 (1GB)
PSU: Seasonic 750W 80+ Bronze
RAM: 2 x 4GB Corsair XMS 3 1600MHz DDR3
HDD: 2 x 2TB Western Digital WD20EARS
Monitor: Dell 22" TFT
Keyboard: Logitech G510
Mouse: Dragon War Leviathan

You might be wondering why I'm not buying a cheaper card & buying a better MoBo/RAM/CPU. It's because I'm planning on upgrading them later, in staged upgrades, as and when I save money (MoBo 1st, followed by RAM & CPU last). I already bought the PSU last year, hoping to upgrade the other components this year. The motherboard should be much cheaper than the card, and also the RAM. The CPU will be expensive, so I plan to buy that last.

So my questions are:

1. Will the other components affect my gaming experience, if I buy a 1080 8GB card (or a 1070 8GB card, if 1080 proves to bee too costly). How badly will it bottleneck the card? There is a video on youtube with a guy using the 1060 card with an i5 2500K and saying that it performs flawlessly on most games. I won't be playing on a 4K resolution till I upgrade the comp fully. I'll be glad if I get 60fps on a resolution of 1920x1080 with this setup + 1080 card.

2. Please advise me which 1080 & 1070 cards I can buy from the USA, and provide me a link to the same, if possible. Suggest a minimum of 2 alternatives each for the 1070 & 1080. (Please note: my budget is $550, with a max final $600). I saw the choices on newegg, and my head is spinning... Too many choices, and I don't know which is good... I want a durable one, one with superior cooling as I live is a hot climate (summer temperature hits 38 C!)

3. Will I be harming my card by installing it on my old system? Also, I plan to upgrade the MoBo next, meaning I'll shift the old CPU to the new MoBo next. Is it safe to change CPUs from a motherboard? (I'll be buying a new CPU last)

4. Will I be taking a risk importing my card from the US, as the warranty won't be universal, & if there's any problem, I can't return the card to claim warranty. How often does these things happen?

If I get any more questions, I'll post them later.

Please note, I prefer the NVidia cards, as I'm more comfortable with them & like their features & the GeForce experience. So I'm not keen on looking at AMD cards as an alternative. I heard AMD runs hotter than NVidia. I don't want AMD to burn down my gaming rig

Sorry for the long post, and looking forward to advice & suggestions.

 

[SMOGZINN]

1. Will the other components affect my gaming experience, if I buy a 1080 8GB card (or a 1070 8GB card, if 1080 proves to bee too costly). How badly will it bottleneck the card? There is a video on youtube with a guy using the 1060 card with an i5 2500K and saying that it performs flawlessly on most games. I won't be playing on a 4K resolution till I upgrade the comp fully. I'll be glad if I get 60fps on a resolution of 1920x1080 with this setup + 1080 card.

Yes, all components affect your gaming experience. The question is how much, and what is that amount worth to you. The GPU is by far the most important, and expensive, upgrade for video games. In my experience the i5-2500 is a decent CPU, I can't say for certain, but I suspect that if you pair it with a 1080 8GB you will be bottlenecked some by it. That means you will not be getting everything you can out of that card, but you are definitely not hitting the limits of the CPU with your current GPU so you will still see massive improvements compared the card you currently have. Then when you finally upgrade your CPU you will be able to get a little more out of the GPU, giving you even more. Overall not a bad upgrade.

The question is do you really need the 1080 vs the 1070? I think that mostly comes down to if you intend to upgrade to 4k or not.

2. Please advise me which 1080 & 1070 cards I can buy from the USA, and provide me a link to the same, if possible. Suggest a minimum of 2 alternatives each for the 1070 & 1080. (Please note: my budget is $550, with a max final $600). I saw the choices on newegg, and my head is spinning... Too many choices, and I don't know which is good... I want a durable one, one with superior cooling as I live is a hot climate (summer temperature hits 38 C!)

I have no opinion on this. For the most part they are all pretty similar. Warranty period tends to be a better indicator of quality than anything else. The warranty on a product tends to be set at where they expect to see the first (non-dead on arrival) samples to fail. Most of the time it will last a lot longer than the warranty period, but the company expects about 10% of the product will start to fail right around the time the warranty expires.

3. Will I be harming my card by installing it on my old system? Also, I plan to upgrade the MoBo next, meaning I'll shift the old CPU to the new MoBo next. Is it safe to change CPUs from a motherboard? (I'll be buying a new CPU last)

As long as you are a bit carful and keep yourself grounded there should be no problem swapping parts out between computers (honestly GPUs are pretty resilient, I've never harmed one even with out bothering with grounding). RAM and CPU is the most sensitive, and you need to clean the thermal paste from the CPU before reinstalling it, but I've done it countless times. There are many YouTube videos and other instructions on how to do this properly.

The thing I would warn you is that for the most part when upgrading from one platform to another the MB/Ram/CPU all has to be bought together. A Sandy Bridge CPU, like your I5-2500, will not work on a motherboard meant for a newer CPU, and the newer CPUs will not run on the H67 Chipset that your MB uses. The best CPU that would work on your current MB is the i7-3770k, which a quick ebay search shows is selling for around $200USD used right now, and the performance difference is probably not worth it. Considering the cost of a new Coffee Lake i7-8700 CPUs are MSRP of around $300USD (when the stock stabilizes, right now they are hard to get which is driving prices up.) The performance difference between the 3770 and 8700 will be substantive.

The same goes for the RAM. To keep your current ram the best CPU you would use is the i7-4790k, which is a moderate upgrade from your i5-2500k, but since it is selling for around $200 used as well, and you would still have to by a MB to go with it, it is probably not worth it when compared to a Coffee Lake upgrade.

Overall, it seems your best bet is going to be just to save up until you can buy MB/RAM/CPU all at the same time. There is no reason to buy one before the others since you can't use them until you have them all, and odds are prices will just go down while you wait.

4. Will I be taking a risk importing my card from the US, as the warranty won't be universal, & if there's any problem, I can't return the card to claim warranty. How often does these things happen?

Having never left the US, I am not qualified to answer this question.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I am using a 2500 non-K with a GTX 980ti now. Is it bottlenecked? Possibly, but it let me play Fallout 4 at 1080p with a smooth framerate and high settings, which my old GTX 680 did not.

I also have 8 GB RAM.

I will be upgrading the CPU + motherboard to intel 8700 (6 core) soon, and will keep using the 980ti with that until the nvidia 2080ti is released, probably near the end of 2018.

 

[PuppyBoss]

Yes, all components affect your gaming experience. The question is how much, and what is that amount worth to you.

First of all, thank you so much for your time and patience to read through the whole thing and answering in so much detail. I do agree there will be some bottleneck, I just wanted to make sure that I won't end up with games unplayable because of the bottleneck. With only this card in my current setup, I'll be more than happy if I can run GTA 5 & Witcher 3 at 50-60 FPS at 1080p resolution. If it can do that, it'd be great.

...you will still see massive improvements compared the card you currently have. Then when you finally upgrade your CPU you will be able to get a little more out of the GPU, giving you even more. Overall not a bad upgrade.

That's great to hear!

The question is do you really need the 1080 vs the 1070? I think that mostly comes down to if you intend to upgrade to 4k or not.

I am now looking at only the 1080, & not the 1070 (from the time I first posted this message). That's because I don't want to spend so much money & get a less powerful card. I might not be able to upgrade the card again for the next 3 years, & don't want to be at a disadvantage getting a 1070 ( as I can't exchange it for a 1080 by paying only the price difference!). I don't have any intention on 4K gaming as of now, but I might be interested in VR. Even if not that, who knows? Maybe the newer games will really need the full use of the 1080.

For the most part they are all pretty similar. Warranty period tends to be a better indicator of quality than anything else. The warranty on a product tends to be set at where they expect to see the first (non-dead on arrival) samples to fail. Most of the time it will last a lot longer than the warranty period, but the company expects about 10% of the product will start to fail right around the time the warranty expires.

That's a scary thought. If my card fails, I can't claim warranty, as I'm importing the card. But I have no option and have to import it, as the card I want is not available in my country, & even if it, I'll have to spend $150 extra for it, which is not cool at all. I browsed through products and finally settled on an EVGA FTW2 1080 card. It seems to have the best clock speeds (Real Base Clock: 1721 MHz / Real Boost Clock: 1860 MHz). It's a bit expensive though. EVGA users have said it runs cool & is really good.

The thing I would warn you is that for the most part when upgrading from one platform to another the MB/Ram/CPU all has to be bought together. A Sandy Bridge CPU, like your I5-2500, will not work on a motherboard meant for a newer CPU, and the newer CPUs will not run on the H67 Chipset that your MB uses.

I had not thought about that. Yes, it makes sense, & I should have realized that sooner. No, I won't buy an older gen CPU just so it fits on my MB, nor will I buy an older MB so that my current CPU will fit on it. I will buy the latest gen, mid-range MB & CPU when I make the next upgrade. I dunno how much the 8th gen i7 will cost. I'll buy an Asus MB (which supports 8th gen CPU & 2400+ Mhz RAM) and an 8th gen i7 & a 16 GB 2400MHz RAM is one go, probably in the next 5 months, depending on the price & availability. For now, I'll just use the 1080 card with my current system. Awesome advice, thanks!

I am using a 2500 non-K with a GTX 980ti now. Is it bottlenecked? Possibly, but it let me play Fallout 4 at 1080p with a smooth framerate and high settings, which my old GTX 680 did not. I also have 8 GB RAM.

Thank you for your reply. Is a 2500 non-K higher or lower than a 2500K? As long as it's not better than a 2500K, if you are running Fallout 4 comfortably, then I have high hopes for my setup as well. May I inquire a few things about your setup?
1. Are you overclocking your CPU (because I don't know how to, & don't want to do it either)
2. A 980Ti is more or less the same as a 1080 (non-Ti), right? How I understand it, the only difference is that the 1080 draws less power. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
3. What's your settings in Fallout 4? Is everything maxed out?
4. What FPS are you getting?
5. What RAM are you using? Mine is 1400MHz.

 

[SMOGZINN]

if I can run GTA 5 & Witcher 3 at 50-60 FPS at 1080p resolution. If it can do that, it'd be great.

You will be able to do that with the I5-2500 and a 1080 no problem.

I don't have any intention on 4K gaming as of now, but I might be interested in VR. Even if not that, who knows? Maybe the newer games will really need the full use of the 1080.

I keep forgetting about VR. Yes, if you want to do VR you should look at a 1080. VR is a new technology and will probably push the graphics envelope for years.

That's a scary thought. If my card fails, I can't claim warranty, as I'm importing the card.

Are warranties region locked? How stupid. But, I bet if you look around you could find a method around that. You just need to find a service in the States that will forward the package for you.

I'll buy an Asus MB (which supports 8th gen CPU & 2400+ Mhz RAM) and an 8th gen i7 & a 16 GB 2400MHz RAM is one go, probably in the next 5 months, depending on the price & availability.

As of right now it looks like for that time frame the i7-8700 is going to be the chip to get. Right now only the Z370 chipset motherboards are out to go with it, which are really for overclocking, so hopefully a cheaper chipset will be released in that time frame (I feel pretty sure there will be).

Is a 2500 non-K higher or lower than a 2500K?

The K at the end just means (for the Sandy Bridge CPUs) that it is unlocked so that you can overclock it. In that generation the K and non-K CPUs were clocked the same out of the box. I think in the current gen CPUs the K version still means it is unlocked, but I think they are actually clocked 100mhz higher at stock as well. In theory this means that the K processors are just a tiny bit better then the non-K, even in the Sandy Bridge because they were picked out as the best of the run. In reality there is no noticeable difference when running at the same clock speed. Even the 100mhz overclock is barely noticeable in synthetic benchmarks, and not something you will notice when actually playing a game.

2. A 980Ti is more or less the same as a 1080 (non-Ti), right? How I understand it, the only difference is that the 1080 draws less power. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'll let Dave answer the rest of the questions, but this one I can field. The 980Ti sits between a 1060 and 1070 in performance, being just a tad worse than the 1070 in most games.

 

[PuppyBoss]

Thank you so much for your help, Smogzinn. You answered a lot of my queries. I can happily get that card now, and I have a general idea on what's to be my next upgrade. Cheers!

 

[daveybrat]

You might even want to get the new GTX 1070 Ti. It's almost just as fast as a 1080 but slightly cheaper.