Few new games run on my laptop now (and few games on sale that grab my interest) so i’m finally committing myself to playing through my extensive backlog of games that i have yet to or have barely played.
One of these is red dead redemption 2 which i had thought wouldnt run ( due to issues when i last tried it a couple of years ago) but it actually does - just loaded it up again this week and played my first 8 hours of it. Absolutely loving it so far.
I’ve lost touch with graphics cards over the years. Built my current rig a few years ago to play farcry 5 but kept my old card which was (was) expensive. Finally found 5 minutes to play Farcry 6 and it isn’t running on a GTX770. So, I have £100 to blow on a used one on ebay. I never buy them new, buy one that somebody spent. fortune on 2 years ago and is still quicker than a comparable new one today. Any ideas folks? Cbeers.
This will run it for £50
Although could stretch a bit further…
I dont really understand the difference between graphics cards ( i have a gaming laptop using a 970m and need to get a new one at some point as i dont have the space for a proper pc).
I would have thought a 1060 would be a minimum recommendation to give you some longevity as most games i see have that as a minimum spec these days?
I’ve literally just upgraded from my 1060 6gb, have boxed it up and was wondering whether to list it on ebay. I’d sell it to you for £100 to save the effort (looking online it seems roughly the going rate, maybe a little less). Served me very well for a number of years, I just wanted something with a bit more grunt.
Very kind offer. There’s a 1070ti going for £120 currently, ends today. Will let you know but thanks 
No worries, let me know if you want me to send pics etc.
What did you upgrade to? I’ve been thinking about upgrading my five year old PC but it seems like I’ll be needing a new one for the long run… I hoped that new AMD and Nvidia cards will bring down the prices of previous generation but it’s yet to happen, at least in my parts of the world.
Granted it might have had a checkered past……
Look at the seller.
I went with the one I’ve had my eye on for a couple of years (was about to get it when the prices skyrocketed lol), a 3060ti. Have been playing Witcher 3 on ultra settings, looks good!
£275, stop tempting me! Always the problem, like cameras and cars, if you just spend a bit more……
Base is belting, top line Ryzon for video encoding, should have spent the money on a GC before they went nuts.
I would think they must start coming down soon (unless companies are deliberately cutting supply ?) as some of the demand from bit coin miners must have disappeared and supply probably rising as supply chains get back on track after covid snarl ups.
To be honest, those rather silly prices got me thinking about buying a console with some sort of subscription (I’m heavily leaning towards PS5). The only thing that’s keeping from pulling the trigger is the fact that 95% games I’ve played were on PC and I can’t let that habit go. Comparing the prices and performance, there’s little reason to invest in a strong PC these days unless there’s a significant reduction in prices of graphic cards.
They have come down a lot tbf. The card I bought was basically at RRP and was basically double the price six months ago.
I’m going to weigh in on graphics cards as I’m on the top end of that pile of crap and did tons of research as the cost is criminal, hope you guys don’t mind but thought I’d share my experience hoping someone might benefit!
The 4090 launch is $2000+, 4080 is slower and cheaper and there’s cards available but the 90’s are getting scalped like crazy, bottom line NVIDIA is ripping everyone off especially with the 4080. That’s the top end of the market and everything else is cascading down as people upgrade, so deals are around but buyer beware.
I’ve had a 1080ti for 4 years and thought I was crazy paying $650 for it back then. But its lasted like a champion and to be honest isn’t too far off my new 3080 12 gig card. I strongly recommend you trying to upgrade and spend as much as you can on the GPU, after making sure the PCI express (motherboard slot the GPU plugs into) can support the new card, and your power supply (PSU) can support and you can fit the damn thing into your case, my card is 12" long, and its heavy and needed a special supporting block to stop it sagging. Watts have spiked with newer GPU cards and you’ll find with newer cards they require 1 or 2 eight pin power cables + cheap PSU’s have been blowing up and frying PCs so take care on cheap PSUs. Here’s the latest best PSU list
Now a really important point is think about your monitor. Are you using a 1080, 2k, 4k? As you scale up to 4k you add a massive amount of work burden to the GPU. Using VR is even more.
Then you have FPS (frames per second) how many frames can your monitor support? HDR available? Does the game use ray tracing (and does it really make a difference)? If you like playing first person games, a lot of that applies. Those footy manager players not so much. Its amazing how much the game experience changes at ultra using a curved screen I love WH3 IE on ultra using a curved screen.
I paid $800 for my 3080 12gig GPU, upgraded to a gold 1000 watt PSU that was the best TUF model I could get and blew a cool $1000. My wife got me a curved 32" monitor for our 25th wedding anniversary, so I truly have a nice rig. The point I’m making is I’ve learned if I buy the best I possibly can it lasts for a long time.
I actually downgraded from a 32" 4k monitor to a 32" 2k curved screen for the immersion and its been great. I did use VR for some time and motion sickness will kick in if your GPU isn’t strong enough to support. Someone saying they were suffering from motion sickness, your rig might well be causing stuttering or tearing that’s invisible to the naked eye but the cause and its a real thing in the industry when you use a VR headset. No good if you are doing a medical implant which I support, so top end rigs definitely minimize this. Back to me downgrading. I found I was having to increase the font size in footy manager, WH3 and just in Windows. Instead of increasing the user interface I changed my monitor and now I’m back to 100% text size. My GPU is working twice as hard as a 1080 monitor and not 3 times as hard, its a huge card so handles it easily. It does get hot though.
I would recommend avoiding AMD. Their cards are powerful but their drivers are terrible. You may get lucky and they work, but I tried and had my PC crash for 3 days straight. I used Amazon, so returned and went back to NVIDIA and got a 3080 and it worked plug and play.
Beware of second hand cards. 1070ti is from the same generation as my 1080ti so price gouging wasn’t so bad. 1060 and 1070 were seen to be good cards back then, 1080 and especially the ti’s were the top of the range. 1070ti was the midrange smart mans card, best bang for the buck, 1080ti was for the idiot willing to pay the premium (I didn’t know that back then, but got 4 years out of it).
This was prior to COVID and Crypto and crypto miners buying all the cards. With crypto crashing, we’ve had a slew of 2nd hand cards entering the market and people have been trading up on deals they’ve been getting on ebay and selling their old cards. I wouldn’t touch a second hand card unless it was guaranteed. I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit like miners using a hose pipe to clean off dust. Lots of stories of bad cards, bricks in boxes, just silly shit going on in the gaming hardware world right now, but GPUs are the workhorse to any PC and not the CPU. You will choke the PC if you get a very good GPU and have a shit CPU so consider your rig. Also power requirements are getting insane, I had to change my PSU to a much higher level and a gold version because there’s also a lot of horror stories of PSU’s blowing up and frying a rig.
Redfan, you are using a laptop and the disadvantage of a laptop is they aren’t very easy to update. That said there’s been some really good deals with high end discrete GPUs being sold in laptop rigs for excellent prices. Discreet is important especially in laptops. Manufactures will sell you an integrated CPU/GPU and they’re really weak for gaming because the CPU is doing the graphics work along with the processing.
The 3080 series will be around for a long time as it supports ray tracing and the gold standard of 60+ frames per second (FPS). This site has been very useful for me to determine if moving away from my 1080ti was worth it.
I then handed down my gpu to my eldest son who has autism but loves to game and for him playing at a1080 resolution or at 4k he can load these games. He was on a 970 which was the prior generation to the 10’s, he’s thrilled to move onto the 1080ti and it lets him play Elden Ring now.
Another very cheap option was my other son’s PC purchase for his birthday. He also has autism sadly and I just bought a sweet 2nd hand i7 desktop computer with 32 gig, 2 tb ssd for $200 which is insanely cheap. That was easily a $1000 pc two years ago - he just watches movies, so is very fast for his needs and could be worth a punt and just replace the whole rig. Sorry to say most of my guidance is US based I know a lot of the forum is based in the UK and other countries. But hope some of that is at least helpful.
I have an older hexacore AMD FX CPU
800W Corsair modular PSU
16GB DDR3
Asus mainboard
EVGA 1060 6gb graphics
500gb SSD boot, 3x 2TB WD Black drives for storage.
All I’ll need for some time. I don’t game above 1080P
Thanks for the offer mate, found a 1080 in Cash Convertors today for £160. Couldn’t help myself! But thanks
I am a PC gamer as I play online shooters and the thought of using a controller over a keyboard and mouse just doesn’t cut it.
Great post but disagree on AMD I have a 6800XT and it works fine, although I didn’t buy as they came out I always wait a couple of months so that the drivers are stable.
as am I, although I’m adjusting to the console controller ever so slowly. it’ll never replace the freedom of a mouse though. That said, playing Division2 on my PS5 is somewhat enjoyable and I haven’t turned on my PC to game in a few months now.
Fair enough tried it once and felt it wasn’t the same