Should I upgrade graphics card now, or wait a few more months?

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
1

I bought my desktop with GTX 1650S with the intention to upgrade to a then-upcoming Nvidia 30-series GPU. It was a mistake. :upside_down_face: The price of graphics cards skyrocketed since the pandemic, and I have not been able to upgrade the 1650S.

Recent weeks, the price of graphics cards has come down a lot. In Canada, Asus Korean Origin (KO) RTX 3060 v2 has been available from some vendors for $611 loonies. In the US, Asus Dual RTX 3050 is finally in-stock at major retailers for $379.99 dollars.

Should I buy? Or should I keep WoW’ing on the 1650S for a few more months, hoping I can eventually buy a RTX 3060 Ti also at a reasonable price? :grinning:

Thanks everyone in advance!

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I say wait.

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it’s a good upgrade if wow is your only game. if you play other games that are more graphically intensive then i would wait

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4

I’m patient. The rumored RTX 3060 Super might have 5,632 CUDA cores and 12GB memory, stronger than the 3060Ti’s CUDA cores 4,864 and 8GB memory.

The upcoming RTX 4080 is rumored to be a powerhouse, boasting 14,080 CUDA cores and 16GB memory. However, I will likely have to upgrade the PSU. :laughing:

5

yeah… hopefully prices stay sane

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6

Depends on your appetite for risk IMHO. There’s a strong chance that availability on next gen cards will be bad, due to hamstrung production, scalpers botting everything into oblivion, or some combination thereof.

If you can deal with potentially not being to get a next gen card until several months after release, wait. If that 1650 Super is killing you and you can’t deal with playing on it for another year, maybe upgrade.

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Excellent points! The best thing about my 1650S is that it’s OEM reliable. It overheats in Ardenweald and Tazavesh, but hasn’t gone bad yet. The shortcoming is, of course, that it doesn’t have ray-tracing cores and is much weaker than contemporary GPUs.

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Wait for 4000 series to drop from Nvidia. The 3000 series will flood the market when they drop and be dirt cheap! Im sure they well even be well below MSRP. :slight_smile: Scalpers will be trying to unload leftover RTX 3000 series FAST

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9

Timing the market has proven to be a bad idea. If you need an upgrade, do it.

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Eh… you’ll have to probably upgrade more than the PSU. It’s rumored to be 600W for the lowest end variants.

The next gen series from Nvidia is not looking great based on the data leaked by hackers earlier.

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11

Spend as much as you’re comfortable spending. There is always going to be a better card right around the corner.

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Not only that we’re at a massive upgrade in tech coming up this year supposedly.
The new iGPUs with cache slapped on them are going to be a major leap and probably replace the need for dGPUs for some people (eg casual WoW players).

Right now if you only play WoW a Radeon 6800 will give the best bang for the buck bar none and the cards are pretty well cooled/power efficient.

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The “40” series cards from Nvidia are coming…so I’d wait…

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A lot of people are telling you to wait for 40 series cards but really I think if you can get a 3060/6600xt for $400 or a 6700XT 3060Ti for $500 you should get it. It will be September till October at the earliest till 40 series GPUs come out and then it will most likely be higher end GPUs the 3060ti didn’t come out till 6 months after the 3070s and 3080s. Also the speeds of the lower end to mind range gpus speeds and prices are very carefully picked. I’m predicting that a 3070 today will be around the same general speed as a 4060 a year from now. So if you buy a $400 dollar 3060 today it will be around the same speed as a $300ish 4050 a year from now. And to me that year with a good video card is worth the $80-100 price difference.

If you do get a video card don’t get a 3050 its barely an upgrade over a 1650s 6600xt is good value at $400 dollars.

The only other thing i forsee that will lower prices is Intel GPU I think nvidia will try to bury its launch with a competitive price cut but I’m not holding my breath for a timely Intel launch.

In short is $100 savings and waiting a year or enjoying a good gpu now worth it to you?

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Your choice of GPU is decided by the CPU you have in order to prevent a bottleneck.

I would advise googling which GPU matches your CPU.

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16

crypto is crashing right now…. good time to shop around

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It will be even better as I said above when 4000 series drops in about 2-3 months. It will drastically reduce what 3000 Series are worth and sold for

Miners will no longer be interested in 3000 Series most and scalper bots will have moved on to the true Money Maker which will be scalping 4000 series. What happens next? Price drops well below MSRP on 3000 series

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18

Patience pays. I saw a retailer offering RTX 3060 for $499 loonies (~$372 USD). So I bought it and installed the 3060 today. :christmas_tree: :gift: :confetti_ball: :tada:

The RTX 3060 doesn’t break a sweat in running the newest games with high or ultra-high graphic settings. I bought but shelved a number of these games because my GTX 1650S wasn’t able to handle, struggling to output 30 FPS (at mid to low graph settings) while still overheated. This RTX 3060, however, has been able to output 60 FPS (limited by the BFGD) without having to turn on the fans sometimes. It’s incredible.

The only downside is that for $499 loonies it’s a final sale from that retailer, so it was a little risky if something were not compatible. Luckily with the 528.02 driver from GeForce Experience it has been as smooth as OEM so far.

It’s insane that this very card was listed for $1,499 CAD by scalpers in 2021.

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