I’m in the market for a new grahics card. I’m currently running a hp omen gaming pc with a 5900x, 32gb of memory(ddr4 3200), and a 6700xt. Got it for a great price back then, fully aware that the first part that was going to be due for an upgrade would probably be the graphics card.
I’ve been quite happy with the 6700xt. Not the most powerfull card, but got me through 2020 pretty good after su10. Was able to run 2020 locked at 30 fps with no sutters for a few su’s with the fenix a320 at payware airports in 1440p. That was pretty cool. I might have even gone without ctd’s at all in 2020 if I remember
Now with 2024, it’s not cutting the mustard anymore. Vram is almost maxed out pretty much contiously, gpu usage is at almost 100% whilst panning/changing views. All in all, it’s pretty stuttery. I hope Asobo will improve the performance a bit more, the reality however, I need a new graphics card.
It’s not the only bottleneck in the PC, I know, but this seems like the most reasonable place to start, especially considering ram prices nowadays.
I’m kinda looking to stay team amd. I’ve been really happy about how it’s all performed, and reading about nvidia over the last few years doesn’t make me feel overly jealous of nvidia users.
Contemplating between buying a 9070xt new, or a 7900xtx used. In terms or prices, it wouldn’t really matter all that much. More or less similar. The ram and raw computing power however is where they differ. 1440p is the minimum for me, but if 4k would be possible at 30fps, I’d love to switch over.
Which of these cards should I buy/do you guys recommed for 2024. Or save up money a little longer and buy a completely new pc used? Previous gen hardware is what it would be then of course(amd 7xxx series)
I have 2 PC’s, one with a 7900xtx/9950x3d and the other with a 9070xt/7900x3d and given your desire to stay with AMD I’m not going to factor Nvidia into my response. Both are awesome graphics cards and you really can’t go wrong with either one. Just a couple of points - if you are going to stay at 1440p, then I would recommend the 9070xt as it is cheaper and will support all the latest FSR upscaling and frame gen and will pair very well with a 7000 series cpu in the future. If you are seriously thinking to move to 4k, then I would recommend you consider the 7900xtx. Either way you should get a small but meaningful fps boost as your PC will immediately become cpu limited with your new gpu. While this is not an issue I just wanted to set expectations.
You’ll want to be aware of the power requirements of whatever gpu you get as it will most likely require an upgraded power supply. Given you have a prebuilt Hp Omen, you’ll need to research if that PC power supply is even upgradeable as low cost prebuilt PC’s often do not have much of an upgrade path. If/when you purchase a new power supply, get one that can be reused when you upgrade the rest of your PC so 1200w would be the minimum I would recommend.
Either way you go your new gpu/power supply can migrate to a new PC in the future with nothing lost.
One more note - I’m not sure where you live however if it is in the U.S. and you live in an area close by a Micro Center store then I would recommend checking out that store. While they have great prices, you can only buy most gpu’s in store to prevent scalping. Also, they sell open box gpu’s at a discount and they will buy back any gpu you’ve bought at their store if you want to upgrade later on with a new gpu.
Thanks for your reply. Few questions: what makes you think the 7900xtx is better if I wanted to jump to 4k?
For the power supply, I’ve looked at that in the past. I think it’s possible to replace the psu, even though the case might be a bit small. A case swap was kind of a no brainer to me anyway. I can take it to the next pc build and it’s gonna be a requirement with a new gpu anyway. Cooling on the current case isn’t great and it’s gonna come down to millimeters whether or not it will fit.
Why would I have to go for 1200w of power tho? From what I’m reading, 850-900 seems like it would be enough for either card right?
With millimeters being mentioned, you now know which part of the world I live in. I’ll try to see if there are any stores here that do open box discounts. 9070xt’s aren’t really available secondhand at lower prices than retail. 7900xtx’s are available secondhand however, for roughly the same price as a new 9070xt
The 7900xtx will beat the 9070xt hands down with regards to pure rasterization power however, FSR 4.1 is helping the 9070xt equalize things more in this area as the 7900xtx will take a ~8% performance hit when using FSR 4.1 upscaling.
The main reason you’d want the 7900xtx for 4k gaming is because it has 24GB of vram. More pixels with 4k means you’ll need more vram to store those pixels. You’ll find this forum riddled with posts with both AMD and Nvidia gpu simmers bemoaning their fps dropped to the 3-5fps range the instant the sim ran out of physical vram and is then forced to use slower RAM memory. However, if you don’t need to have all of the eye candy and are willing to turn down the detail a little you should be fine with 16GB of vram with the 9070xt in 4k. I can run my 7900xtx with MSFS 2024 pretty much on ultra settings on 4k and I never have to worry about vram (vram usage peaks a little over 20GB in highly detailed areas). With my 9070xt, I can run 4k but mostly on high settings which will keep vram usage under 16GB.
If space is tight I would recommend that you just replace your case otherwise you’ll be constantly battling thermals. It’s really important to have good airflow and you can get a really good case for under (US) $100 on sale.
You’ll want at least 1000-1200w for future expansion (or as much as you can afford). You did mention a new AM5 motherboard and a 7000 series cpu was on the horizon. In addition, you’ll have various peripherals to use with the sim that will all require power. Perhaps someday you’ll want to trade up your new gpu for a newer one which of course will require more power. I’ve upgraded both my sim PC’s multiple times as you never have enough - nothing worse than random reboots in the middle of gaming !
The bottom line: after having both 9070xt (~2 months) and the 7900xtx (~2 years), it seems AMD has narrowed the gap between the 2 gpu’s with the recent release of FSR 4.1. Quite frankly, if you’re willing to tone down 4k a little and you can get a good price I’d go for the 9070xt. I was able to get my 9070xt PowerColor Reaper for slightly above MSRP and it is the only 9070xt that takes only 2 slots in your PC case .
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