How can I tell if a new graphics card will suffice?

[shualiko]

Hey all.

It's probably been asked before but please bare with me since I could not find a relevant solution.

My CPU is i7 @3.50, I have 32GB Ram and Win10.

My Graphic card is an Nvidia Geforce GTX660.

When editing 2K and above my system stutters and that's a pain.

Will a new better card do the trick or is only a more comprehensive upgrade do the work?

I do not want to upgrade my entire pc obviously but do wish to work properly...

I'd really appreciate your experienced feedback.

Thanks

[R Neil Haugen]

That card is too old to use the drivers needed in 2018/2019. You would need a 1060 or newer, really. And I would recommend 6GB or more of vRAM on the card.

Neil

[shualiko]

Thanks Neil!

So what I need to look for is an Nvidia GTX 1060 with 6vRam, and that should help smooth things?

[Ann Bens]

No guarantees! How old is the computer itself? What cpu is used? Disk setup?

[RjL190365]

I echo Ann about your hardware:

If your CPU platform is of the Ivy Bridge (3rd Generation) or earlier, then I would strongly recommend a whole system upgrade because such a system would be more likely to become EOL in the coming years. That way, you will reduce the likelihood of compatibility issues between older and newer hardware.

If your CPU is of the Haswell generation, then you may be able to get away with a GTX 1660 (which I am now recommending over the GTX 1060 because the two GPUs are close enough in price to justify paying a bit more for a more significant performance increase). The GTX 1060 6 GB is now a poor buy because it still costs too close to the newer GTX 1660 to justify a small but significant performance drop.

[shualiko]

Hey and thank you!

Indeed after some searching I concluded the 1660 is the thing.

How can I check the generational stuff? Should I take a look at my MB and search around?

Thank you very much for the detailed replies!

[shualiko]

So here's some additional info regrading my MB and CPU, does it help any?

CPU - 3rd Generation intel core family: i7

Motherboard - Gygabyte-z77-HD3

• Supports 3rd Gen. Intel^® 22nm CPUs and 2nd Gen. Intel^® Core™ CPUs (LGA1155 socket)
• GIGABYTE 3D BIOS (Dual UEFI)
• PCI Express Gen 3.0 support
• 2-way CrossFire™ multi-GPU support
• HDMI, DVI, RGB
• High quality HD audio
• GIGABYTE 333™ Onboard Acceleration (USB 3.0, SATA 3.0 & 3x USB Power)
• Humidity/Electrostatic/Power Failure/High Temperature Protection
• GIGABYTE On/Off Charge™ for USB devices

[R Neil Haugen]

Ahhh ... you're about due for a new rig, I think. Til is right about the generation of CPU.

Neil

[shualiko]

Crap. And if I can only afford a card upgrade, would it make any difference...?

[RjL190365]

Nowhere near enough to justify spending the money on. In fact, the closest GPU match to your current CPU - performance-wise - would have been a GTX 1050 Ti, but I wouldn't spend the money on a soon-to-become-EOPL'd (End Of Production Lifed) GPU at anywhere near as high as its current street price.

And in your case, any GPU upgrade that's worthy of consideration (performance-wise) would have been overkill for your current CPU. In fact, such an overkill GPU might result in corrupt renders and/or stability issues, especially when running GPGPU (CUDA, OpenCL, MetAL) apps because the GPU would then sit idle nearly all of the time waiting for the CPU to catch up.

As a matter of fact, software and hardware companies do not like to support products that are even three years old, let alone seven years old (the current age of your system). In fact, a few companies support only stuff that's less than one year old!

[shualiko]

Wow, that's quite bad.

Thanks for clearing this up.

I'll see what I can do - considering that I would actually need to get the entire rig updated.

That's quite and expense...

Thanks

[RjL190365]

This (my two posts) is exactly why I do not recommend wasting your money on something that looks better on paper, but might result in little to no real-world performance improvement (or might even result in a performance downgrade) in your current setup.

By the way, if you MUST get a new graphics card immediately, then go for a GTX 1660, a GTX 1660 Ti or an RTX 2060 - but ONLY if you are planning to update the rest of the system's hardware components within the next few months. Otherwise, if you are planning to stick with your current CPU platform for many more years to come, then you would be just wasting all of your money after bad.

[shualiko]

Oh you got me a bit confused.

I know this is quite elaborate in terms of influencing factors, but you said: Don’t because it might create errors or no improvement, and your last post says that there might be a minute change.

I am planning (for lack of option...) to upgrade in the coming months. Will the 1660 help me until then?

Again, thanks for taking the time to help me find my way around this!!

[Christian.Z]

It should, unless there is another bottlneck somewhere else. CPU and Ram looks good.
How about your storage configuration?