I’m looking to update my computer I built roughly 2 years ago. I primarily a big console gamer using my pc to play Steam games not on the console (My Garage, Mon Bazou, My Summer Car).
Not having the knowledge of what is compatible and the hundreds and thousands options to select from on graphics cards, what would be my fit fit and low budget card to fit on my existing pc.
Currently above games run at a maximum 20fps, I’m looking for over 30 so they are a bit more enjoyable to play
Windows 10
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
16.0GB Duel Channel DDR4 @ 1330MHz
MSI B550M Pro-VDH WIFI (MS-7C95)
476GB ADATA SATA
For the budget cards, the best bang-for-the-buck currently is Intel A770 at $280. This card has 16 GB of VRAM but the drivers are still not supporting all games, only 97% or so.
Other than that, you have essentially two alternatives: The 8GB RX 6600 for ~$180 or the 16GB RX 7600 XT for ~$330. First Nvidia card worth it’s price is the 4070 Ti with 16 GB of VRAM at $800, not the best deal but atleast starting to become competitive.
Here are a few recommendations using PC Part Picker:
I think the 3060 is still pretty competitive, and much closer to the $300 mark isn’t it? Seems to be similar in price to 16GB A770. Even if it’s an older card, I think 30 series is very much worth considering over 40 series, as it still provides strong RT performance, and only really lacks in frame-gen, which isn’t really that important a feature to have tbqh.
That said, I don’t think any of the higher end GPUs are really a good idea with the mentioned power supply. Looking around, it looks like A770, RTX 3060, 7600 XT should all be fine, but would a 4070 really be happy on a low-spec 500 watt? I think even for the A770 or 3060, it might be a good idea to lower clock peaks for long-term stability.
3060 comes with 12 GB VRAM instead of 16 GB, and the Arc A770 and Radeon 7600 XT are both slightly more powerful (for 1080p, 5%-20%, for 1440p, 10%-20%). The 3060 is more like a competitor to the RX 6600, and there it is beating it in specs but not price. The current snapshot of the five cards discussed and the kind of performance you can expect using Hardware Unboxed as a base:
Card
VRAM
1080p min
1080p avg
1440p min
1440p avg
Price
Radeon RX 6600
8 GB
59 FPS
73 FPS
35 FPS
49 FPS
$200
GeForce RTX 3060
12 GB
67 FPS
80 FPS
48 FPS
58 FPS
$280
Arc A770
16 GB
69 FPS
82 FPS
52 FPS
63 FPS
$280
Radeon RX 7600 XT
16 GB
82 FPS
95 FPS
57 FPS
67 FPS
$320
GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super
16 GB
133 FPS
160 FPS
104 FPS
124 FPS
$780
I included the RTX 470 Ti Super just because it is the cheapest RTX 16GB card that does not suck. You could pay $500 for the 4060 Ti 16 GB card and gain ~20% performance over the 7600 XT for only a modest 65% price increase, whereas the 4070 Ti Super is ~75% more performance for ~140% more money.
12GB is a pretty adequate number for the present and immediate future, and 3060 offers a more feature rich card than the radeon, with better compatibility than the A770. It’s not the price to performance champ in any metric, but it is a solid value in that lineup. Very close to A770 in your own numbers, same price, and none of the Intel Arc issues.
Something to consider with those benchmarks is, nVidia’s drivers are very old and very robust in terms of legacy game support, whereas Intel’s DX9~11 support is much less reliable. AMD as well, when it comes to older DX libraries, their driver stack was always well behind nVidia, and rather than fixing it, they focused on making lean mean DX12 drivers instead.
Depending on the software you run, even ignoring RTX, the nVidia GPU might actually just end up being a much better value anyway, especially on a lower-end CPU like that. In windows, anyway. In linux, and with DX12 or Vulkan, things tend to shift the other way, but those libraries are also much less likely to end up CPU limited… But then, on the other hand, DX9~11 software, at least mainstream stuff, will typically struggle at higher(80+ range) framerates rather than the usual/common 60 or 30 targets.
Really, game compatibility and driver support has become a very nuanced and deep subject. The three games mentioned, I’m not especially familiar with, but they do seem to be indie DX11 titles, so there’s a solid chance nVidia will just be the top performer here, even comparing 3060 over 7600.
One small thing, which I discovered not long ago - passing audio through hdmi is not a mandatory thing, and isn’t implemented by default. This I found out while searching the web for an answer of why my intel igpu isn’t passing sound. Turned out I’m not alone.
If you really believe that then you really need to take a look at Hardware Unboxed here:
12 GB is still within reason on 1440p but is barely cutting it, 8GB is clearly no longer enough and struggles with many games even on 1080p. This is also why the 4060 Ti 8GB is dumb - are you seriously going to pay $400+ to run games on Medium quality settings? 8GB is still barely fine for $200 products and below but 12GB? $250 or bust. 8GB should really start going down to $150.
Sorry, but no. The lower amount of VRAM means the 3060 has, at most, 2-3 years life left as a mid tier product, and is already borderline low tier at 1440p. This doesn’t make the purchase invalid and it was a great card in 2022, a decent card in 2023 and held itself all the way until the 7600 XT launch in January 2024. Now it is limping along, unfortunately.
Unless you want eSport, but eSporters do not care about VRAM at all since they put down texture detail to make it easier to see in game.
Yep - But you know what is even more robust? Mesa on Linux Mesa has a stable OpenGL branch and more importantly, Valves Proton converts DirectX 9-12 direct to Vulkan, and then there is Zink that handles OpenGL over Vulkan. There is a perf. hit of about 5% for all these layers, but the end result is that Linux only need a Vulkan driver and you are pretty much good to go now for graphics. Both Linux native and Wine / Proton. Thus Intel is an extremely stable Linux card.
Not everyone can, or want to run Linux though, so on Windows? It’s a lot better now than it was before, not perfect, but then again, there are a ton of older games not working proper on Nvidia too. Most of it is legacy stuff from the Windows XP and Vista days though - games long since abandoned by their publishers.
I argue Arc is now cheap enough and good enough that, unless you are risking your livelyhood, it is worth the gamble, with a 90%-95% probability of a win. But it is up to everyone to decide that for themselves.
Consoles are still sporting 16 total, and it’s a small handful of newer titles having trouble with 8, and always pushing higher settings. Given how consoles influence memory requirements, I really don’t think that 16 is going to be the minimum requirement until the next generation, and the few games that might struggle at 12GB will be quite marginal in doing so; 16GB consoles only seem to make 13~14 available to games anyway.
I really don’t think 12GB is going to be the problem that 8GB is. If it does, it’s likely going to be quite close to when 16GB also becomes inadequate.
It also really doesn’t sound like the OP is the type to run linux, and hasn’t mentioned any interest in more vram intensive mainstream games, making it even less of an issue. They seem to just want an upgrade over the integrated graphics in a 5600G, specifically for 3 indie driving games that have poor performance, so I think it’s even more unlikely that this vram issue is going to be a problem in this case. It seems like even a low-end used GTX 10 series or similar Radeon would probably do the job, actually.
Really, picking the right card for the right situation is more nuanced than following the latest youtube outrage trends. I think you aren’t considering the full nuance of driver stability, performance availability, and the amount of effort someone will have to put in to use the product.
For a PC Noob picking out their first graphics card, upgrading off a 6c 12t zen3 APU, with 16GB of system memory, I really don’t think that last 4GB of video memory is worth all the headache that extracting optimal performance would require for the A770, or even the Radeons.
It’s not an internet fight about what’s the best enthusiast product overall, after all, or a post-purchase justification game. It’s picking the right tool for the job. I think these racing games will have a more similar performance bias to esports than to PS5 ports, though I’ve not first hand experience with them; it’s just a general trend for these DX11 3D indie games. Lots of draw calls, not much tracing of rays.
If that is the case, a Radeon RX 6600 for $200 is the right pick. A 7600 XT will cover the next generation of console game ports and it’s easy enough to spend $50 on a new 32 GB RAM kit, but if all the OP wants is an upgrade then the RX 6600 is the better purchase.
Ain’t nothing wrong with 8GB, per se - but you are going to face issues if you go above Medium settings on newer games, with 8GB. Do you really want to pay $400 only to realize you can only run most titles on Medium? Now, paying $200, on the other hand…
And no offense, but I think you haven’t run a Radeon card for the last few years. Driver stability hasn’t been a noticeable problem on Windows for years, not since the 5xxx series. Arc still reports the occasional hiccup though. Heck, for years Nvidia had a much worse software UI experience, too, though with their latest UI upgrade they more or less caught up.
Since current-gen consoles run Radeon it is likely console ports will run better on an AMD card, too.
A PC Noob is not going to do any crazy OC shenanigans and wring the last bits of juice out of a system in either case, and since the 7600 XT performs better than the 3060 at the same price point, with more VRAM to boot - it is the better option in this case. That does not mean the 3060 is a bad purchase though, just… Lackluster. Like paying $50 for a haircut when you know the fellas at the end of the street does a slightly better job for $40.
The A770 I can agree, is more of a gamble. I also stated as much.
The 12GB 3060 is $280, though? Not $400. And it has 12gb, not 8. It’s also going to likely perform better in cpu-limited DX8~11 software which, for any of these GPUs, at any resolution below 4k, that’s exactly what you’re going to see.
If we’re talking about running harry potter or spiderman or starwars, I agree, 7600xt a better value, but I saw 3 specific games mentioned, none of which look like mainstream console ports, so I’m assuming that’s not the main interest here.
Running a Radeon right now. For Windows drivers, AMD chose to move on from DX11 early on, and focus on DX12. It’s not crashes and instability, it’s reliable performance and good framepacing. nVidia’s DX8~11 and OpenGL drivers are just more mature than AMD’s. It’s been a longstanding issue.
DXVK can fix a lot of this on both the Intel and AMD side, but… For a PC noob, is that really the product to recommend? I would think something more plug-and-play would be more fitting.
Even in linux, until recently, OpenGL performance was basically gutter trash, around half or even less of what an nVidia card would get, despite having good opensource drivers. It’s improved recently in some ways, possibly by doing last-mile shader compilation similar to dxvk, though I’m only basing that on performance characteristics.(stutters for a while on new maps, slowly gets smoother the game is played)
Still can’t compete with nVidia’s stutter-free high performance OpenGL though.
Generally, yes. But, I think if the A770 is on the table, the 3060 12GB for the same price is worth looking at as a less messy, but lower-end option, a sacrifice of some performance for stability. A better option for a new user looking to get the raytracing and upscaling features without the arc-headache.
For the 7600xt, I would say that’s also a fine choice and all, and probably a better product in general, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that the 3060 actually outperforms it in the games OP mentioned. It was a longstanding meme in the later single/dual core games era, when AMD’s best options were half as fast as Intel’s in gaming, and indie games sometimes had benchmarks where basically every AMD and nVidia card were within 1% of their brand peers, but had a disparity of 25~50% between brands.
It’s probably not still that bad, but it’s also not likely something AMD has or will ever fix, as their focus is almost entirely on vulkan and DX12, where they have solid performance wins in terms of CPU overhead, and they have their hands full just trying to achieve hardware feature completion within a GPU generation. see: vega, radeon 7, 5700xt. Even 6000 series I believe still has some features that aren’t complete, at least in linux, so I can only hope that 7000 series development will overlap the development of those features into previous generations where possible.
Like I said, performance is very nuanced, and the mainstream youtube benchmarks focus heavily on things that compare only raw GPU performance in modern titles, so it’s easy to lose sight of those old CPU bottleneck holdovers still prevalent in less mainstream PC games.
My honest recommendation here is an RX 580 for $100 or less. A 6600 or 7600 XT should be workable, but personally I’d rather buy a 580 and 1-2TB of NVMe storage, because 480gb of storage pretty much prevents having more than 1-2 “newish” games installed concurrently… Games which a 2304 580 will very happily run at passable performance.
Obviously, spending more money gets more result, but a 580 and some storage gets you pretty much performance parity with a XB Series S while keeping the PC “advantage” of being able to do PC things… For less than the price of said Series S.
until OP comes back and posts a desired budget, my impression is (s)he wants a VERY modest upgrade from 20 FPS to 30 on non-demanding games as cheaply as possible. In which case I have to agree with the used RX580 or nvidia 1000 series, I would say around the 1070 level for power supply considerations. I play mostly older games and the only reason I replaced my 1070 about a year ago was for VR. And even there it was holding its own in most cases.
I think you aren’t considering the full nuance of driver stability, performance availability, and the amount of effort someone will have to put in to use the product.