Thoughts on a Radeon 7900 GRE on an older B450 motherboard?

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So, at what point does it no longer pay (or make sense) to upgrade a gaming system built on a B450 motherboard? I currently have an XFX SWFT 6700XT video card on an Asus Strix Gaming B450-i (itx) motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 5700X3D, 32GB DDR4-3200 memory at CL16, 1TB Samsung 970 EVO nvme, and a 650W EVGA PSU.
I am thinking of upgrading the GPU to the 7900 GRE (obviously that 650W will need to be upgraded), but wondering it if makes sense with the slower/older B450 architecture. I also am thinking of upgrading the NVMe to a 2TB NVMe drive, but this year’s pricing has me waiting that out for now.

My goal is 1440p gaming, but on a larger monitor. I am currently using a 27" Pixio PX275h monitor. My options are to use the 32" Pixio PXC327 monitor from my 7800X3D/6950XT rig and replace that monitor with a 49" OLED monitor on the 7800X3D/6950XT rig.

Thoughts?

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I think there’s a reasonable likelihood that something like a 7600XT would see more of a hit from 3.0 than a 7900 GRE (x8 vs x16), and a quick YT search kind of confirms that there’s largely no performance penalty on the GRE at 3.0. Also looks to be basically a nothing sandwich between the 7900 GRE and 6950XT, though there are GREs available that are considerably more compact than most 6950XTs.

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the 7900gre is about the performance of the 6950xt with the watts used of the 6700xt.

the 7900gre is not substantially hamstrung by a 5700x3d either, especially if it is a more GPU leaning game.

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I recently got married, and we both kept our homes:

At my wife’s home I have one PC - 5700X3D/6700XT/650W PSU - 27" Pixio PX275h (27" 1440p 95hz)

At my home, I have a 7800X3D/6950XT/1000W PSU - 32" Pixio PXC327 (32" 1440P - 165hz).

I been wanting to get a huge 1440p curved monitor - like one of those 49" OLED monitors. I doubt a 6700XT would like driving something like that - the PC at my house would cruise happily with that.

In April, I upgraded the PC at my wife’s from a 2700X to a 5700X3D, larger case, near silent fans and CPU cooler.

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honestly with some tuning and managed expectations a 6700xt will handle 1440p quite well. but if you have the money to through at less than huge gains, a 7900gre would be a noticeable but not huge bump.

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I would have thought 5,120 x 1,440 resolution would make a 6700XT bog a bit.

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you don’t give any examples.

Starfield = needs managed expectations.
Excel = no noticeable difference.

the three cards are not worlds apart either. in all fairness the 6950xt managed very few 50% increases over a bare bones 6700xt.

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Mostly Gaming with some remote work mixed in. I was thinking of this from a purely gaming angle, but when you mentioned Excel, I was picturing the beauty of Excel on an ultrawide monitor. lol

I like to push my graphics visual settings to the moon. 6700XT has served me well actually. I installed it in March 2022, gamed super hard on it till January 2024. Built a second PC, moved the 6700XT rig to my wife’s house. Realized in March there was a defect in the 6700XT - it was hitting 106C hotspot temps while stating the GPU temp was around 65C. Contacted XFX, RMA’ed it right around the 2 year mark, they tested it, confirmed it was defective, and sent me a sealed 6700XT new in the box.

When the replacement GPU came in April, I ordered a Ryzen 5700X3D, an Arctic Cooler Freezer 36 ARGB cooler, and a DeepCool (RIP) CH360 Digital case. I then transplanted the PC from an InWin A1 Plus mini-ITX PC into the DeepCool case - replacing the CPU/cooler (2700X ->5700X3D) and used a used EVGA 650W modular PSU my best friend was no longer using. My wife was happy because the old InWin case, which much nicer looking, was so darn loud. The DeepCool with two additional case fans (Arctic Cooler (1) P120 & (1) P140 ) and an Arctic Freeze 36 is nearly silent sitting 2-3 feet away from the PC. With the old case, it sounded like a vacuum was left running in an adjacent room.

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yeah, the 7900gre is a valid gaming upgrade. you can probably keep the same PSU for now.

if you are actively looking for a substantial upgrade the ASRock B650E boards get as low as $139 refurb, or $169 on sale sometimes. and an AM5 system with a 7900gre would be another % increase yet again. it all really depends on what your future goals are.

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Not sure, want to see if I can roll with this system for another 2-3 years. I’m approaching the 5 year mark on this PC in January (with some upgrades over the years). Would be fun to be able to keep an AM4 rig essentially rolling for 8+ years.

On AM5, the 7800X3D had been creeping up in price over the last month or two. Right now, that CPU is sold out on both Amazon and Newegg.

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I’d be very surprised if the am4 X3D parts won’t last at least 5 more years

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I was being conservative - my guess is the January 2020 motherboard/RAM would be more likely to crap out than a CPU.

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Interesting, I am currently considering an upgrade from 6600XT to 7900GRE but on a 3800X/X370 taichi with a Pixio PX276 (1440p). I am also looking at a CPU upgrade to 5700X3D eventually but only if I do the GRE upgrade. From what I observed from all these youtube tests it that the performance difference between PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 seems to be negligible so I wasn’t bothering with a motherboard change. All these upgrades are dependent on sales for me but if I see a GRE for 500 or under on sale I will bite :joy:

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