Grunt for 1440p

Games, Gaming & Hardware
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I’m surprising the wife for Xmas. She has a 1440p monitor capable of 165hz and we’re both avoid woswers right now. When we don’t play wow we play other MMOs or (she) plays things like Skyrim and the Sims 3.

My question is, do I need to look at RTX 2060 super or will a 1660/super/ti suffice?

She’s rocking a 3570k @ 4.4 which I know needs updating too but with limited funds what is the best GPU upgrade?

Will the 3570k @4.4 bottlneck and will a 1660 (variants) suffice or is it best going all out for a 2060?

She’s no critic but she’s rocking a GeForce 650 (non ti) without DisplayPort so we’re hoping to take advantage of Gsync with the new card.

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GTX 1660-series are really 1080p cards, so my suggestion would be to get a 2060.
That said, you may find that you 3570K may well sweat a bit more heavily if you ask it to render 1440p.

If you already have the monitor you mentioned at the beginning of your post, may I suggest deferring upgrading the graphics card as part of a bigger overall system upgrade, to get a smoother transition*…?

*EDIT:
Can I just point out that as old as WoW is, the engine the game uses is still rather CPU heavy and largely based around 1080p level gaming.
Fast forward 10-15 years (depending on the player) & game technology has leapt forward to where many of the newest games use the GPU for the lions’ share of the rendering. Many WoW players seem to forget this leap in gaming tech advancement, esp. the newer generations and seem to think that just a new graphics card will solve the problem… it doesn’t always.

So; while my recommendation is to get a 2060, that is largely based on playing at 1440p, a resolution that has only really taken off relatively recently (last ~5years?). I would further suggest that to get the best out of a 2060, you upgrade the rest of the PC to similar generations of parts to obtain the smoother transition mentioned above.

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I play on a 3440x1440 @ 75Hz and even with modern hardware you won’t be guaranteed fast framerate in many zones. Old empty zones will easily provide it but current ones +/- with players will have a varying framerate.

Depending on your local prices - check prices on used GTX 1080, 1080 Ti or Vega 64… but if you want expensive display you may be forced to pair it with modern PC to be anywhere near 165 FPS and not every game will be fast framerate friendly. Skryim by default is locked to 60 as game physics depend on it.

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Thanks guys. Really appreciate the expert advice. It’s really nice to be able to get good help like this :grinning:.
Her CPU is getting on, no doubt about that. I had originally considered a new system but with a limited budget and comparing single threaded performance I’m not so sure a new system (that I can afford anyway) would be that much better.

The Ryzen 2600 for example (available at a good discount right now) has around the same IPC as a 3570k and that’s with no overclock.

A newer Ryzen 2 system will no doubt best it, as would a new Intel system too, but the cost of an entire system and video card would just be too much in one go, especially if going for an RTX 2060.

But wow being outdated and unoptimised poses a bit of a technical headache when it comes to hardware selection. There’s next to no updated benchmarks compared to other games, especially since the multi thread 8.1 patch and it’s not clear how closely you reach the GPU bottleneck. If wow is famously CPU limited will a RTX 2060 be a good investment or since the limit is going to be placed with the CPU will even a cheaper 1650ti suffice?

In an ideal world it would be nice to see some benchmarks on a similar system with some modem video cards to see really if spending a lot more makes a difference, most benchmarks of other games are using faster CPUs and sometimes even they show CPU bottlenecks at 1440p.

The wife really isn’t too picky compared to me and the main reason I thought of a new video card for her is to run wow at decent quality whilst also using Gsync.

Right now her GeForce 650 is connected to the monitor via HDMI because it lacks DisplayPort so Gsync isn’t active. She has to play on preset 2 or 3 and usually in open world her frame rate doesn’t get above 45. In more demanding places it’s even less. I know for sure in her current setup the video card is what’s holding her back because at 1080p the frame rate was a lot higher. I realise that with her CPU certain situations are going to be low frame rate no matter the video card, which is why I want to make a sensible purchase.

Of course the monitor is capable of 165hz which is no benefit really in WoW but the Gsync aspect would be!

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You are looking at some not so good data. IPC won’t equate performance. It’s good to have it high but there are other factors to CPU performance in a game or other apps. And 2600 would be a good choice only if you want something really cheap. Proper value would be R5 3600 - and second gen Ryzen often wins with latest Intel in single core performance as well as high IPC (you get a list of CPUs with pretty much same value nowadays).

This isn’t the best value for the money.

Hearsay, FUD, and whatnot.

Most often WoW will be network, bandwidth and server limited. If online nature of this game isn’t a limit then likely GPU will be - the higher resolution and the higher quality setting you will use the more GPU will be used over CPU. I rarely see any very high consistent CPU load, there is some but often distributed among few cores with one higher than others. On old low power or dual core CPUs you will get such load and the game will be CPU limited. Use anything modern >= 6 cores and it will not.

1080p medium settings GPU. Also not the best value.

I did some benchmarks: https://rk.edu.pl/en/benchmarking-and-analyzing-world-warcraft-performance/ although their focus was more on middle to low end. You can also check YouTube for “GPU NAME World or Warcraft” and see people showcases.

It’s there only to avoid tearing when the FPS isn’t equal to normal display refresh rate. If the display is actual Gsync (and not FreeSync + Gsync-compatible) then only Nvidia cards could use it, if not then also AMD. Other options is vsync and limiting max FPS in game to something more reasonable so that the GPU isn’t spiking 165 - 60 and has more consistent framrerate and lower load.

Upgrade the GPU and then upgrade CPU/RAM/Motherboard.

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Thanks!
I’m just trying to find a good balance. I’m not too fussed about buying a GPU now that in the future will pair well with a better CPU because I feel by that stage, a better GPU will be available anyway. I’m certainly not one of these “future proof” guys as I know how the industry generally works and I’m not willing to waste money knowing I’ll be able to get a bit more from my system in the future.

I can understand from viewing videos that a RTX 2060 is going to be better than a GTX 1660 super/TI but I don’t want to spend more money on an RTX 2060 if the CPU is going to hold back the frame rate a lot.

Likewise I don’t want to spend too little, so that there’s a small gain in performance from her current Geforce 650.

What I don’t want to be doing is spending a load of extra cash for a 2060 when it will be held back by the rest of the system.

Your benchmarks are very useful (and rare). Only a few resources or videos seem to be available comparing different CPUs and GPUs. The problem is there’s so little benchmarks for WoW in general, with limited CPUs tested, you can’t really get an idea of what to expect when upgrading the GPU only and its as if every benchmark expects you to also upgrade your CPU at the same time.

Generally my best guess is that her overclocked i5 3570k is going to perform quite similar to a Ryzen second gen (not zen 2) in wow overall. In userbenchmark it actually beats the Ryzen 2600 in single and dual core benchmarks when overclocked. Although the Ryzen overtakes it slightly when its overclocked itself.

I feel that’s not too bad going considering how old the CPU is.

The biggest question in my head is, is spending more than a Nvidia 1650 justified given the system is old? Most of the frame drops in WoW are centred around raiding/battlegrounds and areas where its very busy. In these moments I’ve seen benchmarks showing a 1060 is no slower than a 1080TI, especially when its not 1080p.

My own system is using a 7700HQ with a 1060 and a similar frame rate would be more than good enough for her. Generally benchmarks suggest the new 1650 to be close to the 1060 in overall performance and the 1660 super/ti to be closer to the 1070. The 2060 seems most similar to a 1080.

As for the monitor, its a Gsync certified model. I avoided buying a “compatible” one because I wanted to avoid any problems associated with using them with Nvidia graphics cards, especially the fact most have a limited range compared to Gsync. So I’m looking at Nvidia only, which I guess is a good reason to buy cheaper with the AMD RX 5700 being the go-to card right now in the upper mid range compared to the 2060 super. I might try and snag a 1660 super or even TI at a good price.

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Buy a used GPU for much better value or spend bit more on something you won’t have to replace for WoW and most non-extreeme games until at least 2021 after 7nm Nvidia cards launch and AMD goes with RDNA 2 cards.

There are time windows when “future proofing” works. People on like 1080 Ti still have very little reasons to upgrade. Even Vega 64, GTX 1080 are safe until next full generation of GPUs and only if someone needs more performance for some demanding 4K gaming.

You can’t OC into infinity, and no, Ivy Bridge won’t match current gen CPUs. Forget about it.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgUlZmTOElI
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v17p2lKzInc
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ccrr6k/debating_upgrading_i53570k_to_ryzen_5_3600/

Buy a used card if at good price:

  • GTX 1080 Ti
  • GTX 1080
  • GTX 1070
  • Vega 64

It’s unlikely you will find good price for 1070 Ti as it’s much rarer card. Vega 64 can also be sought after at higher prices (and no GSync). If you want new: RTX 2070 Super.

If you buy 1650, 1650 Ti, 1660 you will loose a lot of value on resale and the performance may not meet your expectation for 1440p at 165 Hz. 1660 Super is good value but value but I’m not sure it’s good for that resolution and framerate, more like maxing out 1080p, medium 1440p. RTX 2070 Super will kill it and won’t be replaced anytime soon, similarly 1080 Ti won’t be replaced unless you will need to play 2021 games at 4K at uber settings.

So upgrade GPU and later on upgrade CPU/Mobo/RAM/Storage without upgrading GPU.

and the worst picks:

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I approve of LTT links…

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But I didn’t say anything about current gen, I was talking about the Ryzen second gen (Zen 1) like the 2600. If you look at benchmarks its single performance is more or less on a par with the i5 3570k. Overclocked the i5 beats it.

If people today are buying systems running the Ryzen 2600 (not 3600) would the i5 3570k really be a bottleneck to a higher end card?

You can even see in videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwGeAYg3S8U that the Ryzen 2600 isn’t far ahead of the older intel chip. The only time it is is when games take advantage of more cores, which is really not wow’s strong-point.

There’s no doubt to me that a 3rd gen (like R3600) is going to beat it, nor I am debating that a 2nd gen R2600 is as good CPU overall, I’m not. I’m just strictly talking about WoW performance! Anything else, well it frankly doesn’t matter so much as we tend to drift between LOTRO and WoW which are both games that seem to have the same weaknesses when it comes to CPU optimisation. If she plays another game it will be an older one, not a new AAA title.

And I know that an upgrade to the rest of the system is worthwhile, but we don’t have that kind of money at the minute. A R3600 barbone system is going to cost at very least $250 extra on top of a graphics card, and that’s without adding a new PSU, Case or storage! So whilst I understand its a good value upgrade, lashing out that kind of money is out of the question for us right now on top of a GPU upgrade.

And of course, the $250 could be spent upgrading the CPU, motherboard and ram, using existing components for the rest, but it still doesn’t get around the issue that her GT650 doesn’t have a DisplayPort connector.

I know that the sensible option would be to pick up a used card or a 2060 and upgrade later down the line, but I’m not sure we even will, so I want to know if a 2060 now is an overkill for her current CPU or not and if it will hold her back using it say compared to a 1660 super.

I appreciate all the help man i really do, but we are poor folk who don’t have the kind of money to spend even on a budget R3600 and B450 board together with a graphics card and we can’t really consider spending more than a RTX 2060 in total years from now, by which time I’m scared it will be housed and underused in a system that won’t be able to take advantage of it.

So basically, will a 2060 super be held back much by the i5 3570k or a similarly performing R2600 system in wow, if so, is it better to go for a cheaper card given we don’t intend to upgrade that system any time soon?

Or is an 2060 super a worthy investment, even though the system probably won’t be upgraded in the future?

I’m really hesitant to go second hand, and to be fair I haven’t seen great prices for second hand gear anyway. People online seem to be selling their 1070’s for the same price you can buy a 1660 super in a sale, which frankly performs similar overall…even at 1440p. What sense is there buying a second hand GPU if you have no, to less warranty, more of a risk, more power consumption and a greater chance of a fault occurring. For example, on Reddit I see the average price a 1070 vanilla goes for is around $220. I feel like that isn’t good value at all considering how it fairs against modern cards. Just look at this comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHC5EOwXhx0 (1440p later on).

A 1080 usually goes for around $400 and a TI even more. Vega 64 I’m not buying since its an AMD card and we own Gsync monitors. RTX 2070 sells for $500 and is out of the question completely. Maybe in another world where I manage to finish university and have no debt :sweat_smile:

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If the TL; DR of this is, “Will an RTX 2060 be hamstrung by a 3570K?”, then yes, it will.
My short-answer recommendation would be to do a grass-roots system upgrade; wait 'til you can justify upgrading the CPU AND GPU (mainboard & RAM will follow, by inference) at the same time.

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Your cpu isn’t the weakest link. It will handle the game. 1% lows may be worse than on a modern cpu but still playable. Used 1080 in Poland is around 250 eur and 1080 ti starts from around 415. Should be similar on ebay for EU. You just have a very high end display with high end feature like gsync. Rx580 for ~110 eur wont max it out nor do gsync but still will run it.

So the question is do you upgrade to sonething cheap that just works or to something bit more powerfull if you intend to build newer gaming rig with better performance not only for wow.

1 Like
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Those prices are definitely more attractive than in the USA. You can add at least about 50EUR on to those here.

I’m thinking at this moment about just going for a used 1060 or new GTX1650 super and just upgrading the whole system some other time in the future. I’m happy with the performance at 1440p on a 1060 even though it doesn’t push anywhere near 144 or 165hz, for wow the bottleneck is always going to be in raids anyway and Gsync really helps with the frame drops.

Something that I found quite overlooked when shopping for monitors is that most sources assume if you have a high refresh rate 1440p monitor that you have it because you always want to push high FPS. That isn’t necessary the case at all, first of all; you need a high refresh rate one to support frame doubling when FPS is low. Second; once you get to 32" in size, you really want 1440p/2160p and not 1080p for PPI to be acceptable.

If we instead had one of the cheaper Freesync 75/60hz 1440p monitors we would be stuck with a limited freesync range, and potentially compatibility issues with Nvidia cards when below the min Freesync range resulting in frame drops/unsmooth gameplay.

So far I’ve heard that the i5 3570k at 4.4 won’t hold back the system, and that it definitely will. I’m not sure what to believe so I may just have to try it out to see.

EVGA step up program may come in use if I buy new, so I’ll probably look to pick up a low range card from them to see if its good enough.

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Yes, you will always be CPU-limited in raids and you will never see those 144/165 FPS there (not even on a 9900KS).
G-Sync won’t really help at lower FPS like 30-45, which you will still have with a new GPU in raids.
I know exactly where you are coming from because i just upgraded from a 3570K@4,2Ghz with a GTX 970.
Now i’m running on a Ryzen 3900x with a RTX 2070 Super and a 1440P/144hz gsync comptible IPS display.
My minimum FPS doubled.
Still no stable 60 in raids though, but close.

It does. There is no discussion.
It is a 7 year old CPU and even though the older AMDs are much worse, the new Zen 2 and current Intels are MUCH faster in terms of IPC (which is what WoW really needs most, plus fast RAM with low latency).

Do NOT buy a Ryzen 2600 (still low IPC compared to Intel), get the 3600 or an Intel.

The thing is, the Nvidia 650 is really not a GPU you can play on in 2019 (even for WoW).
The i5-3570K is ok-ish if you are fine with 30-40 FPS in raids.

So i would recommend to upgrade the GPU first if you cannot afford a new system.
If you want to play any modern and demanding games in 1440P, you will need at least a 2060S (still have to turn down settings for 60FPS).
A 2070 or better is a 1440P card.

You should have thought about that when you bought the new monitor :wink:

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Thanks. Yeah we’re stuck in predicament but the offer for the monitor was too hard to resist. Its a 32" so its not like a FHD one would be a great choice at that size anyway!

In an ideal world I’d love to buy her a 2070 super and an updated system but that really isn’t on the cards right now, certainly not for another year.

Rumours are around that both the upcoming AMD and Nvidia GPUs are going to be up to 50% faster than their predecessors makes we think I’m gonna go for a GTX 1660 super and try and get one on sale.

Even the refresh of Zen2 CPUs are supposed to be about 17% faster…so hopefully that puts us in better tread in the future for a system upgrade.

So I’m thinking the 1660 super would bet he sweet spot, not too fast for a dated system and not too expensive either. Reasonable value for money compared to the RTX 2060/2060 super and should be okay for her for a good year or two until another system upgrade.

I kid you not, she isn’t that fussy at all. She often plays on her laptop with an Intel i5 3230m and HD4000 graphics and gets an average of 15-20 fps.

On her current system I played once whilst she was busy and found it micro stuttering, turned out the driver hadn’t been updated for a year…not a word was said about it being choppy.

So really, even a 1650 super would probably be enough to impress her.

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What GPUs? There will be 5600XT on CES that will compete with 1660 super and 1660 Ti and according to rumors - beat them. There are rumors of big Navi for late 2020 that can compete or beat 2080 Ti but if it will come to market it will be priced very similarly as 2080 Ti. So if you want that you may as well upgrade everything to match it :wink:

7nm Nvidia is still somewhat far away, maybe after CES Nvidia conference we will know more. Just don’t expect things to be cheap and before H2 2020.

Zen 3 is not a refresh of Zen 2.

Won’t be bad in general. You can also wait for 5600XT pricing and benchmarks and you can also check local prices of used 1070 which is also very similar to 1660 Super performance.

So you started this topic needing an enthusiast GPU for high end 1440p@165Hz and now you just want whatever cheapest that will work at minimum? Make up your mind :wink:

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Ampere and Navi 2

Likely will be late this year, early 21 that Ampere budget/mid range are available, later with Navi 2. Spending a lot of money for us now is pretty hard, so to find it outperformed so much in a year will be a big blow.

Yes, I named it wrong, but its still supposed to be a lot faster.

5600XT benchmarks won’t be long away now but it doesn’t look so promising if this channel is to be believed; https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt6DXSZJFwp1UVDm2ZXImAw even slower than a vanilla 1660…and wow tends to favor Nvidia when it comes to FPS.

The 1070 second hand is selling for close to what you can buy a 1660 super for, its crazy! Second hand sales really have gone downhill in value compared to a few years ago. 5600xt isn’t a consideration since I have a G-sync monitor but would only put me off the 1660S if it happens to outperform it for a similar price.

I think you are grossly underestimating how many FPS the 1650 super can push in wow. As I said in a previous reply people see “165hz” and think immediately that you need to push 165fps but that isn’t what I was looking for at all. You can run a 2080TI in wow and still get 40fps in raid fights…I never considered an enthusiast GPU at all, just the 2060 super at most.

As it stands, for anyone interested or anyone in the same situation as me I’m holding off the purchase for now. EVGA just released the 2060 KO which performs the same as the 2060 but for the same price as the 5600XT, just going to wait to make sure it doesn’t have any cooling issues like the 1660S did and hope that the 5600XT release and 2060 KO means that other vendors produce more similar cards or drop the price on existing 2060 models.

Its frustrating waiting, but its probably worth it considering the EVGA 2060 KO has mixed things up.

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Based exclusively on the current spec in your original post - 3570K & GTX650 - a 1440p monitor was a waste of money, even at 60Hz.

Now; given that you have a 1440p monitor ‘capable of 165Hz’, my honest opinion would be to leave it in the box until you know you have a system that is worthy of being connected to it.

Based on the whole thread, a 1660ti (2060 if you can justify it) would be all you’d need for 1440p, BUT… at least get a CPU capable of generating enough quality frames to make it worthwhile using both the graphics card AND the monitor… and in that respect, a Ryzen 3700x or Intel equivalent with the necessary motherboard & RAM should be your target.

1 Like
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I don’t think it was a waste of money, there’s not really much choice if you want a 32" monitor, other than to look at lower refresh rate models without Gsync. The models that are 1080p at this size have too small PPI. Her old monitor was nothing short of woeful, a 23" Acer using a TN panel with monochrome-esque colours.

She uses the monitor right now with her system and is happy but she has to run the game on preset 2 or 3 to get close to 60fps. The problem here isn’t fps, but the fact there’s no Gsync active via HDMI.

You see, this is something I mentioned above, people assume you get a 165hz monitor thinking you are getting it to push high FPS thats not true at all, its just not possible to buy a good 32" monitor with Gsync that is 1080p and 60hz. Its not even possible to buy a 1440p monitor that has Gsync and also 60hz…and if it was, much the same as the Freesync ones, there would be such a small range it would be pointless.

You need a high hz monitor to get Lower Frame Rate compensation.

No doubt her system is aging, and I’ll see with the new graphics card how much it seems to be holding it back.

To reiterate, having a 144/165hz monitor does not mean you have to feed it with a high FPS source. Gsync will work across all FPS range, including the horrible drops wow suffers from, even with high end hardware today. If there was a way to get a 32" FHD display with Gsync, with good frame rate range we would have gotten that instead, but there isn’t.

Lets see what happens with the RTX 2060 after this recent KO release from EVGA, if nothing decent comes from it then I’ll just go with a cheaper card for now, and upgrade the entire system further down the line.

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You are mistaken, there is a FPS range for G-sync to actually work and it’s from 30 to the max hz of the display.
So below 30 it will not work.

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Yeah, Ryzen 3700x or Intel i9 9900 is the way to go.

Forget the soon to be launched Intel ix 10xxx series, there’s been reports of issues with thermal and power usage. 380w is frankly appalling but something that was to happen when you push 14nm so much as intel has. (Hence the delay at the moment, they’re trying to get that down.)

If set properly you can avoid wow going below 30fps anyways, that’s what party/raid graphical settings are for. Just reduce the quality to an acceptable level when 20 odd people are all firing out spells as well as mobs, bosses.