1070 Upgrade help

[shredz]

Situation: My son has a GTX 770 that needs to be upgraded. He games at 1080p.

I game at 2560x1080p (love the ultrawide) and currently have a GTX 1070. Plan is give my 1070 to my son and buy myself something new.

Problem: I've been researching all the latest cards and drawing a blank. The RTX 2060 isn't much of an upgrade from my 1070 and since I'm not gaming at 1440p anyway it seems like the only real thing it offers is ray tracing support. The GTX 1660 Ti is pretty much neck and neck with my 1070. And the GTX 1660 vanilla would be fine if I buy it for my son and keep my 1070. The RTX 2070 is $500. Wow.

Question: For 2560x1080p can you recommend an upgrade from my 1070?

EDIT: FYI, I did try an RX 580 8GB as a christmas gift but he had endless crashes playing black ops 4 and other games. I troubleshot it for more than a week and out of frustration moved it to his brothers computer who doesnt play games much. He hasn't had any problems yet. No idea what caused it. But I want to go nvidia on this next purchase.

 

[happy medium]

overclock your gtx1070, should net you 10% more performance easily,
early next year we should have more options to upgrade a 1070 cheaper.
buy your son a 1660 it will be over 2x faster.

option 2,
try the used market, a gtx 1080ti is the best upgrade but they are like $500 also.

 

[ozzy702]

Used EVGA 1080TI? Really, nothing under a 1080TI/2080 are remotely compelling for someone with a 1070 that games at over standard 1920x1080. Pascal was literally that good and I don't see there being any great upgrades from a price/performance standpoint until the 3000 series.

 

[cfenton]

With a few exceptions (Anthem), you don't need a 1070 level card to play at 1080p. The only real upgrade from a 1070 is a 1080ti/2070/2080/2080TI and none of those are really worth it since you're not running at 1440p or 4K. I'd say get your son a 580 if the bundled games are appealing, or a 1660 if they aren't.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Buy him a used 970 and wait until prices come down or something better comes out.

 

[ozzy702]

Buy him a used 970 and wait until prices come down or something better comes out.

Or a used 570/580 for dirt cheap. That's personally the route I would go. Use the 1070 until the 3000 series and upgrade then. AMD likely won't have much of an upgrade from a 1070 with NAVI and current 2000 series cards aren't attractive from a price/performance standpoint for 3000 series is really the only thing worth waiting for.

 

[shredz]

Thanks guys. I'm going to look on ebay for options. I did buy him a 580 but had some serious crash issues and not sure why. I moved that card to his older brothers computer and had no issues so far (but he doesn't play games very much). Anyway, kinda gun shy on AMD right now after that experience.

 

[ozzy702]

Thanks guys. I'm going to look on ebay for options. I did buy him a 580 but had some serious crash issues and not sure why. I moved that card to his older brothers computer and had no issues so far (but he doesn't play games very much). Anyway, kinda gun shy on AMD right now after that experience.

Assuming the hardware is good (most used 570/580 will have been used for mining), a 570/580 should be rock solid. Just run DDU, wipe drivers, and install the newest drivers from AMD. I run a 580 on one of my boxes, a 2080 on another and a 2080TI on my main box, meh, I have no problems recommending AMD.

 

[Guru]

Buy your son a RX 580 8GB, it comes with 2 free games($120 value) as well, and those cards sell for as low as $150. You'll save on your pocket and you'll give him a great GPU that is twice as fast as his current one. Buying used RX 580 is a terrible idea, they essentially sell for the same price that you can get them retail and come with NO games. Just the two free games you get with a new RX 580 is worth $120, you are essentially playing just $30-40 for the GPU.

Alternatively you can buy him a GTX 1660 for $230. This card is about 10% faster than the RX 580.

 

[shredz]

Buy your son a RX 580 8GB, it comes with 2 free games($120 value) as well, and those cards sell for as low as $150. You'll save on your pocket and you'll give him a great GPU that is twice as fast as his current one. Buying used RX 580 is a terrible idea, they essentially sell for the same price that you can get them retail and come with NO games. Just the two free games you get with a new RX 580 is worth $120, you are essentially playing just $30-40 for the GPU.

Alternatively you can buy him a GTX 1660 for $230. This card is about 10% faster than the RX 580.

I won't be going with an RX580, I tried one and had bad results (I updated my OP above). Not much value to be had on ebay right now.

So it's either GTX 1660, 1660Ti for him or an RTX 2060/2070 for me I guess.

 

[Guru]

I won't be going with an RX580, I tried one and had bad results (I updated my OP above). Not much value to be had on ebay right now.

So it's either GTX 1660, 1660Ti for him or an RTX 2060/2070 for me I guess.

Did you buy retail RX 580? You might have also come across PSU issues, the RX 580 does use up to 200W when overclocked, custom AIB models up to 170W out of the box, so a weaker and/or cheaper PSU might not be able to handle it.

 

[shredz]

Guru, yes it was a brand new Powercolor Red Dragon 8gb RX580. The power supply is 620w seasonic. I thought it could be PSU also but I ruled that out because the GTX 770 which is working well now actually has a higher TDP at 230w. So I really don't know what the issue was. I was at my wits end so I just swapped it into his brothers computer. His brother doesn't play intensive FPS games and hasnt had any problems at all. He plays games like QUBE 2, Subnautica, etc....

Side note: I would have returned it but it came with the 2 game bundle which has a huge GOTCHA attached. Newegg billed me $99 for the game bundle and the rest was the purchase price of the card. So if I returned the card, I would only get the difference. Just a PSA.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, your first mistake was buying a PowerColor, IMHO, rather than an MSI or XFX. I've "heard stories" about PowerColor. Anyways, there's a reason that they're $20-30 cheaper than better name brands.

 

[ozzy702]

Well, your first mistake was buying a PowerColor, IMHO, rather than an MSI or XFX. I've "heard stories" about PowerColor. Anyways, there's a reason that they're $20-30 cheaper than better name brands.

Heh, yeah, my PowerColor cards have had a rather high failure rate compared to Sapphire and XFX. Strangely enough the MSI Gaming X cards have fans that die prematurely (MSI Armor fans appear to be fine) but they have nice coolers.

 

[shredz]

Well you live and you learn I guess. So for my next purchase of some kind of Nvidia what do you recommend? EVGA Asus Zotac gigabyte?

 

[VirtualLarry]

EVGA, pretty-much hands-down. Or maybe MSI.

 

[Markfw]

Used EVGA 1080TI, I have sold 10 of them. Replaced with EVGA 2080TI

 

[ozzy702]

Well you live and you learn I guess. So for my next purchase of some kind of Nvidia what do you recommend? EVGA Asus Zotac gigabyte?

EVGA if you're buying used. EVGA or MSI if you're buying new. I've owned close to 100 GPUs over the past six years and EVGA and MSI are the only vendors that I've experience quality customer service with.

I picked up two MSI 390 Gaming X gpus in 2016 and used them for a year. They both went dead within a month of each other. I warrantied them and they called me up and said they couldn't replace them with more 390s because they were out but that they would cut me checks for the MSRP of each GPU. I ended up making money off them (I originally purchased them on sale) even after shipping them back. I've had a few other excellent experiences with MSI. A friend of mine sent in their 1060 for warranty, and was given a 1070 in exchange. That 1070 went bad, which would have been super annoying, except they replaced it with a water cooled 1080 that's worked flawless ever since.

Asus and Gigabyte are horrible to work with.