Question Got RTX 2070, I'm happier than I expected! 'Tested' top PC games:

[Zeze]

I had my trusty 1060 6gb I got it new many many moons ago. With the falling GPU prices, I bought a used 2070 from a friend for $200. Yes I know it was a premature purchase as GPU prices continue to fall with holidays season before us. I should've waited until AMD announces their next lineup and see how that impacts the new & used market with the RTX 4000 prices. But I just gave in to my impulses.

I have a near 10-year old then-budget rig of i3-2130, 8 gb RAM, HDD, and HD6870.
It was upgraded numerous times to what it is today: i7-3770 (old & used, fastest cpu for my mobo), 16 gb RAM, 2TB SATA SSD, and GTX 1060 6gb.

Now I have the RTX 2070. I have consumed too many articles and videos on this while the GPU was being sent to me. I know it's same or just a touch above 1080ti. I was cautiously excited.

Then the 2070 arrived. Well it's pretty good! I think the CPU may be bottlenecking a bit, but I am quite surprised. This is for 1920x1080p 60fps gaming.

Read Dead Redemption 2: Few things are set as ultra + 1.5x upscaling gives me 40-50 fps. The game is notoriously blurry at 1080p hence the upscaling per reddit nerds. The game looks gorgeous, but some areas it's started to look dated vs modern open-world games such as Farcry 6 or even Halo Infinite (yes i know these aren't RPGs)
Original game score 9/10
2070 upgrade excitement score 8/10


Halo Infinite: Holy cow, my old card struggled with this so much. 2070 completely blows it away. Unlike RDR2, I set everything to max and it's butter smooth at vsync locked 60fps. I think it clocks in somewhere around 70-80 fps without vsync. This is a complete homerun. This game has a very satisfying gunplay. And 2070 makes it perfect with max 1080 res gaming. You can just mow down enemies with various thumping weapons at max settings. It is a very satisfying experience, more so than Doom remakes.
Original game score 8/10
2070 upgrade excitement score 10/10


Forza Horizon 5: I didn't care for 2070's ray tracing feature because it's first gen and also underpowered for xx70 line-up. But it doesn't seem to impact performance too much here (5-7 fps drop) compared to Far Cry 6. But then you notice less here too. This game is still demanding and I can only set few things to ultra. It kind of feels like 2070 didn't matter too much visually. My previous 1060 6gb made the game looks perfectly fine and beautiful with high settings at 60 fps.
Original game score 8/10
2070 upgrade excitement score 7/10

Overwatch 2: OW2 actually uses a new engine compared to 1. Despite being basically the same game, my old card struggled with OW2 during the beta (when compared side by side 1 vs 2 beta). 2070 makes it an auto-max in OW2. It is utterly gorgeous.
Original game score (of OW2 Beta, not OW1) 5/10
2070 upgrade excitement score 10/10

Far Cry 6: I just bought this so I don't know how it performed with my old game. The opening is super demanding (40 fps) at Extreme settings. I set most at Ultra and High and the game looks gorgeous. Holy cow, the volumetric fog and drenching amber sunset lightings are utterly gorgeous. Time for RDR2 to have a remake!
Original game score TBD
2070 upgrade excitement score TBD

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade: This game looks gorgeous in its own way. Too many stuttering issues which is a known PC port problem reported by... everyone. I experience it too, but it's tolerable.
Original game score TBD
2070 upgrade excitement score 9/10

Deathloop
Original game score 9/10
2070 upgrade excitement score TBD

Control
Original game score 8/10
2070 upgrade excitement score TBD

Thanks for listening. I wanted to build a 3070/i5-12600k/32gb DDR4 system with a new monitor originally. But even being budget conscious, you end up with $1400~ (WTF). This will have to do as a patient gamer.

I am happy for now.

 

[Stuka87]

If the card does what you want, that's awesome. There will always be something better around the corner.

Your CPU is a bottlekneck. I skipped the 3k series intels (I went to a 4690K), but I would assume you could overclock it a fair amount to get some more life out of it. I ran my 4690K at 4.5GHz for years. The friend I gave it to still uses it.

 

[Zeze]

If the card does what you want, that's awesome. There will always be something better around the corner.

Your CPU is a bottlekneck. I skipped the 3k series intels (I went to a 4690K), but I would assume you could overclock it a fair amount to get some more life out of it. I ran my 4690K at 4.5GHz for years. The friend I gave it to still uses it.

i7-3770 is a non-K version. I know little bout OC'ing but googling tells me my CPU just isn't worth overclocking.

 

[Stuka87]

i7-3770 is a non-K version. I know little bout OC'ing but googling tells me my CPU just isn't worth overclocking.

Oh, then yeah, you are basically stuck with it as it is. Technically it can be tweaked up some if the board supports it, but its for little gain.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I had a 2060 super which is roughly the equivalent of the 2070. Great 1080p card. 1440p was excellent depending on title.

As someone that loves budget gaming, I really like your choice for the money. And you helped out a m8 and reduced future e-waste for the bonus points. Then for the perfecta, you avoided OS and software installs.

For searchers from the U.S. that find themselves here, that own old i7 or FX 8&9 EDIT: teh vast majority of these were PCIE 2.0 so lets limit the advice to old i7 and Xeon series platforms with PCIe 3.0 . The 6600 is a x8 card so x8 PCIE 2.0 is going to hold it back. If you are looking for this kind of drop in upgrade, here is something to consider. An RX6600 can be found for $239 new in box with warranty at this time. I see them for under $200 used. For DX12 and Vulcan, AMD has less driver overhead than Nvidia. It can help out that old CPU in newer titles that don't support DX11. They did a praise worthy rework of their DX11 drivers recently too.

 

[Zeze]

I had a 2060 super which is roughly the equivalent of the 2070. Great 1080p card. 1440p was excellent depending on title.

As someone that loves budget gaming, I really like your choice for the money. And you helped out a m8 and reduced future e-waste for the bonus points. Then for the perfecta, you avoided OS and software installs.

For searchers from the U.S. that find themselves here, that own old i7 or FX 8&9 EDIT: teh vast majority of these were PCIE 2.0 so lets limit the advice to old i7 and Xeon series platforms with PCIe 3.0 . The 6600 is a x8 card so x8 PCIE 2.0 is going to hold it back. If you are looking for this kind of drop in upgrade, here is something to consider. An RX6600 can be found for $239 new in box with warranty at this time. I see them for under $200 used. For DX12 and Vulcan, AMD has less driver overhead than Nvidia. It can help out that old CPU in newer titles that don't support DX11. They did a praise worthy rework of their DX11 drivers recently too.

Those are very sweet words for someone who's too broke to spend money of PC gaming.

Yea, my rigs been so frannkenstein'd it's no longer feasible to upgrade... the OG fans have been amazing.

-i7-3770 is the fastest CPU my mobo can support.

-16gb DDR3 1600Mhz Dual Channel is the max my mobo can support

-I bought a brand new 2TB HDD. It's M.2 NVMe, but my mobo doesn't support NVMe it. So I bought a $8 PCI-E adapter to perform at slightly better than SATA speeds. Gaming isn't bothered by SSD, so it's fine here.

- My RTX 2070 is probably the highest you want to go for 1080p gaming with above setup. Further upgrades require a new CPU, mobo, and might as well get a new DDR4/5 at 32gigs/64gigs of RAM.

-My 1080p monitor is perfect for above. Future gaming will require 1440p / 4K monitors, and my setup is all inter-bottlenecked.

In another words this old rig just got $400 spent on it for the final set of upgrades (2TB SDD & RTX 2070)

This rig is a champ.

 

[Ranulf]

Read Dead Redemption 2: Few things are set as ultra + 1.5x upscaling gives me 40-50 fps. The game is notoriously blurry at 1080p hence the upscaling per reddit nerds.

You might try turning down a few things to improve framerates. Hardware unboxed had a decent video on game settings for RDR2. I usually turn down the water quality but I haven't messed with upscaling.

 

[blckgrffn]

Nice! I like that you went with an adapter for the NVME drive so you can carry forward effectively. Buying a SATA SSD now is not great unless you need it (I had to buy one for a Pi because the USB can't support NVME power draw levels, for example.)

I can say for sure though that your CPU is going to give you some weird 1% lows in games though. Clearly you are OK with how it is all working out, but you can expect to get even more mileage out of that $200 2070 (great value imo, no matter what else launches this year) when you upgrade the CPU. Even a 3600 would be a big jump, but I expect that you could either get a "dead end" DDR4 based upgrade that is massively faster (thinking 5800X or better) a year from now for a relatively crazy good value or skip DDR4 altogether (although this seems an expensive route with motherboard and memory costs rising) and you'll get a second shot of noticeably smoother gameplay with the same GPU.

It's just something to look forward too, that's all I am saying, and your storage decision will be even better then

 

[Zeze]

You might try turning down a few things to improve framerates. Hardware unboxed had a decent video on game settings for RDR2. I usually turn down the water quality but I haven't messed with upscaling.

Yes sir. I watched that fully and followed all the settings. And 2070 has plenty of room.. so I upscaled it 1.5x for the game's terrible blurriness at 1080p (reddit nerds say). And that upscaling is expensive. I guess I'm just greedy since the card can do Hardware Unboxed settings more than well.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

You could lock rootin' tootin' cowboy shootin' 2 to 30fps and have a good time, I've done it. But with your 2070 you can use DLDSR and DLSS together at the same time. It is going to give you the visuals and performance.

I question the reddit analysis however. I have played on 1080 native and it looks great. I suppose if you usually play at a higher res, play at non native, or are an image quality snob, then maybe?

 

[Zeze]

You could lock rootin' tootin' cowboy shootin' 2 to 30fps and have a good time, I've done it. But with your 2070 you can use DLDSR and DLSS together at the same time. It is going to give you the visuals and performance.

I question the reddit analysis however. I have played on 1080 native and it looks great. I suppose if you usually play at a higher res, play at non native, or are an image quality snob, then maybe?

1. I don't even think about RTX stuff since this is first gen and a mid-tier card. Where would I toggle those - did I miss it in-game or via Nvidia Control Panel? 2070 is DLSS 1.0 right? Are those features worth it (with ghosting and whatever issues DLSS have)? I guess it doesn't' hurt to try.

2. No it's definitely not an image snob thing... the textures aren't super crisp. I.. uh... beat RDR2 first on STADIA non-pro (which means 1080 res compressed). Even coming from that dog-barf, the PC-installed RDR2's textures at 1080p aren't too crisp. It bothers me.. a lot.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

DSR is control panel, DLSS is in the game menu.

I am 55+ now and wear reading glasses like your avatar. I will defer to your superior vision on 1080p IQ.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I took a quick look around, and there are a lot of complaints of TAA making for a blurry mess. Might want to make certain that is turned off.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Read Dead Redemption 2: Few things are set as ultra + 1.5x upscaling gives me 40-50 fps. The game is notoriously blurry at 1080p hence the upscaling per reddit nerds. The game looks gorgeous, but some areas it's started to look dated vs modern open-world games such as Farcry 6 or even Halo Infinite (yes i know these aren't RPGs)
Original game score 9/10
2070 upgrade excitement score 8/10

Really? I thought RDR2 looked better at 1080p Hardware Unboxed Recommended settings than Far Cry 5 does at 1440 high (both on a 1660 Super).

 

[Zeze]

Really? I thought RDR2 looked better at 1080p Hardware Unboxed Recommended settings than Far Cry 5 does at 1440 high (both on a 1660 Super).

Far Cry 6. Check this day / night cycle.

It's truly an next-gen graphics with enveloping volumetric fog and sunset drenching the entire landscape.

 

[Zeze]

I took a quick look around, and there are a lot of complaints of TAA making for a burry mess. Might want to make certain that is turned off.

Then it's uber crunchy and pixelated. Then you have to go to 4x or 8x MSA options, which are quite expensive to turn on.

I'm currently just doing 1.5x scaling with TAA on with half-way sharpening. It looks great... just needs 10 or so more fps.

I'll try the DSR / DLSS tonight. DLSS looked very bad on Far Cry 6... maybe perhaps it's a AMD native game?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Then it's uber crunchy and pixelated. Then you have to go to 4x or 8x MSA options, which are quite expensive to turn on.

I'm currently just doing 1.5x scaling with TAA on with half-way sharpening. It looks great... just needs 10 or so more fps.

I'll try the DSR / DLSS tonight. DLSS looked very bad on Far Cry 6... maybe perhaps it's a AMD native game?

DLSS works much better at 1440 and especially 4K than with 1080. That's why I am suggesting you upscale and use DLSS in RDR2, it is better than DLSS with native 1080.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Far Cry 6. Check this day / night cycle.

It's truly an next-gen graphics with enveloping volumetric fog and sunset drenching the entire landscape.

Crap, I could swear I was reading vs FC5. Haven't played 6 yet.

 

[Zeze]

Crap, I could swear I was reading vs FC5. Haven't played 6 yet.

You were. I ninja edited. :^)

 

[Stuka87]

Then it's uber crunchy and pixelated. Then you have to go to 4x or 8x MSA options, which are quite expensive to turn on.

I'm currently just doing 1.5x scaling with TAA on with half-way sharpening. It looks great... just needs 10 or so more fps.

I'll try the DSR / DLSS tonight. DLSS looked very bad on Far Cry 6... maybe perhaps it's a AMD native game?

There is no reason to have TAA on if you are down scaling. The whole point of super resolutions is to not need AA. You render the game at a higher resolution, and then down scale it to your native res. There should not be any pixilation in this scenario.

 

[CakeMonster]

Don't hesitate with trying DLSS, but if you're at 1080p, you should use 'Quality' or the input resolution will be so low that it looks funky. Your card will run DLSS 2.3 or whatever the game supports, and it should work great.

 

[DasFox]

If the 2070, more than meets your needs great, but for future Next Gen games, you always have to consider.

And with EVGA out of the game, there are some nice deals on 3000s from them.

 

[Leeea]

If the 2070, more than meets your needs great, but for future Next Gen games, you always have to consider.

And with EVGA out of the game, there are some nice deals on 3000s from them.

Another GPU upgrade for the OP would be a mistake.

A rtx 2070 will be good enough for quite some time at 1080p.


With his CPU, a i7-3770, the 3000 series will do nothing for him. His CPU* is holding him back a lot more then he realizes.


If he does decide to upgrade, his CPU is a far better choice. Jumping to am4 quarter 1 or quarter 2 of 2023 would be a good performance per dollar route for him. Intel might have some compelling offers in the same period.



*I ran a i7-4790k for a brief period with a modern GPU. Even at 4k on my TV I saw a massive performance jump when I upgraded to something modern. I would consider the 4790k better then what he is running.

 

[Zeze]

Cyberpunk 2077 looks gorgeous following a Digital Foundry's optimized settings (with DLSS) + Ray tracing medium at 1080p res. Very very playable at 50-55fps.

Forza Horizon 5 is gorgeous as well with RTX max. I enabled DSR to 4x. But it's very very crunchy. The power lines look awful.

Questions:

1. Why is DSR a global setting? Can't I select it per game basis?

2. Does DSR improve fps or decrease or neutral?

3. If I turn on DSR, what do I do with MSAA / FXAA / TAA (on or off, do they conflict?)

4. Remember I said RDR2, I'm using resolution upscaling for extra texture clarity... but with DSR in the picture.. do I no longer use 1.4x upscaling?

Being an old school gamer, I can't help but to feel like DLSS is just fake stuff vs 'pure' image quality. I notice strange flickering / pixel sparkling, but that's the expected side effect.

But I'm just happy DLSS allows me to play Cyberpunk comfortably.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

All enabling DSR does is make additional resolution options above your monitor's native resolution available for display. Turning on DSR in drivers alone does nothing, you have to select the higher resolution on a per game basis from the game settings menu.

Make sure you set DSR Smoothing to something like 33% if you're doing 4x on a 1080p display. Will help with some of the jaggies that show up with cramming a 4k image on a 1080p screen.

Don't touch any antialiasing with DSR. Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) is one of the oldest brute force AA methods (SSAA, or Super Sample Anti Aliasing): It is rendering more pixels than your screen can actually display, then downsampling the image to a lower resolution. Thanks to the additional sub-pixel info your card is sending to your monitor, everything will naturally look smoother and "anti- aliased" which is what all the other AA methods are trying to do with shortcuts.

DLSS is not DSR. Its actually exactly the opposite. While DSR is is a *downsscaling* technique (over render, then scale down), DLSS is an upscaling technique (underrender, then scale up to full screen). The secret sauce there is NV's image reconstruction techniques that allow a lower resolution image to be displayed at your screen resolution without a lot (or even any) image quality loss.

If you're CPU bottlenecked, you use DSR (or if you just want incredible image quality). If you're heavily GPU bottlenecked, you use DLSS (but unlike DSR, its not a global setting and has to be supported by the game).