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Cheap vid card needed.


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Ugh! Just heard back from the tech checking my computer. It was indeed my video card that died (old GTX670.)

 

This was the worst possible outcome. The price of video cards went thru the stratosphere in the past year. The motherboard was still under warranty, so replacing it would have been free. Even "junk" cards that went for $100 a year ago are going for $300 right now.

 

Any recommendations for a decently priced comparable video card? (nothing older/slower than what I had.)

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4 hours ago, OysterMug said:

Ugh! Just heard back from the tech checking my computer. It was indeed my video card that died (old GTX670.)

 

This was the worst possible outcome. The price of video cards went thru the stratosphere in the past year. The motherboard was still under warranty, so replacing it would have been free. Even "junk" cards that went for $100 a year ago are going for $300 right now.

 

Any recommendations for a decently priced comparable video card? (nothing older/slower than what I had.)

Conventional wisdom is to just buy a complete system, but you may be in the worst position possible.   Look at it this way, if you buy X video card, you get a free computer thrown in.   Something like this https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/acer-aspire-tc-895-ua91

as long as you have a HDD that you can move to the new system.    This features an integrated GPU, but..... it is close (from what I can tell about the very biased PC Mag spec sheet).     Cyrpto miners are driving up the market for retail cards, but contracts for GPU suppliers to computer makers were written before all this craziness with COVID and Musk's Dogecoin talk.

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Thanks for the replies. I found a local vendor that's still selling GTX970's for $380 (960's for under $300, but they're crap) and maybe... JUST MAYBE... a local wholesaler that has 1660's still advertised on their website for under $250 (if still in stock.)

 

If I can get them to honor the listed price, I can buy two, sell the second on eBay, and cover the cost of both. Wish me luck.

 

PS: I've also considered checking out some local pawn shops for a used PC I could salvage for the card.

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2 hours ago, OysterMug said:

Thanks for the replies.

One more... may sound stupid at first, but used/ refurbished on Amazon. YOU have to do a little research on the seller reputation, return policy and whether the product might be backed by Amazon, but sometimes you can get a great deal.

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I personally do not recommend refurbished 1000, 2000, and 3000 from Nvidia.

Looks like they are literally burned out. Had a few friends that got cards that were working at reduced speed/power but paid about full price.

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On 6/3/2021 at 6:09 PM, BillBellochek said:

I have a GTX 1050 just sitting in my NAS, not doing anything useful right now. I can pull it out and sell it to you for $170 shipped (shipped in the US).

 

Get thee to eBay!

 

image.png.c434c2caa8fd153ff54255c25c5d62a4.png

Insanity!

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21 hours ago, CPU said:

I personally do not recommend refurbished 1000, 2000, and 3000 from Nvidia.

Looks like they are literally burned out. Had a few friends that got cards that were working at reduced speed/power but paid about full price.

 

Yeah, those cards are being used for mining. But if you're tech savvy, you can remove the heatsink and reapply a fresh layer of compound to bring it close to new.

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If you are willing to buy off ebay, you have to be extremely careful. I bought one off a trusted buyer. Card still running excellent after 3 years. Dead givaway it's fraud is if they use an advertised image and don't show the actual card in many images.

Edited by Guest
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3 hours ago, endgame † addiction said:

If you are willing to buy off ebay, you have to be extremely careful. I bought one off a trusted buyer. Card still running excellent after 3 years. Dead givaway it's fraud is if they use an advertised image and don't show the actual card in many images.

 

Yes. The gtx670 I've been using for the past 7 years was bought used off eBay.

 

I was just the winning bidder on a "Superclocked" gtx970 for only $152 (plus shipping taking me to $182.) Includes power adapter. Real photo used. Seller says he's selling it only b/c he's upgrading to a 2060.

 

A brand new (not overclocked) 970 sells locally for $380, so I think I got a good deal (I had been hoping for a 1660, but they keep going for over $400. That's nuts.)

 

So I should be rolling again with my primary PC in about a week. :)

 

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2 hours ago, OysterMug said:

 

Yes. The gtx670 I've been using for the past 7 years was bought used off eBay.

 

I was just the winning bidder on a "Superclocked" gtx970 for only $152 (plus shipping taking me to $182.) Includes power adapter. Real photo used. Seller says he's selling it only b/c he's upgrading to a 2060.

 

A brand new (not overclocked) 970 sells locally for $380, so I think I got a good deal (I had been hoping for a 1660, but they keep going for over $400. That's nuts.)

 

So I should be rolling again with my primary PC in about a week. :)

 

 

Not bad. I got a 970 as well. Great for 1080.

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I use a 30" 2K (2160x1600) monitor (I *hate* the 16:9 ratio. 2160x1600 is the largest 16:10 resolution you can still buy.)

 

If my old gtx670 could handle that resolution at 45-65fps, I have no doubt the 970 will too. ? (Eager to run some benchmarks. I save all my old benchmarks from every card I've owned for comparison sake.)

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On 6/3/2021 at 1:18 PM, OysterMug said:

Ugh! Just heard back from the tech checking my computer. It was indeed my video card that died (old GTX670.)

 

This was the worst possible outcome. The price of video cards went thru the stratosphere in the past year. The motherboard was still under warranty, so replacing it would have been free. Even "junk" cards that went for $100 a year ago are going for $300 right now.

 

Any recommendations for a decently priced comparable video card? (nothing older/slower than what I had.)

 

Not gonna like my suggestion, but if I'm gonna have to be brutally honest with you, you're better off buying a pre-built computer. The price for a single decent GPU is comparable (sometimes more expensive), and this is all assuming that the GPU is even available in stock.

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On 6/4/2021 at 1:47 PM, OysterMug said:

Thanks for the replies. I found a local vendor that's still selling GTX970's for $380 (960's for under $300, but they're crap) and maybe... JUST MAYBE... a local wholesaler that has 1660's still advertised on their website for under $250 (if still in stock.)

 

If I can get them to honor the listed price, I can buy two, sell the second on eBay, and cover the cost of both. Wish me luck.

 

PS: I've also considered checking out some local pawn shops for a used PC I could salvage for the card.

Well, it depends on what you need, if you want a graphics card to tide you over for now, it's ok, unless you run some pretty new

However, it is not a very future safe card, I have one and while it's great as long as the VRAM is not maxed out or close to it, once you max that out you are in trouble.

The issue with the 970 is that there's 3.5 GB that are connected via the fast bus and the other 0.5 are really slow.

Most games that I play don't hit the 4 GB, yet, except Star Citizen and Kingdom Come Deliverance (Medium there) but in those it really is struggling. *

 

Honestly I would recommend getting either a 1060 or if that is not possible a 960, mainly for the bigger VRAM.

However, avoid the respective 3GB and 2GB versions like the plague....they are not worth it.

A 1060 is minimally slower when the VRAM is not maxed out, but quite a bit faster if maxed out.

The 960 is usually slower, unless the VRAM is maxed out.

 

One could go technically for a 980 or 980 Ti.....but those are too close to the 1070 and 1060 in pricing to make sense imho.

 

Nvidia has been to miserly with the VRAM in the last few generations, imho.

 

As for pre-builts, depends, I am in Germany and several system builders/manufacturers are out of GPUs as well.

That or they have the shitty GT 1030. Seriously they are selling you Gamer pre-builds with GPUs as "Optional" and if you can get GPUs pricings are nuts. Some 1070s are selling upwards of 300€. Nevermind 2000 cards, some new ones are selling for 600-700 Euros. 3000's, well at least those that are availlable (3070s) are north of 1,000 Euros at the moment.

The Radeons are slightly cheaper, but just, they come with a lot of VRAM though. A 6800XT which depending on game can be as good as a 3070 or slightly less than a 3060 costs north of 1,000 Euros, the 6700XT which is usually around the same power as a 3060 goes for around 900 Euros.

 

Honestly, right now I'd recommend buying anything but GPU, if one can help it. And generally stuff with an eye to what lasts....I recently replaced the steering wheel/pedal combo and am buying a new shifter, because I know they'll last.

I know that doesn't help you, at all.

 

*SC 3.13 is really, really bad, going down as low 12 fps at times, which is not good in combat. ;) Most other games like say Pcars 2, AMS 2, Arma 3, DCS, all the IL-2 including the Great Battles and Cliffs of Dover run fine. But then all those are sims which focus heavily on the CPU. Rising Storm Vietnam and even Squad are running fine.  (not on Max settings though)

Assetto Corsa Competizione which is based on the Unreal engine is struggling a bit, if you crank it to the max with a big grid in bad weather.  but you can have it still good looking and running fine.

The old Train Sim World on the same engine is running mostly fine.

 

Those are the newest ones I'm running, well on new engines that is. I tuned out of the AAA Gaming market for the most part, those games are mostly boring. And a few of those I bought, the Codemasters F1 Games, gave me more trouble than any of the idependent niche ones ever did. Strangely enough those are way better programmed.

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Thx. The old 670 (a 2GB PCIe 2.0 x16 DX11 card) served me well for 7 years. The most taxing graphical program it ran was VX with H5free. ?

 

The "new" 970 (a 4GB PCIe 3.0 x16 DX12 card) should serve me well (from 670 to 970. A pretty lateral move.)

Edited by OysterMug
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3 hours ago, OysterMug said:

Thx. The old 670 (a 2GB PCIe 2.0 x16 DX11 card) served me well for 7 years. The most taxing graphical program it ran was VX with H5free. ?

 

The "new" 970 (a 4GB PCIe 3.0 x16 DX12 card) should serve me well (from 670 to 970. A pretty lateral move.)

Well, you should be able to feel the difference in the more VRAM though....it might enable you to run supersampling with it...if VX and Hook do not have some rendering issues with that.

 

Good to see that you could get what you need without loosing too much money. Personally I'm still kicking myself for not buying those 1070s last summer, when they went for about 150-200 Euros. Ah well, that's life.

 

I went to 970 from the 570...which sadly had decided to die half a year before the 1070s came out.

DX12 or Vulkan are pretty decent, if you get a game that works with them....which is pretty rare.

 

If you want more options with the drivers or to be able to easily backup profiles, the Nivida Profile Inspector is worth a look.

https://github.com/Orbmu2k/nvidiaProfileInspector/releases

 

I used to use it and it's predecessor the NvidiaIspector a lot for supersampling profiles, but not as much anymore. Generally I leave the driver on "optimal Performance" and set the games to "prefer maximum performance" to get the full performance in games. For most games that is enough, but there is a list of compatibility bits:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15UvZ6COCpaD8JJkMqB4KMTxBXoEfDuaDiiP--H4BJ-U/edit#gid=1911323755

You could do a lot of SGSSAA with the old 570...although the 1.25 GB VRAM did put some serious limits to that. :D 

 

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I'M BACK!

 

Okay, I know I was never really gone, but my "new" video card arrived today and my primary computer is back up & running after nearly a month.

 

After some testing/experimenting to see what kind of improvement I get from the new card, I plan to do a few quick uploads.

 

Thanks to all for the feedback.

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Yep, plus layoffs due to Covid tanking inventories, plus Trump's little Trade War with China blew chip prices into the stratosphere.

 

All electronics prices went up, but video cards were affected most because of Miners. ?

 

Brand new RTX3080ti sell on eBay for around $1,700. ?

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It is not only the miners now.

Also the mass buyers.

 

Because the shortage, the cards can be bought quickly at high prices and the re-sold later at even higher prices.

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