GPU question – Nvidia or Intel?

I think my GPU has gone pop (I’ll be testing another card tomorrow to make sure, but I’m not getting any output from any of the ports, and I can’t remote into the PC either which makes me think it’s stalling during boot – though I guess it could be something else in the box).

Anyway – since I’ve just got into playing Cyberpunk 2077, that’ll mean a new GPU.

I’m not a super heavy gamer so I don’t want or need to spend loads – but I do want something reasonable. Gaming at 1080p, occasional Blender, occasional Photoshop and Lightroom.

Current set up is an i5 12400f, 32 gb of ram and an old GeForce 1070.

I was planning on sticking with Nvidia and going for a 4060 for around £270, which looks to be a decent fit. But then I saw the new Intel B580 which is around the same price and seems to be getting some pretty stellar reviews (and has 12 gb rather than 8, which seems like a useful uplift.

Has anyone tried the new Intel GPUs, or got any good reviews to read? Or anything else I should be looking at? AMD competitors seem to have more ram, but lower overall performance.

Nvidia has been in the game longer and their cards just work.

anything else I should be looking at?

A console?

As an employee of intel I would strongly suggest going Nvidia. (Fwiw  Depending on how you define it, intel have been in the game longer)

AMD cards are decent as well, I’ve got an AMD 7600XT on my 1080 machine in the study, which is a 12400f with 32GB of ram like yours. The card has 16GB of RAM which seemed like a better choice for longevity than nvidias offerings at that price point.

I recall the RTX 4060 being a widely criticised card at the time of release. Not sure how it’d stack up a year later mind you

LTT 4060 Review – YouTube

Do you have a max budget?

Over the years I’ve settled into Intel for CPU, and Nvidia for GPU.

Over the years I’ve settled into Intel for CPU, and Nvidia for GPU.

Both of which are maybe not the best choices of the current generations – intel CPUs have had unusually high failure rates in the last few generations. And Nvidia, while their top end cards are still the best, have become hugely expensive, especially for their mid-lower end offerings (especially on release of a generation of cards, the mid gen refresh tends to be what the card should have been to start with), where they’re trading on the reputation of the top end stuff.

In my experience VRAM plays a bigger role than is often mentioned in some performance reviews. There are games I play that as you increase textures and detail settings VRAM comes in to play. If you’re playing at 1080p with global presets at low / med then it shouldn’t be an issue. But if you like more detailed textures and smoother edges more VRAM might be needed.

What I’m waffle on about is an AMD card for a similar budget that has a performance 5% below NVidia might cope better with games with high VRAM demand. I think Cyberpunk falls into that catagory.

Depends on your priorities, Max fps and less detail, lower fps more detail?

I would sit on it a few weeks as the new NVidia cards will be announced/released.. which potentially cause a slight pricing shake up

In my mind, CYberpunk 2077 requires an Nvidia card.. hands down……I havent used an AMD card this century, i would consider one for my lads pc however. And intel, isn’t on my radar right now

This is quite an in depth review of the new intel cards (i’ve not watched it all)

It covers some handy comparisons to other cards too.

It covers cyberpunk (at 1440p) at about about the 14m40sec mark – it does surprisingly well, but bear in mind they are using a more powerfull CPU, but its also running at higher resolution…

I’d watch the full video to get a full overview before dropping the cash though… it looks like a good contender, soundly whooping the Nvidia 4060’s ass.

A console?

I have a PS4 which occasionally gets used. Not much cop for Blender or Lightroom, though.

Do you have a max budget?

Probs around £300.

If you’d have asked me a day or so ago, I’d have said Nvidia no questions. But as mentioned above, the 4060 wasn’t exactly universally adored, and it sounds like 8 gb of ram is going to be a problem in the next few years (my 1070 had 8 gb, and that’s from 2016).

And there are some pretty compelling reviews for the Arc B580 at the moment, but it’s obviously pretty new still.

I’m not writing off AMD either, the 7600 XT could definitely be an option.

Recently got a NVIDIA RTX 4070 (paired with AMD 7700 processor). Very happy so far. Doesn’t get too hot which is important in the Ghost S1 case I have.

Note, I mostly play Command and Conquer so leading edge graphics is not needed, but I do like to use a sledgehammer to crack nuts 🙂

A console?

Like clockwork 😀

In my mind, CYberpunk 2077 requires an Nvidia card

I’d definitely put AMD on the list. Even the older RX 6800 is still a very relevant GPU, has 16GB and will happily chug along at 100+ fps 1080p (RT off). I’m playing on a Radeon 7900XT and it’s great. Close to 100fps at 1440p with ultra settings and RT on. Plus it was about 60% of RRP from Ebuyer’s Ebay store during the Black Friday nonsense, so maybe hang fire until the Boxing Day sales to see if a similar deal comes up.

First hit on google comparing the 7600xt and 4060 in cyberpunk

So they’re similar, fwiw I think the 7600xt will have greater longevity due to the extra vram – which was my deciding factor in getting it.

I’d be looking at the B580 at that pricepoint.  A 4060 is probably a safer option, but intel’s drivers have came on alot and the B580 is better vfm than a 4060. Neither are going to be ray tracing really, so thats not a factor for me. At 4070 ti level and above I’d go Nvidia for Ray Tracing and frame gen though (which works better when youre already above 60+frames).

Yeah a 4070 ti would be lovely but I just can’t justify the cost for the use it’ll get.

I will be disappearing down a YouTube rabbit hole over the next few days…

I’ve just picked up cyberpunk – I was going to buy it anyways, but being able to test it on a system very similar to yours might be useful. I’ll post up here once it’s downloaded.

I wouldn’t worry about RT at your budget… it’s an expensive ‘nice to have’ but none of the budget/mid range cards do it that well without a big performance hit.

There’s a review of the b580 on tech spot. Looks like a decent vfm card but they’ve been selling fast so getting hold of one might be a challenge.

Quick update – Ran the benchmarks on my system as follows (cba fighting image posting)

Results: Average FPS: 82 – Min FPS: 66.99 – Max FPS: 103.86 – Time: 64.25 – Number of Frames: 5269

System Specs: RX7600XT, 16Gb VRAM, 12400F CPU, 32GB system RAM

Custom Preset: Texture quality: High, Resolution 1920×1080, Windowed borderless mode, Vsync off, max fps off, frame generation off, DLSS off,  Ray tracing off.

Had a play with teh framegen/supersampling/ray tracing but it didn’t look great and RT doesn’t bring that much to the graphics anyways, imo

I would and did buy a 1080 Ti rather than a 4060 as it’s much cheaper for slightly better general performance at the cost of much higher power consumption.