I'm considering a graphics card for my computer. My current system has a Ryzen 5 5600 with Radeon Graphics, 16Gb of RAM, my monitor's 1080p, and I have no graphics card.
My main reasons include using Blender and games that I play such as Bonfire and Wildlife , as the former is using a Unity engine, and the latter an Unreal engine.
Thing is, graphic cards are expensive, even more when my brother and I were looking for ones at out local computer shop, and my priority at this moment is a scanner and a hard disk drive for my files and games.

Should I look for a graphics card that's under $200 and since my processor is a mid-range Ryzen, what do you recommend?
Also, does a GTX1080 still hold up with those games that I have mentioned?

Forgot to add this, but here's the specs for the games.

Gonna put the specs for Wildlife from steam for now.
Minimum:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 1060
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: On-board

Recommended:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce RTX 3070
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: On-board

Do I necessarily need an RTX 3070 to run that game, if there are graphics cards like its AMD equivalent Radeon RX6700XT? Will it run like crap if I have a graphics card a step lower than those?

alexyorim said:
I'm considering a graphics card for my computer. My main reasons include using Blender and games that I play such as Bonfire and Wildlife , as they're using a Unity engine.
Thing is, graphic cards are expensive, even more when my brother and I were looking for ones at out local computer shop, and my priority at this moment is a scanner and a hard disk drive for my files and games.

Should I look for a graphics card that's under $200 and since my processor is a mid-range Ryzen, what do you recommend?
Also, does a GTX1080 still hold up with those games that I have mentioned?

Sadly you're out of luck. Even some of the most inexpensive AMD and Intel cpus are over $200. Take a look into the Intel i5. I don't think you need a graphics card in order to use Blender, all you need is a strong enough processor. If you haven't bought one already, spend that extra $200 on an Intel i9.

Your post is kind of scattered to a degree, knowing what your current specs are might help in giving suggestions. However the gtx 1080 is still holding strong, it is able to handle just about any AAA release even now, as long as it isn't a broken unoptimized mess. The rx 6600 might be a good idea as it hovers around 200 right now if the 1080 isn't something you actually have.

Having a ryzen means you have high upgrade potential, so staying on platform is probably a safe bet there. With last gen having upgrades all the way to the 5950 16c/32t for max threadcount or 5800x3d for maximum per core performance which exceeds the standard model 7000 series.

It also highly depends on what you want to do with it. Gaming versus crypto (LOL, no) versus Stable Diffusion versus 4K video.
For example, you can get a really cheap GPU (no video output) card that would be decent if trying out GPGPU applications.

Motherboard prices have been a total joke even longer than GPUs were. More than a high-end CPU. :(

There's a reason that people are grabbing up last-generation servers (or even previous than last-generation) and tossing in a GTX 1080 or whatever they can get cheap. You can get a T5810(Dell Precision tower) with 3GHz+ 12-core Xeon pretty cheaply (less than price of some motherboards, sigh). I ended up helping my brother get one of these a year or two ago.
https://www.greenpcgamers.com/dell/dell-precision-models/precision-ddr4-based-workstations/precision-t5810-gaming-computer/ Goes into detail of components. You don't really need all that junk but it's an idea of what's available.
https://www.theserverstore.com/dell-precision-t5810.html Where we got his. We carefully matched bus speed of CPU and RAM to get biggest bang for buck. Later, ordered more RAM as it's kind of cheap upgrade.
He wanted it for World Machine, for obvious reasons. Many cores makes for faster geometry! :P Running with RTX 2060 if I remember right. Basically the upgrade to the GTX 1080 cards. I got REALLY lucky to find one on eVGA's site 3 years back. XD

One big gotcha with anything Dell is that the cases, while nice, are pretty much useless unless using the same board. Like, I don't even think the T7810(dual-socket version)'s motherboard will fit without a lot of work. People are buying these because cheap for what you get. One big difference compared to others in that generation is it uses a 12V-only power supply. This is normally actually an advantage as they're both cheaper and more reliable, but if you need more 5V outputs for 10 HDDs(joking, they won't fit) or enough LEDs to light your room or whatever, you're going to need a voltage convertor (these are around $5-10 on eBay - again, you likely don't need it). Even bigger gotcha: Intel, if that matters to you.

4K video: The GPU is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, here. The drivers should have acceleration for it. Check before buying!
UHD: without breaking the DRM, newest CPUs don't support it, argh!

:edit: No, wait, we got the 2.6GHz 12-core CPU, not one of the 3GHz+ ones. Sorry for inaccuracy. Also, wow, those are under $100 now and I'll be driving to Dallas soon. I guess I can save on the $50 shipping if I use my own gas, haha.

alexyorim said:
I'm considering a graphics card for my computer. My main reasons include using Blender and games that I play such as Bonfire and Wildlife , as they're using a Unity engine.
Thing is, graphic cards are expensive, even more when my brother and I were looking for ones at out local computer shop, and my priority at this moment is a scanner and a hard disk drive for my files and games.

Should I look for a graphics card that's under $200 and since my processor is a mid-range Ryzen, what do you recommend?
Also, does a GTX1080 still hold up with those games that I have mentioned?

https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/bonfire-system-requirements LOL, it 'recommends' a GTX 590. I think we're good to go with a 1080!
https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/wild-life-system-requirements It... barely squeezes through. It 'recommends' a 3070, but a 1060 is minimum.

alphamule said:
https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/bonfire-system-requirements LOL, it 'recommends' a GTX 590. I think we're good to go with a 1080!
https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/wild-life-system-requirements It... barely squeezes through. It 'recommends' a 3070, but a 1060 is minimum.

Oh, not that Bonfire. The Bonfire I'm talking about has orcs on it, and those orcs are, um, porking it.

I have updated my post for this. Since Bonfire is run by Unity, and Wildlife is run by Unreal. I guess they're miles apart from requirements, even though both games were first developed at the same time.
If I use an Radeon equivalent or a 3050, would the game(s) run like crap like my brother is telling me if run use those graphic cards?

alexyorim said:
Oh, not that Bonfire. The Bonfire I'm talking about has orcs on it, and those orcs are, um, porking it.

I have updated my post for this. Since Bonfire is run by Unity, and Wildlife is run by Unreal. I guess they're miles apart from requirements, even though both games were first developed at the same time.
If I use an Radeon equivalent or a 3050, would the game(s) run like crap like my brother is telling me if run use those graphic cards?

Ah, since both were on Steam, thought it was the same. Lazy searching. XD
What you need is A) some benchmarks if the game has a demo screen, or B) The damn devs (or other players) to tell you how well it works.

Yeah, it's likely to run fine but it would be nice to be able to find someone that tried a GTX 1080 or AMD equivalent on it. Your CPU is likely way more powerful than that poor Xeon family I linked to. ;)

"Recommended" is usually pretty soft. Like, it's OK to get a nearly same card (RTX 3050), but maybe a game with a lot of mods installed might get greedy with the RAM or GPU. Fallout 3 and Skyrim back in the day needing way more RAM and thus not playable on 32-bit OS for example. There are texture packs and graphical mods for some Unreal games that suck up GPU cores to render it all fast enough, as well. This games don't use mods, right? Just same content for everyone (no customization)? You should get nearly same results then as other players.

alexyorim said:
I'm considering a graphics card for my computer. My current system has a Ryzen 5 5600 with Radeon Graphics, my monitor's 1080p, and I have no graphics card.

Ok, 5600 is a quite modern mid range cpu. Zero reason to upgrade that right now. 1080p is standard.

An rx590 is a pretty cheap card for reasonable performance. But picking up a RX 6600 or a rtx XX60 card might be a good idea as well if you can find one cheap enough.

Found a 2060 sold and shipped by newegg for $199.99 USD https://www.newegg.com/evga-geforce-rtx-2060-06g-p4-2062-kr/p/N82E16814487434 Might be the best deal you could find really.

RX 6600 for AMD.
RTX 2060 for Nvidia.

The RX 6600 is slightly faster (~11% faster) and has 2 more GBs of VRAM than the RTX 2060, making it a better choice, however Nvidia does have some features that cannot be found on AMD (CUDA, somewhat better Raytracing, better Blender support, Nvidia Encoder, DLSS, etc).

If you only plan on gaming, go for AMD, if you need a multi-purpose (not just gaming) GPU, nvidia is the logical choice.

If you are willing to go the used route, you can find RTX 3060 (12GB) and sometimes RTX 3060 Ti (8 GB) at around that price. Now, the RTX 3060 (Non-Ti) might be the better choice for Blender workloads thanks to its 50% higher VRAM buffer, but the Ti version will be faster overall (~25%).

azero said:
RX 6600 for AMD.
RTX 2060 for Nvidia.

The RX 6600 is slightly faster (~11% faster) and has 2 more GBs of VRAM than the RTX 2060, making it a better choice, however Nvidia does have some features that cannot be found on AMD (CUDA, somewhat better Raytracing, better Blender support, Nvidia Encoder, DLSS, etc).

If you only plan on gaming, go for AMD, if you need a multi-purpose (not just gaming) GPU, nvidia is the logical choice.

And to be fair, a lot of that stuff is getting closer to parity... Not to mention the insanely overpriced RTX 4080 debacle. Very tempted to stay away from RTX. Don't know if I'd be crazy enough to go Intel for GPU this time, though! :P

alphamule said:
And to be fair, a lot of that stuff is getting closer to parity... Not to mention the insanely overpriced RTX 4080 debacle. Very tempted to stay away from RTX. Don't know if I'd be crazy enough to go Intel for GPU this time, though! :P

To say the RTX 4080 is insanely overpriced is selling it short, it's perhaps the first card to have a negative generational price/performance improvement, it is ~71% more expensive while only giving you ~50% more performance.

NOTE ABOUT BLENDER:
Blender does not have good support for older AMD cards. Cycles render engine doesn't work on (iirc) the RX 500s and below. May support some Vega cards.
If you end up with one of those, you might be stuck using blender 2.8 something which was the last time it was supported.
Also get more than 8gb system ram for blender, it might run fine on 8 but it'll become a bottleneck if you want to anything with a lot of verts or particles.

ijerk said:
NOTE ABOUT BLENDER:
Blender does not have good support for older AMD cards. Cycles render engine doesn't work on (iirc) the RX 500s and below. May support some Vega cards.
If you end up with one of those, you might be stuck using blender 2.8 something which was the last time it was supported.
Also get more than 8gb system ram for blender, it might run fine on 8 but it'll become a bottleneck if you want to anything with a lot of verts or particles.

Nvidia generally has better support for anything windows-related, though I don't buy from them on principle anymore

When you have more VRAM than DRAM? Hehe.

Was actually looking at one of these older-generation Tesla GPUs without video output, but the version of APIs they support are way out of date and thus won't work with out-of-the-box GPGPU tools, anymore. K80 24GB (Kepler) are $70ish, for example. Something like 1% of it's original price. :P 9yo space heater, haha. You're actually supposed to have a case fan since they're missing built-in fans. M40 (Maxwell) comes with 12 or 24GB. P40 (Pascal) has 24GB and is around $200. This is about the edge of using modern software like many Python libraries, and they also are useless for gaming, so this is why they're so cheap compared to other cards with double-digit GB's of RAM. The P100 has only 12GB/16GB options but in theory, the faster RAM is useful. Again, all of these cards have no video output so only useful for effectively adding cores to your main GPU. Just mentioned if you ever get into non-gaming applications, you can sometimes get this stuff cheap for your render box. ;) Of course, it'll likely be mined to death, but so will most things on used market now. I guess replace the heatsink compound and get a good fan, and you'll prolong this stuff. Ain't none of them even remotely energy efficient. I also looked at cards like the MI25 which has 16GB of RAM and is based on Vega family.

I'm researching which generations got cut off on some popular programs like Blender. Tl;Dr All the RTX cards are still supported and likely will be for a long while, right?
An interesting option is the AMD CPUs with GPU built-in. APUs or whatever they branded them.

Blender: CUDA 8 (Toolkit 11), OpenCL 1.2
Poser: Doesn't seem too picky? https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2953950 https://www.posersoftware.com/poser-12 System requirements at end of page.
Premier: CUDA 7.5 (Toolkit 10.1), OpenCL 1.3
Stable Diffusion: CUDA 8 (Toolkit 11.3), AMD
Keras:
PyTorch:
Tensorflow:
Folding@Home: Supports almost everything. :)

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/ Way to look up last version a card supports.
https://docs.nvidia.com/deploy/cuda-compatibility/index.html CTRL-F "Which GPUs are supported by the driver ?" It has a list of last toolkit versions for each generation/family of cards.

You can get away with previous versions on older hardware, but these are what will likely be required going forward.

ijerk said:
NOTE ABOUT BLENDER:
Blender does not have good support for older AMD cards. Cycles render engine doesn't work on (iirc) the RX 500s and below. May support some Vega cards.
If you end up with one of those, you might be stuck using blender 2.8 something which was the last time it was supported.
Also get more than 8gb system ram for blender, it might run fine on 8 but it'll become a bottleneck if you want to anything with a lot of verts or particles.

Nvidia generally has better support for anything windows-related, though I don't buy from them on principle anymore

The Blender I have is version 3.2 something, In other words, the best bet is to downgrade to 2.8 or lower in order not to fry my computer?

alexyorim said:
I'm considering a graphics card for my computer. My current system has a Ryzen 5 5600 with Radeon Graphics, 16Gb of RAM, my monitor's 1080p, and I have no graphics card.
My main reasons include using Blender and games that I play such as Bonfire and Wildlife , as the former is using a Unity engine, and the latter an Unreal engine.
Thing is, graphic cards are expensive, even more when my brother and I were looking for ones at out local computer shop, and my priority at this moment is a scanner and a hard disk drive for my files and games.

Should I look for a graphics card that's under $200 and since my processor is a mid-range Ryzen, what do you recommend?
Also, does a GTX1080 still hold up with those games that I have mentioned?

Forgot to add this, but here's the specs for the games.

Gonna put the specs for Wildlife from steam for now.
Minimum:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 1060
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: On-board

Recommended:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce RTX 3070
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: On-board

Do I necessarily need an RTX 3070 to run that game, if there are graphics cards like its AMD equivalent Radeon RX6700XT? Will it run like crap if I have a graphics card a step lower than those?

Dude. Buy an SSD. They usually last up to 10 years of frequent use while hard drives might last 5 years. Not to mention the archaic write/read speeds and IOPS you get. Unless you download 93828 games and hoard huge files, it's hardly gonna be worth it at all. Sacrifice storage and think of an SSD.

As for graphics, 200$ doesn't get you very far these days. Maybe a 1080 should suffice.

alexyorim said:
The Blender I have is version 3.2 something, In other words, the best bet is to downgrade to 2.8 or lower in order not to fry my computer?

'fry' LOL
It'll just say "sorry, nope, I'm too new for that driver." Then the driver installer says "Haha, sucker, you need a newer card for this driver." And if you have a Macintosh, you get extra pain with updates. If it works, it works.

I didn't put in info for the stuff like PyTorch because it's more complicated than situation with Blender. :(

just_a_week_away~ said:
Dude. Buy an SSD. They usually last up to 10 years of frequent use while hard drives might last 5 years. Not to mention the archaic write/read speeds and IOPS you get. Unless you download 93828 games and hoard huge files, it's hardly gonna be worth it at all. Sacrifice storage and think of an SSD.

As for graphics, 200$ doesn't get you very far these days. Maybe a 1080 should suffice.

I agree that a SSD is nice, but 10 years is... not likely if writing to it often. I've seen good results using them for booting a system and loading games and such, but you really should have them automatically synced to the HDD or network storage. It would be a nice upgrade after a GPU.

Maybe it would be more useful to list some common GPU prices for cards near or below that price range? Note that some of these have different variations but they mostly don't matter if budget is priority. Newer generations usually use significantly less power for same performance.
An RTX 3060 is upwards of $260 right now. An RTX 3050 starts at $220.
An RTX 2060 is $150+. An RTX 2070 is about $190-200. An RTX 2080 is $215-$225. These last two might be good options if going NV.
A GTX 1080 is $130+. TI version is slightly more. Seems like a bad bargain but if other players got it working decently... You electric bills might make up the difference in price, haha.

An RX 5700 ($135-150) is about same performance as RTX2060. https://technical.city/en/video/GeForce-RTX-2060-vs-Radeon-RX-5700 Specs. Benchmarks seem similar on sites I looked at but without the 2 games to test it on both GPUs, side-by-side... who knows if accurate. Some Youtubers did some comparisons so you can see differences? Either way, this is far better than a GTX 1080 assuming you don't need that CUDA junk(and games don't). Now you're probably starting to see why gamers just grab AMD cards!

An RX 6600 ($160-180) is next generation after that. https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-RX-6600-XT-vs-AMD-RX-6600/4117vs4128 LOL, they mention the price differences there. XT model is OF COURSE, more($205-220). Just barely above your limit. They make fun of how even if same performance and price(they were half as much, new), the AMD uses way less energy and thus saves you over a year.

just_a_week_away~ said:
Dude. Buy an SSD. They usually last up to 10 years of frequent use while hard drives might last 5 years. Not to mention the archaic write/read speeds and IOPS you get. Unless you download 93828 games and hoard huge files, it's hardly gonna be worth it at all. Sacrifice storage and think of an SSD.

I already have a 1TB SSD. I am saving up for an additional hard drive for my photos and videos. The SSD are for the games.

just_a_week_away~ said:
As for graphics, 200$ doesn't get you very far these days. Maybe a 1080 should suffice.

Figures, though I feel like the 1080 is becoming outdated.

If you can, I recommend saving up $100+ to get a mid-range card like an RX 6700 XT. It would pair better with a mid-range CPU like the Ryzen 5 5600 and can handle games at 1080p excellently, and pretty good at 1440p as well. If you really don't have the time to save up more, then I'd recommend the RX 6600.

Side note: If you are using Blender or intensive games regularly, I'd also recommend adding some more RAM space. 16 GB will get the job done, but I personally ran into stutters and slow rendering at that range. 32 GB would be ideal imo.

thehuskyk9 said:
If you can, I recommend saving up $100+ to get a mid-range card like an RX 6700 XT. It would pair better with a mid-range CPU like the Ryzen 5 5600 and can handle games at 1080p excellently, and pretty good at 1440p as well. If you really don't have the time to save up more, then I'd recommend the RX 6600.

Side note: If you are using Blender or intensive games regularly, I'd also recommend adding some more RAM space. 16 GB will get the job done, but I personally ran into stutters and slow rendering at that range. 32 GB would be ideal imo.

PCIe 4 and smaller transistor size and lower power consumption and cheaper for the performance. Yeah, the 6000 series RX look very tempting. RAM is super cheap if DDR 3/4. Not so much DDR5. :(

alphamule said:
PCIe 4 and smaller transistor size and lower power consumption and cheaper for the performance. Yeah, the 6000 series RX look very tempting. RAM is super cheap if DDR 3/4. Not so much DDR5. :(

> 6000 series

Chuckles in 6700 issues

just_a_week_away~ said:
> 6000 series

Chuckles in 6700 issues

https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/11ua7ap/anyone_else_having_issues_with_6700_xt/ Hmm, Google results of "amd" "6700" "issues".
Yeah, if it works right, it works great. As usual with Red and Green, drivvvvvver issues. Apparently, going to specific versions fixes it.

alphamule said:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/11ua7ap/anyone_else_having_issues_with_6700_xt/ Hmm, Google results of "amd" "6700" "issues".
Yeah, if it works right, it works great. As usual with Red and Green, drivvvvvver issues. Apparently, going to specific versions fixes it.

According to the people I’ve talked to, that doesn’t appear to be a universal fix, as some cards still have issues after trying that

thehuskyk9 said:
If you can, I recommend saving up $100+ to get a mid-range card like an RX 6700 XT. It would pair better with a mid-range CPU like the Ryzen 5 5600 and can handle games at 1080p excellently, and pretty good at 1440p as well. If you really don't have the time to save up more, then I'd recommend the RX 6600.

Side note: If you are using Blender or intensive games regularly, I'd also recommend adding some more RAM space. 16 GB will get the job done, but I personally ran into stutters and slow rendering at that range. 32 GB would be ideal imo.

RX6700 is considerable, if I have more cash, which I'll need from commissions.
If I still find them too expensive, I might as well play games from 10 or 20 years ago, and buy some polymer clay and some wire should I get into sculpting.

You might be able to get a good deal if you buy used and check subreddits and such for local marketplaces. Oftentimes you can score an older piece of hardware well below MSRP if you're patient.

peacethroughpower said:
You might be able to get a good deal if you buy used and check subreddits and such for local marketplaces. Oftentimes you can score an older piece of hardware well below MSRP if you're patient.

Also, be willing to clean and regrease the fans. This is actually mandatory on >10yo cards, but we're talking newer ones so probably not as big a deal unless they have clear signs of overclocking. In which case, they'd better be pretty cheap!