Rate my rig. Will it play 1440p games? If not, will a 1070 be too taxing for my power...

[Joshua Daley]

Rate my rig. Will it play 1440p games?
If not, will a 1070 be too taxing for my power supply

Specs:

Case: Thermaltake view 27
Power supply: Silverstone strider essential series 500 watt 80+ bronze
Motherboard: asus B150m-a
Ram: 8GB corsair vengeance 2400mhz ddr4
Gpu: asus strix gtx 1060 OC factory dcu ii
Cpu: Intel core i5 7500
Hdd: Seagate barracuda 1TB
Ssd: Kingston UV400 120GB
Operating system: Windows 10 home

 

[Bernard Hamlet]

I have a 1070 and I run 650 watt psu, having said that I have a 7700k also

A 1060 is really only good for 1080p gaming at 60hz, a 1070 is good for 1080p 144hz or 1440p 60hz

 

[Joshua Daley]

C'mon man, 1060 can push beyond 60. I can run rainbow six on ultra at 95fps constant.

 

[Ben James]

^ the standard is usually the most difficult games to run in the current generation, not one of the easiest.

If you want to base it on CSGO then the 1060 is a 300fps+ card. But that's not realistic, when at Ultra settings on AC Origins you're probably looking at 30 or 40 fps.

Calling the gtx1060 a card for 1080p and 60hz establishes a reasonable expectation in the buyer.

And it's true.

 

[Joshua Daley]

Yeah, but ac origins is really poorly optimised. I wouldn't sat r6 is an unrealistic situation given that it is high fidelity, modern triple a title optimised correctly.

 

[Ben James]

Sure, but it's not the norm or even the mean.

Regardless, the defacto standard adopted by the entire tech community is pretty clear.

Gtx1060 = 1080p 60hz
Gtx1070 = 1080p 144hz or 1440p 60hz
Gtx1080 = 1440p 60hz+ up to 1440p UW 60hz
Gtx1080ti =1440p UW 100hz or 4k 60hz.

These are the standards the generate realistic expectations.

 

[Joshua Daley]

If by realistic you mean bare minimum, sure. Because the difference between a 1070 and a 1060 is nowhere near 80fps as your standards seem to imply.

 

[Ben James]

That's not the performance expectations ... it's the appropriate monitor matching standard.

This is pretty basic PC hardware community common knowledge.

 

[Joshua Daley]

The point remains the same, whether you're talking about monitor expectations or frame rate expectations. Hz and fps are the same thing. Buying a 144Hz monitor for your 1070 is impractical if it only achieves 20fps more than a 1060 for a total of 80fps when an implied maximum of 60fps/hz is allows for 1060'

 

[Ben James]

Okay, you're clearly getting your panties all wadded in feeling your purchases and epeen invalidated.

None of this implies maximum fps capacity for these cards in any absolute sense. You're injecting that yourself. It's obviously relative not only to the game in question, but the rest of the system.

The defacto standards I wrote above are a widely accepted and used means of communicating to noobs who don't know these things which hardware is going to be the best general fit per resolution and refresh rate across a range of current and popular titles and considering forward compatibility.

Hz and fps ARE NOT the same thing. Hz is the monitor's refresh rate (potential/max) whilst fps is the actual output from the gpu.

The reason the 1060 is advised for 1080p 60hz is because this is the current norm gold standard, and PC gamers operate by the accepted standard of wanting 60fps minimum (as much as possible) on a 60hz monitor. The 1060 should provide this (and sometimes slightly more, occasionally a lot more).

The reason the 1070 is advised for 144hz is because it is more likely to sit above 90fps on average on a 144hz monitor, which is where the gains of the faster refresh rate are more apparent.

Because the experience of higher fps and refresh rates are subject to diminishing returns and exponential costs, they're attributed a non-standardized and enthusiast assumption (ie: people paying more for more performance/experience). As the cost of the gpu increases, so too does the assumed cost of the monitor thus output. Hence a gtx1080 isn't generally matched to a 1080p monitor, even though a handful of games barely hit 60fps with them. They're outliers. Just like you wouldn't suggest someone pair an i7 8700k with a gtx1050 or a Pentium g4560 with a gtx1080ti.

All of these propositions are a combination of individual price, performance, total system cost, and reasonable expectations for price/experience.

Anyway, if you want to learn more Google is your friend. I'm also happy to teach you more about system building if you like.

 

[Ben James]

As for your rig, I rate it a 6.5 for budget building. It will run games at 1440p, sure. You'll have to compromise settings or fps below 60 in a number of games.

You can technically play GTA V at 4k on a gtx970. But you probably shouldn't ...

And your PSU can definitely handle a 1070 with the rest of your rig just fine. You're looking at about 300 ish watts at the wall with a 1070 by rough calculation. Maybe over 350w with overclocking.

 

[Joshua Daley]

Thank you, that was a very concise summary, I now understand what your point. It seemed rather ambiguous at first glance.

 

[Joshua Daley]

This is my first pc. I paid about $1035US/$1370 AUD in costs for the parts, plus I had it prebuilt for an additional $50US/$65 AUD, primarily for the 1 year return to base warrant which accompanied paying extra for it to be built.

 

[Joshua Daley]

Given the price influx caused by the crypto mining, how much do you think a 1060 will sell for used, granted I haven't used for crypto mining, and have only owned it for about 6 months. Plus, it's one of the best aftermarket models.

 

[Ben James]

A Strix 1060? Depends on the local 2nd hand market. Pretty high I'd say, given the prices haven't totally settled yet. I would personally put it up for slightly higher than the average used 1060 price and see what you can net. If you're in Aus, then check Gumtree and ebay or similar to gauge the appropriate price range.

 

[Joshua Daley]

I'll do that. I do intend to get a 1070 for 1080p gaming when they come on sale around Christmas, so I it's futerproofed for a fair amount of time

 

[Ben James]

I did a similar thing. Got a 2560x1080 ultrawide at 144hz. A freesync model. So I bought an RX Vega 56 to match (at launch, with the discount so it cost almost the same as the cheapest 1070 at the time).

It's got enough power with an overclock to hit 90fps on ultra in the Witcher 3 (no hairworks), been at around 110-120 fps in BF1 with a 120 fps cap on high settings, and 180 ish in Wolfenstein 2.

Better to be overpowered on the gpu side than underpowered. It let's me set an fps cap below my refresh rate and turn of Freesync, so I don't need vsync and my gpu doesn't need to run at 100% all the time.

They're expensive bastards lol

 

[Joshua Daley]

I know. The cheapest 1070 I was just looking at is $550 AUD. The vega 56's are dear as now though. They wouldn't be feasible for me though to their power draw. As I mentioned, I need conservative graphics cards. What I was thinking I could do is trade my graphics card with someone else for a used 1070 + $50 cash. That way I'm not spending the extra 100 to get a brand new 1070.

 

[Ben James]

Oh, no way would I recommend Vega 56 for you. That PSU will be pushed to the limit.

A 2nd hand 1070 is a much better choice for you. Frankly, unless you get the Vega 56 for a steal or have a nice freesync monitor, there's no point getting one at all with current prices.

Don't get me wrong, mine was a steal and tries to battle with the gtx1080 than the 1070 more often than not, once properly undervolted and overclocked.

But if it wasn't for the freesync value proposition, it's not worth the hassle of power draw and noise with the reference cooler at least.

 

[Ben James]

If you can find someone dumb enough to give you a 2nd hand 1070 for your 2nd hand 1060 plus 50 bucks then jump on that deal lol