CHEAP does NOT mean GOOD VALUE - Budget GPUs Explained
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2024
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Budget GPUs might look cheap, but they’re more expensive than you think for such low-end cards. When is it okay to buy one, and how can you tell if you’re overpaying for yesteryear’s cards?
Discuss on the forum: linustechtips.com/topic/14737...
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:04 Good reasons to buy a bottom-tier GPU
1:30 But they're not a good VALUE
2:42 AMD and Nvidia choose deceptive names
4:59 How to determine performance from benchmarks
7:56 Bottom-tier GPUs are not VALUE GPUs
8:30 Alternative solutions you should try first
10:35 My favourite alternative - Buy USED
12:10 Why do these cards exist then?
13:50 Conclusion - Наука та технологія
This has been the case for far too long... Informing consumers is an important step towards eliminating this anti-consumer tactic. Great video LTT.
The worst part is this is the third time they have made this, and it continues to be important
@@joebot86 it will always be, there's always newborns. So this needs to keep spreading.
Their buys affect our buys so we need to have a leveled ground. For the benefit of all of us.
Actually the real anti-consumer isn't the low GPU overpriced tactic as entry level Gaming PCs are around there or some PCs do need that GPU, but it's the " Buy this $2,000 PC with a i7 / Ryzen CPU " and then they just slap in on board Graphics that's worse or just as bad as the GPUs Linus is talking about.
I get Businesses just wants a PC for work but what they don't realize is GPU matters too. Actually Linus will likely get his mind blown if the real reason people buy a $100 GPU is to stick it into their abominable no GPU $2,000 PC that will give them even more options for Work like.. 3D rendering.
🤣🤣🤣
@@Splarkszter as a newborn myself I've done most of my research thanks to LTT. Insane how toxic and volatile pc parts market is. This has been a life and wallet saver
@@Splarkszter in 2020 I had a small town local PC shop quote me for a new PC, my first ever... I gave them a budget of $1500 CAD and they came back to me with a GT 1030 and an R3 1200. I have no earthly idea where they planned to spend the rest of ~1300 dollars... but needless to say thanks to watching videos like this one, and other tech channels, they did not get my money...
I can only hope that new people do see these types of videos and not just LTT core audience!
Great content as always LTT! You forgot option 4: Get a job at LTT and get the $5000 Intel extreme upgrade.
how i make four this? i am xcellent brane and strong bodee.
You forgot option 5 work at LTT and steal everything you need
Im waiting for 4k 240fps gpu that use 75 watt no cable that produces no heat. Is that technology available?
@@fynkozari9271 no. You need power to generate that.. Maybe 4k 60hz is possible but for sure not 240hertz. Especially no heat, you should get to know some more specific info about gpu dyes.
@@broodjenoodles in 15 years? Maybe that technology will exist?
Also consider a 1650 Super, which is a $30-50 price gap from the 1630 for a significant performance boost even from the 1650.
What's the equivalent gpu? Gtx 1070?
@@fynkozari9271 something around gtx 1060 :)
Get a Ryzen 5 5000u
@@Stern_777 its actually better then 1060 like 93% of 1070
@@hamidogamer uhm not really. 1660 super is like 1070. 1650 is way worse than 60s
6:17 Love that Anthony's framerate dropped as he said "consistent from frame to frame"...nice touch!
I thought I was tripping :p
This applies to gaming laptops too, people often tell me that $500 is too much for a gaming laptop, but this is just how much entry level hardware currently costs. If you go any lower, you're just going to have a bad time trying to run games.
Wow... That's like entry to decent laptops imo let alone gaming laptops. Although nowadays I guess the "gaming" label is put on anything with edgy designs and colorful lights...
@@NiSE_Rafter yeah i went to best buy and even during black friday any windows shit with more than 8GB of ram was at least $600. $500 just gets you a fancy chromebook or an intel atom in 2022
Probably more like $700-800 for an entry level gaming machine.
Dude, who in the world are these "people" telling you $500 is too much for a gaming laptop?
People who don't exist in the first place, OR are entirely ignorant. Don't mean to be rude but no one is saying that lol.
If you gave me a grand to spend on a laptop for gaming, I'd be very unhappy with what that got me.
@@ImKraX Eh, I've done okay with a $500 before(GTX1050ti, i5 8300H) and would love what a grand would get me if I shopped around.
Still giving ya the thumbs up cause not everyone has the luxury of shopped around and waiting
THANK YOU, people bashing you for telling them to avoid the cheapest stuff are kinda annoying. They just don't get the fact that the cheapest or the lowest end stuff like GPUs are horrible value, and you really are better off going with an older card that's better and often times cheaper.
Sometimes when you buy the expensive option, you pay unnecesarry extra. But also sometimes when you cheap out you just set yourself up to buying twice.
Right, for computers it is so important to understand what the "*acceptable* budget option" is. Yeah you're on a budget but you aren't gonna have fun with your new PC if it has a damn 1030 or whatever
either buy a older card second hand or buy a middle to top tier now and keep it for many years. I'E spend $1000 now or spend $250 every year and not get as good performance my old brick 1080 ti which is 5 years old at this point is better then then a 3060 ti and worse then a 3070 it will probably be worse then the 4060 when it comes out i bet but ill buy a 5080 and then i dont need to think about that sort of thing for another 5 to 6 years
Yeah. I got lucky and my brother gave me his old 980ti when he got a 1080. I've been running that for the last 6 years and only this year upgraded to a 3070, about a month before the 40 series cards had their prices announced. Rest of my system was up to date enough that I'm not really bottlenecked anywhere.
@@si2foo yeah the 1080ti has been a beast. I was planning on seeing what the 5080ti looks like because even the 4080 isn't looking all that convincing considering I can play everything at max or at least higher than medium settings with high fps.
Now THIS is the kind of video I desperately need to show a friend who is just beginning his journey of building a gaming PC himself. Sometimes there is just so many numbers and letters thrown at a consumer that it becomes difficult for someone who is new to this to understand what they are paying for. Very very helpful! Love the work you and your team does!
You know a really solid idea for LMG would be to make a YT channel dedicated to Scrapyard Wars and hire a specific team to do it all, along with having regular LTT crew like Linus, Luke, Jake etc be special guests or hosts for the specific Episodes. I bet EVERYONE would want it to come back and I know you've said in the past it's too costly in time & money, this way each team member would have an easier time of obtaining parts with out the pitfall of getting recognised as well generating revenue from an entirely new channel should easily subsidize the cost of doing it. I for one would absolutely love it to come back and have an episode every 2 weeks or so! :)
Yes. Watching people scoring on used pc parts and cars is my favourite thing on UA-cam. They could also invite lesser known tech UA-camrs and conduct it as a competition which would be great content and we could all discover new creators.😃 Bring it back Linus, you know the views would be through the roof
That would be the single least profitable venture lmg could do.
Assuming a super slim team of 5 people 2 hosts, two camera men and an editor
Your shooting 1 video every 2 weeks with pretty minimal variation week to week even with challenges. Let's assume Linus is an ass and lays each person minimum wage which is 2000 dollars a month that's 2.5 grand for every video before equipment and parts. would get shoved down by the algorithm if not released daily in parts.
You also have to note that it likely would get similar views to other videos in scrapyard wars which are not crazy top performers
@@mark1A100 someone here has their head still on their shoulders, thank god!
As a budget gamer who built my first pc ever with R5 2600 and Rx580 8gb yesterday, I dived into this information for couple of months to fully understand the art of building your own unit. And I can say I am really satisfied with my research and results based on my budget considering pc parts are 2-3 times more expensive here in our country.
Funny you say that. I bought an RX 580 last week for my Linux build (i replaced Windows with Linux) and AMD GPUs run way better on Linux than Nvidia. I'll move my GTX 1060 6GB to my (Windows) Media PC and start gaming on that. I got the RX 580 used for $120. How 'bout yourself?
🇿🇦
The best skill anyone can have is how to do proper research
I've been as happy with my rx 580 8gb as I was with the 290x I used before it.
I bought a sapphire pulse rx 5600 which had a flashed vbios from factory that made it comparable to a 2070, for like 220 bucks RIGHT before the shortage. Literally 2 months later that same card was selling for 1200 somehow
6:20 is why I love the small touches the LTT team makes to make the video more enjoyable 😂
Yep. Clever
I was like "did they just..." lol
Frame rate change?
scrolled to the comment section to see if anyone else caught on that as well 😂
The bottleneck animation was also nice
This was an awesome video LTT team! Linus, please do one of these videos every year or two around black friday and or school year start. I've been planning to make a secondary rig from my uncle's old Optiplex for a long time but was always delaying it due to the amount of research and effort involved as I don't follow CPU/GPU reviews regularly. Please do more videos like these for people on budget ❤️
If you need a GPU, pick a Radeon. Hardware Unboxed proved that AMD's stuff does well for older hardware and anything that might have a slight CPU bottleneck.
Thanks for replying with useful information @CataclysmZA and @Austin Spencer :)
@@TheRealAdam23 I got an RX 5700 for $150 and I was able to flash the RX 5700 XT bios on it to get more boost performance. Around +400Mhz on the core. If you have just a little extra looking for an RX 5700 is a great deal. It plays many titles @ 1440p. Some you do have to use FSR, but not a big deal.
@@kyle8575 yeah the 5700 is an awesome card too 👍 and I really like the 1080 for around the same price too
@@TheRealAdam23 Yup! 1080 is another good choice on the used market. I generally stick with Linux so I prefer AMD gpus to avoid that whole headache haha.
A tip I have for those who are new and are not wanting to go through reviews of GPU’s, there are a lot of performance test videos out there for different CPU and GPU combos. So say for example you are going to get an i5-11400 paired with a 3070, well you could probably find a video of someone using the same combo and testing it in game. Now it’s not gonna be perfect because factors like model of GPU or kind of cooling they have for both GPU and CPU. But it will give you a general idea on how a similar system would perform.
Yup, such videos aren't that bad. Some of these make the strengths of the 5800x3D clear.
Literally my setup
When I first started PC gaming I always thought cheaper new graphics cards would be better than a slightly older one that's used. Obviously I didn't have much of a clue. But because the lower end market gets so saturated with similar priced cards that are in production for 3 or 4 years it can be very hard for new consumers to tell what's good or not.
The best piece of advice i would give anyone save money by buy something more expensive now and not needing to replace it for year then buying something cheap you need to replace constantly. i have a 1080ti and i have had 0 reason to upgrade it
@@si2foo how long have you been using it?
I was the same. I thought it was like video games. My pre-built PC (at the time) had a GT 530 in it, so my mom bought a GT 630 later because I thought that meant it was better. Imagine my shock when I saw no difference. Luckily I had just started studying for computer sciences and now I know WAY better. Sometime later she saved up money and got me a GTX960 (with a new power supply and VGA to HDMI adapter since my screen was old), and when I started playing it hurt my eyes because I was so used to 20 FPS average.
However when both cards are used we can see some disparities. Why would anyone buy a 1080 TI over a 3060 when they're about the same price used?
What can happen is that people use the launch day reviews to make comparisons and then apply those over multiple generations with newer games.
At launch, most games aren't using the new instructions introduced by the architecture, which tends to be more efficient than the old ones. Over time, people play newer and newer games, and our benchmarks get updated to reflect this. Newer games use these instructions and thus newer cards become stronger relative to older ones.
There's also driver updates, usually the whole architecture becomes unsupported at once because the difference between models is smaller than between generations. So a Pascal GPU is gonna have 4 years less of driver support than an Ampere one, and be last in line to get the support.
For example, at launch 2080 = 1080 TI in reviews, and at launch 3060 TI = 2080 Super. Therefore, the 3060 TI must be just a little faster than the 1080 TI. However, the 3060 TI is actually 40+% faster in Tom's Hardware's hierarchy. In fact even the 3060 beats the 1080 TI here.
Yet due to these disparities in people's minds, a used 1080 TI is the same price as a 3060. Hell someone with a 1080 TI should take advantage and sell it off and buy a used 3060.
@@shanez1215mainly cause the 1080TI is faster in benchmarks and fps.
I'm glad someone besides Budget Builds Official is mentioning this, because the GT1030 has a nasty reputation for being a pixel pusher and nothing else. My problem has always been the fact that RX 580s and 980Tis are just better value, but people buy 1030s because they are new in box. It's upsetting
yeah I ended up getting a RX 580 for my 10 year old rig and it boosts the performance so much better.
There are a few good use cases of the GT1030 though if you can get it at pre-pandemic price, such as using it in a used SFF prebuilt. It is half height and does not require any additional power other than the PCIe. Personally I find it good enough for most indie games, besides, it's the cheapest card to support 4k display, so pretty good for HTPC.
@@jstan5802 any used gpu for same price will support 4k. 1080 for example, unlike 1030, will not just support it - it can run multiple 4k displays. 1030 wont even have extra ports for that, while 1080 can run 5(!) monitors.
As for no power - you can just get 1050 for that.
@@esuil Unfortunately gtx1080 are still expensive (at least where I'm from), not half height and need extra power. 1050 is a good choice but for some reason half height 1050 are usually more expensive.
@@jstan5802 got 1080 for $150 used here (eastern europe). Were are you from, if you dont mind me asking?
I went 5 years with a budget single fan, 3GB gtx 1060 and it held up pretty well for what it was. It was my first build so I didn't know very much, but I'm grateful for that card and now I have a much nicer 3060ti!
That was my first build too lol. Got a 1060 3gb for 75 bucks and a R3 2200g on sale. It ran surprisingly well for a long while
i'd love to see more videos in this niche - i've been wanting to build a pc for years but the prospect of massive amounts of research and shortages and spending so much money makes it a daunting challenge for a beginner. this walked through the steps so clearly and it really makes the whole concept approachable. thank you
If there is still unopened, "last gen" hardware to be found, almost always go with the previous generation. More often than not, you should be able to "upgrade" to a higher tier card with stock most stores want off their shelves.
There's a risk to this, since new cards come with new instructions that current games (at launch) may not be using.
We often see a midrange card being equal to a last gen high end one at launch, but then when tested two years later, it performs better. For example, a 2080 was around equal to a 1080 TI in reviews, but in modern tests is the better card.
This disparity increases the farther you go back.
There's also a question of driver support which tends to apply to the whole architecture. If you buy a 1080 TI over a 3060, you're losing 4 years of driver updates. If you're going to be using that 1080 TI for 3 years, you're gonna be last in line for any driver optimizations and may not get them at all. That could cripple your performance in 2024/2025.
Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case in today's GPU market, at least right now and in my area. Besides the higher cost of their launched GPUs, the number of units produced for these looks to be very low at this moment(intentionally or not) so most retailers are still keeping the previous generation at MSRP or *higher*, even with inflation considered. On recent sales events like Black Friday, retailers didn't even bother to offer a discount on a decent GPU.
Unless, of course, the company making the cards is purposefully not releasing current gen equivalents until their last gen products sell through at a high price.
But of course, that's just a hypothetical. Who would do something _this_ anti-consumer?
@@LAndrewsChannel yeah it's interesting how prices are increasing faster than inflation and are not dropping with decreased demand.
@@shanez1215but how much cheaper are you getting the 1080ti for? That’s the question. It’s always a trade off
I was terrified of buying used hardware for a long time, but that $180 went a lot further as a 1080ti than as a 1650. Especially now that new cards have dropped in price the used is hitting new lows. I have found 1080s for as low as $100 which is just mind boggling.
And don’t forget, the 1080 or 1080ti for that matter is still an absolute beast. At 1080p it still holds its ground!
@@LegionShade it can ray tracing 1080 absolutely beast, its wrong when gtax 1080 is better than rtx 3050 these guys comparing it with 1630 or 1650
i found a 2060 for 180$ is it a good price?
Thats more then i paid for mine, which is why its also important to know the used market of your area.
Some developing markets don’t really have a used market at all.
@@Mustafa_kad yes it competes with 1080 in performance!!!
This is one of the best videos made by LTT ever. More like this please, I regularly use these videos to inform friends/family as the "enthusiast" among them.
Okay, that was a brutal, merciless dissection having Nvidia and AMD marketers cringing under their desks. Consumers like us need this. I love the new-ish format and the production quality, you guys are constantly evolving
Price-to-performance and actual needs, folks. It's all there is.
Great educational video, guys.
i no enjoy
6:07 return of 30fps console games. Then I will wait for PS5 slim for 60fps.
I like to look at performance per watt as well, as powering these modern behemoths has gotten very expensive and is usually unaccounted for.
@@TheCelloPanda these modern day behemoths at the same fps as the previous gens uses far less power
@@imo098765 Yes, but our games are getting more demanding, and we're trying to play at higher resolution and with a higher frame rate than previously, so in the end, we're still burning through a lot more power.
Media literacy really needs to be taught in school, great work on helping everyone be a more informed shopper
Thanks a lot for this video , as the nerd in my social circle who we call for computer problems or making a config with a budget, I didn't realized how big the gap can be between a model of graphic card/cpu or an another. Definitely gonna make me better thinking of what to take for budget oriented builds :D
I miss good old days where mid range GPU made more sense and you could actually save money or have an upgrade path by buying a second one (7600gt was awesome in SLI)
Those were the good days indeed 😢
I mean I'm not through the video yet - but there is nothing really new for me here - *BUT* Thank you so much for making this easy-to-understand guide for everyone just entering the hobby!
THIS is so damn wholesome - especially coming from one of the most "in-depth" channels saying "if you don't have any clue - that's nothing to be ashamed of - let me just help you!"
This is so damn cool and everyone should take this as an example approaching people who might not be familiar with whatever the topic may be!
I LOVE that you all are willing to take things back to basics as often as you do, with no ulterior motive except for the value you bring through being informative. Please never stop being this good!
Thanks for this video.. How often did I put together the hardware list for a PC for a friend, who then said "no, lets save that 20$, I don't really need this much of an expensive GPU" and then had to explain that this little extra price is really worth it. In the future, I'm probably just gonna show them this video.
Great video. I want to assembly my first computer and there's a lot of things that are confusing. This video breaks down the basics of GPUs very nicely.
Would labs be able to make a calculator, where you put the price you pay for a card, and then it will spit out the FPS per dollar? I feel like that would be a good way to compare new/old GPU's that already have been tested by LTT and then consumers can put in prices they find a year or two later.
Problem is you need to look at multiple reviews for the reasons listed. It's not too hard to average the FPS performance from a handful of reviews then simply divide the price you see by the frames to get cost per frame of each potential purchase.
If you're upgrading, can also factor in the sale price of your old hardware which often changes the value equation a bit.
5 minutes in excel could save you a load of money.
the website is called userbenchmarks
@@m4ur1r4g3 them relying on user data makes it not very reliable, due to poorly controlled testing conditions (different software versions, background tasks, thermal throttling, dirty cases/bad airflow, etc.). All stuff that official publications rule out as variables. Also last time I checked their tests/benchmarks were not that varied or in depth (a "good" benchmark suite can take minutes or even hours to run through various synthetic and real world tests like multiple games at different resolutions). Not something most users would sit through, especially not without touching their system (streaming videos because they got bored, etc.)
@@m4ur1r4g3 Userbenchmark is one of the most unreliable sources of information on hardware out there, and has been for years. I don't blame you for using it, its a really good idea but the results are unbelievably biased. I'd suggest watching the video 2kliksphilip did on it about a year ago.
@@saulgoodman2018 This would actually make the site better, but it's not the case. Its how they decide how "good" a component is compared to another one. The most notable case is they tend to skew and change testing methodology to favor Intel chips. For example, try comparing the i3 9350kf to the 5900x. Right now, the 5900x only beats out the i3 by 2% in their "efps" test (which, according to userbenchmark, is more representative of real gaming performance than normal FPS). In absolutely no real world case does that make any sense.
Also, take the time to read some of their reviews on any Intel CPU versus any AMD CPU.
6:19 got me - great editing.
This is generally good advice. I was thinking of buying an Arc 380 for like $120 on sale. Since I was in no big rush, I waited until recently where an RX 6600 went on sale for $180 and I snatched it up. The performance difference for $60 is YUGE! Like 3X.
Excellent, spot on info. I've built dozens of budget builds for friends, family, and small profit in local sales. Linus and crew just made the best advice you can get on the subject. Btw, I recently acquired an msi gtx 1660 super for $100, the guy even threw in a 600w psu.. I ALWAYS replace the thermal paste if the gpu is older than 2yrs, sometimes the thermal pads, takes very little time.
The biggest problem in the last few years is that the budget end of the GPU market has been badly neglected by AMD and Nvidia - the sub-£200 cards offer poor price-performance, meaning that buying second-hand quite old cards has been the way to go.
However, if you want second-hand for a current budget card, the price differential is quite small - I wanted a card that was 50% better than my GTX 1060 3GB (which came out 6 years ago) and Passmark indicated that the RX6600 would be the one to get (besides, I wanted to switch to AMD because their drivers are better on Linux that I exclusively use, plus the RTX 3060 is just too expensive at £350 new for about 15% better perf). Second-hand RX6600's start at £200 on eBay, whereas I could buy one new for £230 and get a warranty and 2 free games worth £100, so I bought the new card.
I'm a little surprised the video didn't mention Passmark, who have a great set of GPU benchmarks and a comparison tool (they list prices too, but I would look around because there can be a wide price variation, plus the prices are US-based, so are much more expensive elsewhere usually). As I said, you want at least a 50% uplift if you're upgrading and you can use Passmark's GPU rating numbers to narrow down your choice. I don't care about "exclusive" features of cards (most of them don't make it to Linux, especially on the Nvidia side [the Steam Deck being AMD has actually swung the dial even more towards AMD for Linux users]), so just raw price-performance for rasteration is all I'm after.
I'm guessing people who want pixel pushers are doing just fine with integrated these days. I've bought a laptop with discrete graphics yet again a few years ago and since I'm not really gaming on it, it just kind of sits there. Helped me a couple of times with work but that's it.
Do you happen to have any experience with iGPUs in laptops running Linux? Can you get good battery life out of thin&light laptops?
This hasn't been an issue since at least August. Budget GPUs are at some of their best prices ever rn.
i just use TPU website for its simple percentage relative performance graph.. i just search my model ( 1070 ).. and scroll for atleast 2x performance ( 200% ) and see it shows 3070.. then just saves whatever money i have to aim for that particular model or better..
especially i can compare the price i bought my 1070 ( RM 2.3K which roughly ttranslate to USD 499 or sometinng )..
It depends on how strong your 2nd hand market is and also which gen you buy in. The current gen of course offers the least value when buying used especially as most former user probably bought the card in the chip crisis for 200% msrp or more and are now understandably unwilling to sell low.
So timing is a very important factor for buying used. E.g. Ich bought my 2060 about two years ago, the prices on the 1st market already skyrocketed and I saw the prices for the high end cards on the 2nd market go up, so I bought the 2060 for about 210€ around new years eve, a few weeks later used 2060 were sold for nearly double the price. My current 3060ti I bought for 305€ right after the realease of the new 40 series. Still hurts a little bit buying a two year old card used for only 25% under MSRP though prices for new ones right now are 5% above MSRP which frankly is crazy given that the card is two years old and the storages are packed but it seems like Nvidias plan working out basically not presenting any reasonable priced cards so that people will pay good money for any card that isn't priced crazy and is available.
Yeah nah Passmark is worthless for determining gaming performance lookup real world benchmarks or even 3dmark Passmark is a workstation benchmark
The thing you need to look for is *memory bandwidth*. There was a brief mention of versions of cards with cut-down memory buses but no real explanation of how to tell. You need to carefully check the memory type (DDR4, GDDR5, etc.) and bus width (64-bit, 128-bit, 192-bit, etc.) and make sure they match the product you read reviews for. There will be cards with the same exact name that differ in performance by a factor of 2 or more.
Also memory type can make a big difference even if everything else, including the bus width, are the same. The GT 1030 has 2 variants. A DDR4 version, and a GDDR5 version. The GDDR5 version is leagues faster, though still slow and probably not worth your money unless it's basically free.
@@DigitalJedi So generally is it better to just go to DDR4 if DDR5 isn't worth it ?
@@ObliviousJohno No. If you buy a GT1030, always get the GDDR5 version. I just don't recommend either since both are bad. The ddr4 one is just more bad.
@@ObliviousJohno The gddr5 version is vastly better and it's good enough to run a lot of modern games at medium setting at 1080p. I use one in my secondary gaming machine which is currently being used to play warthunder. I also use it for world of warcraft, OW, Battletech, WoWarships, Eve boxing (up to 12 accounts), D3, etc etc. Doesn't play star citizen or anything like that but will handle the vast majority of games at 1080 at +40 FPS.
@@DigitalJedi GDDR5 GT1030 is a pretty competent card to use in a sff office PC. Other than the latest AAA titles it play most games at 1080p 30fps.
As enthusiast myself, or at least someone who knows a thing or two about computer hardware, I love hunting for second hand bargains to reduce e-waste! I wish I could do the same for others, helping them out to get the best for their budget.. together to fight the current spike in prices!
Was looking for a video exactly like this. I really appreciate you for taking the time and making this.
I love that they dropped frames when Anthony said "frame to frame" at 6:19
Me playing 20 year old games knowing a 20 year old is going to get me the right perofrmance
Doesn't change the fact that you might need it for other things than your 20 years old game. And having the choice between the crappy 20 year old computer for a 1/5 of the price of a decent recent one is absurd. E-Waste at its best.
@@Karlyr_ maybe I don't have the money 🤷🏽♂️
I have a pre-built PC with a GT 710 in it, it carried me in my college to this day, can't wait to get a job and upgrade this guy
As a guy looking to get into pc gaming, this was a very helpful video. Thanks guys and keep up the great content!
As a low end system builder this is something I deal with Every. Single. Day. I need to talk to my customers saying everything said here to every single one of them. They all want 3090Ti's, but they have RX6400 budgets. I only use new parts, so used doesn't work. I love educating them though so they don't get ripped off. It's so important it's ridiculous. Thanks Linus and crew for saying it on a larger scale. I'll point them here as an aid to them (and ME!!).
oh tell me about it.
all these years.
these are the tops from my personal experience.
"I want to play 4k60fps preferrable at least high settings but must be within 400$ budget". - The Choosing Beggars.
"A PS5/Xbox1 could play EVERYTHING @ 4K60FPS Max settings, why should I buy a PC?"
@@TheWindows72306 Hahahaha, that about covers it 😂😂
I would just flat out refuse to build any system with anything lower than a 6600. I would be worried that using a 6400 or 6500 would result in dissatisfaction and system returns.
@@Face_RC That's my minimum suggestion. Nothing less is worth it anymore (new that is).
@@Face_RC What do you do if you just can’t afford 6600 performance. I mean there’s a $150 gap between it and the 6500.
Re-creating Linus's last PC that he truly had to build on a budget and doing some benchmarking with it would be a cool video
I am using something equivalent as the "tires example" on the Internet for over 10 years now to explain to people who laugh at those who lack hardware knowledge, that they are wrong doing so. Linus is making me like him more and more with every video he produces.
I love you guys still catering to newcomers to our PC community building PCs for years and these videos are still great
This is content that I would love to have go along with labs, because you guys are going to be putting out a lot of information, and knowing how to interpret that info is going to be important. Even for people who know, it would be nice to have easy access to a refresher
Excellent. Back to basics is great for beginners, and refreshers and reminders for people who don't keep up with every new release. And informing the consumers is a great way to make sure we're not getting fleeced by manufacturers putting fancy or deceptive marketing spin on things.
Okay, so thank you for finally explaining how to read those GPU graphs. I've been watching your channels for over 2 years and I never knew exactly what they meant since they were never explained, so the information always kinda got glazed over in my head.
Am in Africa Ghana and this video is helpfull. Have been making research on my new budget pc to build, until I woke up this morning to find this on my most stream channel. More of this video LTT.
I learned all of this through making expensive mistakes. This is a great video and I wish I would've had this years ago. This will definitely save people from future headaches. Well done LTT!
My last GPU was an RX470 for $35 lol, I think that takes the cake for everything
Goodness me outstanding
I will get 2x GTX 1080s donated to me next month with even the High Bandwidth SLI Bridge, it will be a big step up from my RX 480
4gb or 8gb though? there was a weirdly big difference between the 2. either way an awesome deal
@@SUpErmIcrON SLI is dead. the game has to support it or it means nothing, and very few games went to that effort
@@SUpErmIcrON honestly? I’d sell the extra 1080. SLI is pretty much dead at this point and even if you manage to find a game that supports it it will be a marginal increase
I upgraded my PC for the first time in about 15 years. I built my PC before but this time around I bought a 1yr old second hand pre-built workstation. Which ended up being the same price as all the components were I to build it today, but I was saved all the different shipping, research, compatibility, etc, etc. And since it was a high end workstation it's performance was still multiple magnitudes higher than my old system. It also still had some of the factory warranty left over. Buying second hand is a GREAT way to get some quality high performance hardware.
My first gpu was a used 1080 ti a couple of years ago, that thing is beastly even now. I did have to replace the fans once but I am not gonna lie that was kind of fun and the GPU is still works great. I did eventually buy a newer GPU although I can hardly call it an upgrade if any at all "3070" but I only did this as I was troubleshooting my machine and needed to ensure the GPU wasn't the piece giving me issues which it wasn't. I might seel the 3079 and just keep my 1080 ti but I am also getting a new machine soon with another Gpu so who knows. The point is, used GPUs can be great value, especially for a point of entry.
Thank you for publishing more videos about lower end hardware! It seems like everyone is always promoting the next gen when most people would be perfectly content with something a little older.
I just love how all of the 'cheap' cards that were shown always have a high shipping price. Anywhere from 20 bucks for a 10 dollar card to 30 bucks for that 7 dollar value...☺
Shipping costs are shipping costs. You don't want a graphics card shipped in a bubble mailer via USPS for $10. Avoid that by shopping locally (e.g. FB marketplace, craigslist) or just accept that you're paying $20-30 for a barebones gpu. lol
@@theSato That's not entirely accurate. A lot of people will try to make money off the back end of overinflated shipping. By having a lower listed price it drives more interest in them, and that interest will place them closer to the first few pages of products.
The idea is you see the price, and instantly buy without paying attention to the shipping price. I've seen this done lots of times on both Ebay, and Amazon's third party sellers, and have almost been a victim of it had I not been paying attention to the overall price in the cart. There's no way a pop figure costs $35 to ship, yet I've seen it regularly on Ebay when it comes to chasers like the Resident Evil Hunter pop fig. Never discount a person's capacity for greed, and manipulation.
@@demontekdigital1704 Who doesn't check shipping costs before finishing the purchase? Also, keep in mind that LTT is in Canada, most of those shipping prices are from products in the US, UK etc, that is why they cost so much to ship.
And it does cost a shit ton of money to ship internationally. You might find cheap international shipping fees on some sites but that is quite different from an individual selling their used products.
@Telleva It's possible, but I think 3rd party sellers are kind of a gray area. I saw GPUs for sale during the whole scalpocalypse thing, and there were several entries listed at $50, and up for shipping.
@@kuro19382 You'd be surprised at how many people don't pay attention to shipping, lol. You're totally right about international shipping. I've seen ridiculously inexpensive, or even free shipping from places like China. The U.S. has gotten borderline criminal with shipping for sure. My wife is about to ship some heavy cookware to our kids, and I guarantee we'll have to sell both our kidneys to get it done, lol.
Long ago, my HW mentor had taught me of these "display cards" and why to steer clear of those unless of-course you'd need display! A most valuable lesson that saved me and my clients plenty of money.
What?
Good video, guys. I like you spending time discuss your charts and what they mean. Always great to take time out to educate while explaining yourselves. Thanks
Would also like to add that you ideally want to find a review that has also tested your current card in the same rig as the new product. This can be a bit tricky, but it gives a more linear relation in how big of an upgrade you can expect it to be.
Thank you for making this, I will definitively use it whenever a friend wonders what to buy and is interested in learning a little.
If only someone would test that scenario.
Where are the tests that compare todays CPUs with those from 6-10 years ago, with a 5 year old midrange card in 8 year old CPU heavy games?
Great PSA guys. You should make a public service announcement Playlist to make these easy to look up.
I spent every moment I wasn't working for two years researching pc parts to make sure I built what I needed. But for new comers this is a great resource.
Love the cheeky sneaky edit with lowered frames, that gave me a chuckle.
I'm so glad they decided to cover this
As often times I'm left in the dust in understanding all of it
I use this approach all the time.
My last PC build in 2019 Ryzen 2600...etc ended up with mostly new parts except the GPU, I got a used RX570 from a used techy store with a warranty attached.
The card performed well in the few games I played seriously (F1 2019, Euro Truck..etc) without being expensive and I knew it would last long enough before I really needed an upgrade, I mean I still use it now alongside an RTX 3050 laptop.
Low end gpus CAN be good value, but are definitely not at these current prices. The 1030 should be 50 bucks max nowadays, the 1630 and the 6400 80 at most.
Me to my RX 6400
"You will play Starfield at 4K and you will like it!" 😂
Thanks for this video. I remember once buying a GT 710 which was marketed as "Budget GPU for low end gaming" on Amazon. Turned out it was no better than my Integrated Graphics. Only that it was able to provide 1080p video playback on YT. I know I was also at fault for not doing my research well but the product page was misleading.
Great video. You hinted this during a recent stream in reply to a question I had about the ARC cards. As a "cheaper option" for a current gen card. This does help a lot in understanding that cost isn't a good metric alone.
I have a GTX 1050💀💀
@thefuriouscreator my potato is currently running a 1060, so I feel your pain. 3 years ago it was chugging on a GTX210.
@@emt160090 1 month ago I was running integrated 520 on a small laptop and would always crash on my games
I was honestly pretty surprised at how my old GTX1080 compares with some of the current cards... One would assume a 2060 for example would perform significantly better
Im also using gtx1080 still a solid card for 1080p and 1440p on older games. I play bf5 at 1440p high and get 100+ frames.
I mean the 2060 is only a generation newer… not really suprising
Becuase the 2060 being a midrange GPU was released after Pascal No suprise there!. If you we are talking about the 3060ti that is two gens after it destorys the 1080 in everything.
Why would anyone assume that?
My 1060 6gb card is holding in there but brand new games are showing its age a bit unfortunately
I bought my 1650 gddr6 two years ago and it's been serving me so well. I was playing modern warfare 2022 campaign today on medium high setting 1080p and it didn't dip bellow 60 frames.
Thanks for teaching me how to read car tire specs!
I remember back when we had our old eMachine PC, I wanted to turn it into a gaming PC. So I convinced my Dad to buy me a GPU and we went with the cheapest GPU that Fry's had that had a gaming looking box: a $50 GT 430. You can imagine my disappointment when I found out what a piece of crap it was.
That was enough to put me off PC gaming until a couple of years ago when I finally knew how to make a build thanks to you guys and other tech UA-camrs. Now I couldn't be happier with my midrange build, but it also makes me understand the confusion new PC gamers have when it comes to hardware.
I've actually done it myself back in like 2012 or so, buying the infamous GeForce 210.
I however wasn't quite disappointed as it is still such a massive improvement over the integrated GeForce 6150SE lmao
Advertising a GT430 as gaming card is downright criminal, omg!
My first PC was a 400€ office PC with an AMD Athlon dual-core that I had them upgrade to 6 GB ram and a GTS-450 in 2011.
It still makes me cringe that I paid 30€ to have a stick of RAM and a GPU installed for me, but back then I just didn't know how easy that was to do.
Anyway, I was lucky the salesperson recommended the GTS-450 to me and made me understand that below that is not good for gaming (he called the GTS-450 a multimedia card that can do some gaming). It was the most I could afford with my pocket money and it did perfectly satisfy my needs for the first few years, until Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic online came out, that game ran somewhat choppy on it, but overclocking and optimizing settings yielded acceptable results. Back when overclocking was still worth the time and effort, lol...
@@LRM12o8 It's the kind of card that you put in a prebuild so that you can write on the box "WITH 4GB NVIDIA GRAPHICS"
But the GTS 450 was okay. Not highend, but surely capable.
You jokers purposefully dropped the frame rate when he says consistently from frame to frame at around the 6:14 mark didn't you lol
That was very cool what you did there at 6:19 🤣🤣 Very clever!
I am sending this to all my friend who always ask me what to look out for! Another great video :D
It's universally a better value/performance to go for a mid-range card from a generation or two ago.
Especially true with these latest generations. I was using a 2080 Super at 1080p and even in VR with my Rift CV1, I was barely hitting even 70% utilization most of the time. It did kind of crap the bed and now I have to use a 1070 for my main GPU, but even that works pretty much fine for the majority of games I play. Nevermind that you can get a 5600x, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB Samsung 980 Pro, and used 2070 Super/3060 system for about $1000 these days.
@@DarkSwordsman people often over spend on a GPU compared to monitor. If you spend 1000 on a GPU you probably need to spend about half that to get the max out of it.
love it, explaining the graph. this video is a very good start for getting yourself a good deal.
0:12 dude if it was at the original price of $105.86, I'd agree with you. But with that huge discount of $0.86, you are almost getting it for free.
Hey lunis I needed a gpu for the money I had and I planned on upgrading it, so my 1030 was a place holder for about 6 months, and it worked really well for my first PC
That exact GT1030 gave me the best gaming memories of my life, I will appreciate it forever (keep in mind I only ever played WoW)
You can play wow even with 22 years old 32MB NVIDIA RIVA TNT2, that's what I was using to play it years ago :D
It wasn't designed to be a gaming card - it got pushed into that during the 1st mining apocalypse. That GT 1030 was originally designed to drive 4K TV panels for HTPCs.
The gt 1030 was a huge deal in poorer countries. It's a huge shame that both companies stopped producing sub 100 bucks cards, with the only upgrade path being the 6400, which is grade a garbage.
It’s fine for 1080p low settings for most games
@@FFXfever because these sub-100$ GPUs are either on par or slower than GPUs which are inside a CPU
@LTT - Just a quick note on your build spec at 10:02, the A520 MoBo mentioned there DOES NOT support the 5600G out of the box. I know, you'd think it would, but it doesn't; I tried it. It's a great design, too bad that MoBo will need a bios flash to support the chip, which may not be practical for many buyers. I resolved mine by going with a B550 board. That CPU is great though, fast, cool, and can plan DRG at 1080p!
It makes sense cause the A520 chipset is a low end version
I think it's quite a non-issue considering most boards now don't even require a CPU to flash a bios, and that most people would have a usb stick laying around. It's more of an issue when a newer builder doesn't even know the bios even needs to be flashed, or the knowing that the usb needs to format to fat/fat32, quite roundabout for high capacity sticks.
@@pigpiggig well, it's an issue for this board. It requires a CPU to flash the bios.
thanks LTT, it would be great to see such a video for motherboards and cpu s
my biggest pet peeve is manufacturers using the same branding to refer to a bunch of different skus with different performance. the 1650 had at least like 3 or 4 variants even if you don't get into "1650 super" etc., which adds like another 4 or so.
the tu116/tu106 variants of the 1650 are pretty nice imo! i bought one for my current rig, it's very nice for streaming due to the newer encoder support built in compared to the older skus. but that kind of information isn't readily available and you have to use sites like techpowerup's gpu database and cross-reference with nvidia's encoder/decoder matrix to actually figure that out. no! bad!
4:33
Linus: "as an innocent victi-"
No, no, we get it
Depending on how you shop you could over pay easily, in my country (South Africa) the RX6400 is listed new as more expensive than the RX6500XT, and you could get a RX580 for half the price of those if you buy second hand or refurbished.
I see whatchu did there when talking about fps consistency... Very clever Linus, very clever.
I like how in the exact moment you say cheap gpu the bottom of my screen just gets filled with stripes
I recall that shortly before I picked up an RX 580 for $220 in November of 2020, those things could be had for $140-150 all summer long-but I was super lucky to pay as little as that for such a decent GPU, because a month or two later and it was more than double that because the mining craze was at it’s peak.
It’s honestly insane how good of a deal it was right before I got it, because that was the recommended card for something like Warzone and it ran it well above 60fps with decent looking settings, and it was barely more expensive than those eWaste cards.
The good news is that is gonna happen again for another card that does a decent job, and it’s going to be in every budget build guide. No idea what that is yet, because prices are still fluctuating wildly with all these new releases hitting store shelves, but in like 3-4 months once we’ve settled into the current generation of cards, any of the new old stock from the last generation is going to be an insanely good bargain.
When it comes to buying older hardware for cheap, you’re often way better off just buying a whole working system with everything you need, and then swapping out a couple of things, because if you try to piece something together yourself, it can get ridiculously overpriced for new or refurbished stuff, and you need to roll the dice on private sellers.
My first new GPU ever was a new rx 480 8gb. Paid 250$ for it in 2016 and it's still in one of my rigs.
In november of 2020 i had the best deals of my life. My gf (now ex) proposed me 1080ti for 300 usd. It was kinda used in mining for like 2-3 month. But still its 1080ti for 300usd. Three weeks later cards like that had price for like 700+ dollars. So since them it perfectly working in my pc
Got a 5700XT for $410 in February of 2020, upgraded to a 2080 because I wanted raytracing and managed to get it for $600 from a friend of a friend in 2021 during the mining craze when that 5700XT I bought was going for over $1200. Still have both and I intend to put the 5700XT into a mini-ITX build down the road.
Dont ask me hoe much I played for a rx 6600 in March 2021
Aye snagged mine for $300 in 2019, saw prices spike up to $500 for the RX 580 at the worst of the shortage.
Really glad I bought when I did.
I remember my first GPU I bought. It was a GTX1050ti Superclock from EVGA. Paid about $130 for it at the time from what I remember and that little card I would argue still holds up pretty well even today (provide you don't mind the lack of raytracing support)
You can probably still sell it for $200 if you still had it.
@@B5152g Really ? Are you kidding or for real? I do have this thought to sell my 1050ti because at the time of purchase I had less knowledge about gpu. Its just maybe 8 months old.
I'm still on a 1050 ti. It rips!
My first was Monster 3D II 3Dfx card. It had a whopping 12 MB of RAM.
Looking back I should've bought a 1050ti when I had the chance. I built my PC a few years ago as cheaply as possible and went with the 2GB regular 1050, it's not a bad card by any means but now I'm beggining to feel the need to get a better card and they're all so expensive nowadays.
top tier editing on 6:19 making the frames inconsistent
I literally get off my over night shift job. Pick up food, watch a LTT video and sleep for the day. Btw the way linus throws his LTT store ads has me rolling laughing because he’s so good at it
My next upgrades for my pc are mostly to eliminate the bottle neck caused by having an older cpu. I still don't regret spending extra on a 3060 12gb. It has been going strong these last few years.
Didnt it launch like, last year?
The one problem of course is that if the companies killed the "budget GPUs" altogether, the next tier up would suddenly be the "budget GPU" option - and now cost more, though as Linus points out, that just might be worth it.
They actually do have uses, it's just not gaming. For instance, I use an Intel A380 for transcoding. It would be absolute garbage for playing any real games on, but for what it can do, it's absolutely perfect, and I didn't have to pay out the nose for decent hardware encoding and decoding. I was considering the 3050 for that, but the A380 has AV1, which is really nice to have.
@@OhhCrapGuy Gotta be careful with that. For example the 1650 does not have the same NVENC engine as the 1660 or contemporary 20-series. Sometimes the budget cards don't even have feature parity with the performance cards in the same generation.
@@OhhCrapGuy Fair, but most of the conversation is going to be around AMD and NVidia, especially considering how "new" Intel is to this space. :) To be fair, that is one major selling point in favour of Intel compared to the others!
@@MindstabThrull Okay, but when it goes away from gaming, considerations also change a lot. Someone who renders lots of videos will have quite different demands than someone who simply games. Same for scientific simulations, 3D modeling, music production, or plain old office work.
The A380 looks indeed like a really really great home theatre encoding card, that is also capable for some light gaming on the side.
I only once bought a super cheap video card and in that instance it made sense. Several years ago my wife wanted to use an ultra wide monitor with the computer I built her. She only needed for office tasks and the integrated GPU in my 4th generation Intel CPU didn't support 1080P ultra wide so I got a GT210 for like $25 and it worked a treat.
This was very good info; I didn't know that.
GPUs have always been a bit tricky for me. I just normally watch reviews and benchmarks to get an idea.
Thanks, Linus, I was just thinking about upgrading my GPU from 750Ti. Believe it or not, I even finished CP77 on it, but I think it's the time for some little upgrade, and your video contains information I really needed. Thanks.
what model are you thinking of?
@@StanisawSwierczynski I was thinking about something around GTX1660, tho to be frank 2060 would be most preferable.
Wow, I'm surprised it even ran on that. I was running it on a 1070TI when it came out and had to keep it on essentially the lowest possible settings to play at 1440 and keep it at 50 fps. I'm guessing you were playing at 1080p or even lower.
After a couple of weeks I was able to snag a RX 6800. Big difference, I could play on the medium pre-set and stay above 60 fps. The visual difference between low and medium is huge, so I was pretty happy. After their major optimizations patch, I could click the preset to high and sit around 70-80 fps. The visual difference is noticeable, but not nearly as much as the low-med step up. It's such a good looking game, it's a shame to have to play it on low settings.
@@andrewt9204 To be frank, I even streamed CP77 on that card, tho like you imagine it was in 720p. Normally I run it on 1080p and it works for me, tho , i dont want to sound rude, so sorry in advance, but I'm not too particularly whiny about graphics. As long as game works and looks decent, and I have fun playing it, it all good. I have hard time swallowing approach that someone have powerfully hardware and is whining that game doesn't work on million fps or one damn graphic option doesn't work, even i that person could hardly say if it's on or off.
Huge lesson learned. Got an RX 6700 (Sapphire Pulse) a couple weeks ago at a pretty nice deal, but around 1 week ago it started showing signs of being defective.
Well cop that warranty lol
that's probably a great deal just an unfortunate defective unit
I have one too, since September, working perfectly.
AMD Drivers are just Wacky and weird AF... - sometimes my 6700xt reports 512mb vram after driver installation and all that
@@mikepro-ww5fg Already sent it for an RMA 👍
And always keep in mind that you don't just spend once for an upgrade. You spend money now to have the thing, but every minute you use it will also cost you electricity. So going for that slightly more expensive, but less consuming part can be cheaper in the long run. So check your prices, not just the cost upfront but also the cost you'll have to pay until you do your next upgrade.
lool 6:21 i saw that performance dip, LTT editor/s is/are honestly next level tbh
Thanks, Linus
Ya smacked some sense into me. Time to get a 6600XT.
3:30 Why is it so common for these symbols to be used incorrectly? Seriously, it's not that difficult. If the 1630 is the "greater" product (and on the right of the symbol) the symbol you want is
I understand why you always put things in perspective to gamers but as someone who manily uses my pcs for Adobe products it would be nice to get a video like this or at least one graph that helps interpret performance for productivity use cases.
As someone who has worked in finance/accounting across a range of industries, the cheapest product ranges have the highest markup.