From MSI 1660 ARMOR OC 6 GB to aSUS 2060 DUAL EVO 6 GB, is it worth it?

[Makhno25]

Hi all, I was wondering if upgrading from a 1660 to a 2060 is worth it.
I'm not a regular gamer, two or three hours a week, but I like to max everything out at 1080p/60hz and with 1660 I occasionally have frame drops. Would the 2060 give me tangible progress?
Thanks everyone for your attention.
Greetings

[DBCOOPER011]

IMO, it depends on how much your paying for it. If in the U.S., you can find a lot of used 3060's going for around 225 USD, and 3060 Ti's at around 300 USD in hardwareswap. The 3060 Ti is a big jump up from the 3060 and 2060..

[Makhno25]

Thank you for your answer. ? 
The 2060 is the most powerful card I can buy without even changing the power supply. Having said that, I repeat the question, if I installed a 2060 instead of my 1660 would I have a tangible performance increase in il2 sturmovik?
Greetings

[1Sascha]

7 hours ago, Makhno25 said:

without even changing the power supply.

What kind of PSU do you have?

 

I'd start with popular benchmarks and check how they rank the two cards.

 

Passmark:

 

 

3DMark Time Spy, 1660:

 

3DMark Time Spy, 2060:

With the Time Spy results, I would ignore the "Highest Score" entries and just go with averages. 14000+ for the 2060 when average score is just under 7600 probably means there was some insane over-clocking going on there...

 

 

There's definitely an uplift to be had from the 2060 (at least in those synthetic benchmarks) ... it doesn't seem to be a huge one though, so I'm not sure I'd go through with it unless you're getting a very sweet deal on that 2060.

 

If it was me, I'd probably save up a bit more/longer and then try to go 30xx at least - of course, all that also depends on what kind of system you're currently running and how long you want to keep that system. If it's an older CPU it might not benefit as much as you'd hope from throwing a faster GPU in there.

 

1660, 2060, 3060 Passmark results:

 

Not a lot between 2060 and 3060 when it comes to power draw (or current price, but I'm not sure how accurate those are) - so you might as well go with the newer card if your system would benefit from it. Especially with the 3060, I'd probably wait until Nvidia release the 4070 and 4060 sometime in March. That *might* cause prices on the 3060 to drop.

 

S.

Edited February 7, 2023 by 1Sascha

[Makhno25]

1 hour ago, 1Sascha said:

 

 

Hi Sascha,

i've a corsair cv550

Edited February 7, 2023 by Makhno25

[Makhno25]

I don't know if a 3060 is right for me because I use an i3 10105f and maybe I'm cpu limited.

Anyway, your comment convinced me and I think I'll take your advice to wait
Thank you for your accurate and timely information, Sascha ? 

[kestrel79]

I was thinking about going from a 2060 to 3060TI...it's a decent jump?

 

I might just want until the 4060 or 4070 comes out just to make sure. I usually try to upgrade every 2 generations of cards. More VRAM would be nice too for VR.

 

I only have a 750w psu so I can't really do the 4080s or 4090s...

[1Sascha]

1 hour ago, Makhno25 said:

i've a corsair cv550

I don't think you should be worried about your PSU then - at least not with the 2060 (or even the 3060).

 

I'm running an i5-12600K and an RTX 3070 on a Seasonic FX Gold+ 550W. I also have a bit of RGB nonsense in my system and quite a lot of USB devices connected to my mainboard. I'm probably at the upper limit of what this thing can handle safely ... but I used multiple online power calculators and all of them told me 550W should be enough. Besides: In the case of the Seasonic at least, I do know that they can handle quite a bit more than their rated wattage. One extensive review I found had the 550 cut out at over 700 W of power-draw.

 

1 hour ago, Makhno25 said:

I use an i3 10105f and maybe I'm cpu limited.

 

Yeaahhh... that might be an issue. Not sure I'd spend money on any new GPU to pair it with that CPU. You should probably rather keep saving until you can buy a faster CPU, then re-use that 1660 with your new system.

 

Even a lower end 12-gen CPU like the i5-12400F (~€150 in my neck of the woods currently) would be around 100% faster than your current CPU.

 

S.

[Makhno25]

This platform is one year old (i3 10105, 16 gb crucial ballistix 3000 and msi b460m pro vdh for 220 euro)and I was thinking of using it another three or four along with the 1660.
My initial question arose from the opportunity to pay 150 euros for the 2060 thanks to a series of bonuses from an online store. I didn't buy it immediately because it heats up and consumes, above all consumes, more than my 1660 and I was trying to understand the realistic increase in performance to make a decision.
Thanks again Sascha, you've been very helpful.
Greetings

[Makhno25]

---snip---

Yeaahhh... that might be an issue. Not sure I'd spend money on any new GPU to pair it with that CPU. You should probably rather keep saving until you can buy a faster CPU, then re-use that 1660 with your new system.

---snip---

 

I think your speech is valid in the case of high-end cards.
The 10400 doesn't seem much more powerful than the 10105f when paired with mid-range cards, for example

 

 

[1Sascha]

8 hours ago, Makhno25 said:

The 10400 doesn't seem much more powerful than the 10105f when paired with mid-range cards, for example

 

I was talking about the 12400F, not the 10400F

Pretty big difference, since there are two generations between those two (10th gen vs 12th gen) and Intel CPUs did get a pretty substantial performance boost from 11th to 12th gen.

 

 

 

Upgrading your existing platform to a faster 10 or 11 gen CPU (10600, 11600) *might* make the most sense if you can find a cheap second hand CPU and if your system would support it (mobo, cooling). Brand new, these things still seem to be priced rather ridiculously, given their age and the fact that they're two to three generations old. For example: I just found a regular 11600 over here for €270 - or about the same price you'd pay for a 12600K.

 

Of course: Switching to a new platform is more expensive. You'd need a new motherboard *and* CPU... and potentially some more stuff like a more powerful CPU-cooler. And since you said you were on a budget, I think your best bet to get more performance would be to research what sort of 10th or 11th gen CPU your existing motherboard could handle and then look for a 2nd hand example of that CPU. I'd keep that GF 1660 for now - while the 2060 is more powerful, I'm not sure your system would benefit more from it than from a faster CPU.

 

Also: What's the rest of your system look like? Things like mainboard/chipset, amount and speed of RAM, OS, mass storage (HDD? SSD? M.2?) etc are kinda important when you're looking to upgrade your PC.

 

S.

 

 

[Makhno25]

18 hours ago, Makhno25 said:

This platform is one year old (i3 10105, 16 gb crucial ballistix 3000 and msi b460m pro vdh for 220 euro)and I was thinking of using it another three or four along with the 1660.

plus an 860 evo 500 gb

[Makhno25]

I did some research, less accurate than Sascha's, but I think I can say that changing motherboard + cpu or just the graphics card doesn't make any difference, I would get the same increase in fps.
It is Buridan's ass.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Makhno25
A little better

[Makhno25]

I'm thinking about investing 400 euros + bonus in this rig:
12400f
MSI PRO B660M-A
Asus RTX 2060 dual evo

+ old parts (samsung 860 evo 500 gb, corsai 550 W, crucial ballistix 3000 mhz)

[1Sascha]

On 2/9/2023 at 12:32 AM, Makhno25 said:

I'm thinking about investing 400 euros + bonus in this rig:
12400f
MSI PRO B660M-A
Asus RTX 2060 dual evo

+ old parts (samsung 860 evo 500 gb, corsai 550 W, crucial ballistix 3000 mhz)

Looks pretty good - especially for the price.
 

That 860 Evo is a bit slow by today's standards (550 MB/s read ... for both SATA and M.2 variant as far as I can tell.

 

That MSI board does have two M.2 slots if I'm not mistaken and with even a cheap-ish modern M.2 you'd be getting much faster read and write speeds - like 5 to 6 times faster on read, depending on the board's capabilities, but definitely much faster than the 860.

 

Here's a speed-comparison between my old SATA 850 Evo (same read/write speeds as your 860 AFAIK) and my "games-dumping-ground" 980 M.2:

 

 

Plus, and this is probably more important: 500 GB is not a whole lot of space if you want to use your SSD both as system drive (which you should) and as storage for more demanding apps - like games.

 

Might want to think about something like this WD Blue M.2:

https://geizhals.de/western-digital-wd-blue-sn570-nvme-ssd-1tb-wds100t3b0c-a2614238.html?hloc=at&hloc=de

 

Over here, it's currently €50 for the 1TB version.

 

I'd go as large as possible, but at least for a 1TB variant. If there's one thing I've always run out of with my PCs, it's disk-space - as you can see from my screenshots. I "only" had the 1TB 970 Evo Plus and the old 500 GB 850 in this system when I built it last year. I had to grab another 1TB M.2 (the 980) a few months later, because I was starting to run out of space already ? .

 

You should also preferably get that larger M.2 drive before you build and setup the new system so you can install the OS on your fastest drive and won't have to migrate it at a later point.

 

 

 

 

S.

 

[Makhno25]

10 hours ago, 1Sascha said:

You should also preferably get that larger M.2 drive before you build and setup the new system so you can install the OS on your fastest drive and won't have to migrate it at a later point.

For the moment I have decided to change only mb and cpu: I want to see how the 1660 performs.
I will buy the 1 tera sn770, but in a few months, when Debian 12, my main operating system, comes out.

Sascha, again, thanks a lot for your suggestions.
Cheers ? 

[Norz]

Do not change your mobo and CPU. Just upgrage your GPU and enjoy the game.

 

I used i3 10100F just 2 months ago and upgraded it into i5 10600k. The performance test for Il2 shows only +15% (The price for i3 10100F is about 65€ and 165€ for i5 10600k).

I do not think that it is really good idea to going that way.

 

Frames: 4964 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 82.733 - Min: 70 - Max: 112 i5 10600K RX 6750xt Memory 3200 32gb Mobo Z490
Frames: 4371 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 72.850 - Min: 64 - Max: 96   i3 10100F Memory 3200 1.35V Mobo B460

 

Final budget:

 

Z490 100€

i5 10600K 165€

32Gb 3200 60€

 

Old stuff 

i3 10100F + Mobo B460 + 2x8Gb 

 

152€ on ebay.de

 

320€ vs 150€ just to get 15% ... Hm ... Bad Bad Bad expirience:)

 

 

The best way ro invest money into IL2 is the GPU. It is really different game expirience to play 144 fps instread of 60. Your PSU will manage 3060 or 3060ti easily. (220W 3060ti GPU + 75W CPU)

 

P.S: I tried also AMD Ryzen 3600 and i5 10500, the results are close to 10600k. I am not sure that 12400 will provide more performance for Il2 as i5 10600k.

 

Frames: 4692 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 78.200 - Min: 63 - Max: 107  amd 3600 (x42) rtx 3070 memory 3200

 

If you want to improve your CPU performance just buy amd 3600 (about 70€ on ebay and Mobo B450 about 60€ for new one). You will pay only 20..40€ to upgrade your 4 cores CPU into 6 cores and will get 10% more FPS in IL2.

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by Norz

[1Sascha]

On 2/14/2023 at 12:10 AM, Norz said:

I used i3 10100F just 2 months ago and upgraded it into i5 10600k

There's a pretty big difference between an upgrade from 10105F -> 10600 and going 10105F -> 12400 F.

 

 

10th and 11th gen were a bit lackluster in their performance IIRC - but the switch to 12th gen gave a pretty substantial boost.

 

Single thread performance could probably be one factor explaining the relatively small uplift between those two 10th gen CPUs.

 

Plus with the right socket 1700 motherboard, he'd be able to upgrade further in the future - either to a faster 12th gen or even to a 13th gen.

Not sure about the "lesser" 1700 690-chipsets, but my MSI Z690 Tomahawk could handle up to a 13900 - all it'd need is a BIOS update AFAIK.

 

 

S.

 

Edited February 16, 2023 by 1Sascha