I recently bought a used LG UltraGear 38GN950-B in excellent condition, but my RTX 3070 is struggling with newer games at the monitor's native resolution. I often have to lower settings to low or medium. My system has a Ryzen 5 5600X, 32GB of RAM, and a recently purchased 750W be quiet! power supply. I can spend up to €700–€1,000 on a graphics card. Would an RX 9070 XT be the best fit, or should I consider a used RTX 4080 or another option? Would it make more sense to sell the whole PC and build a new system with roughly €1,800 available, plus an estimated €500–€700 from selling my current setup?
3 Answers
Your display is much closer to 4K than regular 1440p in terms of pixel count, so you should choose a GPU with roughly 4K-class performance expectations. The 9070 XT should be a very noticeable step up, but even it will not run every demanding AAA game at ultra settings and very high frame rates at native resolution. Upscaling and a few adjusted settings may still be necessary.
An RX 9070 XT looks like the strongest option in your budget. It should be a substantial upgrade over the RTX 3070 and gives you twice the VRAM, which is useful at this resolution. After installing it, use DDU to remove the old graphics drivers before installing the new ones.
That seems like the best value so far. The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 are difficult to justify at their current prices.
For a 34-inch 3440×1440 ultrawide, the RX 9070 XT has been excellent in my experience. Games run above 100 FPS with high settings without much trouble, so it should be a good match for your monitor as well, provided you are comfortable using upscaling or tuning settings in the most demanding titles.
That is reassuring. Several people have recommended the 9070 XT, so it looks like the most sensible upgrade within my budget.
I found a used RTX 4080 for around €800. Would that provide a meaningful advantage over the 9070 XT for high or ultra settings, or would the difference be too small to justify choosing it?