I've been using a GeForce GTX 1080 for about five years, but it's starting to struggle with newer games and ray-tracing requirements, including Doom: The Dark Ages. I originally wanted an RTX 4060 Ti with 16GB of VRAM, but it seems to be discontinued or unavailable from local sellers. My budget is around €550, with €600 as the absolute maximum. My system has a Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G, DDR4 memory, and an existing motherboard from a prebuilt PC. I'm not very familiar with AMD versus Nvidia hardware, so I'd appreciate advice on a suitable upgrade and whether my CPU could limit a newer graphics card.
4 Answers
Your Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G will work with a modern GPU, but it may limit performance in some games, especially at 1080p or when aiming for very high frame rates. In GPU-heavy games, the graphics card can still make a major difference, so you do not necessarily need to replace the CPU immediately. If you later upgrade the processor, an AM4 chip such as a Ryzen 7 5700X3D would be a sensible option if your motherboard and BIOS support it.
The RTX 4060 Ti 16GB has been out of production for a while, which explains why it is difficult to find new. Rather than paying an inflated price for old stock, consider a newer AMD card. Depending on local pricing, an RX 9070 GRE or RX 9070 could offer substantially more performance for roughly €550–600, though you should compare actual prices and your power supply before buying.
I didn’t realize the 4060 Ti had been discontinued. I’ll compare the newer AMD cards instead of trying to track down that exact model.
The Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB is a much better option to investigate than the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, assuming you can find one at a reasonable local price. It offers plenty of VRAM and strong performance for the money. The fact that the card uses GDDR6 does not matter because that is the GPU’s own video memory; your system’s DDR4 RAM is separate and remains compatible.
That clears up my concern about DDR4 versus GDDR6. I’ll look into the RX 9060 XT 16GB.
Check your power supply, case clearance, and motherboard BIOS before choosing a card. The 4650G platform is older and may run a new GPU through PCIe 3.0, but the card should still function. Just make sure the PSU has the required connectors and enough wattage, especially for the higher-end options.
I mostly play games that are more GPU-heavy, so I’ll start with the graphics card and see how the system performs before replacing the CPU.