My 8GB RX 480 recently died after about ten years of use, and I'm out of touch with current hardware and pricing. I mainly play city-building games such as Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, along with Hell Let Loose, and otherwise use the PC for office work and watching videos. I'm open to either AMD or NVIDIA and would like to know whether replacing only the graphics card makes sense or whether the rest of the system is too old.
My current hardware is an Intel i5-4460, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, a Gigabyte H81M-HD3 motherboard, a 500W be quiet! power supply, a 1TB SSD, and a 2TB hard drive. I'm still using Windows 10, although I may eventually try Linux. What GPU would be a sensible match, and what would be considered a reasonable used or refurbished price? Would a full rebuild be better? Also, is it realistic to wait for data-center hardware to flood the consumer market and make GPUs extremely cheap?
4 Answers
Your i5-4460 and DDR3 platform are old enough that a modern graphics card will usually be held back by the CPU, especially in CPU-heavy city builders and multiplayer games. Rather than buying an expensive new GPU for this machine, look for a complete used system around the equivalent of a Ryzen 5 3500 or 3600, or an i7-6700/7700, paired with something like a GTX 1660, 1660 Ti, RTX 3050, or GTX 1070. That would improve both the processor and graphics performance and give you a better upgrade path.
If the current system was fast enough for the games you play, the simplest option is to install another inexpensive used card and keep using it. A GTX 1660 Super or RX 580 would be reasonable targets and should be a noticeable improvement over the RX 480 without spending much. I wouldn’t plan around data centers flooding the market, since their hardware is generally different from consumer gaming GPUs and is often sold through other channels.
A full rebuild is the better long-term route if you want to play newer games. An affordable AM4 build with a Ryzen 5 3600 or 5500, a B450 or B550 board, and 16GB or 32GB of RAM can still be good value on the used market. Then choose the best GPU your budget allows. Buying an expensive current-generation card for the existing i5 would waste much of its performance.
Don’t overlook the power supply. If it’s also close to ten years old, replacing it is sensible even if the wattage seems adequate. A quality 600W-class unit would give you more headroom. Older cards such as the GTX 1080 can work, but they draw more power and may push a 500W supply too hard, so check the exact PSU model and the card’s connector requirements before buying.
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