I'm asking on behalf of a friend who recently upgraded to an RX 9060 XT graphics card (16 GB). He's having trouble getting decent FPS in games; for instance, he averages only 120 FPS in Fortnite even on the lowest settings. We're wondering if the PCIe version difference could be causing this issue. For reference, he built his PC on this prebuilt model [link to HP Z1 G6 Tower]. His motherboard seems to be the HP 870C. Any advice?
3 Answers
You shouldn’t see too many issues running the RX 9060 XT on a PCIe 3.0 interface. If you check benchmarks, many users report good performance even on that setup. It might not be the interface that's the problem.
First off, is your friend's RX 9060 XT the 8GB or 16GB version? Because I've heard that with the 8GB card on PCIe 3.0, performance can really drop in some games. However, considering that he has a 16GB unit and likely a 10th gen Intel CPU, that CPU might be the real culprit behind the FPS issues. It’s something to keep in mind!
Remember that competitive games often use low settings to maximize FPS, which can lead to a CPU bottleneck. Depending on his setup, a 7th gen Intel CPU can really hold back performance, even if the GPU is powerful. So it might not just be the PCIe that’s causing the FPS drop.
Yeah, the unit is 16GB. Just to add, the Intel i7-10700 in his build is solid but might still struggle in certain situations, especially in competitive games.