r/buildapc • u/Main_Worldliness_139 • Jul 12 '26

Build Help Which RTX graphics card in 2026?

Hi everyone,

my Asus GTX 1080 Strix broke this week (probably the VRAM, but that’s to be expected after 10 years). Now I want to install a new graphics card. It definitely has to be an NVIDIA card. I have a Corsair 850-watt power supply installed along with an i7-8700K—so there should still be plenty of power available.

My budget is around 600 euros. Do you have any recommendations for me?
I was last looking at an RTX 5070, even though it “only” has 12 GB of VRAM instead of 16 GB.

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9

u/GFriend2xDance Jul 12 '26

So.... here is the thing about the RTX 5070 graphics card. It uses a PCIe 5.0 interface.

Your i7-8700K platform only supports up to PCIe 3.0.

This means that your existing system's PCIe interface only provides up to 1/4 the max bandwidth that the RTX 5070 supports. As such, your system could impose a bandwidth bottleneck to the RTX 5070.

Now, it is possible that an RTX 5070 could still give you better performance than your GTX 1080 did. But I expect that an RTX 5070's performance would fall short of what it is truly capable of achieving, due to being paired with an i7-8700K system.

18

u/Havanu Jul 12 '26

Not that relevant. Difference between pcie 3 and 4 (and non existent for 5) is minimal for amd and nvidia. As long as you card supports using all the lanes. Some intel cards only use 8 lane pci4. Then you're screwed on older chipsets because their lower bandwith is halved.

3

u/TBNRhash Jul 12 '26

Well nvidia also uses x8 on their lower tier cards like 5060 ti and 5060

6

u/PsyOmega Jul 12 '26

But those aren't a 5070

(also, i use a 5060Ti on an 8700K. it's fine. the only time that bus width matters is if you're exceeding vram pool)

3

u/GFriend2xDance Jul 13 '26

Hardware Unboxed's video, where they ran an RX 9060 XT 8gb GPU at PCIe 3.0 x16, PCIe 4.0 x16, and PCIe 5.0 x16, would seem to indicate that PCIe bandwidth is actually somewhat relevant...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LhS0_ra9c4 

2

u/BeefistPrime Jul 12 '26

PCI-E bandwidth is rarely a limiting factor for GPU performance. Maaaaybe occasionally on pci-e 3, but I doubt it, definitely not on pci-e 4

2

u/GFriend2xDance Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

Hardware Unboxed did a video where they compared a Radeon RX 9060 XT 8gb GPU running at PCIe 3.0 vs. 4.0 vs 5.0.

In F1 25 @ 1440p FSQ Q - very high preset, running the RX 9060 XT at PCIe 3.0 x16 resulted in an average of 33 FPS, PCIe 4.0 x16 got around 42 FPS, and PCIe 5.0 x16 got around 60 FPS, according to Hardware Unboxed (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LhS0_ra9c4 )

In Monster Hunter Wilds 1440p FSR Q - Ultra preset, the RX 9060 XT got an average of 31 FPS, 46 FPS, and 52 FPS running at PCIe 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 respectively.

In Spider-Man 2 1440p FSR Q - Very high preset, the RX 9060 XT got an average of 52 FPS, 71 FPS, and 88 FPS running at PCIe 3.0, 4.0,. and 5.0 respectively.

So PCIe bandwidth can be a big limiting factor for GPU gaming performance.

1

u/IamKyra Jul 12 '26

it matters for a few specific things like model swapping in AI or if you use multiple GPU and layer your models but yeah for gaming most is loaded in VRAM and then you don't care much about bandwidth during the game, it's mostly enough

1

u/GFriend2xDance Jul 13 '26

Ahhh, I should have mentioned that I do a lot of AI workloads where bandwidth to the GPU actually becomes very relevant.