Area-51 R2, graphics card upgrade, #3

Board search result = Area-51 R2, graphics card upgrade?

In all honesty that is an older system and pending on what graphics card is currently used in it, there's not going to be much of an upgrade path in terms of performance.

Again, it all depends on your current graphics cards.

If you really like your Area-51 R2 and you don't care about Vanadiel logic and economic practicality you can max out your CPU to i7-7700K for about $350.

Logical my dear Watson, logical.

What does his CPU have to do with his graphics card question?

If they want to get maximum benefit out of an upgraded graphics card, then they should max out the CPU. There is no limit to the graphics card that can be installed in the Area-51 R2 . . . the CPU will become the limiting factor.

The graphics card is:

NVDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1080 with 8GB GDDR5X

Given the info presented here, at what level of graphics cards does the card start to outpace the current CPU?  

GTX 1080 is the graphics card you have now . . . or the graphics card to which you are upgrading? Because that is far below "the max card that this unit will support".

If you are only 'upgrading' to GTX 1080 (a nice graphics card, by the way) then your current CPU is fine.

 The 1080 is the current card.  I'm exploring upgrades from there.

If you are not upgrading your CPU, then I don't see much benefit in going above perhaps the RTX 3060.

Like the professor said above. In the end, it really depends on what you are planning to do with it, and what resolution you want to use on your monitor.

If you are planning on running recent games, the system will likely struggle to keep up. With older games, it might run better.

Something that will overall make a nice difference is installing an SSD, if you don't have one already. It's a cheap upgrade that will boost overall system performance.

My Area-51 upgrade was done during the global pandemic, in the midst of a global supply chain crisis, coincident with the crypto mining craze . . . it was not economical.

Yet I would do it again in a heartbeat . . . probably 30% more economical today.

For the monitor, I run two screens, with the primary a 34" @ 3440x 1440, and a secondary monitor is 27" @2560-1440.

At this point, I don't have a clear plan.  If there are economical upgrades, I'm OK keeping the rig for another year or two.  If not, I may just start fresh.

So UW QHD and regular QHD resolution. It's actually the same resolution and setup I use.

I am thinking for that it's best to look at an RTX 3080 or higher, although an RTX 3070 or similar will do ok also.

It's really going to be CPU bound with that 6800K, which brings us down to what the professor said, an RTX 3060. But at that resolution will not be the best solution as the video card will struggle with higher quality settings or fps rates above 60 Hz.

I am still thinking from an economical point of view, a new machine should be considered, unless you absolutely want to keep that case and upgrade what's inside. If you can be separated from the case, I would look at a complete new machine. Even a last year generation will be fine, something like an R10 or an R11, if you can find them.