Building a Budget PC: Should You Buy a Used Graphics Card?

[Julio Franco]

At a time when graphics cards are extremely overpriced, AMD's new Ryzen APUs offer an affordable means of building a basic gaming PC. But we've been keen to see if the APU holds its ground against bargain priced second-hand GPUs. Today we're going to find out.

GTX 750 Ti... 2014 is calling

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1590-build-a-pc-used-graphics-cards/

 

[treetops]

I bought a used 970 awhile back its still rockin like 2-3 years later? The trade off is no warranty... It's a gamble. With the rise in GPU prices........ Things are looking sad for new gamers.

 

[Manuel Diego]

As usual, great article! Just a thing that caught my eye in the last page: "This next graph adds $70 to all configurations for a B350 or B360 motherboard (we expect the latter to be out soon)". I presume "B360" should be "B450"?
EDIT: OK, sorry, now I see it, it's refering to the upcoming Intel CFL platform, my bad!

 

[bas416]

I just picked up a GTX670, it is perfect for the job apart from the 170W TDP, but 90% of the time it is sitting idle anyways so who cares. Got almost 1050Ti performance at fraction of the cost...

 

[Digitalzone]

Great article. That's why I am reading techspot, easy to read, lighweight articles with added value. The only thing I would add from my personal perspective playing on APU some years ago is that I always went after older games. When I had Mobility Radeon HD 4250 in a laptop I played games like Mafia, CS Source,AoE3 etc. The newer Mafia 2 had problems to run fluently. APUs can be really good for somebody who is a secondary players, just for fun, playing the games he liked years ago. You will not enjoy games just from the oven.

 

[alabama man]

Well you can't buy new graphics cards anyways so you have to buy used, there's really no choice. Would have loved to see more higher end used models (680,780 maybe even old titan or quadro) and 900 and 1000 series for comparison. I'm thinking of upgrading but it's hard to find info on the actual benefits when you have 2-3 year old parts as their never in any comparisons. Everything runs fine so I guess I can manage till the next gpus to come and hope you can actually buy one but it's nice to see how your system does compared to the newest parts to know when the benefits are enough for a upgrade.

 

[Uncle Al]

I have yet to go this route but the advantages are certainly noteworthy; still .... it's not comparable to buying a used car ... if that one breaks you can get it repaired; I doubt anyone in their right mind is going to shell out anything to repair a used graphic's card .....

 

[Prosercunus]

No.

 

[money]

I'm happy with my 960 that I bought almost 3 years ago.

 

[UncleSharkey]

Have you looked at the prices of used cards lately? They are way over priced too. I just don't think it's worth it. I refuse to purchase a new video card until the prices come back down to normal. I mean the GT 1030 was going for 69 dollars for the longest time now it's 130 and that is just insane.

 

[Nobina]

It is defintely worth it to buy used if you get a working one without any hidden issues. You won't have warranty so you have to be careful who you buy it from.

 

[Vulcanproject]

A used card is a good deal. If you receive it fully working chances are it won't fail soon. Terminal card failures in my experience are relatively rare and a second hand working GPU purchase is pretty low risk.

I have bought used cards, put them in my systems and they worked for a couple years, then sold them on again working and that person kept them another few years before scrapping the machine.

 

[msroadkill612]

My 2c.

I see apuS improving by 20%+ based on better tweaks of hardware alone. I see zero improvement for recycled junk for both processors

3433 ram is now doable on apuS, and thats critical to apu perf.

the apu is a modern ecosystem with a learning curve that will remain relevant. your precious time will not have been wasted.

very soon we will have the 400 series am4 moboS. The first revision after the beta is always significant, and we are being told as much.


cooling is a mandatory small extra ($10-20 Gammax) for these apuS. They are amazingly over clockable if cooled.

afaik, freesync is a boon for entry gaming rigs - only on recent gen AMD afaik, & not (affordably) on nvidia. There are two ways to performance - more power or less work. freesync saves work.

The most relevant dgpu for ryzen owners to compare imo, is missing - the rx 560 - ~$160 new.

Its only a generation behind vega and a bit of a bump in CUs. Its a similar ecosystem to the current amd mainstream, but with the muscle of more cores & fast gpu cache.

for me & many others, the hassle & risk of a used/old rig vs state of the art? - nah.

If the apu didn't quite cut it for my needs, but staying cheap as - a 1600x ryzen & the cheapest 4GB rx 560 & a freesync monitor is sound value atm. amd mobos and cpuS are on clearance.

~whatever gpu you buy will be rubbish in a year

imho, the apu needs to run at a res between 720p & 1080p. Its too strong for 720p & struggles a bit in places at 1080p.

an important resource ou there folks dont quite get yet imo. A storage resource so fast it approaches slow ram speeds. Its affordable, safe and getting cheaper.

Imagine having almost unlimited slowish memory, but its not so slow. Memory paging by windows swap file e.g. is mostly pre-emptive or can be delayed writes. When the app needs the data, it's often been prefetched into memory.

Full strength nvme raid is now native to am4, along with tr4 and epyc platforms.

 

[TheHughMan]

Used graphics card still overpriced with many miles. Old graphics cards minimum system requirement.

 

[toooooot]

Dont buy a used video card. The only used card I bought was overheating until I installed a water cooler. Video cards often run at very high temps especially in demanding games that puts them into higher risk category.
I have had a lot of HDD breaking, followed by RAM and motherboards, followed by video cards.
If you still wanna get one, at least go for low end low profile because at least those dont produce a lot of heat.

 

[Evernessince]

I bought a used 970 awhile back its still rockin like 2-3 years later? The trade off is no warranty... It's a gamble. With the rise in GPU prices........ Things are looking sad for new gamers.

Typically if a card is going to fail it's going to do so within the first month or it will be good for at least 5 years.

You can take allot of the gamble out by stress testing the card when you get it.

 

[CheekyP]

Dont buy a used video card. The only used card I bought was overheating until I installed a water cooler. Video cards often run at very high temps especially in demanding games that puts them into higher risk category.
I have had a lot of HDD breaking, followed by RAM and motherboards, followed by video cards.
If you still wanna get one, at least go for low end low profile because at least those dont produce a lot of heat.

Depends how 'used' the card is, but in general I agree with you, in terms of failure rates video cards are up there with motherboards after prolonged use.

That said, I was able to get a 2nd hand GTX 1050 which obviously can't be 'that' used, and I've paired it with an older i5 (Haswell) system, so I've gone the opposite to what this article has compared the APUs to, which is older GPUs + newer CPU, whereas I've gone a newer GPU but older CPU. I don't think a Haswell i5 is that much slower CPU wise than a 2200G or i3 8100, but I appreciate the efficiency of the GTX 1050 as compared to the older gen GPUs. In terms of framerates it's probably comparable to a GTX 760 or Radeon 7950 but the power draw is probably around half.

 

[regiq]

I've been buying used video cards for over a decade now and none failed me. It was no problem to sell them either. For me new components loose value to quickly, especially those top of the line. And I wouldn't compare the risk with buying an used car as some do, it's very different money.
BUT now even used cards are very overpriced. I recently sold a GCN Radeon for the same price I bought it 3 years ago...
I'm not sure if the situation will get better. The altcoin bubble would have to pop definitely and then the market would be flooded with very hard used cards.

 

[NoBsPls]

What has the world come to.... This is so sad that people have to go with used 750ti cards. Heck I remember it wasn't all that long ago that I got a 1050ti for $120 and 1060 for $185 and then there were $15 and $25 rebates respectively on both. So effectively $105 and $160.

https://I.imgur.com/URnddqD.jpg

 

[pcnthuziast]

I don't expect prices to "stabilize" or return to pre miner prices. PC gaming is simply a more expensive hobby now and baseline prices for gfx cards and other components is just higher now and I highly doubt the trend will cease. Further evidence is the increase in prices of even complete builds with discrete gfx cards in them. In 2016 an entry level gaming card was 150-200 and a top tier was anywhere from 500-800, but going forward I expect the entry level to start closer to 500 (like 1060 level) and top tier to start at 800-900 and top out around 1500-2000 (1080 ti/xp level).

 

[MaikuTech]

I don't expect prices to "stabilize" or return to pre miner prices. PC gaming is simply a more expensive hobby now and baseline prices for gfx cards and other components is just higher now and I highly doubt the trend will cease. Further evidence is the increase in prices of even complete builds with discrete gfx cards in them. In 2016 an entry level gaming card was 150-200 and a top tier was anywhere from 500-800, but going forward I expect the entry level to start closer to 400 (like 1060 level) and top tier to start at 800-900 and top out around 1500-2000 (1080 ti/xp level).

Well its not the graphic card makers who are jacking up the price tag over the past 4 months.
Its the retailers doing this, such as Newegg, Amazon, Frys and anywhere else.
I was looking into why it is still high even as I type this.
I prefer getting it brand new, so I don't have to put up with someone elses gfx cards.
However coming out of pocket 200.00+ for graphics card is a no go for me.
I still got bills and family to take care of first.

 

[RealNeil]

I've been buying used GPUs for years. I'm living on a retirement income that never goes up, no matter what inflation does.
I started with three R9280X OC cards, then it was three R9-290X cards. Later on, I got two GTX-980s used, and three GTX-980Ti cards came after those.
I now have a pair of GTX-1070s and a pair of GTX-1080s.
I've always preferred SLI and Crossfire gaming.

 

[RealNeil]

I don't expect prices to "stabilize" or return to pre miner prices. PC gaming is simply a more expensive hobby now and baseline prices for gfx cards and other components is just higher now and I highly doubt the trend will cease. Further evidence is the increase in prices of even complete builds with discrete gfx cards in them. In 2016 an entry level gaming card was 150-200 and a top tier was anywhere from 500-800, but going forward I expect the entry level to start closer to 400 (like 1060 level) and top tier to start at 800-900 and top out around 1500-2000 (1080 ti/xp level).

Well its not the graphic card makers who are jacking up the price tag over the past 4 months.
Its the retailers doing this, such as Newegg, Amazon, Frys and anywhere else.
I was looking into why it is still high even as I type this.
I prefer getting it brand new, so I don't have to put up with someone elses gfx cards.
However coming out of pocket 200.00+ for graphics card is a no go for me.
I still got bills and family to take care of first.

While GPU makers are not responsible for GPU prices going through the roof, they ~are~ riding the cash wave along with resellers. Go to EVGA's website and look at the prices that they're asking for factory refurbished GPUs. Check their prices on new GPUs.
They're never going to ~NOT~ take advantage of market conditions.

 

[Ben Myers]

Folks, can you at least fix the titles of your artcles?

"Building a Budget PC: Should You Buy a Used Graphics Card?"

How about we say:

"Building a GAMING Budget PC: Should You Buy a Used Graphics Card?", because all you do is run games and gaming benchmarks. So what? Even with demanding real world software like PhotoShop and Solidworks, a fairly basic card with as little as 1GB of on-board memory will suffice. Nope, Solidworks will not render blindingly fast, but it would be good enough.

As a general rule, when TechSpot does articles full of gaming benchmarks, please call them what they are. Put the word GAMING in the title. Then I can afford to skip over them, having little interest in the topic.

 

[pcnthuziast]

All I'm saying is the days of a top tier card for around 500 are long gone and future 1080 tier cards will be at least double that from now on. I'd put money on it that not only will the prices not drop, but that they are not done peaking yet. The gamers are the ones who will resist the hardest, but all other sectors will just pay and go on about their business. Miners, artists, designers, developers, scientific community and the like, these are the ones who will continue to buy with little resistance to inflating prices and they will generate enough revenue for the manufacturers that they will not see any reason to reduce the prices.