Consider upgrading with Ryzen 5700G or 5500 and a used GPU to stay within budget.
Consider upgrading with Ryzen 5700G or 5500 and a used GPU to stay within budget.
It's not a superior option compared to the RX 6600. I only referred to it because CPUs have a long lifespan and the 5600 performs better than the 5500. The 8GB 2060 Super would be similar if adjusted with the 5600, making that trade-off reasonable.
The 5700G offers 8 cores similar to the 5700X, though the L3 cache remains unchanged. Your summary is accurate. If I recall correctly, the Stryker suggests pairing it with a more powerful CPU (like the 5500) and an older GPU (GTX 1060), while you mentioned the opposite setup (5500 + RX6600). What are your thoughts on this?
It shouldn't really matter much. The most significant impact comes from the largest PCIe bandwidth capacity on most graphics cards, especially when VRAM runs out and data must travel via the PCIe connection.
Noticeable performance changes began to show around the 4090/5090 models when PCIe bandwidth was reduced.
The PCIe scaling for RX 6600 XT shows a slight improvement over its intended bus, though the change is not obvious. For a faster version, a 2% performance drop compared to its designed bus would be detectable, but it remains minor. The RX 6500 XT uses PCIe 4.0 x4 at 8GB/s, matching PCIe 3.0 x8 at 8GB/s. In older systems, it would perform similarly to PCIe 2.0 x8 or PCIe 1.1 x16 at 4GB/s. A 3.0 x8 interface works well for mid-range cards, while a 3.0 x4 setup starts to show noticeable effects. At 1080p D2R, the GPU becomes the main bottleneck, so boosting CPU power helps, and further GPU upgrades only raise the same FPS limits.
The configuration is adequate for 1080p at 75Hz, though it's important to remember that the GTX 1060 only supports Freesync or Gsync Compatible over DisplayPort, not HDMI, and your display doesn't have a DisplayPort port. This means it won't be able to adjust to a Variable Refresh Rate if the workload becomes too heavy, leaving you with options like screen tearing or vSync abruptly reducing the frame rate to half. Adaptive vSync might help limit the maximum target framerate, but it still causes input lag when rendering faster than the refresh rate, resulting in tearing only when FPS drops below the refresh. FastSync remains a viable choice, though it works best when maintaining multiple refresh rates; unlike Adaptive, it doesn’t pause frames in a buffer during higher rates. All these options disable framerate control when FPS falls below the refresh, so tearing will be noticeable whenever this happens. AMD’s FastSync alternative is Enhanced Sync, but an AMD card would support Freesync over HDMI, making that the preferable option. This arrangement should significantly outperform your current Ryzen 5 2400G, which struggles with D2R requirements for 720p at 30fps—especially since it’s only half as powerful as the minimum needed for a GTX 660 or HD7850, which are mainly recommended for 720p at 30fps.
Would choosing an AMD card make more sense? It seems like many of the frustrations with my monitor could disappear. I’m thinking about getting an RX 580 or maybe trying to find a reasonably cheap 5600 XT. Are there any options in between worth looking into?
How many D2R instances am I currently running? 😁 In reality, I’ve been using D2 LOD for a long time, and the older graphics feel more comfortable. Without the quality-of-life improvements of D2R and the fact that few people play LOD anymore, I probably wouldn’t bother with it. My setup handled 7 copies of D2 LOD without any problems 😁