Not just TSW but any game is going to benefit from the best GPU your PC power pack and motherboard can accommodate. As I posted in the Roadcraft thread, going by the demo a GTX1650 with 4Gb of RAM no longer appears to cut it. I believe the minimum spec for MSFS is something like a RTX 2080. However as regards TSW specifically, even people who have thrown high end graphics cards at it still report performance issues. The game is very poorly programmed and optimised.
It depends on what hardware you have, as vern mentioned. Whats your budget, whats the video resolution of your screen? The gtx 1660 is the minimum I would say. The rtx 4060 is probably the best value for money with 12gb vram. Double of what the gtx 1660 has to offer. I found the newer routes on tsw push the boundaries of a 8gb card at higher resolutions.
What if you want to use an ultra wide screen monitor? No need for 4k though. Is this RTX 4046 ti enough?
Now that I’ve got my old PC running Windows 11, looking at jumping my GTX 1650 up to a RTX 3050. Yes an older card but they are now under £200 if you shop around and shouldn’t tax my 450w PSU. Just a question of whether to go for one with 6Gb of VRAM or 8Gb.
4060 is faster, but 8GB VRAM is already not enough for a several games, even on high settings @1080p. It really depends a lot on your game library and the developers' desire to optimize games for 8GB cards in the future.
You would be far better off purchasing a quality 2080ti than a 3050. A much much stronger card in every respect and you would certainly get a second hand one for good money. https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-3050-vs-Nvidia-RTX-2080-Ti/4127vs4027
The more VRAM the better, especially for 1440p and 4K. The 3050 is a weak card, personally I would say the 3070 is much more competent. There's plenty 3070 on ebay for circa £275
At the moment I'm still mulling over whether to just wait and get a new box later in the year. I switched the PC on earlier to send in the monthly gas and electric meter readings and it took about 7 minutes to finally come on, including 5 staring at a black screen. So I don't think it really likes Win 11 even with the workarounds!
Yes I’m just about to revert the PC back to Win 10. Wife has suggested I sell my soul to her and I can get a new PC later in the year.
The GTX 1660 is the bare minimum these days, and really shouldn't be considered an upgrade. The Nvidia RTX 4060 isn't great value. If you are not worried about Ray Tracing (realistically the 4060 can't do much RT anyway), then an AMD RX 7600 is often faster for much less money. For a little more, the AMD RX 7600 XT is level with a 4060Ti, comes with 16GB as standard and is much cheaper. A second hand RTX 3070 is still a lot of money for only 8GB of VRAM, which is quickly making cards redundant at high resolutions. Whereas the RTX 2080Ti 11GB seems like a good option, but I'd be worried about the long term reliability of a second hand card. Lots of them listed "for parts" on eBay and you often don't know the cards' history. Could have been running 24/7 in a crypto farm.
I think it all depends on the country. Here I have 4060 and 7600 sold for +/- the same price. And I would prefer a card with DLAA (unfortunately, not all games have it) than a card without anything, but 0-10% faster for the same money. Of course, if the 7600 is sold much cheaper in your country, then this is a strong argument in favor of buying it.
Good points but you cannot just create a game for the GPU aristocracy either, not if you want to sell enough copies to stay in business. We are where we are with GPU’s partly because of Covid and also the data mining that went on with Bitcoin as Chris mentions, that pushed prices sky high and still haven’t really settled. By rights, that RTX3050 I mentioned should now be retailing for less than £100, not still nudging the £200 mark.
That's was a mess back in covid. I sold a used 1050ti for almost double what I payed for it new. Also I sold one of the kids old pc's on ebay with another 1050ti, the buyer told me to keep the pc and send them the graphics card! Prices are dropping slowly though.