In years prior there were a lot of games and a shifting understanding of what hardware they can require. While gfx needs changed rapidly, hard drive space requirements went up steadily, predictably. As most of us have long abandoned physical media sales and use digital downloads instead, this number has stopped to be defined by the medium’s capacity.
Before and now we had outliers like MMORPGs and movie-like games requiring more estate, while other games like Deep Rock Galactic needing just 4GBs, but there always was some number of gigabytes you as a consumer thought a new game would take.
Where’s that sweet spot now for you?
For me, it’s 60GB, or a 40-80GB range. Something less or more than that causes questions and assumptions. I have a lot of space, but I’d probably decline if some game would exceed 2x of my norm or 120GB of storage.
Check out the Intel b580, your 2019 hardware should support rebar. (An bios update might be required). It’s a phenomenal upgrade for around $250US
But I feel you on the bandwidth issue. I’ve had to give up on some games that frequently update.
Arc seems to take issue with low bandwidth even with rebar on (I suspect an architecture/pipeline issue), both because PCIe3.0 and older CPUs (less IPC/frequency?).
Oh interesting, I’ll need to look into that more.
I’d expect that it’s much better than a 1050. And still probably best in slot at that price point. (For new hardware)
Perhaps a used 1080ti would be better but I doubt a system with a 1050 has the power supply for that.
Remember that was an outlier for the build. PSU is 650w silver. Though it’s currently nice to not need a GPU power cable.
I’m mostly happy with 1050Ti performance level for what I do. Probably will just stick with it unless I could get used AMD (for better time on Linux), like an 8GiB Polaris card for a moderate uplift. Probably not considering I don’t know anyone and don’t feel like buying used online.