PCs and Steam: Thread 01

[MartyG]

I have a 2070 RTX card and was considering a 3070 but feel I'll be just fine for another year or 2 then will upgrade. What are you considering upgrading from?

Absolutely a 2070 is going to be fine for a couple of years (or more). As we can see from the above, you can get by with a GTX 780 if you're prepared to compromise a bit on resolution and post-processing effects and you can pick those up for well under £100 if you look about.

I'm going from a GTX 1080 to 3080 for the 4K gaming and VR headroom, so I will get use out of the extra grunt (well, once the availability has settled down, I've lost interest in keeping hitting F5 now) - I wouldn't bother otherwise as the GTX 1080 only really falters when you start trying to push the resolution.

[eastyy]

I have a 1070, but at the moment my next purchase will be a monitor (high refresh rate Ips probably just 1080p), I plan to wait a while before getting a new Gpu

[Neon Ignition]

I'm on a GTX1080 at the moment so had convinced myself I was fine to go after the RTX 3080 as a similar jump as my original card which was a GTX 770. The trouble has been that with the launch fiasco and other purchases to tempt I've had way too much research time on my hands and so I've started to cast my mind over how much longer I think I can reasonably get out of the rest of my build before I end up having to order a new PC from scratch.

My missus has wanted a laptop for a while so we've used some of the money now and ordered her a pretty entry level Ryzen 3 model which should tide her over fine for what she uses it for but it means saving back difference for the 3080. Now, if it's not going to be available for its real price for a good while then I started to wonder if I actually need it or if a 3070 would save some cash and achieve mostly the same results given I mostly aim to game at 4K 60hz. Given the lack of aggressively pushing software the answer seems to be yes but if it turns out that it too will be stock dry till new year unless you shell out twice the rrp then it's tempting to either leave it or turn my eye to the last option... the RTX 2080ti. I've read that it might be a better option than the 3070 as though it's slower in some regard the much higher ram might make it better for 4K gaming. That and with people trying to sell their's off in an effort to upgrade I've seen them listed for down to £600 already, higher than a 3070 but lower than what the 3070 will likely go for any time soon.

I'm largely thinking of something that meets the feature set out at the moment but will ride my build out. My i7 4770, DDR3 motherboard and harddrive/SSD are all entering their seventh year of operation so I'm thinking one more GPU upgrade and it'll tide it comfortably till it's time to go for something nearing or straying into 12th Gen Intel/PCIE45/DDR4/5

[Neon Ignition]

Also, no idea if real but supposed RTX 3090 benchmark:

[MartyG]

The GPU text in 3D Mark translates to ten series flagship, but why would a fury lie?

So from those benchmarks, you're looking at about a 10-15% uplift at 4K at more than double the cost. It makes me wonder if the CPU was bottlenecking the GPU (looking again, it seems the CPU and GPU weren't getting anywhere near 100% usage in games, so it could be that used CPU cores are getting maxed limiting the GPU).

I think the conclusion, if you were going to draw one based purely on that video, is unless you have a very specific use case (8K or some computational task), you're not going to see any true benefits in real world gaming over the 3080 in the vast majority of titles.

[eastyy]

I'm largely thinking of something that meets the feature set out at the moment but will ride my build out. My i7 4770, DDR3 motherboard and harddrive/SSD are all entering their seventh year of operation so I'm thinking one more GPU upgrade and it'll tide it comfortably till it's time to go for something nearing or straying into 12th Gen Intel/PCIE45/DDR4/5

I upgraded from a 4690k to a 8086k and tbh it was difficult to judge the difference as i was only using a 970 at the time while video rendering was faster as far as games went did not feel much of a difference, upgrading then to a 1070 made a difference but felt i should have waited as while it did improve frame rates a lot...because i then increased details and effects it offset a lot of the improvements. (i wish i did try the 1070 on my 4690k rig to see the difference.


I was insanely lucky though as i won the 8086k in a sweepstakes so all i needed to do was a motherboard and ram, people were telling me back then to sell it and buy a Ryzen but tbh it was a first gen Ryzen at the time.....but now with things i would strongly consider selling it and getting a more recent Ryzen rig

[Neon Ignition]

Ill need to dig out some of the other benchmarks that have started popping up. They still arent 100% legit presumably because if the ndas but a 10-15% lift seems to be the common picture. Essentially, without an 8K display the card is a bad choice especially given the price which probably means even more demand for the 3080.

Might be wrong on this but from what I can gather it seems like the:

3090 beats all but the cost to performance kills it as a viable worthwhile purchase

3080 is the ultimate sweetspot on delivering performance and price but will be a nightmare to get for the right price for ages

2080ti is very narrowly the next best choice given its ram but its high cost kills its appeal in for...

3070 decent very ti comparitive specs but also might end up hard to find and price inflated like the 3080

Everything else being a solid step down.

[Neon Ignition]

Another day, another query:

Does GPU manufacturer matter much?
My PC originally came with a Gigabyte card in it, I replaced that with my 1080 which is an Nvidia FE. I know there's Asus, Palit, Gigabyte, MSI, Zotac, EVGA etc but when I look at reviews etc the differences seem to be next to non-existent. Things like LED's, extra clock speed and fans for about a 2-4fps gain at best. Is there any real differences to be mindful of (presumably reliability etc)?

[MartyG]

It can do but it mostly revolves around cooler design and efficiency - Zotac is generally regarded as being the lower end of the market. There is variation within the manufacurers own cards too, with different fan designs and pre-overclocked cards, RGB etc.

[Neon Ignition]

I was up till arouynd 1am last night largely watching Youtube videos on GPU's How quickly obsessed I become
Feels like more out of sake of precaution that single fan blowers are best avoided if possible just to ensure enough cooling is happening when the card is pushed. On ebay yesterday I saw a brand new, unused 2080Ti Founders Edition go for £700 which honestly would have probably triggered me had the money been available. £600 models are getting more common though. The scary thing is that (filtered for BIN) only two listings were up for in hand 3080's, everyone else selling preorders for whenever they get their hands on it.

[MartyG]

On ebay yesterday I saw a brand new, unused 2080Ti Founders Edition go for £700 which honestly would have probably triggered me had the money been available. £600 models are getting more common though.

I don't think even brand new a 2080Ti is a good buy at £700 - just be patient, there will be stock available to buy on demand for the 3080 next year.

[Neon Ignition]

I've been trying to settle on a balance between benefit, cost and timing. From what I can gather the wait for the 3080 could be a long one due to the high demand and stock levels (especially if COVID impacts manufacturing in the coming months). I've tried to wade through benchmarks and from what I can gather the rest of my build (depending on resolution) drags the performance of the 3080 down by an avg of 15-30fps. I might be wrong but it seems the 3080 has a 30% improvement above the 2080ti but I'd lost half of that at least due to the other components.

The difference between the 3070 and 2080ti seems to be neglible with everything hanging on the cost difference given how expensive the ti was previously. I feel like I'm left circling a 2022ish (presumably around the time of the 40XX series) complete new build PC which isn't a big thing given the age of the existing components.

[Digfox]

I've been trying to settle on a balance between benefit, cost and timing.

Personally I'm with [MENTION=42]MartyG[/MENTION] and wouldn't buy a 2080ti, even at £400-600. The new 30xx series will get all the new features and driver improvements which the old series won't get. Also the newer 3000 card will improve more as it moves to a new PC.

The old 2000 series cards have to be hugely discounted to be worth it now assuming you don't need something straight away.

[MartyG]

I think £400-450 is still a good price for a 2080Ti, drivers will remain supported for a few years yet, but anything much more than that and the price-performance value starts to make less sense compared to a 3070/3080 - if you're CPU bound, then that's still going to be an issue with a 2080Ti too.

Given NI is running a 1080, there really isn't a compelling reason to need that upgrade right now just for the sake of wanting to have a different GFX in your rig.

[Digfox]

I think £400-450 is still a good price for a 2080Ti, drivers will remain supported for a few year

Yes, but the improvements are restricted to the newest series. As a 1070 owner there's been a number of new features for the 2000 series which I don't get. Also the new game ready patches never target my card.

The 3070 feels like a no brainer at the price.

I would also get nervous about warranty support on an eBay card.