GTX 1080 Upgrade Path

[Rin]

What are your thoughts if you had 400€? Or maybe wait for Super refresh or next gen?

I'm fine with 4K/60 with some minor tweaks. A750 looks like fine wine if it continues but Battlemage might just be around the corner. I just want an RT capable card that'll last for a while since this rig of mine is getting replaced during winter but I figured I'd keep it around for other purposes. I got an 8700K so I'm by no means CPU bottlenecked. I just might turn it into an overnight rendering rig (oneAPI/AV1) in which case the A750 would be the perfect candidate.

I have a project in Unity as well and it runs fine with 8GB VRAM (with plenty to spare) so I don't worry about VRAM limitation but maybe RT will cause issues? Or maybe wait for A770 price drop instead?

[Illusion of Progress]

I don't think that price will get you a substantial uplift from a GTX 1080.

The best you're looking at is an RTX 4060 Ti, which I'm not even sure is 50% faster (the RX 6700 XT is better value overall but it's a bit slower yet, and you mentioned favoring ray tracing anyway). That's $399 so if it's actually a bit above your budget then the best you're looking at is the RTX 3060 Ti (this is faster than the RTX 4060 non-Ti).

I'm not sure how much stock I'd put into a RTX 4060 or 4060 Ti for ray tracing longevity to be honest, given it's a glorified x50 chip (128-bit bus and 8 GB VRAM). You're probably not getting 4K/60 FPS with ray tracing on it either.

The RTX 4070 at ~$600 is the minimum I'd look at for your starting point and your desired goals, but you'd have to increase your budget by ~50%.

Originally posted by Robotnik:

I got an 8700K so I'm by no means CPU bottlenecked.

There can always be CPU bottlenecks, even on faster CPUs than you have now with slower GPUs than you have now.

(You'd be fine upgrading to something more current though, which is the point.)

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

If you want ray tracing then you need Nvidia. RTX 4070 or better. With your current budget better to just keep using your 1080 instead of wasting money on €400 card or on Intel card with rubbish drivers.

[plat]

I upgraded from a 1080 to 4070 and I promise you, you will notice a difference in just the most basic of desktop activities. And I got one of the lower end ones for the 8 pin connection.

YouTube videos are sharper and crisper and the power consumption is obviously less. My overall electric bill went down about 5% over several months and I didn't do anything differently.

Of course someone else may experience things differently. But I def. do not regret my purchase even though I prob. paid a bit more for smth. that should have been priced a bit less.

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by Robotnik:

...I'm fine with 4K/60 with some minor tweaks...

What exactly do you mean by this? Pretty sure anyone would be fine with 4k/60hz(fps). I mean only thing higher is 4k/144hz and above which is MUCH HIGHER than a just "fine" experience.

I mean are you saying that's the minimum expectation? is that your plan? Is that what you're really aiming for or you aiming for lower?

At the moment, I'm wondering who thinks it's realistic to expect 4k/60fps with raytracing to go smoothly on a A770 or anything lower than a 6800, and the 8 GB will be a problem from what I understand but I'm assuming you're asking about that because you're admitting to not knowing that. And plus you said you want it to last for a while. A card like that might barely handle that performance now, nevermind hold up well in the future.

[Rin]

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

I don't think that price will get you a substantial uplift from a GTX 1080.

I'm not sure how much stock I'd put into a RTX 4060 or 4060 Ti for ray tracing longevity to be honest, given it's a glorified x50 chip (128-bit bus and 8 GB VRAM). You're probably not getting 4K/60 FPS with ray tracing on it either.

I know but the 4060 still beats a 2080S when it comes to RT, and since actual path tracing is years away not to mention the best we got atm is reflections (forget about light or shadows).

Remember 4K/60 FPS doesn't mean running poorly optimized UE5 games with the above. People are so used to running un-optimized games these days that may or may or get fixed (looking at you UE4 games made in the past 4 years). Even something as simple as a BOTW-like game made in Unity with some RT (scalable of course) will run way better compared to UE4-5 games with the same idea. Fidelity isn't so important when you want consistency. Next Gen Switch is also running on Ampere which I'd like to target as well (Jetson Orin Nano) and should be similar to a 4060 mobile (well more like 2080 mobile but you get the picture).

My card has aged well although it's getting rather old now and I need some new features to play with for the foreseeable future. I gave ~400€ for my GTX 1080 so I figured I'd trade up for something in that price-range. I know there's AMD but drivers are kinda eh when it comes to pro work to the point that oneAPI beats it in say Blender. I had a 290 prior to this but we all saw what they did to Vega and RDNA1.

Oh and more thing; here in EU a 4070 costs (700€~) twice as much as a 4060 (350€~) (will most likely go down to 300€ by winter) while a 4080 goes for around 1100€. Obviously if money wasn't an issue then I'd get a 4090 and this thread wouldn't have been made. But I don't overspend for a reason as I got other hobbies as well. Just like how most posters here make moot comments.

And again, this isn't gonna be my main rig for long but I need a lowest common demeanor for dev purposes (as mentioned among other things). And a GTX 1080 ain't really cutting it anymore. And if we look at https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/ then the 3060 is there but a 4060 is just that but more efficient more or less + you get full AV1 support to boot.

TLDR: This rig is getting retired to a forever home, but needs a new GPU.

[Mr White]

AMD RADEON RX 7600 is good. Drivers are good too.

[Illusion of Progress]

Well if you know you need nVidia, you have a firm budget, and you want to upgrade regardless of how worthwhile what you can get is, just get the fastest thing within 400 euros.

That would be the RTX 4060 Ti, or if that is above 400 euros, then you're looking at either the RTX 3060 Ti, the RTX 4060, or RTX 3060 in that order.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Trading up for same money as you spent on 1080 doesn`t work anymore. Inflation and greed have caused substantial price hike in GPU prices and it`s not likely to go down anytime soon if ever. What cost €400 back then now costs €600-700.
Reason why RTX 4060 is half the price of 4070 is because it`s trash.
AMD cards can`t really do ray tracing, they take too big hit to performance with ray tracing enabled, even the high-end ones.

[Rin]

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

Well if you know you need nVidia, you have a firm budget, and you want to upgrade regardless of how worthwhile what you can get is, just get the fastest thing within 400 euros.

That would be the RTX 4060 Ti, or if that is above 400 euros, then you're looking at either the RTX 3060 Ti, the RTX 4060, or RTX 3060 in that order.

In the end, RAM was never the issue. I did get a cheap(er) A750 for now which has a 256bit bus which should at least help with loading assets faster. It may just be a faster 1080 or 5700 with RT, but at least it's something and I managed to save some money. Hopefully B750/B770 or 5060 (assuming they go RTX 2060 Super route again) beats 4080 once it comes out for much cheaper.

I can see the joy with fake frames, but a card that barely does 60 and needs to rely upscaling has it's fair share of problems that can't be fixed. And yes, I'm aware that Intel Ark drivers are still immature but it's getting better whereas a 128/192bit bus is there forever. Hopefully this becomes a 290/X moment again just less of a space heater :P.