Coworker is selling me a Gigabyte 3070 Ti for $300 flat. Is it a good deal?

[Iggy Wolf]

So I have two PCs. My new one has an ASUS 3060 Ti 3 fan edition paired with an i5 10400, 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD. My old PC is an i5 6400, Gigabyte 2060 Super Windforce Dual fan, 16 GB of RAM and 3 TB HDD. I'm thinking of putting in the new 3070 Ti into the old one. I know, I know, you're all probably thinking "why don't you just stick the 3070 Ti into the new one and take the 3060 Ti and put it into the old one?"

Good question. My answer might be weird to you all but it's my reasoning. I HATE the 2060 Super. It's the V1 of the Windforce that had a crappy heatsink and gets up to 83 C on heavy load, and that's ONLY because I lowered the power limit to 84. At 100% default, it was reaching as high as 88/89 C. The old case CAN fit the GPU. Although given the new 3070 Ti AND my 3060 Ti are both 3 fans, 13 inches long, the 3070 will JUST end literally almost touching the front intake fan in the old case.

But so would the 3060 Ti, so they're both much longer and bigger than the old 2060 Super, but at least would be a cool 64-70 C vs the 89 on the 2060 Super. As far as performance is concerned, my understanding is that at 1080P (which is what I mostly game at), I would see at most an 18% increase in performance on the 3070 Ti on my new PC vs the old one. Not bad, but not exactly something that would make me go "Wow". I figure if I ever need to squeeze more performance out of my new PC, I'll just swap the GPUs then.

But for now, even for the old PC, the 3070 Ti should be a MUCH greater improvement over the 2060 Super. And better, it's only $300, vs the $500 plus tax and shipping that I'd spend buying it online. His son didn't the 3070 Ti anymore because he bought a new AMD 7900 XT. So the 3070 Ti is only "used" in the sense that it was in his son's PC for the last 8 months (but he barely used it), but otherwise, it's brand new. He gets 70 C on it at 1440P at 165 FPS. It's a no brainer, right?

[N3tRunn3r]

Iggy Wolf původně napsal:

N3tRunn3r původně napsal:

I have just read your first sentence...

If this GIGABYTE 3070 Ti is "second hand", "used", "opened", "refurbished" or similiar, THEN STAY FAR AWAY in general... if it is "FACTORY NEW", then yes. It might be worth.

However, many "GIGABYTE" RTX cards from the range of 3070x to 3090x and mainly the 3080x have bricked during various Diablo IV Betas. So even if you get that card "FACTORY NEW", I still highly suggest you should stay away from that cheap and bricky brand "GIGABYTE" as just GIGABYTE RTX 3070x ~~ 3090x have bricked.. while other brands from the 30xx series had crashed game and OS only.

Even Gigabyte's Warranty Site has been locked since then.. not sure if they have re-opened..

Just google 'Diablo IV Gigabyte bricked'.. here an example:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d4/t/diablo-4-bricked-my-gigabyte-3080-ti/4201/145

Uh, if I remember, that was a problem with Diablo IV, not the GPUs themselves. They said the same about supposedly 4080s or 4090s getting bricked by Diablo IV. I wouldn't base my purchase on one game, nevermind new games that I don't actually intend to play or install on my OLD PC. Anything new and bigger is always going on my new PC with the ASUS TUF Gaming 3060 Ti V2.

It's actually exactly why I'm NOT putting the 3070 into it. I trust ASUS. I never trusted Gigabyte for their cards after the 2060 Super fiasco, except in their other product lines (monitors, etc.). I imagine most people would say EVGA cards were the best and they're probably right. Too bad those aren't being made anymore.

Alright.

And yes, EVGA 30xx series are still best and better than any 40's.. at least most reliable and robust, but these EVGA's are now increased in price. Their sales are gone/depleted..

For my little half-brother I built him a custom high-end PC, includes a factory new EVGA RTX 3080, latest i9 K-Processor, 64 GB RAM, 2 SSDs in RAID-0, 2nd-best EVGA PSU, etc etc... in total for about 2800 EUR only.

This system should easily held for ~8 years..

[Talby]

Yes, good deal, I picked up a new one about a year ago for $550 new, wanted something to get my 1440/144 a bit of oomph and didn't care too much about 12g at that price - maybe on the next generation hopefully more price friendly...

[Iggy Wolf]

smallcat původně napsal:

The price is good but may also consider RTX 4060 ti . It d save a lot of power /money coz its 160W vs 290W of RTX 3070ti.

Ugh, no. Not with that 128 bit bus. All that VRAM, being bottlenecked and squeezed by the bus size. You just know it's intention is to simply make the 4070/4080 look better by comparison. That's also why they purposefully released the regular 4060 with only a measly 8 GB, KNOWING people were gonna wait for the 16 GB Ti version regardless.

Not a chance. If the next generation is gonna start asking for 10-12 GB MINIMUM, and possibly up to 16 GB VRAM, I wouldn't settle for anything less than a 5080, whatever specs they end up giving that card (assuming they can't keep pulling this BS without being guilty of outright fraud).

[Iggy Wolf]

smallcat původně napsal:

Iggy Wolf , i respect your opinion . But they re not as bad as you think .

I don't think the cards are all bad. It's the price that's the problem. The 4070 Ti is a great card, if it was for $500 or even $650. Just not $800-900. The 3070 Ti MSRPed for $600. The $700+ was always reserved for the 80 series cards, with only the 90 cards coming anywhere near $1000 or $1200.

[emoticorpse]

I feel the same about the pricing of the 4070 ti. I just don't see it worth $800 (priced higher in a lot of cases). Even if I were a hardcore gamer I don't think it'd be worth it, and if I did end up buying one I still wouldn't think it's worth it, I'd just accept the fact that I allowed myself to get ripped off for the sake of PC gaming.

I do think it should be around maybe $600 or 650, or that's what I'd think is a fair price to pay for it.

My main reasons is that I don't value DLSS 3 at all because of what I heard on it (latency, made up frames). If those aren't really issues then I guess I have a misperception on that.

Performance to me just seems like a great 1440p card and for that I could pay less for an AMD card that performs the same with more vram.

I suppose if I really respected any form of dlss (which I don't because I've never really used it), I could use that "artificial performance" to call it a entry level 4k card but since I don't really value DLSS much I guess that's why I don't see it as a entry level 4k card.

Where a 7900 XT I do see as something of a entry level 4k card, and even though it's $100 more I still think it's more true to it's pricing than a 4070 ti is.

[Paraskeet]

since you seem more interested to find a suitable replacement for your bad 2060 aib model, I think you would benefit from it.

for 300$ you get a powerful card. I think it's using the entire ga104? don't remember it all too well but it's a powerful card but if you plan to play new games with raytracing then 8gb vram is not enough even at 1080p

[Iggy Wolf]

Paraskeet původně napsal:

since you seem more interested to find a suitable replacement for your bad 2060 aib model, I think you would benefit from it.

for 300$ you get a powerful card. I think it's using the entire ga104? don't remember it all too well but it's a powerful card but if you plan to play new games with raytracing then 8gb vram is not enough even at 1080p

That I'm aware of, which is why I'd rather save the big money purchase down the line for a 5000 series card.

[Illusion of Progress]

Iggy Wolf původně napsal:

I even tried to initially RMA it when I first got it but they sent it back, apparently because it "performed to specs". I guess the temps getting as hot as 89/90 C is "performing to specs".

Yeah, I wouldn't accept that, personally, but up to ~83C is fine. That's the point where modern nVidia GPUs will "boost less", not to be confused with actively throttling, to try and prevent it from going any higher. The fact that they push themselves until this point really speaks volumes about how it's fine. Sure, 80C might be warm for some people's opinion, but it's not a problem by any means.

I figured you just had a timid fan curve. My GTX 1060 is like this and I left it that way because I like less noise, and I almost never have to clean the thing of dust. It's been fine for seven years.

But already running max fan speed and still getting towards 90C? Yeah i don't blame you for wanting to ditch that.

Iggy Wolf původně napsal:

Also, I feel like I should ask this though. Is the new card being like 2-3 cm away from the intake fan bad or no? The case is only so big (15 inches) while the card is 13 inches. The front intake fan is an inch itself. That leaves like 1 inch if not less of space between the card and intake. If anything, it should be better for cooling as long as it doesn't block airflow, right? The intake is a Noctua 80 mm fan. So it's small but it's also made of Noctua's traditional wood, so no worry of "metal to metal" contact due to being so close to the GPU.

Not a problem in and of itself, no.

As long as your parts are adequately cooled and not overheating, then it's fine. So unless it does something like block airflow, it's fine. Just make sure nothing (like power cables) have a chance to get caught in the fan.

[76561199502155650]

i think i would take the option of just buying a new card and putting the best one in my best system an just moving the next gpu down the line, in any case.

let us know if you buy the card and how it turns out for you, i am curious to hear how this story played out, and if your coworker is simply trying to pawn off his end of life tech at you for top dollar.

[Iggy Wolf]

Unicorn - Rainbow Unit původně napsal:

i think i would take the option of just buying a new card and putting the best one in my best system an just moving the next gpu down the line, in any case.

let us know if you buy the card and how it turns out for you, i am curious to hear how this story played out, and if your coworker is simply trying to pawn off his end of life tech at you for top dollar.

So I bought the 3070 Ti and it seems to work fine. I was surprised though that it took two 8-Pin connectors, so I had to break out my PSU's box and grab the other 8 pin connector to connect it. Thing is, and I think this is more a problem with my PC's hard drive and/or pagefile than the GPU, is when I booted up Alien Isolation, it worked great, being capped at 100 FPS and rarely dropping. However, when I opened up a new section in the medical facility, and tried to enter there, the FPS would start to drop into the low 20s if not 10s. I alr-tabbed out and saw that the GPU's clocks were falling into the 400 Mhz range, indicating that it wasn't either receiving data to calculate or was simply not detecting the game's visuals. Then I also noticed that SysMain (the old Superfetch process) was showing 147 mb of memory being used ans hogging CPU/disk usage.

I turned it off and when I restarted the game, the problem went away. The only reason I don't think it was the GPU is because when I initially restarted it (before disabling the Superfetch), it would drop FPS in that same section, but not on the initial load. I mean, I don't know what kind of problem a GPU would have to have (if it was the GPU) that it's clocks would heavily drop.

If it matters, the CPU it's paired with is only an i5 6400. Right now, at default 100% with no fan curve, the temps barely exceed 56 C and the fans sometimes even spin down to idle if not a stop because the card is barely being taxed. So maybe that's a CPU bottleneck that causes that.

[Paraskeet]

Iggy Wolf původně napsal:

Paraskeet původně napsal:

since you seem more interested to find a suitable replacement for your bad 2060 aib model, I think you would benefit from it.

for 300$ you get a powerful card. I think it's using the entire ga104? don't remember it all too well but it's a powerful card but if you plan to play new games with raytracing then 8gb vram is not enough even at 1080p

That I'm aware of, which is why I'd rather save the big money purchase down the line for a 5000 series card.

have you seen the leaks for blackwell? if the rumors add up then we might see a decent generation for once.

[Introverted Gamer]

No sales tax and shipping is a win-win. As long as everything functions.

[76561199502155650]

sounds good iggy glad you got a working card, hope you get a long life time use out of it! it is odd that you experienced preformance issues , it could be one of the reasons your co worker was selling it.

[Illusion of Progress]

Iggy Wolf původně napsal:

Thing is, and I think this is more a problem with my PC's hard drive and/or pagefile than the GPU, is when I booted up Alien Isolation, it worked great, being capped at 100 FPS and rarely dropping. However, when I opened up a new section in the medical facility, and tried to enter there, the FPS would start to drop into the low 20s if not 10s. I alr-tabbed out and saw that the GPU's clocks were falling into the 400 Mhz range, indicating that it wasn't either receiving data to calculate or was simply not detecting the game's visuals. Then I also noticed that SysMain (the old Superfetch process) was showing 147 mb of memory being used ans hogging CPU/disk usage.

I turned it off and when I restarted the game, the problem went away. The only reason I don't think it was the GPU is because when I initially restarted it (before disabling the Superfetch), it would drop FPS in that same section, but not on the initial load. I mean, I don't know what kind of problem a GPU would have to have (if it was the GPU) that it's clocks would heavily drop.

There's no reason to suspect that was a GPU problem. I agree with your presumption; the GPU frequency was low because it wasn't receiving enough data to need to be higher.

I'm not sure why it would play fine the first time in an area but then drop to very low FPS. The opposite tends to be more common. Did you check VRAM use? Frame rates around those values are typical "VRAM may be out" and the system will start using main RAM as extra VRAM.

There's no reason to suspect the page file itself is responsible for this. Do not disable your page file, especially if your system was using it (that means it needs it). You should have been watching RAM/VRAM utilization. Superfetch is not the page file; that is something else. That may have been responsible, and I can't speak of that because I'd never think of using Windows these days with an HDD as the system drive.

Sounds to me like the GPU is working well, though.

[Iggy Wolf]

Unicorn - Rainbow Unit původně napsal:

sounds good iggy glad you got a working card, hope you get a long life time use out of it! it is odd that you experienced preformance issues , it could be one of the reasons your co worker was selling it.

The performance issue had nothing to do with the GPU apparently. After I turned off Superfetch, I never had the problem again. Not sure why it would be related. However, I am on the new 536.99 driver, which other people have reported has such instability issues and bugs that result in massive framedrops in games. Worst comes to worst, I'll roll back to an earlier drive, but the GPU itself seems to be running fine. It doesn't get above 60 C in temps on full load (probably cause the games aren't demanding and the old CPU limits its ability to achieve higher frames anyway.