Time to Upgrade?

[Dennis Miller]

I've had a pair of 980 Ti's for almost three years now.  I'm looking for advice as to whether there are any upgrades that both make sense and are worth the money.  GPU prices are still crazy in my opinion and I don't want to throw down a couple grand unless it's really worth it.

 

I'm still happy with these cards but I like gaming at (mostly) ultra settings and I'm starting to wonder how long I can get by with future games.  In particular, I'm looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077 late this year or early next year.  I haven't been this excited for an upcoming title in a long time and I want to make sure I can run it well.  I know the demo they released last summer was running a 1080 Ti and I think my system is comparable but...I'm just not sure.

 

Anyway, I would love to get the forum's opinion.

 

Here's a portion of my system specs:

GPU: 2 Asus Strix GTX 980 Ti (@ 1391 MHZ) in SLI 

CPU: Intel i7-5960X @ 4 GHz 

MB: Asus X99-Pro

RAM: 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 2400 MHz

Monitor: Acer Predator X34 (3440 X 1440 G-Sync IPS @ 100Hz)

 

[LukeSavenije]

well... if you really feel like you need a upgrade a 2080 or VII would be a good option, but as I don't know everything about Cyberpunk and how it's going to perform on it I can only tell you what you could upgrade to, not if you should upgrade

[Madgemade]

That's a nice system, maybe the CPU could be overclocked more but not much reason to upgrade CPU/Mobo/RAM.

3 minutes ago, Dennis Miller said:

In particular, I'm looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077 late this year or early next year.

If it supports SLI (Witcher 3 does apparently so hopefully it will) then you will probably be ok (hard to say, game is unreleased), although you certainly won't be able to run it on the highest settings. With ideal scaling 2x 980 Ti might be around a RTX 2070 in performance. If SLI is not supported or more likely doesn't work correctly on your older card then you probably would need to upgrade for a good experience.

 

My advise would be to wait until Cyberpunk 2077 is actually launched. By the end of this year AMD will have launched all their new GPUs, you don't want any of them (except maybe VII) but prices will for sure be lower when Cyberpunk 2077 comes out and so you should buy then.

 

At CES AIBs have shown some new 2080 and 2080 Ti which are not locked down as much as before (higher power limits now allowed). So I would wait for them to come out if you are interested in overclocking at all because the current 2080 cards are very limited without hardmods.

 

[Earnist_]

13 minutes ago, Dennis Miller said:

I've had a pair of 980 Ti's for almost three years now.  I'm looking for advice as to whether there are any upgrades that both make sense and are worth the money.  GPU prices are still crazy in my opinion and I don't want to throw down a couple grand unless it's really worth it.

 

I'm still happy with these cards but I like gaming at (mostly) ultra settings and I'm starting to wonder how long I can get by with future games.  In particular, I'm looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077 late this year or early next year.  I haven't been this excited for an upcoming title in a long time and I want to make sure I can run it well.  I know the demo they released last summer was running a 1080 Ti and I think my system is comparable but...I'm just not sure.

 

Anyway, I would love to get the forum's opinion.

 

Here's a portion of my system specs:

GPU: 2 Asus Strix GTX 980 Ti (@ 1391 MHZ) in SLI 

CPU: Intel i7-5960X @ 4 GHz 

MB: Asus X99-Pro

RAM: 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 2400 MHz

Monitor: Acer Predator X34 (3440 X 1440 G-Sync IPS @ 100Hz)

 

get the radeon vii its got 16gb of hbm memory which is far better than gddr6 and the radeon vii can play games at 4k very well

[LukeSavenije]

6 minutes ago, Earnist_ said:

get the radeon vii its got 16gb of hbm memory which is far better than gddr6 and the radeon vii can play games at 4k very well

but lacks some features that are important to some people, keep that in mind...

[Earnist_]

21 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

but lacks some features that are important to some people, keep that in mind...

what rtx?? give me a break and you dont need dlss

[LukeSavenije]

Just now, Earnist_ said:

what rtx?? give me a break and you dont need dlss

rayracing, tensor, shadowplay. for some they are important, for some they aren't.

 

I'm not a nvidia fanboy, I'm just telling the truth

[Earnist_]

1 minute ago, LukeSavenije said:

rayracing, tensor, shadowplay. for some they are important, for some they aren't.

 

I'm not a nvidia fanboy, I'm just telling the truth

amd has their own software that is just like shadow play and tensor cores are only useful for deep learning and most people who buy a rtx card dont put them to use

[Settlerteo]

2 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

rayracing, tensor, shadowplay. for some they are important, for some they aren't.

 

I'm not a nvidia fanboy, I'm just telling the truth

Totally agree with you even if i am waiting to get my hands on the Radeon.

[LukeSavenije]

8 minutes ago, Earnist_ said:

amd has their own software that is just like shadow play and tensor cores are only useful for deep learning and most people who buy a rtx card dont put them to use

also false...

if I wanted to raytrace on tensor cores and nvidia would support it, I could

[Earnist_]

2 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

also false...

if I wanted to raytrace on tensor cores and nvidia would support it, I could

but you cant so its not a use case

[LukeSavenije]

Just now, Earnist_ said:

but you cant so its not a use case

say that to dice...

we can go on all day here, but I don't see why. I can counter everything you say in some way so far, even the hbm2 in the way you try to counter mine

 

because noone would use that much bandwith

[Earnist_]

2 minutes ago, LukeSavenije said:

say that to dice...

we can go on all day here, but I don't see why. I can counter everything you say in some way so far, even the hbm2 in the way you try to counter mine

 

because noone would use that much bandwith

hbm2 is far better than gddr6 but it would have cost amd much more money to put gddr6 on radeon vii because they already had the research and know how on hbm so they didnt want to spend even more

[pstarlord]

It's been said already, but just as a bit of support for the answer already.  SLI is a gamble on many newer titles, some don't support it at all.  Some do, but it doesn't scale very well.  Then there are the ones that it works great on.  So, it's kind of a toss up at this point.  

 

If I were you, I'd suggest waiting until closer to the game's release date to make a final decision, but start saving up your coins and then get the best GPU that fits your budget and need when the time comes.  

 

By then, we might see the 11xx cards from Nvidia, plus there is speculation that AMD might have Navi out by the end of the year.  So who knows, by the time Cyberpunk comes out, the GPU market could be completely different. 

 

Since you've already got a G-Sync monitor, I'd suggest sticking with Nvidia, just so you can take full advantage of the adaptive sync tech you paid for.  So, if you want to upgrade right now, I'd say go for the 2080.  BUT, if it were me, I'd look at upgrading the CPU first, then seeing what the GPU landscape looks like when Cyberpunk is closer to being released.  

[pstarlord]

1 hour ago, Earnist_ said:

get the radeon vii its got 16gb of hbm memory which is far better than gddr6 and the radeon vii can play games at 4k very well

-He has a G Sync monitor.  So buying an AMD card is a waste of money in this situation.  

 

[Dennis Miller]

Thank you everyone for the replies...

 

Probably won't go the AMD route since I'm already invested in G-Sync...

 

And I totally get the advice to wait...which I'd have to do anyway if rtx cards are still going to run $1.5k, going to have to stash away a little each month anyway as it's pretty hard to hide four-digit purchases from the wife!

 

Thanks again!

[Dennis Miller]

On 1/15/2019 at 8:59 AM, Madgemade said:

That's a nice system, maybe the CPU could be overclocked more but not much reason to upgrade CPU/Mobo/RAM.

Thanks, I put a lot of work into in, including a full custom loop.  The only "mistake" I made was using a monoblock for the motherboard that cools the CPU and the VRMs.  I call it a mistake because I've gotten the chip up to 4.5 GHz stable but temps started hitting the mid 80s and I just wasn't comfortable with that.  I think it's just a little too much heat for the loop to handle with the VRMs in the picture.