What's a worthwhile GPU upgrade?

[martin.dutton]

The tl;dr is that I have a GTX 1080 driving 3440x1440 @ 90Hz - is a RTX 2070/2080 Super a worthwhile upgrade?

 

###

 

I've been out of the PC building game for a while (having kids) so am looking for some general advice on the current landscape. The key components of my system are:

 

Intel i7 4790k

Asus Z97 Deluxe

16GB RAM

MSI GeForce GTX 1080

Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 512GB (Windows 10 drive) - this is mounted on a PCIe card so I do get the full performance

Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD x2 (storage)

Lots of other irrelevant bits as far as this question is concerned.

 

My display is an Acer X34 Predator (3440x1440 @ 90Hz) - I'm not looking to upgrade this any time soon.

 

This question is purely in the context of gaming - I used to use my system for a lot more, but these days it's internets, email and gaming.

 

Generally speaking I've found this system to still have plenty of performance, capable of handling everything I've thrown at it on either high or max settings. I've started to notice some performance issues/lower framerates on newer titles (not that I've been able to play many) and I suspect that with the next crop of AAA titles that trend will continue.

 

So I guess my question is - what do people recommend? I've been looking at the new RTX lineup but I simply don't know enough about the tech landscape to understand what (if anything) would be a good buy, or if I'm going to find myself bottlenecked by my CPU or some other component - I have been considering replacing the core at some point (mobo, CPU and RAM), but that's further down the line and for another thread.

 

From what I've been able to read, the 2070 Super seems ahead of the GTX 1080 (though not leagues ahead), but is it enough to be worth the money? What does a 2080 or 2080 Super bring to the table? Or if I don't care about ray-tracing all that much, would a second GTX 1080 be a better buy right now?

 

I play a wide variety of games/genres, ARMA3 will be a constant, and there's typically at least one latest-and-greatest AAA title installed.

 

I'd appreciate some suggestions/recommendations... and if you need any more detail about what I have then please ask.

 

Thanks.

 

M

[aisle9]

For 1440p ultrawide at 90Hz...I'd almost say that the 2080 Super is your best bet. You might be pushing towards 2080 Ti territory, but I'm not familiar enough with the highest of the high end to give you a solid answer on that.

[Jurrunio]

unstable frame rate is most likely the CPU's fault, with only 4 cores. Besides the rule to a worthwhile GPU purchase is to have at least two tiers higher, but the 1080Ti performs like the 2070S and 2080S isn't all that much faster than that.

[MadAnt250]

19 minutes ago, martin.dutton said:

From what I've been able to read, the 2070 Super seems ahead of the GTX 1080 (though not leagues ahead), but is it enough to be worth the money? What does a 2080 or 2080 Super bring to the table? Or if I don't care about ray-tracing all that much, would a second GTX 1080 be a better buy right now?

Stay with the GTX 1080, for what you pay it is not worth it for the extra performance.

[Princess Luna]

18 minutes ago, martin.dutton said:

Intel i7 4790k

Asus Z97 Deluxe

16GB RAM

If you want stable high fps then you gonna need a better processor first, something like the i7 9700KF will soon be discounted and might be a compelling pick with a mid range board and 3200mhz~ memory.

 

The 1080 can do it if you reduce graphical settings, if you want to ultra everything it's either the cheapest 2080 Super which if you're USA that's the FE straight from nvidia or pick whatever 2080 Ti you can find... neither is perfect for it costs a lot for the improvement you get, highly advised to wait next gen before buying if you can.

[TheNaitsyrk]

20 minutes ago, martin.dutton said:

The tl;dr is that I have a GTX 1080 driving 3440x1440 @ 90Hz - is a RTX 2070/2080 Super a worthwhile upgrade?

 

###

 

I've been out of the PC building game for a while (having kids) so am looking for some general advice on the current landscape. The key components of my system are:

 

Intel i7 4790k

Asus Z97 Deluxe

16GB RAM

MSI GeForce GTX 1080

Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 512GB (Windows 10 drive) - this is mounted on a PCIe card so I do get the full performance

Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD x2 (storage)

Lots of other irrelevant bits as far as this question is concerned.

 

My display is an Acer X34 Predator (3440x1440 @ 90Hz) - I'm not looking to upgrade this any time soon.

 

This question is purely in the context of gaming - I used to use my system for a lot more, but these days it's internets, email and gaming.

 

Generally speaking I've found this system to still have plenty of performance, capable of handling everything I've thrown at it on either high or max settings. I've started to notice some performance issues/lower framerates on newer titles (not that I've been able to play many) and I suspect that with the next crop of AAA titles that trend will continue.

 

So I guess my question is - what do people recommend? I've been looking at the new RTX lineup but I simply don't know enough about the tech landscape to understand what (if anything) would be a good buy, or if I'm going to find myself bottlenecked by my CPU or some other component - I have been considering replacing the core at some point (mobo, CPU and RAM), but that's further down the line and for another thread.

 

From what I've been able to read, the 2070 Super seems ahead of the GTX 1080 (though not leagues ahead), but is it enough to be worth the money? What does a 2080 or 2080 Super bring to the table? Or if I don't care about ray-tracing all that much, would a second GTX 1080 be a better buy right now?

 

I play a wide variety of games/genres, ARMA3 will be a constant, and there's typically at least one latest-and-greatest AAA title installed.

 

I'd appreciate some suggestions/recommendations... and if you need any more detail about what I have then please ask.

 

Thanks.

 

M

Wait for Ampere Nvidia GPUs.

[BuckGup]

Your 1080 is fine. OC it if you want to get more performance. But a 2080 isn't that much faster and new GPUs, from Intel too, are right around the corner

[AndreiArgeanu]

To be honest I'd recommend looking for a cpu upgrade, perhaps ryzen as that would benefit you much more than a gpu upgrade. I'd recommend keeping your gpu untill at least next generation of gpu's or so as it is a good gpu and for now it's going to do very wellin modern titles. So unless you must have ray tracing, I'd recommend waiting for next gen and see whats best then. Other than that, again, I'd heavily recommend upgrading your cpu and motherboard to something like ryzen, perhaps a ryzen 7 3700x or ryzen 9 3950x paired with a good x570 motherboard.

[martin.dutton]

Thank you all - this largely confirms my suspicions, I've been pricing up a new core (Ryzen 9 with decent CPU and a hunk of RAM) anyway and was wondering whether I'd be good sticking with my GTX 1080 for a spell, or if I should really be considering a GPU upgrade too.

 

It's all about the monies though, and kids are the gift that keep on taking ;-).

 

Based on this I'll likely upgrade the core and keep the GTX 1080, and then see what the next tier of GPU's bring. Like I said, at the moment I can run most games I want to play on high/max settings at playable framerates.

 

Thanks all.

 

M

[RejZoR]

Whatever doubles the framerate of your existing GPU. That's the rule I sort of follow. If card I have now pushes out 50fps, buying one that gives me 75fps is not a worthwhile upgrade. The one that gives me 100, however is. If that means waiting out another year, then so be it. Though I aim higher because of 144Hz monitor I have. But yeah, if I can crank all settings to max and still get silky smooth gameplay, then it's ok.

 

For example, my GTX 1080Ti is currently in an era where RX 5700XT and RTX 2070 Super are about as fast as mine. It's gonna take probably 2 more generations before it'll be worthy upgrading to anything else.

 

In your case, having GTX 1080, you'll probably be good for upgrading next year when RTX 3070 or RX 6700XT come out. They should double your framerate I think.

[martin.dutton]

Gotcha. Right, I know that technically this isn't the correct sub-forum for this question, but it does belong in this thread and is tangentially related - can I expect much of an increase in gaming performance going from my i7 4790k to to say a Ryzen 9?

 

My system currently crushes most things I throw at it, but I may be coming into some cash for an upgrade, so am considering my options. It seems pretty clear that I need to wait a generation for the GPU... hence wondering whether to update the core.

 

To be clear, I realise that a Ryzen 7 will likely do the job (it's the whole i5 vs i7 thing from back in the day); I know that I've said I'm mainly gaming focused these days, but I do like having a high-sec system, and there's nothing to say that I won't pick back up some of the multi-threaded tasks/jobs/workflows that had me buy the i7 4790k back in the day.

[Jrasero]

20 hours ago, martin.dutton said:

The tl;dr is that I have a GTX 1080 driving 3440x1440 @ 90Hz - is a RTX 2070/2080 Super a worthwhile upgrade?

 

###

 

I've been out of the PC building game for a while (having kids) so am looking for some general advice on the current landscape. The key components of my system are:

 

Intel i7 4790k

Asus Z97 Deluxe

16GB RAM

MSI GeForce GTX 1080

Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 512GB (Windows 10 drive) - this is mounted on a PCIe card so I do get the full performance

Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD x2 (storage)

Lots of other irrelevant bits as far as this question is concerned.

 

My display is an Acer X34 Predator (3440x1440 @ 90Hz) - I'm not looking to upgrade this any time soon.

 

This question is purely in the context of gaming - I used to use my system for a lot more, but these days it's internets, email and gaming.

 

Generally speaking I've found this system to still have plenty of performance, capable of handling everything I've thrown at it on either high or max settings. I've started to notice some performance issues/lower framerates on newer titles (not that I've been able to play many) and I suspect that with the next crop of AAA titles that trend will continue.

 

So I guess my question is - what do people recommend? I've been looking at the new RTX lineup but I simply don't know enough about the tech landscape to understand what (if anything) would be a good buy, or if I'm going to find myself bottlenecked by my CPU or some other component - I have been considering replacing the core at some point (mobo, CPU and RAM), but that's further down the line and for another thread.

 

From what I've been able to read, the 2070 Super seems ahead of the GTX 1080 (though not leagues ahead), but is it enough to be worth the money? What does a 2080 or 2080 Super bring to the table? Or if I don't care about ray-tracing all that much, would a second GTX 1080 be a better buy right now?

 

I play a wide variety of games/genres, ARMA3 will be a constant, and there's typically at least one latest-and-greatest AAA title installed.

 

I'd appreciate some suggestions/recommendations... and if you need any more detail about what I have then please ask.

 

Thanks.

 

M

At 90hz probably a 2070 Super or 5700 XT but honestly I would probably upgrade to a 1440P 120+ HZ monitor before buying a new card.

 

 

[bdubbs]

On 10/13/2019 at 8:34 PM, BuckGup said:

Your 1080 is fine. OC it if you want to get more performance. But a 2080 isn't that much faster and new GPUs, from Intel too, are right around the corner

I would agree to wait. BUT a 2080 Super is signifigantly faster than a 1080 non ti. 

[BuckGup]

8 hours ago, bdubbs said:

I would agree to wait. BUT a 2080 Super is signifigantly faster than a 1080 non ti. 

Yeah the super is 

[Nahiko]

Hi i have the Acer X34p (the 120hz variant of your monitor), I'm using 9700k and a RTX 2070 super, obviously it depends on the game but i generally get 100fps at max settings. The fps difference if you get will be 10-20 fps and if you think that's worth the cost go for it. Personally if i had a 1080 I'd just keep using it and although your x34 overclocks to 100hz i don't think you should buy a new card just yet.
The price of upgrading to a 2070/2080 super doesn't seem worth it.

To answer your other question I think your 4790k is enough for gaming and you won't see much of an improvement if any if you go grab yourself a Ryzen/new board as games aren't typically multi-core optimised anyway...

 

Again your system seems decent for most games and should last another year at 60fps+ (which although not ideal after being at 100fps - is playable), go on a holiday or something

[Zando_]

On 10/14/2019 at 5:10 AM, martin.dutton said:

Gotcha. Right, I know that technically this isn't the correct sub-forum for this question, but it does belong in this thread and is tangentially related - can I expect much of an increase in gaming performance going from my i7 4790k to to say a Ryzen 9?

For sure. The IPC on Zen (1000 series and 2000G series Ryzens) and Zen+ (2000 series and 3000G series Ryzens) is about on par with your 4790K, a little bit ahead if you have good RAM and tweak it a bit. So slightly improved single core performance and a heck of a lot more cores, much better in modern titles that happily take 6 cores or more. 

Zen 2 is on par with Intel's current top dog i7s/i9s. They compete with the 8700K on up to the 9900K. So both a noticeable increase in single core performance, and more cores on top of that. In most games you'll notice a solid increase, and in anything that effectively uses more than 4c/8t there'll be a massive difference. The Intel chips will beat them by a few % when overclocked so they're still technically the "best", but they're usually a $100+ price premium over the competing Ryzen. 

1% lows and such are much higher with 6+ core (preferably hyperthreaded, the 6c/6t lads have similar problems to quads in some of the newest of the new titles from what I've heard) CPUs as well IIRC. So your fps will be steadier. I assume this has something to do with the higher core count CPUs having plenty of threads to throw at anything running in the background while still feeding the game. 

[martin.dutton]

On 10/15/2019 at 4:14 PM, Nahiko said:

Hi i have the Acer X34p (the 120hz variant of your monitor), I'm using 9700k and a RTX 2070 super, obviously it depends on the game but i generally get 100fps at max settings. The fps difference if you get will be 10-20 fps and if you think that's worth the cost go for it. Personally if i had a 1080 I'd just keep using it and although your x34 overclocks to 100hz i don't think you should buy a new card just yet.
The price of upgrading to a 2070/2080 super doesn't seem worth it.

To answer your other question I think your 4790k is enough for gaming and you won't see much of an improvement if any if you go grab yourself a Ryzen/new board as games aren't typically multi-core optimised anyway...

 

Again your system seems decent for most games and should last another year at 60fps+ (which although not ideal after being at 100fps - is playable), go on a holiday or something

Thank you. Mine is the 100Hz model, but I think I got unlucky and got one that had a strobing/flickering issue at 100Hz, and 95Hz, but at 90Hz I've never seen it... but that was some time ago, so you prompted me to push it back to 100Hz and see what happens.

 

My position is that I'm going to be coming into 'some' money and am allowed to treat myself, so I could spring for a motherboard, CPU and RAM, or a GPU, but not both.

 

I feel from my own research, and what everyone has said here, that I should wait another generation before upping the GPU, so I'm wondering whether it makes sense to take the opportunity to upgrade the core now, and tackle the GPU next year.

 

Or spend the money on some powertools instead (there's no way I'm disciplined enough to save it), keep the core and do the GPU next year, then upgrade the rest in 2021 or something. Will see what Black Friday/Cyber Monday bring.

 

First world problems eh.

[GoldenLag]

4 minutes ago, martin.dutton said:

First world problems eh.

talking about first world problems. 

5 minutes ago, martin.dutton said:

so I'm wondering whether it makes sense to take the opportunity to upgrade the core now,

thats not a terrible idea. the haswell CPUs still have a decent resale value. or you can use it towards a system for the little ones. 

 

tho id say waiting for black friday if you are getting Ryzen 9 CPUs, there is a mild shortage going on with the 12 core. tho i dont see a reason to get anything bigger than 8 cores this generation. 

[BTGbullseye]

13 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

tho i dont see a reason to get anything bigger than 8 cores this generation. 

Yup. The 3800x is the pinnacle of the single-core benchmarks on every site, and you still get 8 cores with 16 threads...