Used 980Ti Purchase Paranoia

[refinedskillz]

So i found a Palit Jetstream GTX 980Ti for a quite unbeatable price of £135 ($177, 160 euro), on Gumtree. (https://www.gumtree.com/p/video-cards-sound-cards/gtx-980ti/1360777952)(For anyone that doesn't know what Gumtree is its like a mini eBay, where the point is you meet face to face after discussing a price via email/phone , and you find whatever you want to buy on the website of course.) 

 

Anyways, i've been looking on eBay for a couple months for a 980Ti now, as i wanna upgrade from my very dated R9 380, and i don't wanna spend too much money doing it, also if i ever wanna upgrade in the future, i can just drop another 980Ti in. On eBay last month they all sat around the £200 range (237 euro, $263) , and now they all sit around £170 ($223, 200 euro). So me being the person that likes to save as much as I can, this £135 card is a sparkly gem for me. It was originally posted for £150, and in the ad description it said price negotiable, and I asked the lowest he'd go, and he said around 130, so i offered 135 and he said that sounds good. He wouldn't meet me in the city centre, for some reason, but he said he's free all this week, and I asked a picture of the back of the card, and a picture of the connectors, nothing was burnt out or looked unusual from some google photos I compared it too. I asked for a video of it posting, and he complied, and sent me a rather strange video, not really showing the rear I/O of the card, and more just a side shot of his tower, but it did post. So consequently, I asked for a HWInfo screenshot, or something to show the GPU's name/clocks/temps, and he sent me a perfectly acceptable picture, all temps and voltages normal, and it did say "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti" , so i guess the card was plugged in. I then offered to come and pick up the card tomorrow, so the 10th of December, at 9:45am. Surprisingly, he accepted, and asked if there are any benchmark programs i want him to install for me to test out. I politely declined as i'd rather do a quick trade at the door, since I am 16, so I asked for a photo of the card, and he again, sent me a picture of the card running the 3DMark airship benchmark, at full load.

 

So, out of 10, how legit does this seem? Everything i asked for was done straight away, even the price drop of 15 quid was taken with no questions. By the way, I am getting a friend to come with me to go pick it up, so don't fret on that.

[Constantin]

2 minutes ago, refinedskillz said:

So i found a Palit Jetstream GTX 980Ti for a quite unbeatable price of £135

Not worth, the card is to old!

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Constantin said:

Not worth, the card is to old!

Still on par with the 1070/1660 Ti, and likely still better than both for render tasks. They're more power hungry, but they're not bad performers in the slightest. 

[Morgan MLGman]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Still on par with the 1070/1660 Ti, and likely still better than both for render tasks. They're more power hungry, but they're not bad performers in the slightest. 

Yeah, and if you have a high-end model it can actually outperform a 1070Ti. I wouldn't personally buy the JetStream one though.

[glenalz81]

Comparable to 1070 performance, £135 for a 980 ti is a pretty good deal in the UK.

 

Seller seems pretty legit.

[Constantin]

I didn't say it is a bad GPU, but future proof is waiting in the corner

[BuckGup]

4 minutes ago, Constantin said:

Not worth, the card is to old!

If the card can OC it matches a 1080 FE card lol. Old doesn't instantly mean it's bad. It has a shit load of CUDA cores and a phat memory bus which helps in non gaming oriented tasks

[glenalz81]

1 minute ago, BuckGup said:

If the card can OC

Jetstream cards aren't the best OC'ers, the core does ok but memory not so good.

[Zando_]

Just now, Constantin said:

I didn't say it is a bad GPU, but future proof is waiting in the corner

That's not a thing. 

 

1 minute ago, BuckGup said:

If the card can OC it matches a 1080 FE card lol. Old doesn't instantly mean it's bad. It has a shit load of CUDA cores and a phat memory bus which helps in non gaming oriented tasks

Oh damn, didn't know they could do that well. '80 Ti cards do seem to hold their own for a damn good while though. The 780 Ti can still do work and it's really damn old, the 980 Ti is still impressive, and the 1080 Ti can compete with everything up to the 2080 and I think even the 2080 Super. 

[BuckGup]

1 minute ago, glenalz81 said:

Jetstream cards aren't the best OC'ers, the core does ok but memory not so good.

Hence why I said if it can lol. The Jetstream cooler is terrible

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

That's not a thing. 

 

Oh damn, didn't know they could do that well. '80 Ti cards do seem to hold their own for a damn good while though. The 780 Ti can still do work and it's really damn old, the 980 Ti is still impressive, and the 1080 Ti can compete with everything up to the 2080 and I think even the 2080 Super. 

Nvidia has screwed up the lineup now with super and everything in between but generally the TI cards were the best bang for the buck and performed better than the Titan. But the Titan would come out around 6 months beforehand so people could justify the early adopters price. But the prices of GPUs now days is stupid 

[refinedskillz]

6 minutes ago, Constantin said:

I didn't say it is a bad GPU, but future proof is waiting in the corner

I can just add another 980Ti and then I have 2080 performance.

[refinedskillz]

Just now, BuckGup said:

Hence why I said if it can lol. The Jetstream cooler is terrible

Nvidia has screwed up the lineup now with super and everything in between but generally the TI cards were the best bang for the buck and performed better than the Titan. But the Titan would come out around 6 months beforehand so people could justify the early adopters price. But the prices of GPUs now days is stupid 

By the way, not looking to OC or anything, im gaming at 1080p, so it doesnt matter to me.

[BuckGup]

Just now, refinedskillz said:

By the way, not looking to OC or anything, im gaming at 1080p, so it doesnt matter to me.

At 1080p the 980ti is pretty baller. 

[Zando_]

Just now, refinedskillz said:

I can just add another 980Ti and then I have 2080 performance.

If games scale well. And if they scale well, it'd likely be even better than a single 2080. What are the main games you play? 
 

Just now, refinedskillz said:

By the way, not looking to OC or anything, im gaming at 1080p, so it doesnt matter to me.

Yeah the 980 Ti is overkill for most games at 1080p, though the Tomb Raider titles will hurt them, purely because with max textures they consume VRAM in insane amounts (I got crashes trying to run them at max). If you drop to high though, you take a tiny hit to visuals but there's no performance issues. 

[refinedskillz]

Just now, BuckGup said:

At 1080p the 980ti is pretty baller. 

Yeah , no new cards match its performance for the same price.

[refinedskillz]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

If games scale well. And if they scale well, it'd likely be even better than a single 2080. What are the main games you play? 
 

Yeah the 980 Ti is overkill for most games at 1080p, though the Tomb Raider titles will hurt them, purely because with max textures they consume VRAM in insane amounts (I got crashes trying to run them at max). If you drop to high though, you take a tiny hit to visuals but there's no performance issues. 

Nothing special, mainly the latest Need For Speed, Battlefield, minecraft with some shaders turned on.

[Zando_]

Just now, refinedskillz said:

Nothing special, mainly the latest Need For Speed, Battlefield, minecraft with some shaders turned on.

Don't have the new NFS, but IIRC Battlefield games usually scale well. Battlefield 4 scales amazingly well, I haven't tested Battlefield 1 yet, and I think I still have a trial of BFV left too (I have a 780 SLI rig for mucking around with SLI support). Haven't tried minecraft yet either lol. 

If you want a game that is masterfully built on the performance side, Battlefront 2015 is the best I've found so far. Absolutely flawless SLI scaling (99% scaling at 1440p and 4K with the SLI 1080s I used to run) great performance on both single and dual cards, able to run on very low-spec machines (hell I almost got it to playable framerates on a Dell laptop with a low-power i5 and no dGPU), looks amazing too. Sadly there's not much content, but you can get it for $5 or so pretty regularly, and it's fun for mucking around with Star Wars weapons. Has a way larger collection of those than the sequel, also looks better IMO. Sadly multiplayer is the only way to earn some guns though, and that's filled with either hardcore players who effortlessly side-forward-roll spam around maps at 300mph with an EE-3, or shithead hackers. . I still boot it up every now and then though, purely to just bask in how gorgeous it is and how well it runs. 

[refinedskillz]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Don't have the new NFS, but IIRC Battlefield games usually scale well. Battlefield 4 scales amazingly well, I haven't tested Battlefield 1 yet, and I think I still have a trial of BFV left too (I have a 780 SLI rig for mucking around with SLI support). Haven't tried minecraft yet either lol. 

If you want a game that is masterfully built on the performance side, Battlefront 2015 is the best I've found so far. Absolutely flawless SLI scaling (99% scaling at 1440p and 4K with the SLI 1080s I used to run) great performance on both single and dual cards, able to run on very low-spec machines (hell I almost got it to playable framerates on a Dell laptop with a low-power i5 and no dGPU), looks amazing too. Sadly there's not much content, but you can get it for $5 or so pretty regularly, and it's fun for mucking around with Star Wars weapons. Has a way larger collection of those than the sequel, also looks better IMO. Sadly multiplayer is the only way to earn some guns though, and that's filled with either hardcore players who effortlessly side-forward-roll spam around maps at 300mph with an EE-3, or shithead hackers. . I still boot it up every now and then though, purely to just bask in how gorgeous it is and how well it runs. 

Sounds good for me then lol

[Constantin]

14 minutes ago, refinedskillz said:

I can just add another 980Ti and then I have 2080 performance.

LOL.

Joke? Or do you really believe that?

[refinedskillz]

1 minute ago, Constantin said:

LOL.

Joke? Or do you really believe that?

 

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, Constantin said:

LOL.

Joke? Or do you really believe that?

Do... do you not know how SLI performs in well-scaling applications? There's a reason many enthusiasts still run dual SLI setups, or even quad SLI for benching (3DMark benches tend to scale well). 

[Constantin]

@Zando Bob, @Caroline, @refinedskillz.

SLI is if not dead, it is absolutely dying!!!

How many tittles support SLI i the present? 

Just for benchmark, then ok it rocks

[Constantin]

3 hours ago, refinedskillz said:

 

No DX12, no Ray Tracing, ect.....

And still even by a little 2080Ti performs better!!

[Zando_]

Just now, Constantin said:

@Zando Bob, @Caroline, @refinedskillz.

SLI is if not dead, it is absolutely dying!!!

How many tittles support SLI i the present? 

Just for benchmark, then ok it rocks

Every single title ever made that already supported it? 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider scales well with newer GPUs from everything I've seen (doesn't like my 780s so far, though I'm pretty sure it's actually the i7 920 holding me back pretty hard). 
Battlefield continues to support SLI. 
Many racing games still support SLI. 

Oh the whole Mass Effect series does too AFAIK, need to go through and test the older ones I own. People tend to replay those a good bit too. 

It's really only dead if you exclusively only play the newest, most bleeding edge AAA titles but even many of those still scale decently with SLI. And if you play literally any older games, the list expands massively. Many older titles people still play also support SLI and scale well with it. The Witcher 3 also runs well with it IIRC (I should test that next on my SLI rig), and many people still play that game. Need to see how Skyrim does, that's another older game that still has a large playerbase, and can be modded to be extremely, extremely demanding. 

 

1 minute ago, Constantin said:

No DX12, no Ray Tracing, ect.....

And still even by a little 2080Ti performs better!!

$1200 GPU vs two GPUs you can get for $300-350 together. 3 times the price for a couple more fps? Now there are a lot more advantages to the 2080 Ti than that, but if you wanna play games that do scale well in SLI, it's a good way to get insane gaming performance for a lot less money. 

[refinedskillz]

1 hour ago, Constantin said:

No DX12, no Ray Tracing, ect.....

And still even by a little 2080Ti performs better!!

yeah but for a 3rd, if not a quarter for the price.