A 20 series Dilemma

[4K-Pong]

Hey, so I know the 3080 drops in about a week from now, and everyone is wanting to buy anything that has a number 3 in it, but I am wondering if I should buy either of these graphics cards right now and save myself the disappointment later. The two cards are a 2070 and a 2060 super, both from gigabyte and both are about 650 aud.          

https://www.austin.net.au/gigabyte-gv-n2070wf2-8gd-graphics-card-geforce-rtx-2070-8-gb-gddr6.html         (2070 card)

https://www.austin.net.au/gigabyte-geforce-rtx-2060-super-windforce-oc-8g.html             (2060s card)

 

I'm only going to be gaming at 1080p with an r5 3600, but I will be using ray tracing for games like cyberpunk and minecraft if i can. Which one should i buy? Or should I just hold out for the 3070 even though its far more pricey and kind of overdoing it?

 

P.S. I dont know if this should go in building or graphics cards so i posted it here bc its more of a purchase question

 

[boggy77]

the 2060s and 3070 won't do well with raytraciing. without raytracing, I agree they are more than you need and there is no point for the 3070. but if you want raytracing, you might want the 3070, or wait for 3060

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, 4K-Pong said:

The two cards are a 2070 and a 2060 super, both from gigabyte and both are about 650 aud

The 3080 is supposed to be 2x as powerful as a 2080. For 300 more AUD than those. A 3070 is about a 2080ti, and costs about 650AUD. 

 

All Australian prices are straight converted. 

[VeganJoy]

if theyre both the same price the 2070 is marginally better, but neither will handle cyberpunk well in rtx. iirc the original demo was played at 1080p with a 2080ti, with dlss 2.0 helping significantly. if you dont need a build right now it would be extremely beneficial to wait, as supposedly the 3070 will bring better performance than the 2080ti. if you do wanna build immediately, a cheaper card like a 1660 super, 5600xt, or 2060 would be enough for 1080p without rtx (maybe you can play minecraft rtx on a 2060?) and youd be able to sell it upon getting a 2070 without losing too much money. ideally youd buy used for a holdover card but i dunno the used market in australia

[Aereldor]

Cyberpunk is going to look just fine at medium settings, since that's what the developers envisioned while making the game.

 

The game is primarily targeting the PS4 and Xbox One, with the vast majority of optimizations dedicated to getting the game to run and look good on those consoles. High and 'Ultra' settings will likely be an afterthought, and not nearly as well-optimized.

 

Ray Tracing in Cyberpunk 2077, however beautiful it may turn out to be, is an after-after-after-afterthought. It's been in development - as fas as we know - since 2015. Possibly earlier, since the game was announced all the way back in 2012. They only announced their partnership with NVidia to introduce ray-tracing into the game in Q3 2019.|

 

This is pretty much exactly what happened with The Witcher 3. The console settings - medium with high textures and SSAO - are by far the best optimized, with the best ratio of visual quality to framerate. And Hairworks, added as an afterthought, would kill framerates just to offer a trivial increase in fidelity.

 

All this said, I think a 2060 will handle Cyberpunk with Ray Tracing just fine, because it's going to support DLSS 2.0. It's honestly the most groundbreaking upscaling system yet, Digital Foundry had truly absurd test results - they rendered Control at 540p and upscaled to 1080p and the result was surprisingly decent, 1080p to 4k was even better.

 

I'd imagine a 2060 can max out the game at 720p and upscale it very convincingly to 1080p with DLSS.

[Chris Pratt]

The 30-series supposedly handles ray tracing with no performance hit, unlike the current 20-series cards. If you care about ray tracing, then you should go with a 3070, or hold out for a 3060. Otherwise, you're fine with a 2060 super.

[Stahlmann]

I agree with @Chris Pratt.

If you care about ray tracing, the 30-series is the way to go. A 2060 or 2070 will not play the games you mentioned with ray tracing at 1080p 60fps. I'd just wait until the 3070 is available and buy this for your budget. It will perform much better and hold up a lot better in the next few years. Who knows, maybe ray-traycing will completely hit the mainstream now that the consoles and also affordable GPUs properly support it.

 

Pretty much the only 20-series GPU that can perform reasonably well while using RTX is the 2080Ti.

[KaitouX]

29 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

The 30-series supposedly handles ray tracing with no performance hit, unlike the current 20-series cards.

It doesn't:

The performance difference is the same on Control with RT on and off, if there was no performance hit the 2080 would fall further behind in the test with RT.

Getting the newer GPU is probably the better idea anyway, they're really close to launch and possibly there will be information on the 3060, waiting few weeks is the way to go in my opinion.