Am I Falling Down the Upgrade Rabbit Hole?

CT854 · December 30, 2020

Budget (including currency): US$1800

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: AC Odyssey, Minecraft, Skyrim, plus future graphics-intensive games; general multitasking when working from home; hobby video editing and photography

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Looking to play games at High/Ultra settings in 1080p/4K (elaborated in post) at least 40fps (preferably >>60fps) for at least the next 3 years or so before upgrading - my current build is an i5 4690K/GTX 970 machine, so it's reasonably powerful but increasingly dated.

Hi all,

I'm not 100% sure if this is the best place for this thread, but I'll shoot my shot here. So, a bit of context: I saved up ~US$1800 for a new PC over the last year, and I was originally going to go with a Ryzen 7 3700X/RX 5700 XT setup as of around early November. Then, I was convinced by someone that the RTX 3070 would be a better value purchase than the RX 5700 XT, and quickly found out about the supply issues with nVidia cards. Long story short, by the time I figured it'd better to buy an RX 5700 XT, it was around Black Friday and GPU stock seemingly vaporized and everything was more expensive than I had seen before. A modern tragedy.

So, I'd stuck with the 3070 for a while until I remembered that I have a 1080p monitor. A very good one that I love (a 24" Acer Predator w/ 144Hz refresh rate, which I got as a gift), but this is coupled with the fact that realized I actually have the space for the dual-monitored setup I'd always wanted, so why not get a 4K monitor as my primary and use my 1080p monitor as my secondary, and starting looking for a 3080 instead to actually support both of those monitors? After all, I'd like to keep my monitors for a long while (my old one lasted me almost 10 years) and I'd rather face the future with a 4K monitor as my primary than a 1080p monitor. But then a 4K 144 Hz would set me back a pretty penny (the one I'm eyeing retails for US$1200, which is.... a lot, but is money I both have and can easily pay back if I took out a "loan" from myself by dipping into savings and paying it back), so would even that be worth it?

Then there's news of leaks about 40 series cards coming sooner than the 2 year cycle we've seen other cards come out at, and my mind is starting to race, thinking about whether it's even worth it to buy a 30 series card at this rate, with how much they cost and the effort required to get them...

Point being, the scarcity of GPUs left me a lot of time to constantly reevaluate my setup, and I'm wondering if I'm going down a completely unproductive path. As of right now, I've already purchased a 3700X at discount, I have all of my other parts locked down (ASUS X570 TUF Plus, 32GB of 3200MHz RAM, 1TB of NVMe storage, 750W PSU, and a Hyper 212 for light/moderate overclocking, and a Phanteks P400A Digital), and I'm planning to complement it with a 3080 now and a new 4K monitor down the line. However, I still feel uneasy about this and I'm terrified of buyer's remorse, for some reason. My goal is to treat myself after a difficult year, and that includes being able to run games like AC Odyssey at Ultra settings, being able to handle games at High/Ultra settings for at least 3-4 years, getting into hobby video editing and photography and entertaining a few hobbies I have that may require more intensive hardware, and generally feel good about the money I spent. Am I spiraling? Am I being an idiot? What would you do in my situation? Thanks!

RacA · December 30, 2020

A lot of this is a matter of personal opinion but:

RTX 3000 series cards have brought a very large jump in performance in comparison to previous launches. RTX 4000 will come at some point but I doubt they will be that much upgrade over current gen as 3000 is vs 2000.

On your place I would just get 3070/3080 if you can find one in stock. Buyers remorse is very unlikely in this case.

Also if you're planning to play on 4K display, disregard amd rx 6000 series as those cards while excellent for lower res, are losing a bit to nvidia at 4k

CT854 · December 30, 2020

1 hour ago, RacA said:

A lot of this is a matter of personal opinion but:

RTX 3000 series cards have brought a very large jump in performance in comparison to previous launches. RTX 4000 will come at some point but I doubt they will be that much upgrade over current gen as 3000 is vs 2000.

On your place I would just get 3070/3080 if you can find one in stock. Buyers remorse is very unlikely in this case.

Also if you're planning to play on 4K display, disregard amd rx 6000 series as those cards while excellent for lower res, are losing a bit to nvidia at 4k

That makes sense. I have seen that the 30 series cards are very much better than 20 series cards, so that's well taken. I'm still a little uneasy that I'm going down a rabbit hole with the 3080 to begin with, but this is reassuring.