Is a 3070/3080 a risky "long term" investment?

[pipnina]

I got my 1070 over 4 years ago with the same amount of VRAM as the 3070 that came out in october, and even the outrageously priced 3080 (even after tax in the US post-tarrif, they are at their cheapest 100 USD equivalent more expensive in the UK) only has two gig more than my £415 1070 from 2016.

 

Many games like no man's sky already list 8GB+ as a requirement to max some graphics settings, Half Life Alyx recommends a 6GB GPU for *minimum*, Space Engineers reports using about 5-6gig of VRAM as a game that last had graphics updates like 3 years ago, and there don't seem to be any aftermarket cards that ship with extra ram which just kicks in the balls further.

 

It just seems to me that VRAM at the 8gb volume is already starting to be encroached on by a number of titles, and with GPU prices increasing it would suck to have a GPU as powerful as a 3070 which is limited in use 3 years from now only because nvidia decided that tensor cores were worth more than giving it more vram than its 4 year old grandpa.

 

Am I overreacting? Just seems like a kick in the balls for these products to cost considerably more new than what I have but have the exact same amount of vram, while AMD is touting double what nvidia offers in VRAM at similar prices. If they actually exist in the wild that is...

[not_really_gamer]

11 minutes ago, pipnina said:

I got my 1070 over 4 years ago with the same amount of VRAM as the 3070 that came out in october, and even the outrageously priced 3080 (even after tax in the US post-tarrif, they are at their cheapest 100 USD equivalent more expensive in the UK) only has two gig more than my £415 1070 from 2016.

 

Many games like no man's sky already list 8GB+ as a requirement to max some graphics settings, Half Life Alyx recommends a 6GB GPU for *minimum*, Space Engineers reports using about 5-6gig of VRAM as a game that last had graphics updates like 3 years ago, and there don't seem to be any aftermarket cards that ship with extra ram which just kicks in the balls further.

 

It just seems to me that VRAM at the 8gb volume is already starting to be encroached on by a number of titles, and with GPU prices increasing it would suck to have a GPU as powerful as a 3070 which is limited in use 3 years from now only because nvidia decided that tensor cores were worth more than giving it more vram than its 4 year old grandpa.

 

Am I overreacting? Just seems like a kick in the balls for these products to cost considerably more new than what I have but have the exact same amount of vram, while AMD is touting double what nvidia offers in VRAM at similar prices. If they actually exist in the wild that is...

by the time the 3070 comes back in stock, the minimum requirement of vram will be 16gbs

[cm992]

Get the RTX 3060 12GB if you want more vram, or RTX 3090 if you have money to burn. Or wait and hope for the end of the year when hopefully there will be a Super refresh of the 3000 series or maybe they will call it 4000 series. Hopefully there will be a refresh then, I think that if there is it will probably be on Samsung 7nm instead of the current 8nm with more vram.

[Mister Woof]

wouldn't call any computer parts investments unless you're using them as a work tool.

 

They all have a useful life and it's anyone's guess how long that will be.

[tikker]

Prices are hugely inflated because of the current world state and so are not directly comparable to prices 4 years ago.

 

8 GB will probably be fine still. The 3070 is a 1440p card, they wouldn't equip it with insufficient VRAM. The 3080 is equipped with faster GDDR6X instead of GDDR6 like the 3070 and AMD cards.

 

No games apart from MSFS 2020, as far as I'm aware, report actual VRAM usage. The rest reports allocated usage and games will typically allocate all they can get to just load stuff it might need. On an 8 GB card you'll see 8 GB "used", on a 16 GB card you'll see 16 GB "used". How much of it is actually actively in use is hard to tell.

[Bobbysixjp]

Ignoring VRAM the 3070 has almost double the performance of the 1070. Depending on the resolution and type of games you play, it should easily last you 3 years. The 3080 will probably last 4-5 years but prices are so inflated right now it might be worth waiting a while unless you don’t mind paying over the odds for a GPU.

[Pc6777]

the 3070 is like double the performance of me 2060, and has 25 percent more vram, it should really have like 10 gigs, and the 3080 should have 12. people would have gladly paid 30 dollars more for 2 gigs more ram in the cards, that nvidia knows that but they want you to buy rtx 40xx. that could hold them back in the future and give you a reason to spend money on a new shiny nvidia card. the new amd cards have worse ray tracing and no dlss, but way more vram, so its kind of a tradeoff, you cant get the best of both worlds unless you get a 3090 lol. the 3090 is the most future proof gpu right now by far.

[pipnina]

7 hours ago, Pc6777 said:

the 3070 is like double the performance of me 2060, and has 25 percent more vram, it should really have like 10 gigs, and the 3080 should have 12. people would have gladly paid 30 dollars more for 2 gigs more ram in the cards, that nvidia knows that but they want you to buy rtx 40xx. that could hold them back in the future and give you a reason to spend money on a new shiny nvidia card. the new amd cards have worse ray tracing and no dlss, but way more vram, so its kind of a tradeoff, you cant get the best of both worlds unless you get a 3090 lol. the 3090 is the most future proof gpu right now by far.

Yeah I kind of agree with the idea the 70 should have 10 and the 80 should have 12. That said despite my case being rather large I don't know if I would fit a 3090 in! Let alone the fact they are £1600-2000 in the UK after tax.

 

13 hours ago, Bobbysixjp said:

but prices are so inflated right now it might be worth waiting a while unless you don’t mind paying over the odds for a GPU.

Yeah, I will probably be in my best mind to continue waiting. It sucks but I guess that's the state of the world right now.

 

14 hours ago, tikker said:

8 GB will probably be fine still. The 3070 is a 1440p card, they wouldn't equip it with insufficient VRAM. The 3080 is equipped with faster GDDR6X instead of GDDR6 like the 3070 and AMD cards.

I wouldn't call the 3070 a 1440p card... I run 1440p and get close to max on most games I've tried on my 1070...

To be honest 4GB would have been considered fine when the 10 series launched, but they sold it with 8 anyway and I feel like that's why that gen has lasted so long. We don't know what ram demands might be going forward so it just seems odd they'd pair these cards with the same ram size as four years ago.

[tikker]

3 minutes ago, pipnina said:

I wouldn't call the 3070 a 1440p card... I run 1440p and get close to max on most games I've tried on my 1070...

To be honest 4GB would have been considered fine when the 10 series launched, but they sold it with 8 anyway and I feel like that's why that gen has lasted so long. We don't know what ram demands might be going forward so it just seems odd they'd pair these cards with the same ram size as four years ago.

Close to max what? 8 GB VRAM now is not 8 GB VRAM 4 years ago. The 1070 has slower GDDR5 for one while the 3070 has GDDR6. Also again the whole allocated vs actually used bit.

[pipnina]

2 minutes ago, tikker said:

Close to max what? 8 GB VRAM now is not 8 GB VRAM 4 years ago. The 1070 has slower GDDR5 for one while the 3070 has GDDR6.

I can play no man's sky and space engineers on max and get 80-120fps depending on the scene. Elite Dangerous gets maybe 40-50fps on max in planetary asteroid rings but that's entirely the fault of the extreme shadow and volumetric effects, everywhere else it's almost always pinned at 144. The most troublesome game has been Half Life Alyx which struggled to get above 90fps but that's running at 1440x3200 and I didn't see as much difference between higher and lower settings. I was also CPU limited in my first playthrough and need to re-test.

[AngryBeaver]

18 hours ago, not_really_gamer said:

by the time the 3070 comes back in stock, the minimum requirement of vram will be 16gbs

This just isn't true. Most people think they need much more Vram than they really do. If you aren't running extreme resolutions like 8k or using the card for content creation where you need massive amounts of vram then again no need for it.

When it comes down to say the 3080 the speed of the ram make it much better than say the 3060 with 12gb of ram. Having more ram when you don't have speed to utilize it doesn't really help do anything other than make it look better than it is.

 

Lastly, moving forward Dlss with give these cards a lot of future proofing due to the effect it has on vram usage and fps.

[pipnina]

55 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

This just isn't true. Most people think they need much more Vram than they really do. If you aren't running extreme resolutions like 8k or using the card for content creation where you need massive amounts of vram then again no need for it.

When it comes down to say the 3080 the speed of the ram make it much better than say the 3060 with 12gb of ram. Having more ram when you don't have speed to utilize it doesn't really help do anything other than make it look better than it is.

 

Lastly, moving forward Dlss with give these cards a lot of future proofing due to the effect it has on vram usage and fps.

But even at 8k, aren't you only dealing with at most 500MB of framebuffer? something like 125meg per full frame of 8k plus the second buffer that gets swapped in, and maybe one or two pre-rendered frames (nvidia control panel has an option for that?). Wouldn't most vram usage come from models and textures? So I'd have thought that fast vram would be what's needed above 4k, but big vram pools would be needed for games that make heavy use of high-res textures or tesselation etc?

[ShennyG]

Another topic on a topic that has been beaten to death everywhere? Okay. 

 

3 years - You're fine

5 years - Lower settings

10 years - As if your keeping the card that long. 

[Falkentyne]

On 2/4/2021 at 11:31 AM, pipnina said:

I got my 1070 over 4 years ago with the same amount of VRAM as the 3070 that came out in october, and even the outrageously priced 3080 (even after tax in the US post-tarrif, they are at their cheapest 100 USD equivalent more expensive in the UK) only has two gig more than my £415 1070 from 2016.

 

Many games like no man's sky already list 8GB+ as a requirement to max some graphics settings, Half Life Alyx recommends a 6GB GPU for *minimum*, Space Engineers reports using about 5-6gig of VRAM as a game that last had graphics updates like 3 years ago, and there don't seem to be any aftermarket cards that ship with extra ram which just kicks in the balls further.

 

It just seems to me that VRAM at the 8gb volume is already starting to be encroached on by a number of titles, and with GPU prices increasing it would suck to have a GPU as powerful as a 3070 which is limited in use 3 years from now only because nvidia decided that tensor cores were worth more than giving it more vram than its 4 year old grandpa.

 

Am I overreacting? Just seems like a kick in the balls for these products to cost considerably more new than what I have but have the exact same amount of vram, while AMD is touting double what nvidia offers in VRAM at similar prices. If they actually exist in the wild that is...

3070's and 3080's are not long term investments.

The only cards considered long term investments are the highest end TI models, which at the time were 980 Ti, 1080 Ti and 2080 Ti.  The 3090 takes that slot's place now.

 

Your 3070 or 3080 will be a great card for a nice long while.  You just won't be able to play at 4K very well, but 4K has atrocious framerates on anything recent anyway...

[not_really_gamer]

On 2/5/2021 at 6:07 AM, AngryBeaver said:

This just isn't true. Most people think they need much more Vram than they really do. If you aren't running extreme resolutions like 8k or using the card for content creation where you need massive amounts of vram then again no need for it.

When it comes down to say the 3080 the speed of the ram make it much better than say the 3060 with 12gb of ram. Having more ram when you don't have speed to utilize it doesn't really help do anything other than make it look better than it is.

 

Lastly, moving forward Dlss with give these cards a lot of future proofing due to the effect it has on vram usage and fps.

i just wanted to let you know, i was making a joke about the 30 series cards being sold out forever.

[Mister Woof]

Personally feel my 3080 will last longer than I'm willing to accept it's performance level.

 

Currently can play most games at 4k with relative ease, but I play at 1440p max.

 

I am almost certain this GPU will be able to play games at 1080p/60 with any number of resolution settings changes for at least 5 years.

 

But at a certain point, it won't power 1440p/60 well enough, and I won't be willing to play at 1080p/60 and then I'll upgrade to something else. It's likely that time will come sooner than later, that way I can upgrade another PC in my home with the 3080 as well while it still has useful life.

[AngryBeaver]

3 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

Personally feel my 3080 will last longer than I'm willing to accept it's performance level.

 

Currently can play most games at 4k with relative ease, but I play at 1440p max.

 

I am almost certain this GPU will be able to play games at 1080p/60 with any number of resolution settings changes for at least 5 years.

 

But at a certain point, I won't be willing to play at 1080p/60 and then I'll upgrade to something else. It's likely that time will come sooner than later, that way I can upgrade another PC in my home with the 3080 as well while it still has useful life.

Seeing I gave an old 780ti to a nephew and he can still play without issues at high settings now...  I mean sure 3gb of vram isn't much these days but at 1080p it isn't an issue. All goes to show you will probably be fine.

 

Also worth noting the 780ti is like 8 years old now. So for more apples to apples look at the 1080 it is right at 5 years old and doesn't struggle at 1080p at all

[Mister Woof]

5 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Seeing I gave an old 780ti to a nephew and he can still play without issues at high settings now...  I mean sure 3gb of vram isn't much these days but at 1080p it isn't an issue. All goes to show you will probably be fine.

 

Also worth noting the 780ti is like 8 years old now. So for more apples to apples look at the 1080 it is right at 5 years old and doesn't struggle at 1080p at all

Oldest GPU in my household is the 1060 3gb that my daughter uses. It plays all her games perfectly fine on her little 900p monitor. And that's over 4 years old now, almost 5. It was a 1080p card to begin with, lol.

 

Still manages pretty good on even newer well-optimized games.