Could the RTX 4090 be considered "worth it" simply due to it's extra VRAM?

[LightningMachine]

I'm on the fence of buying a totally new rig, and my eyes have been set on either the 4080 (1249EUR) or 4090 (1699EUR). 

 

While the RTX 4090 costs 32% more over here, when I compare the frame rates to the RTX 4080, it only delivers 23% more performance. So at first one might feel like the RTX 4080 is the better, smarter choice. However, when I looked at the comparison between the RTX 3070 and 6800 XT, it really spoke volumes in terms of just how important VRAM is, even in the long run. 

 

What do you guys think? Should I buy an RTX 4080 to exchange it for a 50 or 60 series card later on or should I buy the 4090 and in that way "future proof" my rig for the next few years to come?

 

 

 

[PDifolco]

5 minutes ago, LightningMachine said:

I'm on the fence of buying a totally new rig, and my eyes have been set on either the 4080 (1249EUR) or 4090 (1699EUR). 

 

While the RTX 4090 costs 32% more over here, when I compare the frame rates to the RTX 4080, it only delivers 23% more performance. So at first one might feel like the RTX 4080 is the better, smarter choice. However, when I looked at the comparison between the RTX 3070 and 6800 XT, it really spoke volumes in terms of just how important VRAM is, even in the long run. 

 

What do you guys think? Should I buy an RTX 4080 to exchange it for a 50 or 60 series card later on or should I buy the 4090 and in that way "future proof" my rig for the next few years to come?

 

 

 

Do like I did, get a 7900XTX, as much VRAM as 4090 for less than a 4080  

[LightningMachine]

3 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

Do like I did, get a 7900XTX, as much VRAM as 4090 for less than a 4080  

I understand, truly I do, but I have a GSYNC monitor, and DLSS has been proven to be far, far more effective than FSR. I'm cheering AMD on for sure, but they haven't been putting out the innovation that Nvidia brings to the table. 

[Darknighterror]

3 minutes ago, LightningMachine said:

I understand, truly I do, but I have a GSYNC monitor, and DLSS has been proven to be far, far more effective than FSR. I'm cheering AMD on for sure, but they haven't been putting out the innovation that Nvidia brings to the table. 

I would get the 4080 and upgrade in a few years (when you feel like you need/want to). The extra Vram is useless when you don't need it and we dont know if you will actually need more than 16 in the next years.

[bezza...]

6 minutes ago, LightningMachine said:

I understand, truly I do, but I have a GSYNC monitor, and DLSS has been proven to be far, far more effective than FSR. I'm cheering AMD on for sure, but they haven't been putting out the innovation that Nvidia brings to the table. 

personally i cant tell the difference between fsr and dlss and dlss 3 is known to have its own set of issues.

[emosun]

The bad price to performance ratio increases exponentially the higher end you go kinda like a race car. You pay more for less % increases. 

 

Id get a 4080. The 4090 isnt worth the cost unless you just want the clout of a 4090

 

[PriitM]

12 minutes ago, LightningMachine said:

I understand, truly I do, but I have a GSYNC monitor, and DLSS has been proven to be far, far more effective than FSR. I'm cheering AMD on for sure, but they haven't been putting out the innovation that Nvidia brings to the table. 

GSync and Freesync are in essence the same thing, just adapted to different architectures. Besides, this technology will be standard in the near future. DLSS and FSR are pretty much the same thing: just a competitive answer to each other. What matters is value and longevity. Nvidia is going with Apple approach, giving you less for more and requiring you to upgrade more often. And did you miss the part where AMD introduced a software Ray Tracing... which gave RT capability to pretty much ANY card? Vulkan API is full of such things, all ready to be applied in game engines. If AMD had the same game developer support Nvidia has... we would many more features than just Nvidia "offerings"

[Agall]

24 minutes ago, LightningMachine said:

I understand, truly I do, but I have a GSYNC monitor, and DLSS has been proven to be far, far more effective than FSR. I'm cheering AMD on for sure, but they haven't been putting out the innovation that Nvidia brings to the table. 

RTX 4090 is sort of futile in most scenarios unless you're running 4K high refresh rate. So whatever display you're currently using that's Gsync only, I'd also look to upgrade if you're looking at a GPU upgrade.

[Agall]

3 minutes ago, PriitM said:

GSync and Freesync are in essence the same thing, just adapted to different architectures. Besides, this technology will be standard in the near future. DLSS and FSR are pretty much the same thing: just a competitive answer to each other. What matters is value and longevity. Nvidia is going with Apple approach, giving you less for more and requiring you to upgrade more often. And did you miss the part where AMD introduced a software Ray Tracing... which gave RT capability to pretty much ANY card? Vulkan API is full of such things, all ready to be applied in game engines. If AMD had the same game developer support Nvidia has... we would many more features than just Nvidia "offerings"

G-sync =/= Freesync on many levels. Most newer displays will support both since especially the G-sync requirements have been loosened, a lot. 

 

Even if you're mostly over-driving your display to that 1.5-2x level for minimal latency, VRR is still worth it. I just refute the nature of upgrading your GPU without considering a monitor upgrade, especially if the display in question is old enough/budget enough to be G-sync only.

 

Generally, a Freesync monitor in 2023 will support VRR on Nvidia, but a G-sync monitor is generally Nvidia only for VRR.

[ewitte]

21 minutes ago, emosun said:

The bad price to performance ratio increases exponentially the higher end you go kinda like a race car. You pay more for less % increases. 

 

Id get a 4080. The 4090 isnt worth the cost unless you just want the clout of a 4090

 

Last gen there was a tiny difference between a 3080 and 3090.  There is a massive difference in Cuda cores between the 4080 and 4090.  If you see that in-game depends on what you are playing.  It is pretty easy to not realize that big of a difference due to how CPU-limited a lot of titles are today even at 4k.  Likely as new titles and UE5 roll out the gap will widen.

[GuiltySpark_]

If you’re not at 4K and don’t plan do be, 4080. If you are, the difference between the 4080 and 4090 is significant. Probably more than you think. It’s kind of insane the jump in performance from my 3090 to 4090. 
 

Price is subjective but if PC gaming is one of or your only hobby, a $1600 purchase is cheap in the grand scheme of what you could be spending on other hobbies over two years. 
 

All about perspective. 

[Agall]

57 minutes ago, ewitte said:

Last gen there was a tiny difference between a 3080 and 3090.  There is a massive difference in Cuda cores between the 4080 and 4090.  If you see that in-game depends on what you are playing.  It is pretty easy to not realize that big of a difference due to how CPU-limited a lot of titles are today even at 4k.  Likely as new titles and UE5 roll out the gap will widen.

Its because the RTX 3080 and 3090 used the same GA102 die where the RTX 4080 uses a much smaller die with an equivalent cuda core count to the RTX 3070ti when doing an intergenerational comparison. Performance deltas also track better between the 3070ti and 4080 when compared to the 3090 and 4090 that show a better intergenerational performance gain closer to 70%.

 

Practically speaking, the RTX 3080's Ada Lovelace counterpart doesn't exist, but if it did, it would look a lot like this speculative card. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Ti Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

 

Nvidia would have to have millions of AD102 dies that didn't make the cut as production cards or the RTX 4090 for the short list of GPUs using that die on the market. NVIDIA AD102 GPU Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

 

Amusingly when using this standard, the RTX 4090 is closer and below the RTX 3080ti in binning scheme/silicon quality.

[Agall]

5 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

If you’re not at 4K and don’t plan do be, 4080. If you are, the difference between the 4080 and 4090 is significant. Probably more than you think. It’s kind of insane the jump in performance from my 3090 to 4090. 
 

Price is subjective but if PC gaming is one of or your only hobby, a $1600 purchase is cheap in the grand scheme of what you could be spending on other hobbies over two years. 
 

All about perspective. 

RTX 4090 is just an absolute 4K monster, its the only reason I bought one since I already had my 4K 240Hz display and it doubled the 6900 XT I had at the time. 16GB of VRAM was also limiting in some games, where Division 2 I would have to run DX11 or lower the texture qualities to prevent it from maxing out the VRAM, which turns out was about 19GB of actual use.

 

I've also seen speculation that the RTX 4090 will retain a lot more value than the 3090 simply due to the better tensor cores for AI. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 vs RTX 3090 Deep Learning Benchmark (lambdalabs.com)

[LightningMachine]

1 hour ago, Agall said:

RTX 4090 is sort of futile in most scenarios unless you're running 4K high refresh rate. So whatever display you're currently using that's Gsync only, I'd also look to upgrade if you're looking at a GPU upgrade.

The problem is often with modern AAA games that they implement an absolute shit-tier level of TAA. See also Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC. That game, on 1440p is unviewable for me. Setting the resolution scale to 150% relieves the problem so, so much more. 

 

Why would you say that I'd need to upgrade my monitor too? 

 

 

[GuiltySpark_]

11 minutes ago, Agall said:

RTX 4090 is just an absolute 4K monster, its the only reason I bought one since I already had my 4K 240Hz display and it doubled the 6900 XT I had at the time. 16GB of VRAM was also limiting in some games, where Division 2 I would have to run DX11 or lower the texture qualities to prevent it from maxing out the VRAM, which turns out was about 19GB of actual use.

 

I've also seen speculation that the RTX 4090 will retain a lot more value than the 3090 simply due to the better tensor cores for AI. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 vs RTX 3090 Deep Learning Benchmark (lambdalabs.com)

Division 2 is an odd one. On any card, even my 4090 it nearly maxes out VRAM but there is the argument of used vs. allocated. MW2 seems to do the same thing. I'll look at VRAM usage in HWiNFO and they'are always at 20-23GB "used". Its the same number for allocated so

[SteveGrabowski0]

2 hours ago, LightningMachine said:

I'm on the fence of buying a totally new rig, and my eyes have been set on either the 4080 (1249EUR) or 4090 (1699EUR). 

 

While the RTX 4090 costs 32% more over here, when I compare the frame rates to the RTX 4080, it only delivers 23% more performance. So at first one might feel like the RTX 4080 is the better, smarter choice. However, when I looked at the comparison between the RTX 3070 and 6800 XT, it really spoke volumes in terms of just how important VRAM is, even in the long run. 

 

What do you guys think? Should I buy an RTX 4080 to exchange it for a 50 or 60 series card later on or should I buy the 4090 and in that way "future proof" my rig for the next few years to come?

The 4090 is a worlds better gpu than the 4080, they're just not even close to the same class of card. That 23% difference probably has a lot of cpu limits with current games, as the 4090 has a staggering 68% more CUDA cores and in Time Spy Extreme the 4090 benches 37% higher than the 4080 on graphics store. The 4080 is enormously cut down vs previous gen 80 series compared to the flagships. I wouldn't touch a 4080 with a ten foot pole when it's so close in price to the far superior 4090. Though you'd be nuts to not upgrade to a 4k144 monitor too.

[Agall]

3 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Division 2 is an odd one. On any card, even my 4090 it nearly maxes out VRAM but there is the argument of used vs. allocated. MW2 seems to do the same thing. I'll look at VRAM usage in HWiNFO and they'are always at 20-23GB "used". Its the same number for allocated so

I know Division 2 would use more than 16GB since it would do the typical 'single digit framerate' issue when you're dipping into shared memory.

 

But I agree on used vs allocated, since MW2 will allocate 23GB as well but be unlikely to actually use that much.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

1 hour ago, ewitte said:

Last gen there was a tiny difference between a 3080 and 3090.  There is a massive difference in Cuda cores between the 4080 and 4090.  If you see that in-game depends on what you are playing.  It is pretty easy to not realize that big of a difference due to how CPU-limited a lot of titles are today even at 4k.  Likely as new titles and UE5 roll out the gap will widen.

This is a topic of conversation that isn't mentioned nearly enough imo. Up until the 4090, we had CPU's fast enough where GPU's were the bottleneck ~90% of the time. Now? We as a community BADLY need Arrow Lake/Zen 5 to be wicked fast. Even the 7800x3d can't keep up with a 4090 a lot of the time.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

2 hours ago, LightningMachine said:

I'm on the fence of buying a totally new rig, and my eyes have been set on either the 4080 (1249EUR) or 4090 (1699EUR). 

 

While the RTX 4090 costs 32% more over here, when I compare the frame rates to the RTX 4080, it only delivers 23% more performance. So at first one might feel like the RTX 4080 is the better, smarter choice. However, when I looked at the comparison between the RTX 3070 and 6800 XT, it really spoke volumes in terms of just how important VRAM is, even in the long run. 

 

What do you guys think? Should I buy an RTX 4080 to exchange it for a 50 or 60 series card later on or should I buy the 4090 and in that way "future proof" my rig for the next few years to come?

 

 

 

I'd get neither of these. I'd get a 6950xt or 7900xt

[Agall]

10 minutes ago, Deadpool2onBlu-Ray said:

This is a topic of conversation that isn't mentioned nearly enough imo. Up until the 4090, we had CPU's fast enough where GPU's were the bottleneck ~90% of the time. Now? We as a community BADLY need Arrow Lake/Zen 5 to be wicked fast. Even the 7800x3d can't keep up with a 4090 a lot of the time.

I find its more engine limitations than CPU limitations. Example being Warframe I can get up to 1200 fps at 720p/1080p ultra which is CPU/engine limited. At 4K, its in the 500 fps range.

 

I made this thread to demonstrate how limiting it can be in the best case scenario for an older chip, being 4K ultra settings. At 4K in enclosed single player scenarios where my 7950x3D could reach 1200 fps (mind you this is testing every CCD configuration, including pseudo 7800x3D and 7700x not shown in this post) the 4790k got basically the same 500 some fps as the 7950x3D.

 

"Cassini (saturn) solo staring in corner 1080p- 500 (same at 4K) vs 500 4k and 1200 at 1080p"

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

5 minutes ago, Agall said:

I find its more engine limitations than CPU limitations. Example being Warframe I can get up to 1200 fps at 720p/1080p ultra which is CPU/engine limited. At 4K, its in the 500 fps range.

 

I made this thread to demonstrate how limiting it can be in the best case scenario for an older chip, being 4K ultra settings. At 4K in enclosed single player scenarios where my 7950x3D could reach 1200 fps (mind you this is testing every CCD configuration, including pseudo 7800x3D and 7700x not shown in this post) the 4790k got basically the same 500 some fps as the 7950x3D.

 

"Cassini (saturn) solo staring in corner 1080p- 500 (same at 4K) vs 500 4k and 1200 at 1080p"

I think it's a little of both honestly. But you're right. Game development is the REAL issue, not the hardware, cpu/gpu or otherwise. Look at the dumpster fire that is LTOU Remake on PC, Jedi Survivor, Hogwarts etc. Although I think Nvidia needs to give us more VRAM, there is no reason why all of a sudden anything less than 16gb should struggle in new AAA Games

[PDifolco]

2 hours ago, bezza... said:

personally i cant tell the difference between fsr and dlss and dlss 3 is known to have its own set of issues.

I also have a GSync monitor, but as the game FPS are close or better to its 120Hz I don't have any tearing or such

No real need for DLSS neither

[GTC]

4 hours ago, LightningMachine said:

I understand, truly I do, but I have a GSYNC monitor, and DLSS has been proven to be far, far more effective than FSR. I'm cheering AMD on for sure, but they haven't been putting out the innovation that Nvidia brings to the table. 

With a high end card such as the 4080 or 4090 you're probably gonna wanna turn gsync off anyways unless you're playing 4k 144hz and you won't need dlss or fsr, those features are mainly for lower end cards. 

The 7900 XTX seems like the clear option for you to go for imo.

[ewitte]

20 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

 I wouldn't touch a 4080 with a ten foot pole when it's so close in price to the far superior 4090. Though you'd be nuts to not upgrade to a 4k144 monitor too.

I was in the same boat once they released the 4080 I didn't even consider it.  I'm fine with the 120hz I have on my 48" OLED, although it is probably equal to a 144-200hz LCD.

[ewitte]

20 hours ago, Deadpool2onBlu-Ray said:

I think it's a little of both honestly. But you're right. Game development is the REAL issue, not the hardware, cpu/gpu or otherwise. Look at the dumpster fire that is LTOU Remake on PC, Jedi Survivor, Hogwarts etc. Although I think Nvidia needs to give us more VRAM, there is no reason why all of a sudden anything less than 16gb should struggle in new AAA Games

80% of the issues were VRAM related (after about a month of being out at least).  The real issue is UE4 has been pushed to its limits.  It doesn't properly make use of modern processors, there are some inefficiencies, etc.