Wanting to buy the best: safe to get 1080ti or wait until vega?

[sveniat]

I'm going to be doing my dream build: no holds barred. The current plan is to do dual 1080tis in SLI, as I want the most power (within reason, i'm going into 3 card territory) possible. At the moment i'm looking at getting 2 FTW3s with the iCX, since i'll be doing water cooling so i'd like the extra power phases and sensors over the standard PCB, which are supposed to release early May. Is there any realistic chance that vega ends up beating the 1080ti in raw power (so ignoring perf/price)? I totally expect there to be some awesome cards in the vega lineup, but I am looking for power and power alone, so I am wondering if I need to wait for vega to be sure I get the best or if it's a pretty reasonable assumption that vega will be some really great value competition in the 1070/1080 range, but not really at the 1080ti level. 

[alca]

I don't think VEGA will be even close to the 1080/1080Ti, but we'll see.

[Skiiwee29]

There is always that chance as we have yet to see anything on Vega's performance.. Q2 can be anywhere from April 1st to June 30th... so you got a ways to go yet for Vega. If the past is an indication, the 1080TI "should" beat the Vega GPU's based on past history and performance match ups. But again, we know next to nothing about Vega other than Q2 launch. I expect we will likely see information slowly start to come about with it starting in May at the earliest. 

[NinJake]

If you wait until "the next release to see if it's better", you'll wait forever. Buy now, or wait.

 

Edit: I waited 3 years to actually start my PC build, due to this same reason. Eventually you just gotta pull the trigger.

[Phentos]

Depends on whether you're going Intel or Ryzen. If you're going Intel, stick with the 1080TI SLI. If Ryzen, at least wait until Vega releases, then make your decision.

 

I doubt even big Vega will outperform the 1080 TI in gaming, though I am pretty confident it will beat the 1080. However big Vega will (hopefully) be cheaper than the 1080 TI.

 

New information has been brought to light recently that Ryzen CPUs can potentially perform much better when paired with an AMD card, so that is something else to consider if you plan on going with a Ryzen build.

[sveniat]

9 minutes ago, Phentos said:

I doubt even big Vega will outperform the 1080 TI in gaming, though I am pretty confident it will beat the 1080. However big Vega will (hopefully) be cheaper than the 1080 TI.

This is kinda what i'm thinking, and why im leaning towards getting the 2 1080tis as soon as the aftermarket model I want is available. 

 

I am currently on a 7700k, so ryzen isn't a factor for me. Even if the R5 series ends up better than the 7700k, i'm not upgrading CPU until intels 10nm lithography.

[Phentos]

Just now, sveniat said:

This is kinda what i'm thinking, and why im leaning towards getting the 2 1080tis as soon as the aftermarket model I want is available. 

 

I am currently on a 7700k, so ryzen isn't a factor for me. Even if the R5 series ends up better than the 7700k, i'm not upgrading CPU until intels 10nm lithography.

Then stick with the 1080 TI setup. It will hold up very favorably for perhaps two more generations.