Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Stupid name for a thread.
I'm looking to upgrade my GTX 780. It's getting on a bit and my newish monitor is a 2560x1440 demanding beast (relative to the card and newer games).
I've done a lot of maths, aggregating benchmarks, looking at relative performance difference between old and proposed new cards and coming up with ratios of performance / pound.
The AMD cards are out of it, because they're too expensive for the punch they provide. The NVidia cards which have nearly the same outcomes in terms of performance per pound are the 1070Ti, 1080 and 1080Ti. In terms of price per improvement over my current card, they are pretty much equal.
I have the money to go for any of these cards. The question then is which one? The 1080 seems like the best option at a 105% improvement over current performance but the Ti version is looking at 151% with the value proposition being very similar. The 1070Ti is 63% better which is probably not good enough for the longevity I am wanting. Also, I'd like to supercompute occasionally and the extra cores would make for some GPGPU fun.
My concern is that if I get a 1080Ti, it's just totally overkill for my monitor at 1440p and that DirectX versions and other tech will have moved on before the card itself is beginning to struggle leaving me in a position where I feel I need to upgrade before it's really required for frame rate. The other question is the CPU - it's an i5 4690K (@stock but watercooled and primed for an OC when it starts bottlenecking, got just under 18 seconds in pifast) and my concern is that this may become a bottleneck to unleashing the performance of the 1080Ti. I have only just replaced my monitor in the last year and as such don't particularly feel that I'm going to be going 4K any time soon (although 4K HDR gaming mmmmaaaaay sway me).
The reason I'm having this debate is that when I got my GTX 780, the Ti model came out a few weeks later, the price dropped massively (of the 780, the 780Ti was introduced at the same price I'd just bought my card at) and the performance increase of the Ti model would have meant I'd have been still playing silky smooth games even now. I felt quite burnt with that one.
TL ; DR:
1) is a 1080Ti overkill for a 1440p monitor even though I'm planning on a long service life? (Current card is around 5 years old and just showing signs of strain, I'd expect something similar).
2) will an i5-4690K bottleneck it?
3) Is the planned service life so long that, before performance becomes an issue, would advances in tech render it obsolete before its time?
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Some games like ARK push my GTX1080 at qHD,so a GTX1080TI would make more sense if you intend to keep the card longer,but Pascal is towards the end of its retail lifespan,so unless you have some game you really need to run now,I would wait until the newer stuff comes out,especially since Pascal does not support stuff like Nvidia RTX in hardware,and I suspect the next generation will be better in DX12/Vulkan too. Regarding the Core i5 4690K - it depends on what games TBH. Anything game which is multi-threaded will be a bottleneck to a degree,and anything less threaded will be a less of an issue,but again qHD and 4K are taxing resolutions,but with Ryzen 3 out next year,its probably best to wait anyway even if you are considering a CPU upgrade.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
philehidiot
1) is a 1080Ti overkill for a 1440p monitor even though I'm planning on a long service life? (Current card is around 5 years old and just showing signs of strain, I'd expect something similar).
I'd say no, more so if you'll be keeping the new card for the same amount of time. The joys of nvidia dsr means that the resolution can be bumped up beyond native specs and then dropped back down if it starts to struggle down the line. Avoids the "I should have gone for the better card" tears. I have a 1080 monitor with a 780ti, and bump up to 4k for most games. This also irons out any bottleneck issues - some games I get a similar fps at 4k to that at 1080.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
A vote for 1080ti here.
Rumour mill is putting the 1180 as basically the same specs as a 1080ti so it should last you another 5 years easy. Not that it would be a disaster if you got a 1080.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
I'd say it depends on the type of games you play, the framerate / image quality you consider acceptable. At 2560x1440, a lot of games will still be GPU limited. Since you have an overclockable CPU, it'd be a simple task to try overclocking it to see whether the increased frequency improves the games you like to play. I have a 1070 paired with a 2560x1440 monitor, and tend to play mostly FPS type games. In BF1 for example, I'm getting 80-120 fps on medium graphics settings without AA. As CAT said, if you need a new GPU now and you can afford it, go with the 1080Ti. If you can wait a few months though, the new NVidia cards will no doubt give a nice boost in performance for approximately the same money.
Edit!
Regarding 4K HDR gaming: you're going to have to be pretty well-off to afford going down that route; such monitors are retailing for about $2000 I think, so probably in the region of £2000 in the UK. Plus the cost of GPU(s) powerful enough to drive them at a respectable framerate. IMHO 2560x1440 will be the 'sweet spot' for higher resolution gaming for a little while longer.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Its better to buy the updated uarch cards at the start of the cycle- Pascal MK1 will be moved back in terms of driver optimisations since the uarch will be 2 to 2 and a half years by the time the newer cards launch,and with no hardware support for tech like RTX,and probably worse DX12/Vulkan support,its not really worth spending £700 just to gain a few months earlier usage,when you are going to keep it for 4 to 5 years. Remember,if you intend to keep the card for 4 to 5 years,the uarch will be 6 to 7 and a half years old at the end.
The other thing is FP16 support,which Pascal lacks,which might be something incorporated into the newer Nvidia cards. Plus look at how Kepler started to tail off in performance once Pascal launched - an example was games like The Witcher 3. The fact is graphics cards are very easy to force upgrades,as the software support needs to be constant with newer and newer games.
Also prices are still to inflated now,a number of cards are still more expensive than in late 2016 or even last year with a weaker pound. So even if you want a GTX1080 or GTX1080TI,the best deals will probably be had once the newer cards launch.
Edit!!
With ARK with very high IQ settings at qHD my GTX1080FE frequently is well under 60FPS,although not being an FPS game,its OK. FO4 with graphical mods and an ENB is under 60FPS in many areas too. However,I also probably a bit CPU bottlenecked at times.
Some other games like Deus Ex:Mankind Divided could also sometimes see dips under 60FPS. I did a review last year running my GTX1080FE at 1080p and qHD:
https://forums.hexus.net/reader-revi...enchmarks.html
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Thank you everyone for your informed and considered opinions, I really apprecaite your time. That sounds like a perfunctory line but I do mean it.
My concern with buying the new cards at the start of the cycle is that they'll possibly be better for mining and the prices will be artificially inflated as with this generation. Then the prices for the then previous gen will also be kept artifically high as gamers like myself are trying to get a decent card at a reasonable price, increasing demand for stock which will definitely be limited. This means that buying now whilst the prices are starting to look a little more reasonable (£350 for a 1070 does, relatively speaking, seem reasonable these days which is a shock) might (emphasis on might) be the better option.
The Cat is quite right about the age or the uarch towards the end of life, that's a real consideration as just 5 years is an age in computing. It's a problem I have now really as there's probably zero optimisation going into my drivers for new games and my card was almost brand new when I bought it. I generally have looked in the past to spend £100 / year on a GPU but frankly inflation and the £ dropping means that I've had to revisit that to get the kind of performance I want. Basically, I'm not only a greedy sod and therefore I want to be able to play at native res at full quality settings for the longest period of time possible. I am a Yorkshireman. I have also saved a load of cash from refurbishing rather than replacing my motorcycle (I ride rather than drive, I despise driving) on the usual schedule and as a result do have the money to throw at something decent....
...before the missus spends it. There's a new bathroom, a new house alarm, some new blinds, some new carpets and I suspect possibly a new sofa in my near future that I am apparently buying.
If anyone has any further advice to give, the answers to your questions are that I generally play FPS games. Call of Duty, Far Cry, etc. I really do enjoy playing these kinds of games on high quality settings but I'm also amazingly tolerant of lower frame rates compared to many people. I dunno if it's because my vision is wonky or because I am normally inebriated of an evening but I can tolerate a frame rate as low as 20FPS without it impacting enjoyment too badly. Testing back in the days of Counter-strike Source showed that below only 18FPS is where I find it totally intolerable. Bear in mind though that this would be an absolute minimum acceptable frame rate, not an average provided in a benchmark and that it's usually the most action packed scenarios where the FPS drops which are also the scenes where it's least tolerable and most likely to ruin things.
Also, the consideration of the 4K HDR was more a thing for the future if the price of monitors dropped accordingly and the technology became standard in games. I suspect that I would absolutely have to replace my GPU at that time as it's gonna be a couple of years at least before the monitors become even slightly affordable.
As for the CPU, I remember how they went on about games producing several decent threads and how the FX6300 was going to "come of age" in the future when games could really exploit all those cores. Still it seems that for the kinds of games I play single threaded performance is king. I was hoping with the multiple cores in the PS4 that they might start really multithreading but it just doesn't seem to have happened in the manner the magazines of the day (RIP PC Format) were ranting on about. Hence why I went for the CPU I did and watercooled it so I could overclock it in future. I'm therefore very skeptical about the "multithreaded future" they've been bangin on about for a decade happening anytime soon or properly exploiting more than the 4 cores that I already have and as a result I'm rather reluctant to invest in something with masses of cores at the expense of single threaded performance. It should be fairly obvious as pointed out above to test for CPU bottlenecking with a simple overclock.
Also, does anyone know if 12GB of RAM (DDR3) would pose any bottlenecking issues with a 1080Ti? I doubt it would but it's best to ask the question. I'm seriously reluctant to upgrade the RAM as it's just so expensive. To go to 16GB would be stupidly expensive for a relatively small upgrade and I'm reluctant to invest in yesterday's tech when it's going to be replaced with DDR4 in the next few years, also at apparently great cost.
If anyone made it to the end of this post, I congratulate you on your endurance of semi drunken rambling.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
RAM size is either a bottleneck or good enough - the game either fits in the RAM or it doesn't, and the FPS your GPU outputs doesn't come into it. Try running a few games in windowed mode with task manager open, and see how much they want while you're playing. Games want surprisingly little these days, eg <6GB RAM & <4GB VRAM for far cry 5. If it becomes an issue down the line DDR3 on ebay will only get cheaper, of course
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
The answer is always, always, always... wait for teh new cards to come out. New cards are always just around the corner....
But if it were me, I'd buy a 1080Ti anyway!
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Xlucine
RAM size is either a bottleneck or good enough - the game either fits in the RAM or it doesn't, and the FPS your GPU outputs doesn't come into it. Try running a few games in windowed mode with task manager open, and see how much they want while you're playing. Games want surprisingly little these days, eg <6GB RAM & <4GB VRAM
for far cry 5. If it becomes an issue down the line DDR3 on ebay will only get cheaper, of course
I thought as much but having never even considered a GPU with RAM comparable to the size of the system memory I was just making sure there wasn't some kind of mirroring of the data held in the GPU RAM by the system RAM. I know a fair bit about PCs but I'm always cautious when exploring new territory especially when it's expensive territory.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ttaskmaster
The answer is always, always, always... wait for teh new cards to come out. New cards are always just around the corner....
But if it were me, I'd buy a 1080Ti anyway!
Yeh my issue used to be "just hang on that bit longer as X is about to come out" and you can do that ad infinitum. I think these days it's best to often just go for it as you can delay again and again. Usually you can predict what prices will do but this mining craze has really made the usual patterns weird out and then you also now have to consider the codevelopment of console games. Consoles are, in my opinion, what have taken GPU cycles from 6 monthly refreshes to 2 year ones. They just do not need to be bothering and can spend the time tweaking their range. The PC gaming market has suffered from consoles which are essentially PCs in a pretty box.
Interestingly, I've just checked up on my PSU spec and found it's nearly a decade old. As is some of my RAM. I bought 4GB of DDR3 for around £30. Ahhhh, those were the days.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
philehidiot
Yeh my issue used to be "just hang on that bit longer as X is about to come out" and you can do that ad infinitum. I think these days it's best to often just go for it as you can delay again and again. Usually you can predict what prices will do but this mining craze has really made the usual patterns weird out and then you also now have to consider the codevelopment of console games. Consoles are, in my opinion, what have taken GPU cycles from 6 monthly refreshes to 2 year ones. They just do not need to be bothering and can spend the time tweaking their range. The PC gaming market has suffered from consoles which are essentially PCs in a pretty box.
Interestingly, I've just checked up on my PSU spec and found it's nearly a decade old. As is some of my RAM. I bought 4GB of DDR3 for around £30. Ahhhh, those were the days.
I think the opposite is now true. Not in the past as much but now I think just not researching a graphics buy ends up wasting you lots of money longterm.
Too many enthusiasts on forums jump due to impatience and then regret it months later. I saw people do it before Ryzen dropped and now regret not waiting for Ryzen and CFL after spending £100s. In fact its the biggest issue with graphics cards - remember all those people who went for a GTX780TI mere months before the GTX970,etc?? Or those who went for a GTX980TI for £500+ mere months before the GTX1080,etc.
In fact you can see what happened with Kepler as time progressed - in newer and newer games it started to fall behind the newer uarch cards,even though it was competitive in older titles. Look what happened with The Witcher 3 and so many titles with Gameworks which absolutely tanked on Kepler. Its a credit to CDPR eventually putting in the tessellation slider.
Pascal is just a slightly rejigged Kepler on a new node - it is an intermediate uarch. You need to remember that,and with Volta Nvidia actually has fixed its DX12/Vulkan performance it appears.
Graphics cards are easy to gimp performance wise,as unlike any other part,they need constant driver updates and game optimisations to perform adequately. My advice to everyone is to buy graphics cards at the beginning of their launch cycles now,not at the end especially if you want to play newer games and intend to keep the cards as long as possible.
The only time I would buy an older gen card at the end of a cycle is if has a decent discount,which is what tended to happen in the past.
Companies are not your friends - they want people to buy their new cards. Hence there is little incentive for them to care about the people with cards a few years old.
Then you have new tech like Nvidia RTX and MS DirectX based raytracing:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12546...gpus-and-later
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12547...ctx-raytracing
https://i.imgur.com/yZApI4C.png
No full hardware support on anything but Volta and partial hardware suppport on Vega. So what is the likelihood the newer Nvidia cards will have some degree of hardware support??
Metro:Exodus will use RTX BTW.
Now,I can't see Nvidia and the dev putting that in the game,if they expect only the Titan V to run it. It tells me they intend to launch more cards with hardware support for the tech.
Then the other elephant in the room is FP16 support. Volta and Vega supports it. The PS4 Pro supports it.
So that is something else we need to consider.
Now if you intend to keep the card for 4 to 5 years,you really need to think ahead. If anything Vega has FP16 and limited hardware support for DirectX based raytracing,so is a bit better than Pascal in future tech support,but is overpriced for what you get(GTX1080 cards can be had for the price of a Vega56 based one for example).
Even if the GTX1100 series is a further enhanced Pascal,it most likely will support RTX,and I suspect FP16. However,looking at the last major uarch Nvidia did,ie,Pascal it was done on an older node,ie,they did a tick-tock thing,with Pascal being the refinement so Ampere might be the next Nvidia uarch and they will shrink it down on 7NM.
Edit!!
You need to see it this way - say the GTX1180 comes out at the end of this year,or Q1 2019 at latest. In the first year,no doubt there will still be Pascal cards around for sale,so Nvidia will attempt to support it,but what happens after the first year??
If Nvidia switches to a new uarch with the GTX1100 series,and then shrinks it down at 7NM(think Maxwell and Pascal),that could be the next three to four years Nvidia will have to keep supporting the cards in some way.
Even if the GTX1100 is a further tweaked Pascal,if it ends up supporting RTX/MS DirectX Raytracing and FP16,then more and more games will use it and Pascal will probably not be so great in comparison.
I mean it could be that Ampere is just Pascal with GDDR6 instead,but I would find that very weird,as otherwise Nvidia could just keep selling Pascal instead. Its not like AMD is in the game right now,and I can't see them really having new generation higher end GPUs until next year on 7NM.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Cat, that logic is pretty much bang on and exactly why I sought the opinions of people on here before buying. You're quite right - the longer interval between releases means that the tech of the new platform is actually going to be significant enough to actually warrant an upgrade whereas in the past the speed of updates meant it wasn't anywhere near as relevant. Also, the longer interval means the drivers of the newer platform will be updated quicker for longer and the older ones will be relegated to second place within only a couple of months of purchase and may well be classed as totally obsolete well before I declare the lifespan of the card over.
Unlike, say, many (intel) CPU updates of late where they offer very little over the existing chips but seem to be there for the sake of it.
You're quite right, I'm thinking with an old school philosophy which is probably going to end in me spending a vast wad of cash on something that's going to be at best second place in a couple of months and at worst obsolete probably two years earlier than if I hang on for a bit longer.
I shall spend this cash on braided brake lines for my motorcycle, some new front fork springs and a rear shock tailored to my weight and riding style. Then, when the new uarch comes out, I shall splurge relentlessly. And if that doesn't bring happiness and contentment into my life, I'm blaming you.
The only exception here would be if there was a massive price reduction of the current gen stuff at some point, but it would have to be pretty significant for me to override the points made above.
Does anyone know if AMD have anything actually useful in the works? As far as I'm aware all they have coming anytime soon is a process refinement of the Vega cards. I did a cost analysis of the Vega cards Vs Nvidia and, whilst I despise NV's business practices (such as releasing a different GPU using the same model name as a current one to make use of excess chips, misleading the consumer in my view) I simply can't go throwing money at AMD when the value proposition is just so poor in comparison. The only good thing about them is that they've probably made a big mistake in ramping up production at this point. With the lead times it means they're going to end up with a huge excess at the wrong time and they're already selling at a loss from what I hear.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
philehidiot
Cat, that logic is pretty much bang on and exactly why I sought the opinions of people on here before buying. You're quite right - the longer interval between releases means that the tech of the new platform is actually going to be significant enough to actually warrant an upgrade whereas in the past the speed of updates meant it wasn't anywhere near as relevant. Also, the longer interval means the drivers of the newer platform will be updated quicker for longer and the older ones will be relegated to second place within only a couple of months of purchase and may well be classed as totally obsolete well before I declare the lifespan of the card over.
Unlike, say, many (intel) CPU updates of late where they offer very little over the existing chips but seem to be there for the sake of it.
You're quite right, I'm thinking with an old school philosophy which is probably going to end in me spending a vast wad of cash on something that's going to be at best second place in a couple of months and at worst obsolete probably two years earlier than if I hang on for a bit longer.
I shall spend this cash on braided brake lines for my motorcycle, some new front fork springs and a rear shock tailored to my weight and riding style. Then, when the new uarch comes out, I shall splurge relentlessly. And if that doesn't bring happiness and contentment into my life, I'm blaming you.
The only exception here would be if there was a massive price reduction of the current gen stuff at some point, but it would have to be pretty significant for me to override the points made above.
Does anyone know if AMD have anything actually useful in the works? As far as I'm aware all they have coming anytime soon is a process refinement of the Vega cards. I did a cost analysis of the Vega cards Vs Nvidia and, whilst I despise NV's business practices (such as releasing a different GPU using the same model name as a current one to make use of excess chips, misleading the consumer in my view) I simply can't go throwing money at AMD when the value proposition is just so poor in comparison. The only good thing about them is that they've probably made a big mistake in ramping up production at this point. With the lead times it means they're going to end up with a huge excess at the wrong time and they're already selling at a loss from what I hear.
Well my view is even if a new gen ends up being dissapointing you can still get the old cards anyway,but usually with a discount and free games since retailers need to shift them for the new shiny,but I would be very surprised if Nvidia didn't add some extra features otherwise no one would buy their new cards.
From what I gather is that 12NM adds extra transistor density but not massive power savings,so Nvidia will use a narrower GDDR6 memory controller to do that,and expand the chip size to add new features. Also if you have had a GTX780 this long,waiting a bit longer probably makes more sense,and its summer too,so plenty of stuff to do outside!! :p
Its a bit like my CPU upgrade plans - my old IB Xeon E3/Core i7 is a limiting factor in many games,but the high RAM prices,and the fact CFL has issues,and Ryzen 2 is not quite there means,I probably will wait until next year TBH.
When you have something for so long,its tempting to upgrade(almost got a Core i5 8400) but another 9 months after owning the CPU for 4 years and being on socket 1155 since 2011 I can wait longer.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CAT-THE-FIFTH
Now,I can't see Nvidia and the dev putting that in the game,if they expect only the Titan V to run it. It tells me they intend to launch more cards with hardware support for the tech.
Actually, I can see them doing that. Raytracing is notoriously computationally expensive, it might be that you will only ever get that to work on a really high end card and the 1060 mid range will never get memory bandwidth for it. Nvidia would *love* for there to be a real reason to spend £1000 on a card and push up their average selling price.
For mainstream use the fp64 rate was chopped right down years ago. Doing fp16 is a pretty big overhead as well, I can see a few dedicated AI units going in but I would be surprised if it was just blanket added in like on Volta which sucks pretty badly at fp32.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
philehidiot
Also, the longer interval means the drivers of the newer platform will be updated quicker for longer and the older ones will be relegated to second place within only a couple of months of purchase and may well be classed as totally obsolete well before I declare the lifespan of the card over.
An optimistic view would be that dragging the card generations out for longer would mean the driver guys have less work to do if 5 years of support means 2 generations not 4. Even Nvidia with their reputation for only doing bugfixes on old cards not performance tuning, they are still doing bug fixes. Pushing that manpower into fewer card types on the market should make for better drivers hopefully for older cards too.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DanceswithUnix
An optimistic view would be that dragging the card generations out for longer would mean the driver guys have less work to do if 5 years of support means 2 generations not 4. Even Nvidia with their reputation for only doing bugfixes on old cards not performance tuning, they are still doing bug fixes. Pushing that manpower into fewer card types on the market should make for better drivers hopefully for older cards too.
A cynical view would be that they would just let natural attrition reduce the number of staff they have working on drivers (don't want to "cut down" or "restructure" as that looks bad for shareholders) and reduce numbers to match workload. It depends on a few things, such as how nible a company is and how good it is at shedding legacy costs and old habits. I suspect Nvidia is a little big to be classed as "nimble". I wonder if they'll pop some HBM2 on some high end cards with raytracing being the excuse for an associated massive margin.... I suspect they're too sensible for that as the R&D costs probably would never be recovered and volume at those prices would be limited.
Re: Cry HAVOC! Let slip the 1080s of war!
Think this thread should be subtitled Cry HAVOC! (wait a few months) and let slip the 1170/80s of war! [unless there is a really good deal on a 1080 instead]!:undecided
