Who do you trust/which would you get? Zotac/Palit/Inno3D?

[Saracen999]

Well the 3090 TI, 3090, 3080 TI, 3080 12GB and the 3080 all use the GA102 chip, with varying degrees of cutting down. Going narrower may mean they can run at higher clock speeds of course, and later productions sometimes have better quality silicon which allows higher speeds too.

Yeah, I misremembered the "different chip" bit, which apparently was in the comparison between how the 1080Ti relates to the 1080, not how the 3080Ti relates to the 3080. The 3080Ti is, according to Linus, "slightly nerfed" version of the 3090 chipset, other than having half the frame buffer at 12GB as opposed to 24GB.

Comparisons (the nerfing) were :-

CUDA cores : 10,240 rather than 10,496.
RT cores : 80 rather than 82.
Tensor Cores : 320 as opposed to 328.
Bus : Both 384-bit, 912GB/sec as opposed to 936GB/sec, both on GDDR6X.
NVENC engine : same.

The benchmarks, in summary, were that it was within about 2.5% of the 3090 at worst, and slightly faster in some, for gaming. It was similar in creative tests being within about 2% of the 3090 in almost all, except Resolve, which was about 6%.

That's what led to my conclusion .... for my needs, it's significantlyccloser to 3090 performance but a lot cheaper. It is, of course, also about £400 dearer than the 3080 but also quite a bit quicker.

Which is the best value entirely depends on what it will be used for, and of course, on the value perception of the individual buyer about that £400 difference. To me, the price of the 3090 typically just takes me further than I want to go, but the 3080Ti is almost within the £1000 cap I put on myself. And the fact that it is that bit faster hopefully means it will stay competitive for that much longer, as games get more demanding over time. Is that worth the £400? As I hopefully will never do this again, to me, yes. Probably.

But the point I was getting at was, as Linus pointed out, the 3080Ti is better seen as almost all the benefit of the 3090 but for a lot less, than a bit better than a 3080 for a chunk more. And hence, what the "Ti" bit really means depends on which part of the product range you're talking about. It's not quite within my £1000 cap (for the FE, while available), but close enough. Ti's often, it seems, are seen as better versions of the same number, not "slightly nerfed" versions of the next tier up. Tbhis one bucks that trend.

[keef247]

The question of whether Ti is worth it or not is one that confuses me. From what I can make out, usually not. BUT .... from what I can see, the 3080Ti is actually more of a 3090 Lite than a 3080 with extra bits. If I understood it correctly, it uses the 3090 chip not the 3080, but effectively has just half the (very expensive) graphics RAM. Whether it's "worth it" or not would then seem to depend entirely on what will be done with it. Nothing I do is likely to get much, if any, benefit from 24GB rather than 12GB though there certainly are use cases that will. In gaming, though, the 3080Ti seems to be VERY close in performance to the 3090, and in some cases, actually exceeded it.

But at about £400 more than the 3080.

So my takeaway from that is that for my usage, I get virtually everything I would get from a 3090 but for a lot less.

But, of course, a 3080 is stilll a heck of a lot of grunt for my needs, at (supply permitting) a lot lower price than te 3080Ti.

Do I need a 3080Ti/ Nope, but truthfully, I don't really need a 3080 either. Do I want one? I'll plead the 5th on that. And my accounting brain says "£400 difference, but I'll get 5 years out of it (or more), which is £80/year, or £1.50-ish a week. Is it worth £1.50 a week to indulge myself?"

It's amazing what we can rationalise ourselves into if we want to, innit?

Anyway, my point is to be careful when selecting between Ti and non-Ti because the differences aren't always what you might think. A lot of the numbering seems to be as much about market positioning and marketing, as about performance. Maybe more than "as much" about that.

totally agree with you mate, fair points! I'd be well up for spending the extra if the Ti was 24gb... That future proofing would sell me in an instant!

[Saracen999]

But what will actually use (and give a benefit) 24GB? That was my question to myself, and my answer was "not much, if anything at all, any time soon".

Those users with certain types of very memory-intensive "creator" uses? Yeah, okay, but I don't do anything like that. Games? I can't see it, for a long time. It would be too restricting to games by limiting their audience. IMHO, of course. Most general "creators"? Given that GDDR6X is very expensive, you'd either have to put the price up, or cut something else quite heavily and those something elses are going to make much more contribution in most scenarios.

And my guess is that those "creators" that do have a genuine use for 24GB are exactly those with a good business case for going 3090 in the first place.

I think the 3080 Ti gives me all the bits of the 3090 that I would like without costing as much as the full-strength product would. Stick 24GB on the 3080Ti and you pretty much have a 3090. That's why it appealsto me (even if it's currently hugely overkill) .... it leaves out the very aspect f the 3090 I can't justify.

I mean, sure, more GBs might extend the usefulness even further but, at a significant price. Going from 8GB to 10Gb is a good idea (for me) given that some games are starting to push the 8GB limit now, and 12GB gives a bit more leeway still, so might come into use in a few years. 24GB is just, IMHO, way more than is going to benefit my performance, and will not just drive up cost put power draw too, it seems.

I think there's a sweet spot, as with most PC tech. 24GB just goes too far for my anticipated expectations.

[DanceswithUnix]

I think there's a sweet spot, as with most PC tech. 24GB just goes too far for my anticipated expectations.

Then just before Christmas the cheaper 4070 comes out with 3090 performance and 16GB of vram at 3070 price levels:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/nvidia/rtx-...and-benchmarks

Nvidia will get a lot more transistors to play with on the new process, and some of those look to be going into something like AMD's Infinity Cache which allows cheaper ram chips to be used.

Then there's the 3060 (not the ti part) has 12GB of vram on it, and the current AMD parts start at 8GB for the 6600 and i have to wonder if we are going to see 8GB cards as the budget option for the next gen. We've had the likes of the 8GB RX480 for a long while now, so it just sort of feels like it's time to move up in size.

[kalniel]

Then just before Christmas the cheaper 4070 comes out with 3090 performance and 16GB of vram at 3070 price levels:

I think the 4070 is looking more like 10GB VRAM across a very narrow bus.

[Saracen999]

Well, that might be true, though that story does state it's based on rumours and they, of course, can be anything from hidden-source official info, to a WAG (Wild-Ass Guess).

Even if of the 'deniable press office stunt' variety, there is absolutely no way anybody can be sure what the external factors will be doing by then, from whats going on in Ukraine to more speculation that major players (including nVidia) have drastically over-booked fab capacity and end up cutting prices just to shift stock.

The specs might be right but the pricing speculation is just that.

Besides, there's always promised jam in the future if I put up with dry toast mow.

Nah, mate, I'm about at the point of either buying without worrying about new Ryzens, RTX 40x0 or DDR5, or just not bothering at all. This laptop is doing a pretty good job of coping with what I need, making a desktop (well, midi-tower) PC pretty much an expensive indulgence. I've been dithering too long aready. Not that the GPU shortage gave me much choice, or I'd have done this a year ago.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Different brands have different warranties. From that link I posted earlier:
https://imgur.com/JFmZ8CM



It was last updated in 2018 but that is what you also need to consider!

[MrJim]

Sending components abroad for RMA is quite a hassle these days. I returned a DDR4 RAM kit back to Taiwan a few months ago, and considering how small & light-weight the package was, it cast a small fortune! (well, about £35 if I remember rightly, but it was still a lot I thought!).

[keef247]

But what will actually use (and give a benefit) 24GB? That was my question to myself, and my answer was "not much, if anything at all, any time soon".

Those users with certain types of very memory-intensive "creator" uses? Yeah, okay, but I don't do anything like that. Games? I can't see it, for a long time. It would be too restricting to games by limiting their audience. IMHO, of course. Most general "creators"? Given that GDDR6X is very expensive, you'd either have to put the price up, or cut something else quite heavily and those something elses are going to make much more contribution in most scenarios.

And my guess is that those "creators" that do have a genuine use for 24GB are exactly those with a good business case for going 3090 in the first place.

I think the 3080 Ti gives me all the bits of the 3090 that I would like without costing as much as the full-strength product would. Stick 24GB on the 3080Ti and you pretty much have a 3090. That's why it appealsto me (even if it's currently hugely overkill) .... it leaves out the very aspect f the 3090 I can't justify.

I mean, sure, more GBs might extend the usefulness even further but, at a significant price. Going from 8GB to 10Gb is a good idea (for me) given that some games are starting to push the 8GB limit now, and 12GB gives a bit more leeway still, so might come into use in a few years. 24GB is just, IMHO, way more than is going to benefit my performance, and will not just drive up cost put power draw too, it seems.

I think there's a sweet spot, as with most PC tech. 24GB just goes too far for my anticipated expectations.

Yeah I get what you're saying my friend.

I think it's when I see stuff like FC6 and Resi remakes already maxing out 10-12gb 3080's and causing the game to stack etc that worry me and I think, well if it's poorly optimised/clearly amd sponsored etc then it's a sign of things to soon come if they're already making use of 16gb amd cards etc and I want to run my games as high settings as pos as I have both a 4k tv and soon to own a 180hz 2k monitor... I'd like to grab as much future proofing as possible for this build seeing as it's the first one since 2007-8 bar having macbook pro's...

[Saracen999]

Yeah I get what you're saying my friend.

I think it's when I see stuff like FC6 and Resi remakes already maxing out 10-12gb 3080's and causing the game to stack etc that worry me and I think, well if it's poorly optimised/clearly amd sponsored etc then it's a sign of things to soon come if they're already making use of 16gb amd cards etc and I want to run my games as high settings as pos as I have both a 4k tv and soon to own a 180hz 2k monitor... I'd like to grab as much future proofing as possible for this build seeing as it's the first one since 2007-8 bar having macbook pro's...

Yeah, quite. The way I see it, the "future proofing" concept is, at the same time, both necessary and a slippery slope. The art in that is to work out quite how far to go to give some leeway, but beyond a certain point, it gets overly expensive. The "marginal benefit" of each step up decreases and in inverse proportion, the cost increases. I guess we all have to work out where to draw our own personal line, and that very much depends on what you want to do, and how much you'll pay (and when) to do it.

It's like cameras. Up to a point, I'll pay up but beyond that point, where I'd like a new XYZ, it justs costs too much. Or cars. For me, Ford to BMW, yup. BMW to Aston Martin? Umm, no? I did even once think, pretty briefly, about a Ferrari. It appealed to me. BUT .... take a hard look, find out what insurance costs, what even a basic service costs, and how often you need services, and so on. It pretty soon became clear that even if I could afford the car, the upkeep was another matter.

But if I ever won a lottery jackpot?

Actually, being serious for a moment, even then for me, Ferraris are just impractical. There comes a point where it's not even about the cost, even if I could cover that, but about what I really want, and I don't want the constant faffing about. They're fun, though.

It's a bit like that with the PC too. I'm really not that bothered about 4k. I think for me, 1440 is probably the sweet spot, where I want to be able to set game settings pretty high (or max'd out) without either slowing everything to a crawl or causing the standbt generators to kick into life at my nearest nuclear ower station to supply the go-juice it'll suck down.

So really, I'm targetting being able to run anything I want at 1440 both now and for the future, as far as is reasonable to try to predict. But that said, my objective (at my age, etc) is to not do this again. No doubt, over time, game specs, memory requirements etc will get to the point that even a 3090Ti, bought now, will struggle. I just think that's suffivciently far in the future that anything I buy now, assuming it doesn't just croak, will just have to struggle on and I'll run at much less tham max settings as/when technology moves on, because I want to avoid doing this again. But for that, I'd be looking more at 3060, maybe 3070, than thinkig 3080/3080Ti. Given that I do plan on getting quite a few years out of it, the extra few hundred quid now hopefully saves me the hassle of doing it again in x years. Spread that few hundred quid difference out over, say, five years and it starts to look like not so much.

I did that in the mid '90s with a car. I bought an M3, and never thought I'd spend that on a car. But, here we are 25+ years down the line and I still have it. If I'd bought something pleasant but run of the mill, and changed every 3 to 5 years like many people do, it would have cost a damn sight more than the M3 has. I'm kinda aiming at that logic with the PC build - do it right, go (MUCH) farther than I normally would, and hope to hell it lasts far longer.

Which is why I'm trying to strike a tricky balance, that's right for me. Personally, I'm not bothered about 4k but that is not a criticism of either 4k or anyone that wants it. Not in any way. It's just about what suits my needs.

[keef247]

haha I get you mate!
it'll kill you to know ford own aston and the v12 is 2 duratec v6s welded together, just like a w12 is 2 v6 vw engines haha!
Ferrari's are amazing made (it's only the interior bits that fall off but they give you cubbies to hide the bits in haha) it's the same with any race derived engine on a road car - it WILL need adjustments/shorter mileage maintainence. But yeah they do charge major scene tax to simple services on anything exotic it makes me very angry - that's why I'm glad I do all my own stuff!

Only thing you need to do on a rari is pull the engine to do a cambelt/chain but that'd be the same for anything from a bmw 6 cyl diesel to any big 8-12 cyl be it mid or front mounted...
Plus if you're into cars/can afford them like that like I am you usually have a mate or 5 with their own lift/units so it's actually not much work as we've done engine swaps on most of our cars and yeah pulling an engine is a pretty easy process, you'll spend more time faffing about bleeding the coolant/plumbing the fuel lines in the right way/bleeding brakes etc than undoing a few mounts and taking a nose cone off and using a hoist. So never let that put you off!

I've had 5 e36's and I was always keeping them alive but it made me so 1:1 with them and they felt like a friend, I properly get the whole 'aura' the japanese mention in Initial D vs buying a soul-less car that can be replaced easily if someone hurts it/crashes it.

I feel that way about pc's and anything tbf, I love to customise/modify them and make it my own.

As for 4K I'd rather be able to do it for as long as pos at 60fps in SP then when it begins to bog in years I'll know I'll still be able to smash out 1440p stuff at high settings or mid... Hence the overkill current gen performance justification. I.e. it should last a few fair years 1440p regardless of 4k now.

[keef247]

Sending components abroad for RMA is quite a hassle these days. I returned a DDR4 RAM kit back to Taiwan a few months ago, and considering how small & light-weight the package was, it cast a small fortune! (well, about £35 if I remember rightly, but it was still a lot I thought!).

Zotac have UK service centre https://www.zotac.com/gb/support/contact-us