Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 price cuts in UK better than expected

[Marcus]

Going from a 1070 to 1080 is fine if you've got money to burn but it sounds like he doesn't. It's much more satisfying to get a big upgrade after using cherished hardware for many years and getting your money's worth out of it :-) In my opinion, that is!

[Xlucine]

Raven's Nest - it is generally a bad plan to keep buying "incremental" updates - saving for a 1080 when you have a 1070 will result in spending a lot of money for barely 20% speed increase. That isn't going to be noticeable, esp if playing at 1080p etc. Going from a 280 to 1070 was probably a reasonable upgrade, and more significant than 1070-1080.

Your son would be far better advised to wait for future generations, where 1080 prefermance will be available for 1060/1070 prices. For example, I believe the current 1060 generally outperforms the older 980 for much less money.

If you could find a buyer for the 1070 at sensible price, that's about the only scenario where a 1070->1080 would make sense. In other words, if your son only had to pay a further <100ukp on top of second hand price of 1070, then he might feel OK with it. Otherwise, he's likely going to feel robbed.

You also don't say what PC he's putting it in. If it is a fairly poor CPU/RAM or no SSD, then putting an expensive graphics card in the system isn't a magic bullet. For example, I wouldn't suggest putting a 1070/1080 in anything less than a fairly recent i5 (or Ryzen) with 8Gb RAM minimum. You could arguably feed it with a skylake+ i3, but you probably wouldn't be getting the best out of it (certainly for AMD GPUs).

Bottom line - high end GPUs are something of a "mugs game" in terms of value for money. I tend to bite the bullet every couple of years, but there's always something new on the horizon. The 1080ti is looming large, and then in six month's there's be an 1100-series (or whatever) to replace that.

The best advice I can give is to use what you have for as long as you can bare it, then make a big jump to the best you can possibly afford. This will give the biggest jump in experience, and probably the longest lifespan of your current card (ie. value for money).

There's something to be said for buying mid-range, as price/performance increases exponentially as you go up the range. Doing this results in much lower outlay for a little bit less performance, so you can upgrade more often - sure, a £300 1060 isn't as fast as a £600 1080 (both when launched), but the 1160 ought to match the 1080 and you've had the £300 the 1160 cost sat in your account ready for a rainy day (handy if your car broke down the day after you ordered the 1080!)

[Ravens Nest]

Buy what you need, when you need it, and you won't be unhappy.

Raven's Nest - it is generally a bad plan to keep buying "incremental" updates - saving for a 1080 when you have a 1070 will result in spending a lot of money for barely 20% speed increase. That isn't going to be noticeable, esp if playing at 1080p etc. Going from a 280 to 1070 was probably a reasonable upgrade, and more significant than 1070-1080.

Your son would be far better advised to wait for future generations, where 1080 prefermance will be available for 1060/1070 prices. For example, I believe the current 1060 generally outperforms the older 980 for much less money.

If you could find a buyer for the 1070 at sensible price, that's about the only scenario where a 1070->1080 would make sense. In other words, if your son only had to pay a further <100ukp on top of second hand price of 1070, then he might feel OK with it. Otherwise, he's likely going to feel robbed.

You also don't say what PC he's putting it in. If it is a fairly poor CPU/RAM or no SSD, then putting an expensive graphics card in the system isn't a magic bullet. For example, I wouldn't suggest putting a 1070/1080 in anything less than a fairly recent i5 (or Ryzen) with 8Gb RAM minimum. You could arguably feed it with a skylake+ i3, but you probably wouldn't be getting the best out of it (certainly for AMD GPUs).

Bottom line - high end GPUs are something of a "mugs game" in terms of value for money. I tend to bite the bullet every couple of years, but there's always something new on the horizon. The 1080ti is looming large, and then in six month's there's be an 1100-series (or whatever) to replace that.

The best advice I can give is to use what you have for as long as you can bare it, then make a big jump to the best you can possibly afford. This will give the biggest jump in experience, and probably the longest lifespan of your current card (ie. value for money).

I totally agree 100% with both of you

The 1070 was a noticable upgrade but because my son games at 1080p a Nvidia 1080 would have been overkill, he wasnt sure what he really wanted either 1080p with his current TV, 144hz or 4K if he bought the necessary monitor/TV because he wasnt sure and went with the 1070 to match his 1080p TV he now longs for better things i.e. 4K 1080 (But i know a 1080 isnt enough for 4K either)

Selling the 1070 is a option, but like Irien has said getting a decent price for it and paying the difference for 1080 he would still feel robbed.

I think now learn from his mistakes and just live with the 1070 until a major GPU release happens.

My son has as follows.

Xeon E3 1230 V3 (Equivalent to a i7 4770),
16GB DDR3 1666mhz,
ASRock Fatal1ty H97 Killer ATX Motherboard - LGA1150 Socket,
Samsung ssd 850 evo 250GB
Western digital 2TB 7200rpm HDD
And the Gainward NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Phoenix Edition

High end is definitely a mugs game, but without people buying them i wouldn't be able to buy there old GPU's cheap from them lol