Hardware & Technical I am thinking about upgrading my GPU

Rob At Work

R
I am thinking about upgrading my GPU as the prices are coming down. Currently have Nvidea GTX 970. Was thinking about 1070 Ti Maybe 2070 Ti, or if I switch to 4K their *080 equivalents.

Whilst browsing and looking at prices etc.. I noticed that there are several same spec GPUs the difference is the supplier(?) name.
Ie Asus Nvidea 1070 ** , Zotac Nvidea 1070 ** can anyone explain the differences please?
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
I just upgraded to the GTX 1080 from the GTX 970... I picked up the 1080 for $429 USD and I'm very pleased with the performance boost. I run Elite in VR so I was able to get much better visuals and performance out of the GTX 1080 over the GTX 970. I also play Battlefield 1 (and the V Beta) with the game settings on full Ultra locked at 144 frames per second on 144hz 1080p monitor... Way better than the 970!

I would suggest upgrading to the GTX 1080 as the only reasons to get the RTX series cards is if you'll be playing games like Battlefield V which will take advantage of ray tracing or if your running high frame rates on a 1440p monitor or want 4k at a solid 60 fps. In the first case, you will need to pickup the RTX 2080ti to run ray tracing at anything close to 60 fps on a 1080p monitor. For the second two you might get way with a GTX 2080 and get the performance you need. Other than that, the GTX 1080 at even $450 is the best bang for the buck by far. If you're running 1080p, 1440p @ 60hz, or no VR the GTX 1070 can be a very good value as well.

As for the RTX 2070ti... Not even in the picture. It will likely only be brought if AMD actually gets too close to the performance of the RTX 2070. I don't think waiting on the RTX 2070 (due out after the others by a month or so) is worth it as it won't be that much better than the GTX 1080 and right now you can find GTX 1080s for 460-430 USD quite readily. At that price and considering the expected price of $599 for the RTX 2070 you will be overpaying for the performance boost you'd get by quite a lot. Also, although it is too early to tell, the RTX 2070 looks like it won't be very good for ray tracing games as they currently dog the heck out of the RTX 2080ti at 1080p. Of course, that's with the games and drivers not fully optimized for ray tracing. I would say if you want to get the RTX cards you wait quite a while until it all settles out and you can see a clearer picture and hopefully the price drops.

EDIT: the difference in the Asus and Zotac 1070 is that they are different manufactures of the same card. Each manufacturer will have one or more cooling options and lighting effects as well as varying levels of factory overclocks. Most cards will overclock to reasonably the same level and if you're really into overclocking getting a card with the best cooling and power options will certainly help.

One thing to note is the warranties and how well they service them. Zotac has a spotty reputation when it comes to warranties and tech support, Asus has a better rep and EVGA has about the best reputation. Read the consumer reviews and you will see what I mean.
 
Last edited:

MickyG1982

M
Rob At Work said:
I am thinking about upgrading my GPU as the prices are coming down. Currently have Nvidea GTX 970. Was thinking about 1070 Ti Maybe 2070 Ti, or if I switch to 4K their *080 equivalents.

Whilst browsing and looking at prices etc.. I noticed that there are several same spec GPUs the difference is the supplier(?) name.
Ie Asus Nvidea 1070 ** , Zotac Nvidea 1070 ** can anyone explain the differences please?
Click to expand...

Probably very little bar their own coolers & some minor differences in PCB design. Of course all that also depends on the version you look at too, each will have their own factory overclocked (Higher tier) editions that may or may not have any definite performance difference between the two. There will, of course be very minor differences in frame rate, but this video literally says it all:

[video=youtube;460yAkVBQ30]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=460yAkVBQ30[/video]

Practically the same across the board...
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
MickyG1982 said:
Probably very little bar their own coolers & some minor differences in PCB design. Of course all that also depends on the version you look at too, each will have their own factory overclocked (Higher tier) editions that may or may not have any definite performance difference between the two. There will, of course be very minor differences in frame rate, but this video literally says it all:



Practically the same across the board...
Click to expand...

Pretty much, I would suggest looking at the manufacturer and see who has the best warranty and reputation in tech support. After that, it would come down to the cooler performance and how quite it is, then aesthetics for me. If you don't want to overclock the card then just getting a card with a decent factory overclock might just be what you want. Most all of the non overclocked cards can be overclocked to pretty close to the best factory overclock out there so if you want to do that you can save some money.
 

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE
If I was in the market for a new GPU right now I would wait around 3-5 weeks until the 2080s/2080tis were in people's hands and the prices of the 1080/1080ti will come down even further as retailers try to clear the remainder of the existing stock*, just keep an eye on the major retailers to check stock levels to make sure you don't miss out :) *in the UK this is starting to happen already with some good prices on lower-end 1080 models. Agree with others than the 1080/1080ti are the cards to go for (speaking as a 1080 owner).
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
Patrick_68000 said:
Still waiting for the official tests of the 20xx series
Click to expand...

Me, too.
But I am slightly pesimistic, actually. All they've shown is that 2080Ti is 2.5x faster with ray tracing than 1080Ti. But that's just a marketing crap, because 1080Ti isn't BUILT for this.
What I'm afraid of is that in normal operations (games of this day, not some far distant titles with RT) it will be only 15-20% faster than 1080Ti and it simply won't be worth the money. Paying almost twice as much money for some questionable "future-proofing" of your system is bogus.

Plus it seems that nVidia deliberately ignored the trend, which is higher resolutions (4K, 8K) and higher FPS (120 and 144Hz monitors are becoming affordable), which I consider a really cheap and totally anti-gamer move.
Sure they are "inovating", but if the "ray tracing specialist card" can only play ray traced games at 20FPS (Tomb Raider demo) it simply means the technology simply isn't ready for that, yet and they would be better off by making simply a card that is 20-30% better at everything, in comaprison to 1080Ti.
 
Last edited:

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE
Chris Simon said:
Plus it seems that nVidia deliberately ignored the trend, which is higher resolutions (4K, 8K) and higher FPS (120 and 144Hz monitors are becoming affordable), which I consider a really cheap and totally anti-gamer move.
Sure they are "inovating", but if the "ray tracing specialist card" can only play ray traced games at 20FPS (Tomb Raider demo) it simply means the technology simply isn't ready for that, yet and they would be better off by making simply a card that is 20-30% better at everything, in comaprison to 1080Ti.
Click to expand...

nvidia are claiming that the 2080ti is 35%-40% faster than the 1080ti in rasterization. We'll see when the reviews are out on the 17th.
 

Gortron

Gortron
Rob At Work said:
I am thinking about upgrading my GPU as the prices are coming down. Currently have Nvidea GTX 970. Was thinking about 1070 Ti Maybe 2070 Ti, or if I switch to 4K their *080 equivalents.

Whilst browsing and looking at prices etc.. I noticed that there are several same spec GPUs the difference is the supplier(?) name.
Ie Asus Nvidea 1070 ** , Zotac Nvidea 1070 ** can anyone explain the differences please?
Click to expand...

The main difference will be the cooling solution and factory overclocks but it works a bit like a motherboard purchase. The chipset dictates what the board is designed to support (in the case of a graphics card it is a pre-installed GPU, in the case of a motherboard it will be a type of CPU and if that CPU can be overclocked) and there are some other things that the card has to have to comply with that are dictated by the chipset maker such as VRAM. Some things are down to the manufacture such as the quality of the components such as capacitors and whether it has fancy LED lighting.

On top of that there is branding premium, just like a Chicken sold in Aldi will be cheaper than one sold in M&S even if they come from the same source because of the perceived quality difference by the customer. I will never buy anything by Gigabyte (for example) because I've never bought anything from them that hasn't failed within 2 years (and I've given them a few chances). MSI and EVGA I've had good experiences with and out of those to EVGA is the posher brand.

All that aside, I would say now is a terrible time to upgrade a GPU. I'd wait until the 20 series cards have been out a few weeks and are benchmarked properly.
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Chris Simon said:
Me, too.
But I am slightly pesimistic, actually. All they've shown is that 2080Ti is 2.5x faster with ray tracing than 1080Ti. But that's just a marketing crap, because 1080Ti isn't BUILT for this.
What I'm afraid of is that in normal operations (games of this day, not some far distant titles with RT) it will be only 15-20% faster than 1080Ti and it simply won't be worth the money. Paying almost twice as much money for some questionable "future-proofing" of your system is bogus.

Plus it seems that nVidia deliberately ignored the trend, which is higher resolutions (4K, 8K) and higher FPS (120 and 144Hz monitors are becoming affordable), which I consider a really cheap and totally anti-gamer move.
Sure they are "inovating", but if the "ray tracing specialist card" can only play ray traced games at 20FPS (Tomb Raider demo) it simply means the technology simply isn't ready for that, yet and they would be better off by making simply a card that is 20-30% better at everything, in comaprison to 1080Ti.
Click to expand...

It seems that according to unofficial tests, that the 2080ti is one third higher than the 1080ti
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom