Not especially interested in high-end graphics cards, but read a bit around the topic because of the possibilities of recording/transcoding etc. using moderate-strength-plus offerings. However, cards used to be a big deal on teh and I know there are still a few gamers around. I see that the latest generation of Nvidia cards is imminent and what I couldn't fail to notice is that (supposedly) the cheapest RTX 3070 will comfortably outperform the previous generation's flagship RTX 2080 Ti in many areas. No doubt the shitload of high-speed memory on the 2080 Ti will allow things that the budget 3070 can't match, but if I was a keen gamer who had just blown north of £1200 on a 2080, I think I'd be a bit nauseous that a new card, somewhere south of £500 could wee on mine in so many areas.
That's the fun of putting cash on the barrel head for this or that part, knowing full well it can be had or even beaten @ half the cost in a few months.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news: The Alien trilogy as an analysis of the process of grief.”
Totally; but the rumor mill has been working overtime over the new 3xxx series for a while, so anyone who bought a 2080Ti within the last 2-3 months took an informed, big risk if they'd done their research.
I've been an AMD fanboi for a while (usually because they've just been much better in terms of value-for-money and silly discounts), but the 3070 looks tempting even for me...
It's why I've always refused to buy the top-end bits. Usually something in the upper area of mid-range will provide the majority of the performance for a price that won't make you care as much when the inevitable replacement product comes out.
My 980 is getting a little long in the tooth so I was hoping for good news here, but more in the "maybe 2080s will be a bit cheaper now and I'll just have to grin and bear the cost" so it's a pleasant surprise for me. Even though £500 is still a lot of money, thanks! For one component! Sheesh.
Doesn't stop me thinking "only another £150 for the 3080!" a bit. I only have a 1440p monitor anyway but perhaps for the VRs it's worth it? I shall research.
I've always found that ~£200 is the sweet spot for gfx cards for the best bang to buck ratio. I've always kept pretty close to that with all the cards I've bought but never really had any affinity to either of the big two. Last upgrade was about 18 months ago and I replaced an ageing 560gtx that I'd had for around 8 years
I've rarely gone above 1080 for gaming (I do run project cars 2 and GTA V over three screens for 1080x5760) and my rx580 runs it all fine and dandy, albeit a little noisily when the fans spin up to full speed.
I had a recent flurry of leap-frogging bits over each other for the sake of my Vive performance, and now my 1070(bog standard) is probably the laggardly component. But upgrading to a Ryzen 3800X (which necessitated upgrading the mobo to a Gigabyte X570 UD, which in turn led to a Gallic shrug and replacing O.L.D. Ram with 16gb (tbh) Viper Steel 3600MHz DDR4 (RAM compensates for its dreariness by outrageously butching up its nomenclature)) was probably less significant overall than swapping from a middling SSD C Drive to NVMe.
I've got two obvious bottlenecks now: the 1070 and my HDD drive (significant, because Steam lives there). The HDD replacement would have to be a 2tb NVMe, which would make my eyes water a bit; but less so than upgrading the GPU. Of course, flogging the old components offsets the costs a bit.
And then, of course, there's the fucking Valve Index winking saucily at me from the wings...
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked."
James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
