Looking for a 1080ti but don't know where to start...

[Paul Jeffrey]

Hey folks,

I'm after some help please

I've been saving for a while now and I'm in the market for a 1080ti, however when it comes to graphics cards I'm frankly a bit of a dunce, and don't really know much about what to go for.

I know I want a 1080ti, however when looking online it seems like literally dozens of different brands and versions exist. With this being a pretty serious cash drop I'm nervous about picking one up blind, and wondered if anyone has any advice as to which card would be the best performance?

I'm a VR user so I'm basically looking to get the best graphical performance at the highest graphics settings I can, plus I want any future RD videos I make to look all pretty on the stream when I'm not in VR..

So gentlemen, any advice on which one to get would be most gratefully received

Thanks

Paul

 

[PicoBp]

Your best bet would be an ASUS Strix amongst the mainstream ones, maybe an MSI or EVGA. Avoid the blower style coolers, they work perfectly fine up to a 1080 - if you can bear the audible noise when the fan ramps up - but can't really cope with the heat a 1080Ti puts out. Don't mind the factory overclocks, it's a beast out of the box, and also all of them can be manually pushed to near similar clocks.

Oh, and make sure the rest of your build is up for the task as well. VR is very CPU heavy, my old i7-4790 couldn't keep feeding not only the current 1080, but the previous 1070 neither. I'm back to GPU limited mode though after the recent upgrade to an i7-8700k.

 

[Andy_J]

You are getting paid too much by RD mate............ I suggest this one Paul and Novatech are very good people:
Gigabyte AORUS GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition 11G

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products...i-xtreme-edition-11g/gv-n108taorusx-11gd.html

 

[Denis Betty]

I've paid for a card from Novatech, but I'll be waiting a bit longer it seems. I had an e-mail from them the other day, stating that they're having trouble getting hold of graphics cards, due to a shortage caused by people buying them up for crypto currency mining rigs. I'm not in any rush, so I'm gonna sit tight for a while.

 

[Mr Latte]

Paul, I think you'd be a bit bonkers to get a 1080Ti at this stage when the newer cards coming will be unveiled soon.

The 2070 or whatever it will be called is likely to perform somewhere between a 1080 and 1080Ti
The replacement for the 1080 is likely to be cheaper than a 1080Ti but potentially a better purchase.

Keep an eye on the current GPU rumours if you can hold out.

 

[sjb266]

You are getting paid too much by RD mate............ I suggest this one Paul and Novatech are very good people:
Gigabyte AORUS GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition 11G

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products...i-xtreme-edition-11g/gv-n108taorusx-11gd.html

I can recommend this card for VR...

 

[Nick Gregory]

Yeah, about those 1080Ti's...

Nvidia is going to unveil Ampere in April, so I wouldn't buy a new GPU right now unless the one you currently have dies. Another major problem is that thanks to the damned cryptominers, almost no GPUs that are worth anything are either out of stock, or they are waaaaaaaay over their MSRP. For example, a 1070 should be in the $350-$375 range, not over $700.

 

[natedogg1867]

Paul, I think you'd be a bit bonkers to get a 1080Ti at this stage when the newer cards coming will be unveiled soon.

The 2070 or whatever it will be called is likely to perform somewhere between a 1080 and 1080Ti
The replacement for the 1080 is likely to be cheaper than a 1080Ti but potentially a better purchase.

Keep an eye on the current GPU rumours if you can hold out.

This could be said of any PC hardware, ever.

There is always that 'next new thing' around the corner. Fact is, it may or may not come at the estimated date, and may or may not have the performance being marketed. Just look at AMD polaris/vega.

If you 'need' a new gpu 'now', just get what you can afford.

And to that point, boo crypto currency mining jacking up gpu prices.

Nvidia is going to unveil Ampere in April, so I wouldn't buy a new GPU right now unless the one you currently have dies.

What happened to volta? Is Nvidia just sticking to 1 card for that architecture release? I would highly doubt that, so their next arc will be a year+ out unless they really did skip consumer volta cards.

 

[RasmusP]

This could be said of any PC hardware, ever.

There is always that 'next new thing' around the corner. Fact is, it may or may not come at the estimated date, and may or may not have the performance being marketed. Just look at AMD polaris/vega.

If you 'need' a new gpu 'now', just get what you can afford.

And to that point, boo crypto currency mining jacking up gpu prices.



What happened to volta? Is Nvidia just sticking to 1 card for that architecture release? I would highly doubt that, so their next arc will be a year+ out unless they really did skip consumer volta cards.

The volta was so "business" that they changed the name for consumer cards to ampere.
Still volta kind of
To the timing, I mostly agree with you. Well to wait until June might not be a great thing to consider if he wants it now. If it would be May already and we would have pictures of custom design cards from msi, Asus I'd say better wait - but in February? Not so much.

Just looked at the prices and wow, that's crazy... Bought my 1070 at release for 504€. They are at around 700€ now

 

[Jeremy Ford]

GPU prices are currently jacked up and screwing buyers, but want my outstrip need so if you can afford you swallow the bitter pill the 1080Ti is a great card for VR. Nvidia are 'only' rumoured to be announcing a new card soon, and the release schedule is only a rumour too. Likely true but not actually confirmed by Nvidia. Holding off would be sensible.

I like EVGA, good coolers and they give you a long warranty. Avoid blowers, they run a lot hotter and louder. Noise is a less of an issue when games are running, but the heat will throttle the card a bit.

As previously mentioned VR perform can be bottlenecked by the CPU. That statement runs true to my experience too. My GTX 1080Ti was used in a PC with a i5-4670. Then the CPU upgraded to a i7-4770k. And most recently a new build I7-8770k. I able able to tell a difference in racing titles where repeatable situations would could cause frame drops with the older CPU's. Nothing that would completely spoil the game, but distracting enough for me to realise my VR gaming was being impacted by the CPU.

 

[Andy_J]

I recently sold my RX480 for more than I paid for it and then purchased a GTX1080 AURIS for £479. I think I got one just in time.

 

[RasmusP]

I recently sold my RX480 for more than I paid for it and then purchased a GTX1080 AURIS for £479. I think I got one just in time.

This exactly planted a little thought in my head last week.
I'm a person which is extremely annoyed by flickering and micro stutters so I always run vsync and the highest Anti Aliasing I can.
With nvidia you have several options of forcing or changing things.

But lately I think: screw it, just sell your 1070, get a used AMD card and a Free Sync 1440p Monitor. Would be +/- 0€ I guess.
No Vsync and no custom AA needed anymore and better text sharpness for reading on the PC (still studying).
I don't care for less eyecandy. Just fluent and clean image quality.

Sorry for off-topic. Had to get this thought out to the public

It would also solve my issues with dropping frames to the mid 50's due to stupid games not supporting more than 1-3 threads. Sorry, but I won't buy an I7 8700k when my 2600k is only used up to 35% due to single thread limitations...

 

[Andy_J]

This exactly planted a little thought in my head last week.
I'm a person which is extremely annoyed by flickering and micro stutters so I always run vsync and the highest Anti Aliasing I can.
With nvidia you have several options of forcing or changing things.

But lately I think: screw it, just sell your 1070, get a used AMD card and a Free Sync 1440p Monitor. Would be +/- 0€ I guess.
No Vsync and no custom AA needed anymore and better text sharpness for reading on the PC (still studying).

Hi Rasmus, I did the opposite. I have a Freesync 34" 75mhz Monitor and with the RX480 I couldn't get the high frames I wanted even though the games were quite smooth with freesync I still had to turn details down. With the GTX1080 I can now have everything on Max settings (Pcars 2, AC, RF2 etc) and sometimes I don't bother enabling V-sync either. I don't seem to see much tearing, flickering etc. But if I do I enable V-sync and and have smooth games @75mhz or 60mhz with no problems. This card just blasts through all games so far for me.

 

[RasmusP]

Hi Rasmus, I did the opposite. I have a Freesync 34" 75mhz Monitor and with the RX480 I couldn't get the high frames I wanted even though the games were quite smooth with freesync I still had to turn details down. With the GTX1080 I can now have everything on Max settings (Pcars 2, AC, RF2 etc) and sometimes I don't bother enabling V-sync either. I don't seem to see much tearing, flickering etc. But if I do I enable V-sync and and have smooth games @75mhz or 60mhz with no problems. This card just blasts through all games so far for me.

Yeah the 1070 and 1080 of course are great cards indeed!
What I read between your lines is that I should probably wait for this move until amd releases their new cards and spend some more money?

I thought about going the gsync route but there are just no 1440p gsync monitors that are even somewhat worth their money when compared to the free sync ones.

 

[Gaudin]

Cryptominers love the 1080 GTX TI, so much so, the biggest online store here limited the amount of grafic cards one can order to ONE per account - so now, they've got a lot of bots creating accounts and trying to order this cards

I'm happy with my 1080 GTX, got it for 759 in december 2016, it's now 50 more, and you wait 3-4 weeks...

Wishing good luck with getting one - it's worth it!

 

[snyperal]

I like the zotac range of cards as they have a 5 year guarantee. I'm sure there isn't much too choose between all the top end cards though .

 

[Mr Latte]

What I find a bit annoying based on watching a recent "Gamer Muscle" video is that even with Oculus / Vive current resolutions and with a 1080Ti combined with a powerful CPU we still can't reach max settings with 90 FPS+

I hope the new cards really bring improvements in efficiency and outright power.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

Without factoring in supersampling my guess is you'll need a GPU with 50% more rendering power than the 1080Ti for max settings.

 

[Mr Latte]

Without factoring in supersampling my guess is you'll need a GPU with 50% more rendering power than the 1080Ti for max settings.

980Ti - 1080Ti was approx 100% was it not?

But then to use that same comparison we would need a 2080Ti not just the expected 2070 or 2080 models. Personally I do not see a 2080 being slower or worse purchase than a 1080Ti

Just as the 1080 was superior to the 980Ti and the 1070 was more closely matched to it.
If taking this pattern then the 2080 should be a good deal better than the 1080Ti and the 2070 may not be far from its potential.

Speculation yes, but thats the gamble someone buying a new card at this stage may have to take.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

980Ti - 1080Ti was approx 100% was it not?

But then to use that same comparison we would need a 2080Ti not just the expected 2070 or 2080 models. Personally I do not see a 2080 being slower or worse purchase than a 1080Ti

Just as the 1080 was superior to the 980Ti and the 1070 was more closely matched to it.
If taking this pattern then the 2080 should be a good deal better than the 1080Ti and the 2070 may not be far from its potential.

Speculation yes, but thats the gamble someone buying a new card at this stage may have to take.

I've checked some benchmarks and it's not showing 1080 Ti double the performance over the 980 Ti. The 1080 is faster than the 980 Ti. The 1070 is pretty much on par with the 980 Ti.

One should expect the 2080 to be around 20-25% faster than the 1080 Ti. Nvidia trickle feed the performance boosts per generation to keep us hooked like crack whores.