Insane for downgrading?

[Vexr]

I had a GTX 970 that was struggling running a 3440x1440 60 hz monitor, so I upgraded to a GTX 1070 Ti.

NVidia then opened up to the FreeSync standard, so I upgraded from my 3440x1440 @ 60 hz monitor to a 100 hz FreeSync one at the same res with allegedly top-notch GSync compatibility.

I then got addicted to 85 fps+ (preferably 100 fps), and found the 1070 Ti lacking for this without severely compromising graphics settings. My 1070 Ti / general hardware combo also inherited the apparently rare Windows 10 GSync borderless fullscreen bug that meant adaptive sync was essentially only usable in exclusive full screen mode, which certainly irritated me.

I've had a good winter playing my fill of triple AAA games, and either got bored or completed the ones I liked, or was disgusted that my 1070 Ti wasn't delivering the frames/graphics quality I'd hoped for (i.e. AC: Odyssey / FFXV). I'm now in retro mode playing GZDoom and other oldies/indies.

I've therefore sold the 1070 Ti and have an RX 550 2 GB in the post, which is FreeSync compatible and can at least support 100 hz @ 3440x1440 despite being severely anaemic compared to the GTX card.

Am I mad? TBH the only AAA titles I see myself bothering with in the near future are Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, and it seems likely Navi/other new cards will have launched between now and either of those games arriving on the scene. The other game I might be interested in is WoW:Classic - which will be borderless windowed only if anything like WoW right now, and therefore GSync disabled for me.

 

[Double07]

You thought a 1070Ti would give you 3440x1440/100? That's the insanity there.

 

[Vexr]

You thought a 1070Ti would give you 3440x1440/100? That's the insanity there.

No. I thought a 1070 Ti would give me 3440x1440 @ 60 fps. Then a monitor upgrade happened and raised the frame rate ceiling another 40 fps.

 

[Double07]

No. I thought a 1070 Ti would give me 3440x1440 @ 60 fps. Then a monitor upgrade happened and raised the frame rate ceiling another 40 fps.

Does the 1070Ti though? I mean I game at 2560*1440 on a 2060 which is roughly similar, ish sort of and 60fps with headroom isn't exactly guaranteed on a lot of games. Or were you talking things like CS:GO that run at silly FPS or what?

 

[Vexr]

Does the 1070Ti though? I mean I game at 2560*1440 on a 2060 which is roughly similar, ish sort of and 60fps with headroom isn't exactly guaranteed on a lot of games. Or were you talking things like CS:GO that run at silly FPS or what?

I suppose the big title that prompted the GPU upgrade for me was Shadow of the Tomb Raider. TBH, I was disappointed with the 1070 TIs ability to deliver 60 fps at 3440x1440 - settings had to be less than maximum and there were intrusions into the 50 fps range despite my efforts.

I suppose when I went with the 100 hz FreeSync monitor I was entering a new world I'd only heard rumours / weird testimony about, where some insist on 100 fps/hz+ and some find 25 fps looks like 60 fps thanks to GSync/FreeSync, and say they never need more than 30 fps ever again thanks to the syncing.

Unfortunately I turned into a reasonably high fps enthusiast and definitely not content with 30 fps synced, or 60 fps for that matter. 75 fps+ bare minimum would only do me.

The 1070 Ti has gone now and I think when I get back in to real gaming then definitely something along the lines of the Radeon VII/2080/1080 Ti level will be the bare minimum.

 

[Kaapstad]

I suppose the big title that prompted the GPU upgrade for me was Shadow of the Tomb Raider. TBH, I was disappointed with the 1070 TIs ability to deliver 60 fps at 3440x1440 - settings had to be less than maximum and there were intrusions into the 50 fps range despite my efforts.

It would be hard work even for an RTX Titan to get 60fps at that resolution.

Personally I am more interested in the gameplay rather than the settings.

I often play really old games and at the moment I am on Baldur's Gate 2 and will be kicking a certain Red Dragon's butt when I go back.

 

[Panos]

I had a GTX 970 that was struggling running a 3440x1440 60 hz monitor, so I upgraded to a GTX 1070 Ti.

NVidia then opened up to the FreeSync standard, so I upgraded from my 3440x1440 @ 60 hz monitor to a 100 hz FreeSync one at the same res with allegedly top-notch GSync compatibility.

I then got addicted to 85 fps+ (preferably 100 fps), and found the 1070 Ti lacking for this without severely compromising graphics settings. My 1070 Ti / general hardware combo also inherited the apparently rare Windows 10 GSync borderless fullscreen bug that meant adaptive sync was essentially only usable in exclusive full screen mode, which certainly irritated me.

I've had a good winter playing my fill of triple AAA games, and either got bored or completed the ones I liked, or was disgusted that my 1070 Ti wasn't delivering the frames/graphics quality I'd hoped for (i.e. AC: Odyssey / FFXV). I'm now in retro mode playing GZDoom and other oldies/indies.

I've therefore sold the 1070 Ti and have an RX 550 2 GB in the post, which is FreeSync compatible and can at least support 100 hz @ 3440x1440 despite being severely anaemic compared to the GTX card.

Am I mad? TBH the only AAA titles I see myself bothering with in the near future are Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, and it seems likely Navi/other new cards will have launched between now and either of those games arriving on the scene. The other game I might be interested in is WoW:Classic - which will be borderless windowed only if anything like WoW right now, and therefore GSync disabled for me.

Seems there is an error in your post. You go from 1070ti to rx550? The latter will struggle to pull 60fps at 1080p........
Why.you didn't got a Vega 64 with the money from the 1070ti?

 

[wellibob]

Someone slap this guy. No seriously you can do whatever suits your needs graphically. Most upgraded so the response to downgrade is generally regarded as anal .Enjoy what you have although a 100htz 1440p ultrawide really deserves nothing less than a 1080ti/2080

 

[willhub]

i'm happy at 4k with my 1080Ti, really does better than most people would expect. my 1070 laptop tanked at 4k

 

[Panos]

Someone slap this guy. No seriously you can do whatever suits your needs graphically. Most upgraded so the response to downgrade is generally regarded as anal .Enjoy what you have although a 100htz 1440p ultrawide really deserves nothing less than a 1080ti/2080

Vega 64 (Sapphire, Asrock, Powercolor only) is perfect for 3440x1440 also, and a bargain considering it's price.

 

[Vexr]

It would be hard work even for an RTX Titan to get 60fps at that resolution.

Personally I am more interested in the gameplay rather than the settings.

I often play really old games and at the moment I am on Baldur's Gate 2 and will be kicking a certain Red Dragon's butt when I go back.

I should've said I meant less than high-ultra settings, not the 'maximum' settings like in the benchmark threads, which are quite the insane FPS killers

I picked up Baldur's Gate 2 on the cheap some time ago, will have to give it a go.

Seems there is an error in your post. You go from 1070ti to rx550? The latter will struggle to pull 60fps at 1080p........
Why.you didn't got a Vega 64 with the money from the 1070ti?

TBF, for the amount the 1070 Ti sold minus the cost of the RX 550, I could buy a new Vega 56... though I won't, I think I can wait until more graphics cards are released before deciding.

A big thing for me was realising the 1070 Ti wasn't quite powerful enough for the high end gaming experience I wanted plus the GSync issues I was having with borderless full screen games. The latter definitely seems to be an NVidia/Win10 issue and not to do with FreeSync compatibility, and neither MS or NVidia seem to be in rush to fix it going by what others are saying.

I've now got the RX 550 up and running, and indeed the borderless full screen games I have work properly with FreeSync now.

The performance difference in some games is so extreme it's actually pretty amusing. I know most newer games just shouldn't be attempted, but there are a couple I reckoned that are just 'in range' of this GPU's power, like Cities: Skylines and Life is Strange - Before the Storm. 3440x1440 LiS BTS has gone from 100 fps @ ultra @ 20%-40% GPU usage (probably the GPU wasn't even running at full speed) - to a solid 27 fps @ low @ 100% usage. I'm guessing VRAM has a lot to do with that as it seemed to max the 2 GB.

Cities: Skylines I dropped to low settings and its textures look like a game from 1995 Though obviously CPU bottlenecked generally on a 100k city, even on an extreme zoom out or whatever the game never went above about 25 fps @ 100% GPU usage on the RX550. And yet, Cities Skylines is a borderless windowed only game, so it actually compared okay for smoothness with FreeSync on over the 1070 Ti, which had the aforementioned GSync bug.

The real surprising result is with World of Warcraft, firing up a trial character and going to a city. This is another game that's borderless windowed only, and at default settings gets 60-80 fps quite happily in the middle of Stormwind on the RX550 @ 3440x1440, and if anything looks better/smoother than on the GTX 1070 Ti because it has working FreeSync in borderless windowed mode (and the fact the 1070 Ti doesn't get much more FPS due to WoWs single threaded CPU bottleneck).

Fun experiment this is lol..

 

[ANDREW GREEN]

A 550, yes you could get a 570 for a tiny bit more if you want a cheap card. I'm not sure Navi will beat a 1070TI by much either.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

You weren't happy with the frame rate from a 1070ti so you downgraded to a 550 and in the process went from 8GB to 2GB. You continue to game at 3440*1440?

There is literally no justification for that. Borderless fullscreen... For what??

 

[nashathedog]

It would be hard work even for an RTX Titan to get 60fps at that resolution.

Personally I am more interested in the gameplay rather than the settings.

I often play really old games and at the moment I am on Baldur's Gate 2 and will be kicking a certain Red Dragon's butt when I go back.

+1,

I usually struggle to see a difference once I've done the tweaking properly, I even found that my RX480 back-up card does a decent job keeping framerates north of 50 at 3440x1440 for only a small drop in visual quality, nothing that really hurt the experience.
I was disappointed in my GTX1080 as this res, I think the Vega 64 is the better Ultrawide gpu by far. An RX 550 is a bit silly although I can't talk I once bought a 4gb RX560 to cover me for a few weeks, It lasted roughly 2 days at which point it I went secondhand to get a better back-up card.

 

[NirK]

Yes sounds a bit odd.

 

[willhub]

Insane in the membrane

 

[Vexr]

You weren't happy with the frame rate from a 1070ti so you downgraded to a 550 and in the process went from 8GB to 2GB. You continue to game at 3440*1440?

There is literally no justification for that. Borderless fullscreen... For what??

The justification is I'm not playing demanding games anymore, I'm playing oldies - like in my GOG catalogue and cheap indies picked up on Steam. I'll re-upgrade later when one of the titles I'm looking forward to is released. I mentioned what was going on with borderless fullscreen + FreeSync/GSync half a dozen times in this thread, so that's why 'for what', whatever that means.

 

[TNA]

I downgraded from a Titan XP to a 970 as I have no plans to game until the 3000 series hits.

If they price it right I will go for a 3080 Ti. If not will get a 3070 and a PS5. The 3070 will play every game I have now in my library when I want and the PS5 for all the new games

 

[Dirk Diggler]

The justification is I'm not playing demanding games anymore, I'm playing oldies - like in my GOG catalogue and cheap indies picked up on Steam. I'll re-upgrade later when one of the titles I'm looking forward to is released. I mentioned what was going on with borderless fullscreen + FreeSync/GSync half a dozen times in this thread, so that's why 'for what', whatever that means.

For what, meaning what difference does it make just go fullscreen.

Your thread is missing the most important details; how much did you pay for the 1070ti and how much did you sell it for second hand?

 

[Vexr]

I downgraded from a Titan XP to a 970 as I have no plans to game until the 3000 series hits.

If they price it right I will go for a 3080 Ti. If not will get a 3070 and a PS5. The 3070 will play every game I have now in my library when I want and the PS5 for all the new games

I'm glad someone here gets it

For what, meaning what difference does it make just go fullscreen.

Your thread is missing the most important details; how much did you pay for the 1070ti and how much did you sell it for second hand?

Many games don't have exclusive full screen available - examples being World of Warcraft, Cities: Skylines, and Forza Horizon 4. Most wouldn't notice this unless say their GSync went ballistic when used on 'fake' fullscreen modes.

GTX 1070 Ti cost £400 new and sold for £300. The RX 550 cost £50 (used) .