3080 to 7900XT (second hand)

[Alexrose1uk]

Hi Guys
Additional thoughts here would be appreciated. I am doing the wife a rebuild, and CONSIDERING, whether its worthwhile to take the leap from the 3080 to a 7900XT for her if I could find a good deal on one of the better models second hand. She plays on a 3840x1600 Ultrawide as well, so the additional VRAM is extra relevant over the coming years.

The way I see it, I'd be looking around the £600 mark, and could likely sell the 3080 for a reasonable amount (or keep it and sell a FE 3070 I have) whilst those are still desireable, meaning it wouldn't be a crazy priced upgrade.

Pros:
Faster, anywhere from 20-80%, closer to 20-40% average from what I can see.
Probably actually cooler and quieter if I got a good cooling model
20GB VRAM vs 10GB on her 3080
Resizeable BAR (her 3080 has a BIOS without this) for when it matters

Cons:
No DLSS (and that at least, more than RT, is actually fairly decent now)
RTX is stronger on the 7900XT but not massively so
Still not cheap
Have to sell a card to offset some cost, so there is some time/effort/risk here.
Upcoming Super cards MIGHT change the equation/market values.

Thoughts?
I am leaning towards doing it IF I got an exceptional deal aka around £500-600, so would work out around a £300 upgrade but not above that.

 

[ToOo]

At first glance, probably not worth it.
What games does she play?

 

[Alexrose1uk]

A bit of literally everything, including Hogwarts Legacy, Darktide and other games which would make use of the additional grunt and VRAM. She is pushing ultrawide, part way between 4K and QHD so it's fairly demanding on the GPU horsepower and VRAM!

I wouldn't do it at full price, but for ~£300 after everything, I'm willing.

 

[mickyflinn]

Ray tracing is the deciding factor if she games with that then the 7900xt isn't going to be as big of an upgrade.

If she's not complaining about FPS or stutters (low 1%) then it mite be worth waiting.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

She doesn't really care all that much about RT, and the RT on the 7900XT seems to be slightly better anyway, so for what she cares it should be fine.
She did find Hogwarts Legacy a bit heavy, and a few other games now and then, partially due to the high res screen, honestly it was only the fact I found a good deal on a 2nd hand 7900XT that made me even consider this, and the fact it'll make her old machine easier to sell off as I'll have a spare GPU around

I had also seen a misprice on a 4070ti which I ended up passing on for similar money, feel like the additional VRAM and rasterisation power is more worthwhile, given the resolution of the monitor she has!

7900XT will also match the rest of the system build that is coming together for her; first all AMD build I've done in well over a decade hahah

 

[ToOo]

Treating that resolution as aproximately 4k.

Hogwarts Legacy seems to go from 50fps to 61fps at ultra settings no RT so bang on 20%.
Neither GPU can really handle RT but it does highlight the VRam issues of the 3080 10gb.

Hogwarts Legacy GPU Benchmark: 53 GPUs Tested

Hogwarts Legacy is open-world action RPG set in the Harry Potter universe. Having launched to very enthusiastic user reviews, it's time we benchmark it and we have...

www.techspot.com

There don't seem to be any useful current benchmarks for Darktide, I've been told the performance is now much better than at launch. But as it was a year ago the game favoured Nvidia.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT & Radeon RX 7900 XTX Gaming Review

AMD's first RDNA3-based GPUs have just landed, with both the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX targeting the top-end of the market. We're kicking off our performance coverage with a look at 4K gaming across a wide-range of titles, with ray tracing and upscaling tests strewn throughout.

techgage.com

 

[Alexrose1uk]

I watched a few videos on Youtube from people playing with a 7900XT and a similar build in recent months, using external capture, and frankly performance looked fantastic now; there has definately been some work on it! They did use FSR2, which also didn't actually look too bad at quality mode, albeit not QUITE as good as DLSS, but can't complain when the actual raw base framerate is higher.

And yes, the 10GB of the 3080 is long for this world, at least for high resolution, the writing has been on the wall for 8-10GB since the beginning of the year; I noticed a lot of tests seemed to imply the average framerates were maybe ~20% higher, but the mimimum framerates were better on the 7900XT vs the 3080 by a decent way, likely because of the VRAM component coming into play.

Honestly, I wouldn't have considered this even an option at new, it's way too much money, and as I'm on a QHD screen, I'll wait, but she needs the extra grunt that bit sooner than me

 

[Nexus18]

£300 not worthwhile. Not to mention losing a superior upscaler which is proving it's worth massively nowadays.

I'm using a 3080 at 3440x1440 and not really noticed any issues including darktide with RT maxed (it's not that vram demanding) so I imagine the 3080 should be fine for the higher Res. Darktide is very demanding on the CPU.

Hogwarts legacy not worthwhile using RT in this anyway. The game runs bad in a number of ways anyway that even more vram and grunt won't solve e.g. traversal stutter and still some shader comp. stutter.

 

[tommybhoy]

3080s a great GPU but shame about the 10Gb.
It's simple, either stick with the 3080 and keep on dropping settings to keep it under 10Gb to avoid sharing system ram.

Or, if you want considerably higher mins for waaay smoother gameplay, get the cash out.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Ooof you're a lucky man Nexus, I have seen some pretty hefty drops in the game with RT on, even at medium, and the 3080 even at QHD, on both our systems. DLSS actually was one of the reasons I was leaning against the move, as it really actually is quite good now, that being said I'd still take better native performance over better upscaled, and the wife often doesn't enable upscaling anyway. I had been aiming for higher FPS than 60 though, so that target framerate may be part of the reason we have differing opinions on the 3080

Appreciate the thoughts guys, it's been on a knife edge this decision.

The deciding factor in a way though over everything else is how much easier having a spare GPU will make shifting her old system; and the wife likes the look of the particular model of 7900XT, especially when I'd have ended up grabbing another GPU to stick in her old system to move it on anyhow.
The wife quite likes plug and play, so not having to lower settings over the next year or so to manage the VRAM is almost worth the price of admission

 

[Nexus18]

Ooof you're a lucky man Nexus, I have seen some pretty hefty drops in the game with RT on and the 3080 even at QHD, on both our systems. DLSS actually was one of the reasons I was leaning against the move, as it really actually is quite good now, that being said I'd still take better native performance over better upscaled.

The deciding factor in a way though over everything else is how much easier having a spare GPU will make shifting her old system; especially if I'd end up buying something to put in it anyway!

Looking at your cpu in your sig, I'm not surprised, you are bottlenecking your 3080 massively in games like darktide, even if at a higher res. (and if you're using dlss, you're actually running a lower res. where a cpu bottlebeck will show evne more). Might be worthwhile getting a OSD on to see exactly where the system is being held back i.e. vram (and dedicated at that), cpu or gpu grunt. A move to amd gpu may help here since better utlisation of cpu i.e. less driver overhead especially at lower res.

Hogwarts is also very cpu demanding.

Better native is all very good but no amd gpu is going to give you acceptable native performance in newer/more demanding games i.e. you'll still need to use upscaling or you'll have to lower your settings if you don't want to use upscaling thus a worse graphical experience overall.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

12400 overclocked to 5GHz all core (up from 4.4GHz, I have one of the retimer-equipped motherboards which allows it) isn't too much of a bottleneck luckily (I was running a lot of OSDs in the past and typically seeing full GPU utilisation rather than CPU). It's similar performance to a 12700/13600K, bit up and down dependent on the title, Darktide has traditionally been better optimised for Intel CPUs which has helped additionally. She is going to a 7800X3D however, so felt like a good time to pair something stronger all round with the new build.

She was still on a 10700K, so the 7800X3D will definately move things forward, the 10700K was beaten soundly by my 12400 overclocked in multicore (6 v 8 cores...), let alone in single core, which is what really matters for gaming!

 

[Nexus18]

12400 overclocked to 5GHz all core isn't too much of a bottleneck luckily (I was running a lot of OSDs in the past and typically seeing full GPU utilisation rather than CPU), she is going to a 7800X3D however, so felt like a good time to pair something stronger all round with the new build.

6 core is quite limiting these days imo, at least when looking at games like darktide and hogwarts.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Honestly hasn't been too bad based on OSD feedback when I've played, in regards maxing out on the CPU, although I suspect I'd have felt a bit differently if I was still running stock, as that additional 600MHz on each core is definately buying some time.
That said it's definately on the cards when I do do a rebuild down the line, whether I go Intel or AMD will depend on what's best for me at the time.

This CPU, despite lower cores, was actually quite a noticeable step forward from the previous gen Intels in gaming, I used to have a 10700K also, and the thing just runs better all around, as well as cooler/quieter

Had it a year now, so I'll see what happens

 

[Nexus18]

Honestly hasn't been too bad based on OSD feedback when I've played, in regards maxing out on the CPU, although I suspect I'd have felt a bit differently if I was still running stock, as that additional 600MHz on each core is definately buying some time.
That said it's definately on the cards when I do do a rebuild down the line, whether I go Intel or AMD will depend on what's best for me at the time.

This CPU, despite lower cores, was actually quite a noticeable step forward from the previous gen Intels in gaming, I used to have a 10700K also, and the thing just runs better all around, as well as cooler/quieter

Had it a year now, so I'll see what happens

Yeah the Osd isn't great for CPU e.g. my 5600x didn't show any problems but the 5800x3d is leagues ahead in terms of the 0.1 and 1% lows. Main way to tell if CPU is bottlenecking is the GPU usage stat i.e. if you usage is low. Should see a good upgrade in perf going to a 7800x3d anyway.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Yeah that's the thing, GPU usage is very solid on my system.

Wife should get a very nice quality of life increase with the new build, coming from her 10700k though.

Crazy to think that's basically a tweaked 9900k and that thing was the bees knees at the time. We have gone from little progress for years to real progress in just a few generations again. Shame GPUs are not working like this at the moment

 

[jklc]

Ray tracing is the deciding factor if she games with that then the 7900xt isn't going to be as big of an upgrade.

If she's not complaining about FPS or stutters (low 1%) then it mite be worth waiting.

I'm stuck on the 3080 and have thought about the 7900 series too. The 7900XT may push ahead in stuff like the Port Royal RT benchmark but in games where RT is used extensively (which are usually nvidia leaning) it falls behind a bit. The raster power shows in non or lighter RT games like AMD sponsored ones which caught my eye. Think I'm just going to wait it out though, roll on 202...5?...

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[mickyflinn]

I'm stuck on the 3080 and have thought about the 7900 series too. The 7900XT may push ahead in stuff like the Port Royal RT benchmark but in games where RT is used extensively (which are usually nvidia leaning) it falls behind a bit. The raster power shows in non or lighter RT games like AMD sponsored ones which caught my eye. Think I'm just going to wait it out though, roll on 202...5?...

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty GPU Benchmark

The Phantom Liberty update brings significant updates to Cyberpunk 2077, including DLSS 3.5, further graphics and hardware support enhancements. It's GPU benchmark time.

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Wise choice.

 

[JediFragger]

Wait til the Supers are released, it will at the minimum shake up the market a little.