Future-proofing your GPU.

[CashmereThoughts]

First and foremost, excuse any technical naivety on my part, and forgive me if this question seems a bit silly or if there's already a thread discussing this.

However, I wanted to ask for your thoughts on what you look for when buying a new graphics card. Is it the hardware, brand recognition/trustworthiness, the build, or cooling and thermals?

How much of a decision-making do innovative technologies like rendering techniques such as FSR and DLSS factor into your purchasing decision?

Regarding the software side of things and firmware updates, are you conscious of how each "team" performs, and how much of a factor is that in your decision?

These are some of the first things that I thought of; however, I'm sure there will be many who are able to come up with some very pertinent, nuanced, and insightful points to add to this discussion.

I invite you to post some of your thoughts, or to alternatively cry ridicule me for being silly inquiring about this, as on the face of it, the answer is self-evident: get the best GPU you can get at the time.

 

[CashmereThoughts]

Well the first thing to know is that GPU's are not built with longevity in mind.

For example you could buy a 4090 today with 100GB of vram and think your sorted for vram for a good while. Right?

Well....

For example:

Next year when Nvidia release the 5000 series, DLSS 4 could be locked to the 5000 series only.

On top of that lets say DX13 launches and needs a certain something that only the Nvidia 5000 series and 8000 AMD cards support due to hardware requirements.

Etc etc etc.

What you buy when you purchase a GPU is a certain performance envelope and a set of supported features.

This is for NOW. Not for tomorrow games or API's because all that changes constantly.

So in summary don't buy a GPU based on does it have much longevity. Because none of them do.

By what you need that meets your needs as of now.

I understand that completely and it's certainly a fair way of explaining how technologic advancement would work. However, there are so many variables just in the vram discussion, apropos the adequate amount one should have in 2023.

I totally get your point but a lot of people are putting in significant amount of money not just into now, or next month, but rather into a 3-4 year down the line, and those people would surely be looking for stuff like firmware updates, new technologies; vrr, dlss, fsr et al. no?

Thanks for your input, mind. Interesting thought.

 

[CashmereThoughts]

I tend to just get an upgrade. I'm way behind everyone else, I've not long had a gtx 1070 which replaced a gtx 970.
I've been buying second hand the last few years. Maybe in a couple of years (if it lasts that long) I'll do some research in to what's good now.

Wow. This is awesome. One of the reasons I've started this thread was because I've seen numerous people who are, by today's standards, using very weak GPUs, and yet, they've been able to make it work.

I'd love to know about your experiences.

What are the main choke points? I'm guessing it's VRAM?

 

[CashmereThoughts]

1. What resolution is it marketed for.
2. Can it actually play games at that resolution.
3. Is the power consumption and noise within reason for the performance.

Don't care about the other stuff except for: is it a brand/model likely to break, or have a useless warranty?


Depends on the intended usage and the price.

- If I wanted to buy Intel their lack of consistency and poor performance in older (e.g. DX9/DX10) games might be a concern for a retro-oriented PC.
- If I wanted to use my PC for workstation stuff, I'd prefer nvidia over AMD for cuda, performance and driver support.

If I'm buying something high-end to play with all the toys then I'd care about ray tracing, but if the card is £200,.. who cares.

FSR and DLSS: not bothered.

I actually started caring about power consumption and noise a lot more than I used to. So much so that I went with the Hellhound 7800XT over the Nitro.

Regarding the warranty, well, there is a thread on this forum about whom to trust and whom to be more wary of, so on that, there is a little pushback from me.

I personally don't pay much attention to rendering tech myself. I mean, I do, but I just bought an AMD card, which is objectively a less mature technology.

 

[CashmereThoughts]

I don't currently play anything too modern, so the 1070 seems to have plenty of go.

Aye, 2016 is the release date of the GPU but a lot of amazing games it could still run, I'm sure.