• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Getting the itch for a switch

champ222

champ222

champ222

Associate
Joined
19 Aug 2005
Posts
1,564
Location
Beds, UK
Hi All

I'm thinking of switching my RTX3070 for an RX6800XT.

There is quite a lot of chatter about 8GB VRAM not being quite enough for an increasing amount of new games. Performance wise, i'm ok with what i get from the 3070, but the 6800XT should give me a boost in performance. Particuarly in COD/warzone, which i play quite a bit.

In the past, ive always just upgraded the PC all in one go, by which point, most of the parts arent worth much, the GPU in particular. If i do that again, in a few years maybe, i'd be facing a pretty big outlay in one go. It would be easier to justify, even if its not technically the most cost effective way of doing it, to make much smaller jumps.

I'm doing way more gaming than ive ever done before, so generally i'm more keen to upgrade than i have before. so, i'm tempted to make the move now, while there is a decent value in the 3070. If i do then lose interest a bit, and not upgrade for a while, the 16GB of VRAM on the AMD card should help that last me longer.

the last 3070FE went for £330 on the MM, and the 6800XT is currently £540 for the ASROCK:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asro...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-00b-ak.html

or £549 for the Sapphire pulse:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapp...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-39c-sp.html

So its £220 ish for the upgrade.

The 3070 i bought new in March 2022 so still has plenty of warranty on it. on that basis, i wouldnt want to go used with no warranty. I paid £469 for it, so its cost me £140 ish over the last year. which isnt too bad i guess.


The 7800/xt seems to be coming fairly soon (or is that just the XT?), so i guess its worth waiting to see what happens. Going by recent cards, the 7800 is likely slightly better than the 6800XT for similar money as the 6800XT released at, and the 7800XT will be £700 ish? too early to say i guess.


The 3070FE is a lovely card though. a really nice piece of kit. the ASROCK 6800XT looks awful in comparison... you dont spend much time looking at it though i guess. the sapphire looks better

What do you guys think, am i just wasting money?

Thanks
 
if you are going for an upgrade it has to have enough of an impact to be noticed really otherwise you will get the swame itch in 6 months time :)
 
I get where the OP is coming from though, I'm also running a 3070, it wasn't what I had planned but in the middle of the mining crisis I got it on an OCUK forum deal so it was a no brainer as I was keen to upgrade from a 1070 at the time.

I wanted the next grade up really but it wasn't an option and I wasn't spending £1200 on a GPU.

But I think the consensus of the forum is sound here, see what the 7800xt brings.
 
agreed, i'll see what the 7800xt brings.

"right now" its very much a side grade as you all say. in fact a used 6800xt is about what a used 3070 goes for, roughly.

but in a years time, the picture might be very different. it depends on how many games really start pushing 8gb of vram. Console games will eventually stop supporting last gen consoles, and then the requirements will go up and up i guess. when that happens used prices of 3070s and 6800s would be very different.
 
Not played my Switch in a long time. Got the new Zelda on pre-order and looking forward to that. Get the OLED version if you plan to play on the go :)
 
If you were happy to buy a second hand 6800 XT then the outlay would be a lot smaller and so the value proposition may well be worth it. Definitely not for £220 though.

I still occasionally contemplate nabbing a used 3080 12GB/Ti and selling my XT, just to have a fiddle about and scratch the itch that the latest generation's prices put me off scratching.
 
champ222 said:
What do you guys think, am i just wasting money?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately you made the mistake of buying a 8GB 3070 in 2023 (blame Nvidia for their planning obsolete of not putting 16GB on a perfectly capable card like 3070), which won't be sufficient new games with Raytracing or on UE5 engine.

IMO the moment you bought the 3070 new, it is already like walked into a dead-end. If you gonna upgrade so soon after just having the 3070, you would definitely be losing out from financial standpoint.

The main issue with 3070 is running out of vram with stuttering and/or crashes on games with RT, so I guess if you have a backlog of older games it would make more sense to just focus on clearly them first, and wait for next gen before upgrading your graphic card again.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Unfortunately you made the mistake of buying a 8GB 3070 in 2023 (blame Nvidia for their planning obsolete of not putting 16GB on a perfectly capable card like 3070), which won't be sufficient new games with Raytracing or on UE5 engine.

IMO the moment you bought the 3070 new, it is already like walked into a dead-end. If you gonna upgrade so soon after just having the 3070, you would definitely be losing out from financial standpoint.

The main issue with 3070 is running out of vram with stuttering and/or crashes on games with RT, so I guess if you have a backlog of older games it would make more sense to just focus on clearly them first, and wait for next gen before upgrading your graphic card again.
Click to expand...
Alright mate, i bought the 3070 in march 2022, so not 2023, not sure where you got that. At which time the fe cards were the only sensible buy as everything else was ridiculous money. To have bought a 6800xt at that time would have cost at least twice the price of an 3070fe.

I agree nvidia should have out more ram on the cards.
 
champ222 said:
Alright mate, i bought the 3070 in march 2022, so not 2023, not sure where you got that. At which time the fe cards were the only sensible buy as everything else was ridiculous money. To have bought a 6800xt at that time would have cost at least twice the price of an 3070fe.

I agree nvidia should have out more ram on the cards.
Click to expand...
since late 2020 until recently nvidia fe cards were the only ones worth buying in the UK. amd never had stock here while i saw fe cards pop up for MSRP all the time, and at the MSRP ampere is/was fantastic.
 
More Vram is a double edged sword. The 1000's etc had 8gb if Nvidia had just doubled that for say the 2000 series then again for the 3000's and so on you would then have even lazier game dev's not bothering to optimise the use of it . We have already seen this with some newer games. Then you would have everyone on a older gpu complaining Nvidia gives too much Vram and it was planned obsolescence for their older gpu because unless your playing at 720 p games are unplayable and why didnt Nvidia put more vram on those. 8GB should be the lowest Vram for todays lowest Gaming gpus however and it should go up from there IMO.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom