Getting the itch for a switch

[BUDFORCE]

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.

I agree with this, but due to circumstances it was somewhat more unavoidable for me.

I built a new PC end of 2020 after finally letting my Sandybridge i7 system go, but was still using a 1070.

Get to mid 2021 and I was really keen to upgrade the GPU as I was playing PUBG at a reasonable level and was keen to squeeze more FPS, being absolutely bang in the middle of the mining crisis a 3070 came up on a forum deal for (at the time) a cracking price and it was a no brainer.

To be fair it took about a year for prices to come down lower than what I got it so overall I can't complain, and I've had 2 years of good use from it.

BUT.......Had it been standard market conditions, it would not have been the card I would have gone for, I probably would have gone for a 6900xt which would still be sitting pretty today.

I'd say it's unlikely I'll upgrade this year now, if I were to it would be a 7900xt.

The point is though, had the 3070 shipped with even 12GB of VRAM this wouldn't even be a consideration.

The 1070 is still being used today in my son's PC over 5 years since purchase and is a cracking card IMO, I cannot say the same about the 3070.

 

[Marine-RX179]

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.

Sorry I would admit I have misread, but even for 2022 the point still stands, with 8GB wasn't enough for even enable high-res texture in number of games.

Don't get me wrong...I might come across as Nvidia hater, but the truth is my stance is simply a believer of Nvidia shouldn't take the Apple anti-consumer approach, of relying on their branding power and marketing for the sake of underdelivering to consumers what they deserve for the money they pay.

Just look at what they are doing with the 4000 series- marketing the heck out of features like DLSS while selling way under-spec overpriced graphic cards...it's absolutely disgusting.

 

[champ222]

Sorry I would admit I have misread, but even for 2022 the point still stands, with 8GB wasn't enough for even enable high-res texture in number of games.

Don't get me wrong...I might come across as Nvidia hater, but the truth is my stance is simply a believer of Nvidia shouldn't take the Apple anti-consumer approach, of relying on their branding power and marketing for the sake of underdelivering to consumers what they deserve for the money they pay.

Just look at what they are doing with the 4000 series- marketing the heck out of features like DLSS while selling way under-spec overpriced graphic cards...it's absolutely disgusting.

Agreed.

Though in 2022 when i was reading reviews of gpus, the reviews all occurred when the cards were first released. No one then was really commenting on amount of ram as it seemed a non issue. When the 6800/xt was being reviewed, by gamers nexus for example, They didnt even mention that it had twice the ram of the 3070.

Knowing what i know now, i would still have bought the 3070 because i could get an FE for £469. The RX6800xt would still have cost £900+ at that time. No amount of future proofing could justify that.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Agreed.

Though in 2022 when i was reading reviews of gpus, the reviews all occurred when the cards were first released. No one then was really commenting on amount of ram as it seemed a non issue. When the 6800/xt was being reviewed, by gamers nexus for example, They didnt even mention that it had twice the ram of the 3070.

Knowing what i know now, i would still have bought the 3070 because i could get an FE for £469. The RX6800xt would still have cost £900+ at that time. No amount of future proofing could justify that.

Yea I suppose you are right. Pricing was quite crazy back then and getting any graphic card at any relating reasonable price would had been challenging.

I guess the current ram situation serves as good lesson for everyone to learn about the impact of not having sufficient vram, and would allow get them to learn to consider carefully about how a card with stingy offering for the amount vram that might be slight faster than its rival at launch could be bad idea in the long run; becoming unplayable with stuttering, texture error and crashes just 1-2 years later down the line while the slightly slower rival at launch won't have those issues for another 3-4 years at least.

Anyone get a new gen card together with 12GB vram or less today that game at higher than 1080p they should be mentally prepare to need to upgrade again within the next 1-2 years rather than expecting it would last them for 3-4 years or more.