• 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.

Nvidia GPU options?

scotty38

scotty38

scotty38

Associate
Joined
9 Jan 2023
Posts
191
Location
UK
Hi all,

I recently built a machine primarily to use for processing of Astronomical images using PixInsight. It is quite processor cores and memory intensive which is why I built to the spec below. Additionally it does not use much in the way of GPU resources but a few processes will use one. That is likely to change at some point but will use CUDA hence my belief that I need to stick with Nvidia cards.

For PixInsight alone I don't think I'd need anything fancy and had been thinking I'd eventually go for something like a 3060/3060ti however the desire to run a few games just to have a play has kicked in. It won't necessarily be anything intensive and this desire may fade away but the question is do I stick with my original thoughts or maybe up it a bit to a 3070?
I did fancy having a look at CyberPunk/similar type games and my current monitor is 1440 but I will be getting a 4k device for the imaging stuff. As an aside I did used to play Battlefield with my youngest a few years back on Playstation and even though I was garbage it would be nice to have another look at that if it's still around....

Current machine spec for the bits I think relevant is:

AMD Ryzen 7950x
64GB of DDR5 5200Mhz
Arctic Freezer 360 AIO
2 x 3 Lian Li SL Infinity fans
1 x AL 120 exhaust
Lian Li O11D Evo case.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
 
Hi, budget is around the cost of those cards and will be new, most likely. I could go higher on the budget, it's probably not needed for my use case but to be honest it's why I'm asking just to make sure I don't buy and wish I'd gone bigger
 
If I was in your shoes with your PC spec and use case, I wouldn't considering getting anything lesser than the 4080...however, the pricing for the new gen cards is horrendously overpriced...

Value for new last gen 3000 series cards are also quite awful, with it's pricing pretty much not much different from when they were launch 2 years ago.
 
Last edited:
Marine-RX179 said:
If I was in your shoes with your PC spec and use case, I wouldn't considering getting anything lesser than the 4080...however, the pricing for the new gen cards is horrendously overpriced...

Value for new last gen 3000 series cards are also quite awful, with it's pricing pretty much not much different from when they were launch 2 years ago.
Click to expand...
Thanks but they are becoming serious prices and you think for my, possibly brief, venture into gaming a 4080 is the right place to be?
 
scotty38 said:
Thanks but they are becoming serious prices and you think for my, possibly brief, venture into gaming a 4080 is the right place to be?
Click to expand...
The realistic choice for most people for Nvidia cards is pretty much divided between sucking it up and getting the overpriced new 4000 series, or 2nd hand 3000 series so they'd get better card for the same money (even if it means potentially sacrificing warranty).

In the past, old gen cards would typically drop by good £100-£200 due to EOL by the time new gen card was launched, but Nvidia being a greedy jerk that got spoiled by amount of money they got from the mining craze they have now gone all out of their way in maintaining the high pricing of the 3000 series at the same level as (or even more expensive than) their launch price two years ago.

Picture yourself have to spend the same money (if not more) for buying the same phone that was launched two years ago...it would be a bitter pill to swallow.
 
Last edited:
Ok thanks, I have been reading the pricing threads etc but no idea if or when pricing will drop. I know some folk are waiting on the financial results today to see if it affects anything.....
 
For a bit of casual gaming at 1440 then a 3060 Ti is fine, but I wouldn't pay nearly £500 for one. For production type work, the 3060 has 12GB of VRAM which can come in handy, but it's more of a 1080p card than a 1440p card. For 4K everything changes, since a 3060 Ti will struggle at that resolution, though you can upscale in some games, but of course Cyberpunk is one of the most demanding games you could dabble with.
 
Tetras said:
For a bit of casual gaming at 1440 then a 3060 Ti is fine, but I wouldn't pay nearly £500 for one. For production type work, the 3060 has 12GB of VRAM which can come in handy, but it's more of a 1080p card than a 1440p card. For 4K everything changes, since a 3060 Ti will struggle at that resolution, though you can upscale in some games, but of course Cyberpunk is one of the most demanding games you could dabble with.
Click to expand...
Many thanks. I will end up with a 4K monitor but wouldn't necessarily want to dabble with games at 4K so would that be an issue? You mention upscaling but on the whole would having a 4k monitor basically mean gaming at 4K and therefore everything that comes with it?
The 4070ti seems more in reach although I think I'm aware of that card's history plus it's still priced higher than it should be I guess? I have never looked at these cards when prices were more normal so have no idea just how inflated they are at the minute.
 
scotty38 said:
Many thanks. I will end up with a 4K monitor but wouldn't necessarily want to dabble with games at 4K so would that be an issue? You mention upscaling but on the whole would having a 4k monitor basically mean gaming at 4K and therefore everything that comes with it?
The 4070ti seems more in reach although I think I'm aware of that card's history plus it's still priced higher than it should be I guess? I have never looked at these cards when prices were more normal so have no idea just how inflated they are at the minute.
Click to expand...

No, you don't have to use 4K, but the picture quality of using a lower resolution than native varies (as does upscaling with DLSS). Some monitors are pretty good at it, but other monitors..., not so much. You could just play in a window, which avoids this issue. Not sure if reviewers bother to test this anymore, they did once (I think the technical term is: interpolation). You do have to keep the same aspect ratio, to avoid distorting the image.

Historically speaking, the cards are about twice the price they should be. The FE models aren't too bad and during the crypto boom were pretty much the only option (outside of subsidised launch day prices), but they haven't been in stock for quite awhile. The AMD cards are generally better priced and have more reasonable VRAM capacity, but their workstation app support (& performance) is not usually as good, so you're probably right about avoiding them.
 
Last edited:
scotty38 said:
Thanks again, do you think a 4070ti would fit the bill all round, if we disregard its pricing for now?
Click to expand...

4070 Ti would be fine, easily 60FPS in 4k with most settings high/ultra.

I have a 3070 and with cyberpunk as your example game. I'm getting ~ 60FPS at 1440p with highish settings, ray tracing and with DLSS (upscaling) at balanced.
At 4k the 3070 would really struggle to be playable unless the settings are cranked round down.

You can choose a lower resolution and let the monitor upscale, but that really depends how fussy you are and how well the monitor upscales.
I have a PS4 Pro and Xbox 1 that output 1080p to my 1440p monitor and have never really noticed any issues, though I don't really study the image quality that much.

Obviously the market feels the 4070 Ti is a little expensive... no other reason every single model in stock at OCUK
 
scotty38 said:
Thanks again, do you think a 4070ti would fit the bill all round, if we disregard its pricing for now?
Click to expand...

I'd honestly be tempted to just buy an RX 6600, which you can get for £240-£250. According to this video, it can play Cyberpunk at 1440p medium with FSR, or even 4K at a low setting and then if you get back into PC gaming (or your work stuff starts to use CUDA) then you can sell it on and buy a better card.
 
Thanks Decto much appreciated.

Tetras said:
I'd honestly be tempted to just buy an RX 6600, which you can get for £240-£250. According to this video, it can play Cyberpunk at 1440p medium with FSR, or even 4K at a low setting and then if you get back into PC gaming (or your work stuff starts to use CUDA) then you can sell it on and buy a better card.
Click to expand...

To be honest I'd not even considered this so probably not a bad shout. There is stuff already that will make use of CUDA, not huge amounts and I can certainly get by without it for now so I'll have a good look at this, thanks.
 
scotty38 said:
There is stuff already that will make use of CUDA, not huge amounts and I can certainly get by without it for now so I'll have a good look at this, thanks.
Click to expand...

Ah, I would say go for a 3060 instead then, but I think the cheapest 12GB model on OCUK is £340 and that's not 'dabble' money anymore.
 
scotty38 said:
Thanks again, do you think a 4070ti would fit the bill all round, if we disregard its pricing for now?
Click to expand...
4070 Ti would be great, and probably best value this generation besides the likely 4070 (which is supposed to launch in the next few months). Definitely worthy to be in that system, much more so than 3060 Ti/3070 due to how low the 8 GB of vram they have is.
 
Thanks @Tetras and @Poneros plenty to think about and appreciate the pointers. I suppose once the pain of paying for a 4070ti has faded that one would leave the fewest doubts and "I wish I'd done something else..." thoughts.
 
Hi all, just to update on this one I decided to get an AMD card as seemed to be the better choice cost wise. When PixInsight can use more of a GPU I'll then consider a change to Nvidia as at the moment the app is blazing fast compared with what I'm used to anyway.

I bought an RX 6750 XT by the way, I managed to stop the creep up the range at that point....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom