RTX3080Ti options...

[Preytheon]

Despite the RRP of £1050 for the 12Gb 3080Ti, it looks like this is still ~£2000 everywhere, so I'm casting around for alternatives.

I'm kinda okay with the ~£1100 price tags, but since my 6Gb GTX only cost £230 in 2019, I'm loathed to spend even £500 in 2022 for a graphics card with less than 10Gb RAM and no video encoding acceleration.

The only other card that comes close is the Radeon 6800XT and seems to be available for ~£1100... but then I'd lose out on CUDA cores for video encoding - the admittedly old software I use only seems to offer CUDA support and certainly all the initial reviews were pretty scathing about the ray tracing performance on the Radeon card - if I'm spending that much on a card, I'm expecting to be able to enable all the eye-candy at 1440P ~175Hz!

So my main questions are:
Do any video encoding apps have an AMD equivalent to CUDA acceleration?
Has the ray tracing performance on them improved much since the release reviews?

And more generally....
What are people's experiences of these cards?
Any other alternatives to put in the mix?

I'm guessing these are available and still at semi-sensible prices as people are in the same position as me: struggling to justify the £1000-ish price tag for a card with no CUDA support, DLSS and limited ray-tracing, despite the high raster-performance and 16Gb DDR6?

 

[tris179]

I know its not quite what you are after, but can you not get a FE3080 for half the price? That for me where my money is at when I can lay my hands on one

 

[Gavster]

Despite the RRP of £1050 for the 12Gb 3080Ti, it looks like this is still ~£2000 everywhere, so I'm casting around for alternatives.

If you install Telegram on you mobile phone, Google FE PartAlert and join the notifications you will get notifications of the drops to the FE seller. Log into your account of the FE seller if you have one, if not create one and stay logged in as this will speed up the checkout process. You should be able to get the 3080ti fairly easily as they around for a fair bit longer than the `gone in 60 seconds! 3080FE.
Sorry if you knew all this, but people are still asking so I just post it all up each time.
Good luck.

 

[Preytheon]

@Gavster No - I wasn't aware of any of that - so you're saying that there are sellers that are releasing the 3080FE near to the £650 MSRP / 3080Ti for ~£1050?!?

I'd be perfectly happy with either of those FE boards! The cooling design looks pretty solid and if I really get the urge to cool it further, I'd rate my chances at getting an aftermarket/waterblock for one of those ahead of most other boards!

 

[heatonpkmassive]

@Gavster No - I wasn't aware of any of that - so you're saying that there are sellers that are releasing the 3080FE near to the £650 MSRP / 3080Ti for ~£1050?!?

I'd be perfectly happy with either of those FE boards! The cooling design looks pretty solid and if I really get the urge to cool it further, I'd rate my chances at getting an aftermarket/waterblock for one of those ahead of most other boards!

Near to, £649 for a 3080, £1049 for the Ti, which is much less good value than the 3080 given the performance difference. Happened every 4 or 5 weeks for a while now.

 

[uscool]

@Gavster No - I wasn't aware of any of that - so you're saying that there are sellers that are releasing the 3080FE near to the £650 MSRP / 3080Ti for ~£1050?!?

I'd be perfectly happy with either of those FE boards! The cooling design looks pretty solid and if I really get the urge to cool it further, I'd rate my chances at getting an aftermarket/waterblock for one of those ahead of most other boards!

It's just one retailer Nvidia goes through for FE , drops pretty much happen every few weeks or longer as Gavster mentioned join that alert group to get alerted once they drop

They don't last long but 3080ti does stay longer recommend setting up everything on phone so ready to buy once you get alerted

 

[Poneros]

if I'm spending that much on a card, I'm expecting to be able to enable all the eye-candy at 1440P ~175Hz!

That won't happen with any card in the most demanding titles, so forget about it as a rule. Secondly it won't happen for you without a serious CPU upgrade also, but in some scenarios there's again also no CPU available fast enough for some games at such high framerates. Third, raytracing performance on AMD remains at a generally pathetic level for the games you'd most want it in. In most applications requiring specific acceleration the situation is even more dire for AMD unfortunately and it looks to be years away from when they'll figure it out (if).

For your needs it's clear an Nvidia GPU would be much better but as you've seen there's no escaping the prices. Your only options are to pony up so you get one immediately, or try to catch an FE drop, or just wait it out and hope prices improve later this year (it's looking likely) - and there's a new generation of GPUs launching in Q4 anyway.

 

[Gavster]

@Gavster No - I wasn't aware of any of that - so you're saying that there are sellers that are releasing the 3080FE near to the £650 MSRP / 3080Ti for ~£1050.

Yes, there is one retailer that seeks the Nvidia cards, they are the official retailer by we can't name them on here due to forum rules. If you go to the Nvidia website that lists the cards, the links take you to that retailer. When the telegram alerts come the links bypass the Nvidia sure and take you straight to the retailer.

 

[Preytheon]

That won't happen with any card in the most demanding titles, so forget about it as a rule. Secondly it won't happen for you without a serious CPU upgrade also, but in some scenarios there's again also no CPU available fast enough for some games at such high framerates. Third, raytracing performance on AMD remains at a generally pathetic level for the games you'd most want it in. In most applications requiring specific acceleration the situation is even more dire for AMD unfortunately and it looks to be years away from when they'll figure it out (if).

For your needs it's clear an Nvidia GPU would be much better but as you've seen there's no escaping the prices. Your only options are to pony up so you get one immediately, or try to catch an FE drop, or just wait it out and hope prices improve later this year (it's looking likely) - and there's a new generation of GPUs launching in Q4 anyway.

Thanks - more or less as expected.

That won't happen with any card in the most demanding titles

Don't worry - I'm not deluded that I'll maintain 175FPS lows in everything, even with a 3080Ti

it won't happen for you without a serious CPU upgrade also,

5900X is "dispatched" - I'll update the sig once it is installed

AMD remains at a generally pathetic level for the games you'd most want it in.

I assume you mean the GPUs not the CPUs - I know Alderlake is better in some cases and a 5800X3D would be the best on the AM4 platform, but 5900X hits the sweet spot for me in terms of reasonably efficient and plenty of cores on my current platform.

I'll hold on for an nVidia card (in whatever form) for now, even if I have to wait for Q4.... I can't complain too much as in some ways I got VERY lucky: I only got rid of my HD7970 in Dec 2019, just because I needed a stop-gap (with CUDA cores) and £230 for a GTX1660super was a nice upgrade at a bargain price - it now feels like an absolute steal!!

[your comment]

Understood on all accounts, thanks.

Thanks guys - I appreciate that it may feel that the thread went nowhere, but it really has helped me confirm my current "wait and see" approach and has given me an option to put at least one line in the water, rather than waiting for a fish to land on the deck of my boat

 

[Gavster]

FWIW I would still use Telegram and see if you land a card, I doubt that the next gen cards will be realistically available until next year, meantime it gives you time to try and land this generation, especially as we have no idea how Nvidia are going to prove the next generation.

 

[Preytheon]

FWIW I would still use Telegram and see if you land a card, I doubt that the next gen cards will be realistically available until next year, meantime it gives you time to try and land this generation, especially as we have no idea how Nvidia are going to prove the next generation.

Don't worry, mate, that'll be the "[fishing] line in the water"... if I get a bite, then great!

 

[leon4112]

I bought a Gigabyte 3080Ti OC for just over £1500 before xmas and hate to say it im really happy with it it was up for £1900 but had it price matched with another on the internet with one in stock and got refunded the differnce and sold me 2070 super to a friend to offset the cost a little.

 

[Poneros]

Thanks - more or less as expected.



Don't worry - I'm not deluded that I'll maintain 175FPS lows in everything, even with a 3080Ti


5900X is "dispatched" - I'll update the sig once it is installed



I assume you mean the GPUs not the CPUs - I know Alderlake is better in some cases and a 5800X3D would be the best on the AM4 platform, but 5900X hits the sweet spot for me in terms of reasonably efficient and plenty of cores on my current platform.

I'll hold on for an nVidia card (in whatever form) for now, even if I have to wait for Q4.... I can't complain too much as in some ways I got VERY lucky: I only got rid of my HD7970 in Dec 2019, just because I needed a stop-gap (with CUDA cores) and £230 for a GTX1660super was a nice upgrade at a bargain price - it now feels like an absolute steal!!


Understood on all accounts, thanks.

Thanks guys - I appreciate that it may feel that the thread went nowhere, but it really has helped me confirm my current "wait and see" approach and has given me an option to put at least one line in the water, rather than waiting for a fish to land on the deck of my boat

Yes, I was referring to RDNA 2 RT performance (have an RX 6800 myself). Enjoy the 5900x it's a cracking CPU!

 

[Preytheon]

FWIW I would still use Telegram and see if you land a card, I doubt that the next gen cards will be realistically available until next year, meantime it gives you time to try and land this generation, especially as we have no idea how Nvidia are going to prove the next generation.

I'm signed up to "FE Part Alert ES", which I think is the correct chat??

If that's the right one, as soon as I see any 3080/3080Ti FE's go on sale, I'll be on it.... I think I'm one of the rare people that would probably prefer a FE board over a 3rd party one - I'll either have it at the slightly more conservative stock speeds: still a monster of a card for 1440P gaming.... or in a few years, when it isn't worth more than a months' mortgage, then I'll water-block it and OC it a little more aggressively.

 

[Preytheon]

[duplicate]

 

[Gavster]

I'm signed up to "FE Part Alert ES", which I think is the correct chat??

If that's the right one, as soon as I see any 3080/3080Ti FE's go on sale, I'll be on it.... I think I'm one of the rare people that would probably prefer a FE board over a 3rd party one - I'll either have it at the slightly more conservative stock speeds: still a monster of a card for 1440P gaming.... or in a few years, when it isn't worth more than a months' mortgage, then I'll water-block it and OC it a little more aggressively.

Mine is Just FE PartAlert, should look like this.

 

[Preytheon]

If I search for that in Telegram, I can't even see the other group now that I've deleted it

[removed my own oversized screengrab]

 

[Gavster]

I couldn't find it in Telegram, I had to Google it and join it from there.

 

[Preytheon]

I couldn't find it in Telegram, I had to Google it and join it from there.

That's messed up, but a Google search worked:

telegram 3080 FE partalert

 

[Gavster]

You should be good to go sit tight and wait for the drops.