Upgrade to 3080 or 40xx?

Groog

Groog

Groog

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I reckon I'm looking for a graphics card upgrade at the moment, but thought it would be worth sense checking.

My system is showing its age a bit now, but still in good working order:
6700k with a mild overclock
GTX 1080
16 GB RAM
850 W PSU

I have a 4k monitor and cranking quality settings down to let the 1080 handle 4k just isn't cutting it any more.
I play a mix of online FPS (BF etc) and single player titles.

Is a 3080 (perhaps used) a good buy just now? I reckon I expect some CPU bottlenecking, but also a pretty notable bump in FPS as well.
My gut feel is that going for a 40xx series card is overkill (and far too expensive) and the rest of the system won't let me get decent value out of it.

Any suggestions?
 
AMD cards often perform better with older CPUs so I'd consider a 6800 or 6800 XT, if it was me.

How long will it be until you upgrade the cpu?
 
Good suggestion, I hadn't really considered AMD graphics cards. I guess I was keen to take advantage DLSS assuming it is still superior to FSR?

I don't see me upgrading the whole system for at least 2-3 more years. When I do I'll likely do an entire new build.
 
My 3080 absolutely smashes 1440p max setting bits. the 3080 is better than a 6800xt, but the 6800xt costs less
Both are well upto 4k but your cpu will hold both back
 
Groog said:
I guess I was keen to take advantage DLSS assuming it is still superior to FSR?
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I don't know, I only watch the roundups on hardware unboxed.

The reason I suggest it (for CPU reasons), is their scaling videos like these: 1, 2. You can see that, with a weaker CPU, a 6950 XT can actually beat a 4090, since there's less driver overhead.
 
Groog said:
6700k with a mild overclock
Click to expand...
Even at 4K this cpu will hold things back. I used it with 3080 for a short time, titles like MSFS2020 benefitted massively with a cpu upgrade beyond 4 cores, Cyberpunk, Battlefield etc improved but not as much.
Skylake was great with my 1070, not with 3080. Not what you want to hear budget-wise i'm sure!
 
turbot1984 said:
Even at 4K this cpu will hold things back. I used it with 3080 for a short time, titles like MSFS2020 benefitted massively with a cpu upgrade beyond 4 cores, Cyberpunk, Battlefield etc improved but not as much.
Skylake was great with my 1070, not with 3080. Not what you want to hear budget-wise i'm sure!
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Sure, but like always, he will benefit more immediately @ 4k from a GPU upgrade than CPU

But at the end of the day, trying to get a 2017'ish system to work well at 4k is gonna be a tall task

I have a 4080 and timespy says I'm well near the limits of the silicon lottery and I find 4k to be intimidating in a lot of titles, I wish the 4090 had been in stock when I was in the market for 2 damn months
 
kute said:
Sure, but like always, he will benefit more immediately @ 4k from a GPU upgrade than CPU

But at the end of the day, trying to get a 2017'ish system to work well at 4k is gonna be a tall task

I have a 4080 and timespy says I'm well near the limits of the silicon lottery and I find 4k to be intimidating in a lot of titles, I wish the 4090 had been in stock when I was in the market for 2 damn months
Click to expand...

Agree, but @Groog is keeping Skylake for 2-3 more years! That 4 core is already a problem, in 2025 it won't be a bottleneck but a brick wall.
 
I have a very similar system to OP except I'm on a new 1440p 144hz monitor. No plan to change anything but I will be keen to see what the op does.
 
turbot1984 said:
Agree, but @Groog is keeping Skylake for 2-3 more years! That 4 core is already a problem, in 2025 it won't be a bottleneck but a brick wall.
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Yea definitely. But say, 1080 to 4080 is quadrupling in power. Going from 6700k to 13600k is like 35%. I have a feeling he isn't going to buy anything on par with even say a 3070, IDK if he'll even max that 6700k out

Though getting into a 13600k can probly be done for like 600 bucks, but a good ass new GPU is gonna be double that. It's a mess

If I was on a "budget", I'd accept that if I want to play new games @ 4k, I'm gonna have to spend like 1200, with half of that going to a used 3080 or something, which still won't do 4k in a lot of new games
 
With current gpu pricing such a mess then I'd say to go with a 6700XT which will be a 50% boost over your 1080 and will be less likely to bottleneck the CPU, you could probably do the upgrade for 150 quid net cost.
 
Joxeon said:
With current gpu pricing such a mess then I'd say to go with a 6700XT which will be a 50% boost over your 1080 and will be less likely to bottleneck the CPU, you could probably do the upgrade for 150 quid net cost.
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he's trying to fill a 4k screen. I had a 6700xt in the fleet and it was a great card, but I'd go 6800xt minimum to try and fill that monitor
 
kute said:
he's trying to fill a 4k screen. I had a 6700xt in the fleet and it was a great card, but I'd go 6800xt minimum to try and fill that monitor
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I doubt he'll see much additional benefit though unless he also upgrades the CPU.
 
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3080 or AMD equivalent is fine at 1440p but 4k will stretch it, your CPU may hold it back and see stutters or quite low 1%
You also need to consider 32Gb RAM on your system
Other considerations is 3080 (base) has 10Gb vRam, you may want to get something with more. AMD cards tens to have more vRam
 
Hi all, thanks for the interest.
I'm very aware that my 6700K will bottleneck a newer GPU. I'm looking for what gets me the best value for an improvement in FPS. Ideally would want to use high settings or above, but I'm not that precious about it.
A while ago a friend bought an RTX 3090 which we tried in my computer and the difference in performance was huge across the few games we tried, despite the CPU. Based on that and the discussion above I still think a GPU upgrade is the the best value thing to do just now.

I monitored my system whilst playing BF2042, and it is CPU bottlenecked at 1080p, GPU bottlenecked at 4K. At 4K the CPU is sitting at ~85% utilisation, so clearly not a lot of spare performance there.

It looks like you can get a second hand 3080 for ~£550-600 right now. 6800 XT seems to be ~£600 new or ~£500 used.
The additional VRAM on a 6800 XT is interesting, should allow for better textures.
From what I can tell, FSR 2 vs DLSS 2 are not too dissimilar so I don't think that should influence my decision.
I've never tried ray tracing, and would clearly need a beefier system for that if I wanted to. I'm pretty sure it adds a big CPU load?

I'll likely wait for pay day before I actually buy something, so still got some time to figure out what to choose.
 
So I was poised to grab a second hand 3080 or 6800XT, but then the 4070 was about to be released... so I got one of them for £600. About a 3080 in performance, more power efficient, newer features, warranty etc.

I did some not particularly scientific benchmarks before and after that I'll summarise here for anyone who it might help.

System:
  • i7 6700K
  • 15 GB DDR4
  • 750 W PSU
  • Z170 motherboard
  • Dark Rock Pro 3 CPU cooler
  • GTX 1080 (original graphics card)

3DMark
1080p, 1.3x score increase
1440p, 1.6x score increase
2160p, 1.6x score increase

Cyberpunk 2077 in game benchmark, high, no DLSS (compared against original GTX 1080 FPS)
1080p, 1.55x FPS increase to 87 FPS
2160p, 2.6x increase to 42 FPS

Cyberpunk 2077 in game benchmark, high, DLSS quality (compared against original GTX 1080 FPS)
1080p, 1.6x FPS increase to 90 FPS
2160p, 4.4x increase to 71 FPS

Cyberpunk 2077 in game benchmark, high, DLSS quality, frame generation (compared against original GTX 1080 FPS)
1080p, 3x FPS increase to 167 FPS
2160p, 5.1x increase to 82 FPS
(I'm very aware frame generation "FPS" isn't real FPS, just reporting what the benchmark told me)

Cyberpunk 2077 in game benchmark, RT Ultra
2160p, 66 FPS
(Will likely not keep RT on!)

BF2042 playing a 64 player round and eyeballing the FPS on MSI afterburner, low settings, no DLSS (compared against original GTX 1080 FPS)
1080p, 1.05x FPS increase to 95 FPS
2160p, 2.1x increase to 95 FPS

BF2042 playing a 64 player round and eyeballing the FPS on MSI afterburner, low settings, DLSS performance (compared against original GTX 1080 FPS)
Pretty much the same as having no DLSS.


So basically, I have moved up to being able to easily achieve 4K 60 FPS in these games.
I spent some time tweaking my BF2042 settings and now have much much higher visual fidelity and sit at about 90-100 FPS. I found that DLSS made a difference once the settings were turned up.

I definitely have CPU bottleneck, but I'm very happy with the upgrade as I can play the games I want at my monitor's native resolution. I also have a clear path for a future CPU/motherboard/RAM upgrade.

Hope this helps someone out there.
 
Groog said:
Hope this helps someone out there.
Click to expand...

Very interesting benchmarks, always curious how old CPUs handle these cards. Looks like overall you've done pretty well, especially at 4K and when you upgrade the CPU it should be another nice boost in some games without changing card :)
 
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