Upgrade to 3080 or 40xx?

Groog · 10 Mar 2023 at 08:50

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?

Groog · 10 Mar 2023 at 13:50

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.

Groog · 13 Mar 2023 at 11:51

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.

Groog · 14 Apr 2023 at 21:52

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.