When to upgrade from a 980ti??

[MurphyBrix]

1440p I game at. 980ti is struggling now. Going to have to wait what the future holds there's no way I'm paying 600-800 pounds on a 2080. I can't justify paying out that sort of money on a graphics card. Think I'd rather go down the console route and keep the PC for less demanding titles.

 

[Zernath]

1440p I game at. 980ti is struggling now. Going to have to wait what the future holds there's no way I'm paying 600-800 pounds on a 2080. I can't justify paying out that sort of money on a graphics card. Think I'd rather go down the console route and keep the PC for less demanding titles.

What about a Vega 64? You don't have to buy Nvidia, there are other options for 1440p gaming.

 

[BigBANGtheory]

The simple answer is we don't know yet because AMD and Nvidia don't want us to know yet.

Best guess is 18months from now in whatever form the 7nm Ampere takes, I think Navi will fall short on performance myself (for a 980Ti upgrade) but I could be wrong and indeed I hope I'm wrong.

What we need imho is Nvidia to start shedding its Pascal cards, if Navi can at least achieve that pressure we'll see some progress. Otherwise really a 2080Ti is your only real choice atm, a choice that comes with a painful $$$

 

[Casdawer]

What about a Vega 64? You don't have to buy Nvidia, there are other options for 1440p gaming.

I moved from a 980ti to a VEGA 56 which some would argue is a more of a sideways upgrade however I'm getting much better FPS in all my games plus I can now use FreeSync on my monitor which makes games even better.

If @OP can stretch to a VEGA 64, I'd highly recommend it.

 

[Zernath]

I moved from a 980ti to a VEGA 56 which some would argue is a more of a sideways upgrade however I'm getting much better FPS in all my games plus I can now use FreeSync on my monitor which makes games even better.

If @OP can stretch to a VEGA 64, I'd highly recommend it.

I went from a 1060 to a used 1070, and then ditched the 1070 for a Vega 56. It's only a slight improvement admittedly, but the deal was too good to pass up.

I'm now waiting to see where Vega 64 prices go in the next few months, and whether or not AMD come up with something new this year. I'd love a Radeon VII, but £650 for a GPU is pure technoherecy in my opinion!

 

[Marine-RX179]

I'm now waiting to see where Vega 64 prices go in the next few months, and whether or not AMD come up with something new this year. I'd love a Radeon VII, but £650 for a GPU is pure technoherecy in my opinion!

The main reason for the high pricing of the Radeom VII is the overkill amount of expensive HBM vram onboard.

For gaming, 8GB would still sufficient for 99% of the games out there even at 4K, but AMD can't except simple just drop the vram capacity down from 16GB down to 8GB as the architecture would not be able to do so due to the Radeon VII are essentially Instinct MI50 rebranded. Had the Radeon VII just came with 8GB HBM vram, the pricing could have possibly came in at around £550 rather than £650.

It is what it is I guess, and as much as I would like to get a card with more performance than my Vega64, I'm guessing the only realistic option is to wait for next gen.

 

[leon4112]

I am seriously thinking about buying a Vega 64 for £299 and selling my 980ti in replacement i have a x34 with gsync though but tbh im not willing to spend £600 for a 1080ti/2080 just to keep gsync and might just do it for a cheap upgrade for a year or so.

 

[wellibob]

I was, happily playing a 1440p ultrawide until summer last year with my 980ti. I was fortunate to get a 1080ti for £560 just as RTX range first launched so the 980ti was retired (still use it in another pc) .

 

[WantoN]

Second hand 1080 or 1080ti imo, as long as you can get a decent price. Since RTX second hand has been a bit silly.

I appreciate you can’t access it yet, but I got a G1 Gaming 1080 off the MM for £330, then picked up a second hand water block. I get about 2140Mhz stable out of it. The improvement over my 980 is huge (for some reference, at stock the 1080 is about 25% faster than the 980ti iirc). My WC 1080 runs 3440x1440 surpisingly well; much better than I’d hoped, and I couldn’t be happier. I won’t upgrade until there’s a >35% performance increase, offered at a good price, by someone other than NV.

Alternatively the 1080ti trades blows with the 2080, though it doesn’t have the (imo useless) RTX features. If you can get one for a good price it’s a better option than the 2080, and doesn’t encourage the current price insanity.

Frankly GPU prices and performance progression are an absolute joke at the moment. The stagnation is very reminiscent of the pre-Ryzen CPU market.

I’m hoping AMD (or Intel) cause a similar shake up in the GPU sector, and whilst I hope it’s Navi that does it, I have my doubts. I think it’ll be at least a year (or two) before we’re over the hump.

My decision to buy second hand was driven partly by the excellent price to performance level of a 1080 for £330, and partly by the fact that I couldn’t contribute to our current problem; I think it’s pretty hypocritical to decry a market situation and then add to it by buying overpriced products.

 

[Apone70]

1440p I game at. 980ti is struggling now. Going to have to wait what the future holds there's no way I'm paying 600-800 pounds on a 2080. I can't justify paying out that sort of money on a graphics card. Think I'd rather go down the console route and keep the PC for less demanding titles.

1080ti or 2080 is perfect for 1440p mate if you have a 144hz monitor. What about a Vega 64?

 

[RedMogg]

I recently upgraded from an SLI 580GTX setup (bought Nov 2011) and actually considered buying a 980Ti...

I could have saved myself the better part of £2k by not buying a whole new Ryzen system & 2080Ti, but my reasoning was "It's only going to get more expensive and I'll still need to upgrade sooner or later..."

 

[JonnyG1982]

I have a gtx980ti & like many feel nothing worth upgrading to. I liked the boost to a gtx1080ti but couldn't justify the price at the time & decided to skip & wait. I should be looking at rtx2080ti for £650-800 now or gtx1080ti for £350ish. Now we have both at £1000+. Disgraceful! There is no sensible upgrade path. So the waiting game continues. I'm fairness my gtx980ti seems to run everything fine at 1440p anyways. Just worried with some idiots supporting these prices they maybe here to stay or worsen.

 

[subbytna]

I have a gtx980ti & like many feel nothing worth upgrading to. I liked the boost to a gtx1080ti but couldn't justify the price at the time & decided to skip & wait. I should be looking at rtx2080ti for £650-800 now or gtx1080ti for £350ish. Now we have both at £1000+. Disgraceful! There is no sensible upgrade path. So the waiting game continues. I'm fairness my gtx980ti seems to run everything fine at 1440p anyways. Just worried with some idiots supporting these prices they maybe here to stay or worsen.

It's not going to get any better price wise, Nvidia saw with the very first TITAN, that the sheeple would pay £1k for a GPU. Prices are here to stay....

 

[leon4112]

I have a gtx980ti & like many feel nothing worth upgrading to. I liked the boost to a gtx1080ti but couldn't justify the price at the time & decided to skip & wait. I should be looking at rtx2080ti for £650-800 now or gtx1080ti for £350ish. Now we have both at £1000+. Disgraceful! There is no sensible upgrade path. So the waiting game continues. I'm fairness my gtx980ti seems to run everything fine at 1440p anyways. Just worried with some idiots supporting these prices they maybe here to stay or worsen.

I think the best bet after looking around at reviews and such is a 2070 or a vega64 in the £300-400 bracket i've seen some 2070s at £390 which oc is near 1080ti levels so i might just go for that with a gsync screen and have done with it for 18months or so.

 

[fizzy]

I finally caved and upgraded from my MSI 980ti Gaming to a Radeon VII. Bit of an impulse buy to be fair, and something new to tinker with. I don't have a GSync monitor so not tied into nvidia.

I had a couple of AMD 7970's before getting the 980ti pretty much on launch, so don't upgrade too often.

So far very happy with it.

 

[GloriousMess]

I'm in the same boat, in that I have a 980ti with a decent CPU (6700K) and still wouldn't mind upgrading. I've been looking at second hand 1080ti cards on [name of popular online auction location] and to be honest, they're a little pricey still. Some types of 1080ti cards are also just not very good from what I've read - stories of horrible noise, coil whine, overheating - and I'd rather not spend ~£500 and inherit those problems.

Unless I can get a bargain I suppose I'm playing the waiting game. I'd love to get an Aorus AD27QD (144hz IPS freesync monitor) to go with a new graphics card too.

 

[MurphyBrix]

I have a G-SYNC monitor so going over to AM
D isn't really an option. The 500 odd pound I paid nearly 4 years ago was a big chunk of money for a graphics card for me, although over 4 years and ill have it longer the way things are going I think that's pretty good value.

Surpose the only option is to wait another 4 years lol and hope the cards on sale for around that price are worth it for the performance increase. I think I started off gaming at 1440p to early because at 1080p the card would be still more than capable. I'm just finding at 1440p the 980ti is struggling in newer titles at more than medium settings. I honestly don't know how people game at 1080p now, when Ive switched in games to have a look they look horrendous.

 

[Skynet5]

I upgraded to a 1080ti back in September from a 980ti. Cost 620 from Amazon for an Aorus.

Decent upgrade from a 980ti, but I wouldn't upgrade now.

1080ti are too expensive now and new cards don't sit right with me personally.

I'd wait out

 

[WantoN]

1080ti is minimum for ultrawide imo

I’m afraid I disagree. While I patiently waited for the right parts to appear on the MM, I ran my 980 (non-ti) at 3440x1440 and the experience was perfectly fine.

I now run my x34p on a 1080 (non-ti), and it’s awesome; no drops or stutters, and settings are always high or ultra, and I sit at around 100fps. I might need to tweak a setting or two on some titles, but that’s it. The card is under water and I’m pushing it hard, but it was still great at stock with the factory cooler.

I suppose we all have different thresholds of ‘acceptable’. Hell, I played quite a bit of Shadow Warrior 2 on my XPS15 with a 1050; loved it.

Upgrade when your frame rate is too low.
There's no point in upgrading if you still have a very good frame rate. Also it's stupid to wait if you're framerate is too low. The same applies to any GPU. It's simple.

I couldn’t agree more, except for the ‘stupid’ part; there are many valid reasons why someone might not be able to upgrade to a better GPU. Not everyone has a few hundred quid to drop on what is essentially a fun pastime. People have bills, families and responsibilities, and for most of us ‘moar frames!’ is at the bottom of our priority list.

I would imagine there are plenty of people here who upgrade for fun rather than necessity, and lots of people who upgrade the moment performance drops below their ‘acceptable’ threshold. But there’s probably many others who either can’t, or won’t, spend the money required for a new GPU in 2019.

If I’m being honest, the market seems to have lost its ****ing mind; people pre-ordered a consumer card that cost £1,200, with only 30% more performance than a 1080ti. I couldn’t encourage the pricing of Intel or Nvidia at the time, so I built my machine almost entirely from the MM and parts from my old machine.

 

[GloriousMess]

Surpose the only option is to wait another 4 years lol and hope the cards on sale for around that price are worth it for the performance increase.

Hah, I don't think you'll need to wait that long, but you will most likely have to wait for the next big thing on the market before 980ti + 50% performance becomes affordable. If and when that happens I can see price drops happening in the new market as well as second-hand, although I happily admit that's just guesswork.