Crazy amount of GPUs ?

Pladio

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I was thinking of maybe (finally) building my own desktop after having gamed on laptops my entire life.
I know most people would say that's good, but I had a quick look at NewEgg GPUs and it's maddening.

I filtered on 1080s and there are 25 of them. How do you pick between all of these ? I thought they were all the same.

https://www.newegg.com/global/uk/Pr...x?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100196022 601194948

EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0, 08G-P4-6286-KR, 8GB GDDR5X, RGB LED, 10CM FAN,
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC GAMING ACX 3.0, 08G-P4-6183-KR, 8GB GDDR5X, LED, DX12 OSD Support
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 Mini, ZT-P10800H-10P, 8GB GDDR5X IceStorm Cooling, Dual Fans, 90mm Pressure

This is very confusing to a layman such as myself :(

Is there any actual difference in performance ? Or do they use different ports to hook into, so that I need to be careful with which MB I would want to use.

Note that this is more of a general question, as I am not planning to buy until next year...
 
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Some are factory overclocked more than others.
Some have different cooling solutions.
Some may have varying amounts of onboard memory.

Most of the time you should be able to spot the differences via the specifications tab in the description. And always read the reviews!
 
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There are differences but they tend to be minor. Unless you are running 4k screen(s); i would go with the most reliable cheapest option. Btw if you are not running 4k you might be able to save a bit and go with something like a 1070.
 
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I would choose the most silent one. I have an evga acx 1070, it (and many others) shut down The fans completely below a threshold temperature, making it completely silent during non-gaming tasks. The FE-edition cards dont have that option I think. Definitly something to thinkabout
 
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As several others said: the differences are small. I haven't heard of a single 1080 card on the market which could be called rubbish. The cheapest card is probably ca. 5% slower than the more expensive cards with factory overclocking, it has less room for more overclocking by hand, and it's not silent without load and a bit louder than the rest under load. Apart from that such a card will deliver what nVidia promised and get the job done.
The key question you should ask yourself are:
How silent should the card be? (medium = cheap; pretty silent; no noise at all even under load= very expensive)
Do you want to overclock by hand?
Do you need long warranty? A few manufacturers offer extended warranty up to 5 or even 10 years.
Do the last few % performance really matter?

examining every card on the market isn't worth the effort. Just collect a couple of recommendations, read reviews and make a decision.
 
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Lucky bum, @Pladio;. Wish I could do the same. :(

That said, there are a million of these cards indeed, but I've had great success with EVGA. They overclock them slightly (in a safe way) and I've never had so much as a hiccup with my GTX 970. Not even a slight rise in temp ever either.

Probably can't go wrong with any of them. I would just pick one and then maybe read a quick user review and go with it. If you're buying new you should be covered by a warranty anyway, so...
 
If you are concern about warranty then check which company does a good job honoring warranty. I haven't looked in a while but last time I did gigabyte was good and evga was not as good as it used to be but still very good (i'm talking about if you have to contact the company and expect service). There is a list somewhere that shows RECENT results (recent as in the last couple of years). It changes year from year. I think MSI was moving up but cant' remember the exact order and it has likely changed since i last look. Vaguely i remember xfx being ok - lots of people complain about asus. I personally have been happy with all of them but for gpu i avoid asus and evga is usually not cheap (I tend to go cheap since gpu change every 2 to 4 years).
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Of course none of this is really relevant if you are going to deal with the store (some stores are pretty good some are not)
 
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Thanks everyone.
So in summary, it seems there are differences, so I should not go for the cheapest available, but probably should not bother with the most expensive ones unless I really care about overclocking and silent gaming.

I think I will need your help as I am planning to build my first own desktop for the first time, so I will be back for advice next year August-September :)

Appreciate it.
 
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By that time 1080 will most probably be outclassed by new Volta cards. ;)
https://www.pcgamesn.com/nvidia-volta-performance

Yea, I don't believe that percentage gain will be the same while running real life software, but still.
Volta cards were rumored for end of next year - it's possible we see them a bit earlier due to Intel and AMD becoming "best friends" over GPUs recently.

Keep in mind that no overpowered GPU will make a difference in cases of horribly written code - GPU will idle while your CPU is being hammered to death for no reason. For example, my GTX 1070 is chillin' and doing almost nothing while all 4 CPU cores are constantly sweating on 100% in ACO.
 
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By that time 1080 will most probably be outclassed by new Volta cards. ;)
https://www.pcgamesn.com/nvidia-volta-performance

Yea, I don't believe that percentage gain will be the same while running real life software, but still.
Volta cards were rumored for end of next year - it's possible we see them a bit earlier due to Intel and AMD becoming "best friends" over GPUs recently.

Keep in mind that no overpowered GPU will make a difference in cases of horribly written code - GPU will idle while your CPU is being hammered to death for no reason. For example, my GTX 1070 is chillin' and doing almost nothing while all 4 CPU cores are constantly sweating on 100% in ACO.

Yeah, the 10xx series might not be the right one next year, but I was just having a look and this scared me.

In the end I think I would need all of the following:
- Futureproof Motherboard
- Good CPU - I believe these last quite well. My laptop CPU is rarely used at 100% and it's a i7-4700MQ, so 4 gens old
- GPU in the 1060ti-80 range
- 500GB SSD (I have another 250GB SSD I could as additional space and another 500GB HDD as well)
- Case with space for 3 hard drives, enough space to remain relatively cool
- Power, I have no clue how much I will need, but I assume 700W probably to run all of this.

I then also would likely buy a new keyboard and a new monitor too.

I have no clue how much all of this would cost, but it sounds like it would be a lot :D
 
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I think "futureproof" is overrated. ;) By the time you want a new CPU, it exclusively comes for a new socket and a faster RAM standard has taken over. My advice would be to buy what you need now, but only buy solid mainstream components. Then you replace the graphics card a couple of years down the line to double your graphics performance. I don't see CPUs with many cores, as they have come out this year, become obsolete anytime soon. These pieces have enormous reserves, and 90+% of the games are graphics-limited.
 
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Waiting to "futureproof", to me, always seems like people waiting just to wait. Buy now, if you want to upgrade later you can sell the old components and get good prices for them. There's always someone interested in non-cutting edge components and the price for them remains decent even when new and better stuff is out.

So just pick a time when you want to buy and go in. :)
 
Waiting to "futureproof", to me, always seems like people waiting just to wait. Buy now, if you want to upgrade later you can sell the old components and get good prices for them. There's always someone interested in non-cutting edge components and the price for them remains decent even when new and better stuff is out.

So just pick a time when you want to buy and go in. :)

Yeah, but I don't see the point in buying something that won't even allow me to upgrade.
I don't want to buy an old motherboard which won't allow me to upgrade to the next GPU when that one stops working well enough for example.

I don't mean futureproof for 20 years, but enough so I do not need to replace every single part in 4 years.
Otherwise, I may as well just buy a laptop again.
 
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Yeah, but I don't see the point in buying something that won't even allow me to upgrade.
I don't want to buy an old motherboard which won't allow me to upgrade to the next GPU when that one stops working well enough for example.

I don't mean futureproof for 20 years, but enough so I do not need to replace every single part in 4 years.
Otherwise, I may as well just buy a laptop again.

Whatever your budget is, buy the best components in that range you can. It's that simple, to me at least.

The more you spend, the more "futureproofed" your stuff will be. The more you spend on a motherboard the more slots it will have for upgrades, etc.. And nothing will become obsolete instantly to where you can't replace it, because someone in the future will always want your old components for their own purposes, so you can flip those if need be. Worst case you sell an old component and put the money towards a new upgrade.

It really comes down to what your budget is. Also, if you look on Ebay you can get custom built rigs where you select the parts and they build it for you, ship it to you, etc.. Of course you have to research who you buy from but there are quality companies that operate there. A company from Ohio called Adamant built mine and I love it. It was well-built, quality components, great customer support and very reasonable prices on the components. Also has a 3 year parts AND labor warranty. So you could go that route too.

IMO it just comes down to how much you're willing to spend. More money = more futureproofing.
 
How about no.

As usual, I'll take me as example.
A couple of years ago I didn't buy 4K monitor - I bought, let's call it cheap, 144Hz capable monitor, 1080p ofc. Is it not futureproof? To you perhaps it's obsolete for a decade already, to me it's a thing I don't plan to replace soon unless it farts. In which case I still won't buy 4K monitor.

I had to upgrade my GPU. And then, eager and without patience, my paws went on GTX 1070. I didn't wait for AMD's cards and didn't wait for GTX 1060. What happened? The bloody thing is so overpowered it doesn't even sweat while running highly demanding GPU products. I could have saved me at least $100 (and buy moar games!) if I just waited a month.

SSD? Sure, benchmarks will show you some are faster than others. And are automatically more expensive.
In reality however you can't notice the speed difference at all and it basically means buying the cheapest ones is the best option (of course longer the warranty, the better).

CPU? Yeah, those new hexacores from both AMD and Intel are "I want those and nothing else". But wait, I have a rather old i5, 4670K, and it never failed me nor I ever felt it became so weak - I see no need to "retire" it.
Most notably, I yell here on the forum over and over, don't buy i7, don't buy i7, don't listen to advertisers. And everyone is ignoring it.
Meanwhile both me with my i5 and owners of i7 have the same problem with rubbish code in ACO where the bloody game hammers the CPU equally. Such a futureproof choice.

It was also me very excited over vulkan and dx12. I did post that I can't wait the day we'll have one nvidia card and one AMD card inside the rig where a product will use best of both worlds paralelly.
Sadly just like VR, both vulkan and dx12 are still not a thing. Honestly, if I bought two cards back then, I'd feel stupid today.

So I say, be smart.
Don't buy yourself an airplane if you won't fly it.
 
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Well, I've only ever bought a single video card that I would consider truly bad - which was an AMD Radeon HD 6990. A terrible, terrible card.

But I've owned dozens of cards - of a large variety of brands, and they've all been fine, really. The cheaper brands, too.

Performance differences should be evident from the clock frequence of the GPU and memory - but in most cases it's pretty trivial.

It depends on your level of enthusiasm, I guess. If you really want that extra 5-10% - then by all means, go for the specialised versions.

The last few years, I've been sticking with Gigabyte and MSI - because my motherboards have been of the same brands. I tend to stick with the same brands when building stuff to "ensure" compatibility.

I doubt it's really necessary though. Times have changed when it comes to building your own PC. It used to be quite the nightmare unless you REALLY knew what you were doing, but I'd say it's easy these days, so long as you're reasonably informed about interface standards and what not.

I mean, the last couple of PCs I've built from scratch have been bootable with the same Windows installation as the previous build. That was absolutely unheard of in the past :)
 
@joxer;, My point is - buy the best components you can afford and don't worry about "futureproofing". If you can afford a 1070 and it fits in your budget, get it. If it's too expensive or over budget, get the next best card you can afford.

That's how I built my PC a year and some change ago and it's been great. Now I'm at a point where I can upgrade the GTX 970 (hopefully to a 1070 or 1080) and not really miss a beat as all my other components are good, too (SSD, 16mb ram, i5 4690 etc. etc..)

If you're loaded and money isn't an issue, buy top shelf everything. Otherwise just buy the best you can afford. :)
 
The intarwebs are reporting / semi-speculating today that it looks like nVidia is going to skip the Volta generation (12 nm) for their gaming chips. Instead they're jumping to something smaller they label Ampere. The Ampere chips should start production once the exclusive period of TSMC's 10 nm process is over. This should be the in Q2/2018. At the moment all 10 nm resources are used for SoCs for Apple and Samsung.
That's good news for the end customer. A full process shrink from 16 nm to 10 nm allows for a higher performance gain.
 
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