this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Thing is: there is always the "next better thing" around the corner. That's what progress is about. The only thing you can do is choose the best available option for you when you need new hardware and be done with it until you need another upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Exactly. The best time to buy a graphics card is never

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

really my rule of thumb has always been when it's a significant upgrade.

for a long time i didn't really upgrade until it was a 4x increase over my old. certain exceptions were occasionally made. nowadays i'm a bit more opportunistic in my upgrades. but i still seek out 'meaningful' upgrades. upgrades that are a decent jump over the old. typically 50% improvement in performance, or upgrades i can get for really cheap.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

4x…? Even in older cards that’s more than a decade between cards.

A 4080 is only 2.5x as powerful as a 1080ti, those are 5 years apart.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

What's wrong with upgrading once every 5-10 years? Not everyone plays the latest games on 4k Ultra

Admittedly 4x is a bit steep, more like 3-4x

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It depends on what you need. I think usually you can get the best bang for buck by buying the now previous generation when the new one is released.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Yup just picked up a whole PC with rtx3090 for $800.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Graphics card. Not even once.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah it's always that: "I want to buy the new shiny thing! But it's expensive, so I'll wait for a while for its price to come down." You wait for a while, the price comes down, you buy the new shiny thing and then comes out the newest shiny thing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yep. There will always be "just wait N months and there will be the bestest thing that beats the old bestest thing". You are guaranteed to get buyers remorse when shopping for hardware. Just buy what best suits you or needs and budget at the time you decided is the best.time for you (or at the time your old component bites the dust) and then stop looking at any development on those components for at least a year. Just ignore any deals, new releases, whatever and be happy with the component you bought.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I bought a 1080 for my last PC build, downloaded the driver installer and ran the setup. There were ads in the setup for the 2k series that had launched the day before. FML

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Yep. I bought a 4080 just a few weeks ago. Now there is ads for the refresh all over... Thing is: you card didn't get any worse. You thought the card was a good value proposition for you when you bought it and it hasn't lost any of that.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm so sick of Nvidia's bullshit. My next system will be AMD just out of spite. That's goes for processors as well

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

That’s exactly why I’ve been using AMD for the past 2 years. Fuck Nvidia

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

only thing keeping me is CUDA and there's no replacement for it. I know AMD has I-forgot-what-it's-called but it is not a realistic option for many machine learning tasks.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I went with an AM5 and an Intel Arc GPU. Quite satisfied, the GPU is doing great and didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How is the stability in modern games? I know the drivers are way better now but more samples is always great.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Like, new releases? I don’t really play many new games.

Had Baldur’s Gate III crash once, and that’s the newest title I’ve played.

Other than that I play Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, The Sims and Elden Ring, never had any issues.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Considering the price of a 4070 vs the 7800XT, the 4070 makes a lot more sense where I live.

But yes, the way AMD makes their software open to use (FSR, FreeSync) and they put DisplayPort 2.1 on their cards, they create a lot of goodwill for me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The only thing giving me pause about ATI cards is their ray tracing is allegedly visibly worse. They say next gen will be much better, but we shall see. I love my current non ray tracing card, an rx590, but she's getting a bit long in the tooth for some games.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

ATI

"Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time"

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not since, oh before most of Lemmy was born. I'm old enough to remember when Nvidia were the anti-monopoly good guys fighting the evil Voodoo stranglehold on the industry. You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

yeah, that's pretty much why I stopped buying Nvidia after GTX 1080. Cuda was bad in terms of their practice, but not that impactful since OpenCL etc can still tune and work properly with similar performance, just software developer/researcher love free support/R&D/money to progress their goal. They are willing to be the minions which I can't ask them to not take the free money. But RTX and then tensor core is where I draw the line, since their patent and implementation will have actual harm in computer graphic and AI research space but I guess it was a bit too late. We are already seeing the results and Nvidia is making banks with that advantage. They are essentially just applying the Intel playbook but doing it slightly different, they don't buy the OEM vendors, they "invest" software developers/researcher to use their closed tech. Now everyone is paying the premium if you buy RTX/AI chips from Nvidia and the capital boom from AI will make the gap hard to close for AMD. After all, R&D requires lots of money.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have to admit I still tend to call them that, too. Oldttimers I guess.

The first GPU I remember being excited to pop into my computer and run was a Matrox G400 Max. Damn I'm old.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I would have been so jealous. Being able to click "3d acceleration" felt so good when I finally upgraded. But I was 12, so my dad was in charge of pc parts. Luckily he was kind of techy, so we got there. Being able to run Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II with max settings is a day I'll never forget for some reason, lol.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

i saw a 4080 on amazon for 1200, shits crazy

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All three cards are rumored to come with the same memory configuration as their base models...

Sigh.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Give us more fucking vram you dicks.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Major refresh means what nowadays? 7 instead of 4 percent gains compared to the previous generation?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The article speculates a 5% gain for the 4080 super but a 22% gain for the 4070 super which makes sense because the base 4070 was really disappointing compared to the 3070.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For anything ML related, having the additional memory is worth the investment, as it allows for larger models.

That said, at these prices it raises the question if it is more sensible to just throw money at GCP or AWS for their GPU node time.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

As a Linux gamer, this really wasn't on the cards anyway

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

AMD is a better decision, but my nVidia works great with Linux, but I'm on OpenSUSE and nVidia hosts their own OpenSUSE drivers so it works out of the get go once you add the nVidia repo

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

freezes

stands there with my credit card in my hand while the cashier stares at me awkwardly

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It really is a risky bet to make.

I doubt full price RTX 4080 SUPER upgrade will worth it over a discounted regular RTX 4080.

SUPER upgrades never crossed the +10%

I’d rather wait for the Ti version

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