Best Use of $600 - RTX 2070?

Oldie

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My son (17) is in the process of building his own rig and wanted to do it with money he's earned on his own. He's got most of the other components nailed down but we've been going back and forth on the video card situation. He's got a budget of about $600, which he could use to grab an RTX 2070 and maybe have a bit to spare. I've been following the reviews and know about the Ray Tracing debacle with BF5 but aside from that do you guys think he'll see a good return on investment or would you get something else?

He'll be pairing it with an I7-9700k and some 3000Mhz RAM on an MSI MPG Pro Carbon.
 
There was an ebay Newegg deal the other day, as well as other times, for $600 on the RTX 2080 . See if ebay runs another coupon soon. The 2070 is frequently around 450 to 500 now too.
 
Get a 1080 TI used for around $450 to $500. Best performance for that price.

With all of the mining going on, isn't used a bit risky now days?
 
Sticking with a 1080p for the moment, but would like to do 4k at some point. He's aware that will take another GPU investment.

I mean did he get a monitor with adaptive sync or Gsync? . And is the monitor a 60Hz one or 120hz or 144hz?

Maybe he should put some of the money by and just get a 1060 or 580/590 for the moment and upgrade when he decides to move to 4K. The 6B 1060's can be got from around $200 now I think, and a good Sapphire Nitro + 590 can be bought for $259 and come with 3 free games. Both cards will be plenty powerful for 1080p and it will give him over $300 to put towards his next upgrade. With 7nm coming, that would be the way I would go.

Unless his heart is set on getting Ray Tracing, and if it is then if he can get the 2070 for around $500 or the 2080 for around $600 that's the way to go.

But, seriously consider getting one of the less powerful cards and saving the money until he does actually make the jump to 4K.
 
With all of the mining going on, isn't used a bit risky now days?
Nah. Unless the miner was a total n00b, it's arguably less stressful on the hardware than gaming use, because the card got up to a relatively low temperature and stayed there for long periods of time. One could argue that maybe the fans see more wear, but my experience says fan failures are mostly random, and probably have more to do with defective fans than abuse.

I think 17 year old RazorWind would have been happiest with a 2070. There are benefits to having the current generation architecture that transcend just what the benchmarks say, such as ongoing driver development.

Edit: Vega64 with a FreeSync display is another solid option. I really liked Freesync with my 290X. It does a lot for the experience if you can't just use VSync and brute force to keep the frame rate constant.
 
The RTX 2080 was on sale for a couple hours the other night for $599. I couldn't make up my mind in time. I'm sure you probably cant wait but I suspect in the next two weeks the post holiday price drops will come in. With the shitstorm going on around Nvidia I'm strongly suspicious the RTX 2080s will hover at 600 hear soon with the RTX 2080 ti hovering at $999. Both of those are far more realistic price points.

Oldie I'll pm you if I see the RTX 2080 hit $600 again. I have an alert on a couple deal sites.
 
The RTX 2080 was on sale for a couple hours the other night for $599. I couldn't make up my mind in time. I'm sure you probably cant wait but I suspect in the next two weeks the post holiday price drops will come in. With the shitstorm going on around Nvidia I'm strongly suspicious the RTX 2080s will hover at 600 hear soon with the RTX 2080 ti hovering at $999. Both of those are far more realistic price points.

Oldie I'll pm you if I see the RTX 2080 hit $600 again. I have an alert on a couple deal sites.

Thanks! I don't have the time to hit up the deal sites too much but I should clue him in on where they are (except our hotdeals forum...I'm not sure he's ready to read some of the stuff his mother has posted in Genmay). Maybe if he buys this now I can "buy" it from him later for his sister or something and he can bump up. :)

Kind of proud of the kid, he does really well, so I offered to nab him a 2080Ti of his choice and he turned me down. He bought his own car this year too, makes a guy proud.
 
Get a 1080 TI used for around $450 to $500. Best performance for that price.
RTX 2070 thread would be incomplete without someone suggesting getting mined 1080Ti :ROFLMAO:

Sticking with a 1080p for the moment, but would like to do 4k at some point. He's aware that will take another GPU investment.
1080p is little low resolution for RTX 2070 which will be bored with such monitor, especially if it does not support 120/144Hz
...but on the other side at least Ray-Tracing will run very good on 1080p so one thing less to worry :)

Today the best choice is high refresh rate 1440p monitor, preferably of course with G-Sync, though these can be pretty expensive.
 
RTX 2070 thread would be incomplete without someone suggesting getting mined 1080Ti :ROFLMAO:


1080p is little low resolution for RTX 2070 which will be bored with such monitor, especially if it does not support 120/144Hz
...but on the other side at least Ray-Tracing will run very good on 1080p so one thing less to worry :)

Today the best choice is high refresh rate 1440p monitor, preferably of course with G-Sync, though these can be pretty expensive.

He can always use DSR and up the IQ until he gets a better monitor.

I was very impressed with the MSI 2070 Armor for $500.
 
Newegg had the AMD Frontier Edition Liquid Cooled for 600 bucks, but it got snapped up quick...

14-105-074-V03.jpg
 
Still surprised that you aren't at least considering a 1060 or a 590/580. It's 1080p, those cards are designed for 1080p, the 2070 and 2080 are 1440p and higher. I won't go so far as to say they are wasted at 1080p but they certainly won't be pushed in a lot of games. To me it would seem like a waste of money to get a 2070 or 2080 when he is going to upgrade the GPU again when he goes 4K. His best strategy is buy a 1080p card now and get a good 7nm card when he goes 4K.

I am saying this because I think the resale values of the Turing cards will be poor when the 7nm cards appear. Whereas the 1060 and 580/590 won't drop as much in value. And if he was buying a GPU for the long term, then I would say yes, buy the 2070/2080, but, he isn't.
 
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these new rtx cards have some kinks to work on and at 1080p i would give the rtx cards a year to get drivers fixed and board revisions for the massive heat they make fixed before i touch a rtx card. Go with a 1070ti or 1080 ti or rx 590 put any saved money into ssd or ram or processor...
 
He's not upgrading monitors right now because he's got 3 of them and wants to do them all at once. According to him that will be April-ish.
 
these new rtx cards have some kinks to work on and at 1080p i would give the rtx cards a year to get drivers fixed and board revisions for the massive heat they make fixed before i touch a rtx card. Go with a 1070ti or 1080 ti or rx 590 put any saved money into ssd or ram or processor...

Agreed. Could save some bucks and put it toward the monitor.
 
He's not upgrading monitors right now because he's got 3 of them and wants to do them all at once. According to him that will be April-ish.

So he’s doing 3x 1080p for gaming? That’s 6MP or about the same as my 3440x1440. What does he plan to get in April? I’d probably size the card for what he wants in April IMO....
 
So he’s doing 3x 1080p for gaming? That’s 6MP or about the same as my 3440x1440. What does he plan to get in April? I’d probably size the card for what he wants in April IMO....

He usually only uses one screen for games.
 
If he is going 4K in April then he should buy a 4K capable GPU now, or stick with what he has until then. It would be a waste of money to buy a 2070 now and have to sell it and then buy a 2080 or 2080Ti in April to go with the 4K monitor.

I thought, when you said that he was considering 4K later, that he might not be upgrading again until late next year. That's what my previous advice was based on. But, I think he should take you up on your offer for a 2080Ti. Get a $999 one that's on sale now and let him pay $600 for it and you pay the rest.
 
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If he is going 4K in April then he should buy a 4K capable GPU now, or stick with what he has until then. It would be a waste of money to buy a 2070 now and have to sell it and then buy a 2080 or 2080Ti in April to go with the 4K monitor.

I thought, when you said that he was considering 4K later, that he might not be upgrading again until late next year. That's what my previous advice was based on. But, I think he should take you up on your offer for a 2080Ti. Get a $999 one that's on sale now and let him pay $600 for it and you pay the rest.
he doesn't need a 2070 for 4k nvidia's new line is a joke it runs hot it has buggy drivers that need almost a year of board revisions and driver fixes to address and on top of that now that the mining for gpus is not really profitable the market should be flooded with retail or lower gpus both new and used. go for a 10 series they do 4k too.
 
2070 is already overkill for 1080p resolution. But go ahead and get one if is on sale at $499, he can use the extra $100 bucks on better mobo or more ram.

PS If it's three monitors then he needs the most gpu he can get for his money, used 1080 Ti is probably the best bang for buck if you can find it for around $500 on ebay.
 
i just built a system for a friend with a vega 64 i believe he got for $379. runs 1440p really really well and I couldnt notice a difference vs my 1080ti on water.
 
If he's currently at 1080p, I'd honestly recommend an RX 580. Less than $200. Or a 1070 ti in the secondary market for 280 to 300. By the time he upgrades to 4k, the competitive landscape will be such that he'll be able to do a lot better at the $600 tier than he can now. And if you're on this site, you'll know how to get some money back for that 580 or 1070 ti. ymmv.
 
Why do people mention 1080p over and over in threads like this? As already mentioned, 1080p does not mean a damn thing as you can use DSR to run higher resolutions.
 
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