Is GTX 1070 overkill for 1080p? Should I go RX 480/GTX 1060?

euskalzabe

euskalzabe

[H]ard|Gawd
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For the past few generations I've remained in the x70 range with nvidia cards. This has served me well, but it seems that the market is moving upwards. I got burned with my 770, which I bought hoping to keep for 3 years (as I upgraded to it from my 470), but is clearly impossible to do so on 2GB VRAM. Gaming is now more memory-demanding and even at 1080p I'm not getting as much performance as I should from this card.

I'm thinking now it may be better to spend $200 every 2 years instead of $300 every three, as I "modernize" at a faster clip while spending the same money every 6 years - $600. After seeing the 1070 release, I'm wondering... is it overkill for 1080p gaming? I have a 60hz IPS panel and I have no intention of going high-framerate nor 4K. Should I consider the RX 480 or the eventual 1060? I'm still waiting on reviews for the AMD card and we'll see what the 1060 delivers, but I'm going to buy a card this fall at the latest and it seems that stepping down 1 performance tier and renovating more often is a smarter move for my gaming resolution.

While on 1080p, I do like to keep my games on as high settings as I can get - ultra is not necessary, but high details are, I avoid medium unless the downgrade is not noticeable. 60 frames preferred, but I can put with variable 40-60 - heck, I played Unity at variable 30 frames going above and below. Thoughts?
 
Upgrade cards when your current card doesn't do what you want it to. Spend a reasonable amount of money when you upgrade and don't buy anything expecting to get a specific amount of time out of the card.
 
for your situation it seems so, if you don't really care about ultra in everything with AA and whatnot, and those are only a few titles anyway.


check out benchmarks and see what would suit you best, there are a lot out there. We roughly know how fast the 480 is compared to other cards so it shouldnt be hard.
 
Nauseous said:
im in the same boat game @1080p and have a 770. going to upgrade to a 1070.
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You have a cpu that will allow you to get practically all of a 1070 in every game, the OP does not. And it seems silly to keep talking about having a 1080 monitor as you are NOT stuck at the res and can uses DSR. Buy a 1070 and for super crazy demanding games like Quantum Break stick to your native 1080 res but for most other games you can run them at DSR 1440. Plenty of the less demanding games will even be fine at DSR 4k.
 
At 1080p, 60hz monitor - The Radeon 480 sounds almost over kill and in most games you will probably be able to max out the settings and still use VSR (like DSR). If you think you will be getting a higher resolution monitor in the next year or so - I say go for the 1070 if not save yourself a couple of hundred dollars for a future upgrade. Now I would recommend a 8gb version of the 480 and not the 4gb one.
 
if I would've bought a GPU to fit my monitor, I never would've upgraded to 1440p. remember, you're not tied to any particular piece of hardware. if you get a 1070, it doesn't mean you cant upgrade to 1440p down the road.
 
I'm currently on a 970 and there are quite a few games I'll have to turn down settings to get 60FPS minimums.

With that said, it's always better to have extra horsepower ready. With postprocessing injectors like ReShade and ENBs, it's not hard to use the extra HP for even better image quality.

Furthermore, upcoming games will be even more taxing so I can imagine that 1070 will get old pretty quick.

Though it really depends on what games you play and when. If you're content with playing 2-3 years old AAA games, then going with the lower x60 tier will serve you fine at 1080p. But that's about it.
 
Yep, the 970 will handle 1080p, high (not ultra) settings, 40+ FPS in every game. Most games not named The Division will perform much better than that, actually. Which means the RX-480 will do the same or slightly better and the 1070 is definitely overkill.

If you want to go 1080p absolute maxed settings and locked at 60fps, yes the 1070 is a better choice.
 
Kepler was overpriced at launch - there's no way of sugar-coating that. At least you got the 770 (not the 780).
But either way, if you bought these before the 290/290x forced the price cut, well, tough luck haha.

That said, I would not buy Maxwell as you are buying an old process (28mm).
Either spend the $379-$399 for a baseline 1070, or do as you suggested, $199 for the 4GB RX 480.
You will be buying blind if you choose the RX 480, as there won't be review numbers until the end of this month.

Used cards that fall between these two SKUs are not going to hold a lot of value, unless you are getting an insane discount. E.g. used 290/290x/390/390x are going to be overpriced in light of the Polaris launch. Same goes for used 970s/980s, *unless* these are priced appropriately. Don't even bother with used Keplers haha.

You have to understand that the typical rule does not apply here, because this is the first node change in a long time.
 
Daniel_Chang said:
Locked 60fps was not one of the OP's criteria. He stated that 40-60 was fine.
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You should pay more attention to the context of my reply. Michaelius was the one who mentioned 60 fps and {NG}Fidel had directly quoted him saying he played Witcher 3 maxed.
 
Michaelius said:
Nope it's not overkill- you need 980ti to play many of todays games at 1080p with maxed settings and stay at 60 fps for most of time.
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Which, if you saw in his post, he said he doesnt necessarily care about max settings, just not medium or below, and that 40-60fps is fine.

also, theres about 10 games that demand something like that, the rest (99%) dont.
 
It isn't overkill if you care about max settings, a permanent 60fps with no drops, and vsync.
If those things don't matter, then it probably IS overkill.
 
GTX 1070 is fine for 1920x1080 imho. GTX 1080 probably overkill for the average user though. If you're open to selectively using med/high/v.high vs benchmark ultra (which I'm fine with) then maybe wait to see what 1060 brings (or if 1060 Ti comes back). Maybe find a used 970/980 for super budget?

Agreed about 680/770 cards ... probably the card I was most disappointed with ever. Just sold my 680 on CL, gone in a flash, kid looked really happy though lol.
 
misterbobby said:
You should pay more attention to the context of my reply. Michaelius was the one who mentioned 60 fps and {NG}Fidel had directly quoted him saying he played Witcher 3 maxed.
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Yeah In order to show the OP that his choice is overkill. Not to say i don't like over kill but I'm just being honest with the guy.
 
I'm giving my 970 to one of the boys so they can tinker with SLI or whatever, and I'm getting a 1070 when they are really available. I was even contemplating a 1080 even though I game at 1080. The 970 does really well at 1080, but it is not perfect and I want one of these new cards. I do need to start thinking about updating the entire system though. Oh yeah, I use two monitors like most people, a nice curved 1080 and a good flat PVA or whatever 1080 for browsing and whatever else...
 
Go for the 1080 because why not, hell you can even grab another one down the line to make sure you max everything. You may even be able to get 60 fps on the first Crysis game.

Yes it can be overkill for 1080p but buy whatever you want after you have done the research and checked out benchmarks. Buying a 1440p monitor finally made me upgrade from my GTX 660.
 
No such thing as overkill exist.. this is specially true since the apparition of DSR/VSR technologies.. too much power for a game? no problem play it at 1440P or 4K..... more important thing these days more than the panel resolution it's the panel itself, response time, flicker-free, etc etc etc..
 
If I we're you I'd pick up a 1070, @ 1080/60hz you should get at least 2 years out of the card with max settings with the advantage of using DSR when you're getting crazy fps in certain games. I really don't see much evidence that DX12 will have a huge impact on gaming in 2017, unless M$ does something about DX12 availability on older OS it's going to be awhile until games steer away from DX11. If you wait for the AIB cards you'll likely get to see some early reviews of the RX480 if that interests you at all, by that point you'll have a pretty clear picture of cards available at each price point for the remainder of 2016.
 
Not if you're looking to do DSR with it. 1070 will be nice for 1080 and at 2k / 4k Resolutions.
 
Being [H]ard means there is no such thing as overkill!

But seriously, I'm thinking about buying a GTX 1070 for 1080p. I was going to go GTX 1080 and 4K, but it doesn't look like we're at the point where single-card 4K is a realistic dream so I'll settle with keeping my current monitors and getting really nice frame rates.
 
Ocellaris said:
Upgrade cards when your current card doesn't do what you want it to. Spend a reasonable amount of money when you upgrade and don't buy anything expecting to get a specific amount of time out of the card.
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Here, have my wallet. It sounds like you will take much better care of its contents than me.
 
No such thing as overkill. But I wouldn't touch an AMD anything.
 
Wait for head to head benchmarks with the 1070 and the 480 and or anything else on up new from AMD.
 
Misterzeno said:
Go for the 1080 because why not, hell you can even grab another one down the line to make sure you max everything. You may even be able to get 60 fps on the first Crysis game.
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Don't stop there, request the enthusiast key to unlock quad sli. :cautious:
 
A 1070 is certainly not overkill for 1080p.
I have a 980ti which is faster than a 1070 FE when both are clocked.
Yet it fails to hug 60fps @ 1080p in some games without even maxing the settings.
Most games will run at 60fps constant with maxed or near max settings.

If you want close to 60fps all the time and to max the quality settings most of the time, a 1070 will be great.
Or even a second hand 980ti if you can get a good deal. The AIB 1070s might even edge it out.
If you can cope with being much lower than 60fps or lower quality, wait for the 480. (although I wouldnt, too many horror stories)
If you must have 60fps in everything constantly, get a 1080.

Games are not going to get any easier on graphics cards, performance requirements will increase.
Bear this in mind.
And if you spend a lot of time gaming, why not have your cake and eat it.
Compared to most hobbies, for the time spent using a PC, its actually pretty cheap!
 
My best experiences so far have been playing games that are a few years old at 4K DSR on a 1080p screen. Definitely not overkill.
 
Just save yourself some bucks, get the 480 if it has performance around the 980/390x. It should be a very quiet card and low power. If you really get into the game vice some sort of setting worship that one most keep otherwise it will be misery and an utter failure on your part with suicidal thoughts like if you get one second of 59fps it is all over. I wouldn't worry about it. Wait for the reviews though and buy what you want - there is plenty of card worship it seems that drive people to buy things to just talk about it and not actually use it.
 
Wait for the reviews to come out, make a decision.
If 480 is somehow between 390 ~390X buy one, and then add another when you feel like you need more performance.
Will still be cheaper than a 1080. with almost same performance.
 
Right, waiting for RX 480 reviews is certainly smart. As I expected some of you recommended a 1070/1080 anyway, but it just doesn't make sense for me. It's too much. I've been thinking about it this week and remembering my parts need to fit holistically with the rest of my PC:

AMD FX 6300
ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS motherboard
Nvidia GTX 770
8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1333
Crucial MX100 128GB - main SSD
Samsung Spinpoint F3 - HDD for games & general storage
Corsair Carbide SPEC-01 case
Dell ST2220T 1080p60 IPS monitor

If I put a 1080, or even a 1070, they're going to be bogged down by that FX 6300. The fact that the 1070 moved up-market in price tells me this is now for a difference audience: 1080 is for 4K, 1070 is for 1440p, 1060 will be for 1080p.

By the end of this year I'll consider a mobo/cpu/ram upgrade when I see what Zen offers, but until then my system seems too old to imbalance it with an ultra-powerful GPU. Besides, I'm trying to get rid of that Spinpoint HDD so if I buy a GPU in the $200 range that offers ~GTX980 performance + $200 on a 1TB OCZ Trion SSD or similar, I will get 2 upgrades for the price of a 1070.

Clearly this is not the highest performing option, but it does seem balanced for my PC - and doesn't blow up my budget (could spend much more, I just think I neither need to nor will notice the benefit dramatically).
 
euskalzabe said:
For the past few generations I've remained in the x70 range with nvidia cards. This has served me well, but it seems that the market is moving upwards. I got burned with my 770, which I bought hoping to keep for 3 years (as I upgraded to it from my 470), but is clearly impossible to do so on 2GB VRAM. Gaming is now more memory-demanding and even at 1080p I'm not getting as much performance as I should from this card.
Click to expand...

My 7970 was supposed to be all I needed for maxed out 1080p with an insane 3GB of memory. It's merely middle of the road now. As games advance, so does the fidelity and required rendering power. In 3-4 years time, a 1070 might be middle of the road for 1080p

Plus a 1070 would be a good pick for VR....IF you ever go that direction.
 
I would get a used 980Ti.
You can skip everything until Volta is near EOL. Pickup a used 1080Ti or something.

Also, I think VR needs another hardware generation before investing in, so I wouldn't be too hung up on buying a "special" card for it.
 
The rumour-du-jour now is that the RX 480 8GB will cost $229 (link). If it gets close to the GTX 980 performance, that's what I'd be happy with for 1080p and it's quite cheap.
I have a feeling this is pissing off Nvidia. I would have expected the 1060 to be between 970-980 and probably cost $250-300 with 4/6GB. Now they can't do that, as AMD would be either cheaper or a stronger performer, or both. Seems to me the RX 480 just made Nvidia have to make a stronger 1060 and limited them to a specific price bracket. That's only good news for both AMD and Nvidia customers: competition is always good!

I'm looking forward to reviews in 9 days. After that, probably it'll be hard to get the 480s, so I'll wait a few weeks and I'd expect to have decent leaks on the expected 1060 to make an informed decision.

It's an interesting time to buy a GPU!
 
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