Upgrade or wait: mid 2022 edition

If you have the money and the need, go for it. However, if you can live with what you already own, keep what you have. After all, is there other things you could be doing with that money?
 
Money and value are always going to be subjective. Both highly depend on how much you have vs. how much you care about PC gaming, FPS, resolution, etc.
Thing is, if you're in this forum, you probably care way more than most.
 
I'm so torn, I'm still rocking my 1080ti from multiple years ago and have been needing a new card. I have the funds, at the moment, to spend a grand on a 3080 12gb.

I know the 4000 series is right around the corner but I also don't want to fuck up and miss my chance to get a 3080 quality card for <$1000 incase the 4000 series is a giant clusterfuck launch like the 3000 series was. I really need an upgrade to my 1080ti because this particular upgrade is likely gonna be my videocard for a few years because of... reasons.

hmm....

I can't sell my 1080ti cause when I upgrade that's gonna go to the wife who's stil using a 1070.
 
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I don’t think 3080 12 GB will sell out anytime soon. If you are really unsure of what to do, wait until the 4080 has a launch date and then buy an EVGA 3080 12 GB within 2ish months of the launch window as you have 90 days to step up. Register for a step up to a 4080 on day one and hope you get the card within 6 months.

If you absolutely need a card now then buy a card now.
 
BassTek said:
I don’t think 3080 12 GB will sell out anytime soon. If you are really unsure of what to do, wait until the 4080 has a launch date and then buy an EVGA 3080 12 GB within 2ish months of the launch window as you have 90 days to step up. Register for a step up to a 4080 on day one and hope you get the card within 6 months.

If you absolutely need a card now then buy a card now.
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You know that's a good point. Since my 3080 Ti is an EVGA, does that mean I can do their step up program with it? I have not looked into the regulations about that recently. If I can, I might be open to it depending on the price...
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
You know that's a good point. Since my 3080 Ti is an EVGA, does that mean I can do their step up program with it? I have not looked into the regulations about that recently. If I can, I might be open to it depending on the price...
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You have to register the card within 14 days of purchase from an authorized reseller. After that the step up program only works for 90 days.
 
Arkanian said:
You have to register the card within 14 days of purchase from an authorized reseller. After that the step up program only works for 90 days.
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Well, I have it registered on the 4th of this month. That means I can do step up until August the 4th, as I understand it. I can also return the GPU entirely until June 4th since these carry a 30 day return period from Microcenter (although at this price it would be a bit foolish to). I guess that's good timing considering in about 5 days we'll be getting release details on the next generation. Didn't someone say they'll be released during June or July? Might just be a rumor though.

I am being a bit greedy, but hey, I wouldn't say no to a step up lol.
 
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Hmmmm, I think the smartest thing to do would be to wait.

In a month or two people are going to start panic selling their cards, so regardless if you're after the current or next gen, you should just hoooooold for a little more.
I sold my 3080 in April so when the new cards are announced I'll buy a new one for less or just go for the next-gen if the price is right.
 
I need a new system in the next month(ish), so I've decided to split the difference. I'm buying a mid-range card now, then I'll flip it for a high-end next gen card. My thought being, if every current card does drop significantly in resale value, that bite is probably going to hurt much less on a $500 card versus a $1k card.
 
Assuming you're willing to spend time on launch going after a card it might be worth waiting. While the power draw and MSRP will probably be high, it looks like there will be major performance gains over current gen GPUs. If you just want a mid-range or budget card though I wouldn't feel bad buying now. Prices are pretty reasonable and it looks like Nvidia will only release high end stuff initially for next gen.
 
vegeta535 said:
The 4070 will not be faster then a 3090. Other then the top of the stack the power requirements won't be insane.
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Indeed. The power requirements only go out the window when you're trying to compete with the other guys. The current competition in GPUs means everyone is pushing the envelope to be the fastest.
 
I know that the performance difference is neglible in 99.9% of situations, but I have a thing that I wasn't gonna upgrade my 1080Ti (11GB RAM) to anything with less VRAM, so the basic 3080 was always out of the question.
Numbers must always go up! Never down.
 
TheSlySyl said:
I know that the performance difference is neglible in 99.9% of situations, but I have a thing that I wasn't gonna upgrade my 1080Ti (11GB RAM) to anything with less VRAM, so the basic 3080 was always out of the question.
Numbers must always go up! Never down.
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100% agree. I had a 1080ti and that 11gb helped give it some long legs. Now the 16gb on my 6800xt is probably excessive, but there was no way I was going down to 8gb on a 3070ti.
 
TheSlySyl said:
I know that the performance difference is neglible in 99.9% of situations, but I have a thing that I wasn't gonna upgrade my 1080Ti (11GB RAM) to anything with less VRAM, so the basic 3080 was always out of the question.
Numbers must always go up! Never down.
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I felt the same way, but eventually bit the bullet and got a 3080 (before the 12gb version was a thing)

There's nothing the 1080Ti did better or even as well as the 3080. I have not yet been limited by the 10GB buffer @ 1440p
 
Lepardi said:
Something like Ready or Not would do the trick, but they are unable to produce a simple 1-life objective game mode without respawn. They tested MP with their respawn-arena-shooter mode and then decided multiplayer cannot be made in their game, lol.
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Its all about the SP and co-op. Not sure why they bothered with MP. Red Orchestra might be the mix you're looking for, if Tripwire does an RO3 or other spin off. Rising Storm Vietnam is probably dead.
 
travm said:
Indeed. The power requirements only go out the window when you're trying to compete with the other guys. The current competition in GPUs means everyone is pushing the envelope to be the fastest.
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I mean are we actually sure now that the 4070 won't be 30% faster than the 3090? Current reports are looking like it might be...

This 3080 Ti at $900 was a great deal, but... the info in the other topic is having me question whether I should return it and bet on the next gen now. No one expected information about it to come down the pipe this fast, and I wonder if it's really going to end up being that much of a bump. They currently have the release date rumored to be July 22nd, which means it'll be at the very edge of my EVGA step up program, IF there aren't any delays.

Sigh what an annoying time lol. I wish the mineshaft would just (permanently) collapse and all of the scalpers would just spontaneously combust and die in a pool of their own blood so we at least didn't have those annoying factors...

Well at the very least, guess I'll wait till May 22nd.
 
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travm said:
Indeed. The power requirements only go out the window when you're trying to compete with the other guys. The current competition in GPUs means everyone is pushing the envelope to be the fastest.
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From what little that I have seen about the power consumption rumored? I'll stick with the 30 series.
 
All I've seen is silly early rumors so far. The most recent Nvidia said, 4090 450w max with double the performance of a 3090 @tpu then of course the early estimate of 900w max a while back. I'm not going to worry to much about early assumptions at this point.
One eye on real Nvidia news releases the other on crazy good deals on current cards. There have been some nice ones so far.
 
I fully expect that actually getting the 4000 series at launch is gonna be a clusterfuck, same with AM5 and DDR5 RAM when they launch.

Part of why I'm fine with getting a 3080 12gb right now. Worst case scenario is that I DO get a 4080 or whatever and have to sell the 3080 for probably near what I bought it for.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like going up to the 40 series isn't going to be worth it unless you have the latest in other parts such as DDR5 RAM, a CPU and MB that can support PCIe 4, etc. I'm not saying it won't work or won't be an improvement, but it won't get its full potential without those. But again, correct me if I'm wrong.
I have a 3060 and would sooner upgrade to a 3070 or 3080 before going into the 40s. I've even thought about going to a 2080 or something like this since I'm still only able to use PCIe 3.
 
JonCZ said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like going up to the 40 series isn't going to be worth it unless you have the latest in other parts such as DDR5 RAM, a CPU and MB that can support PCIe 4, etc. I'm not saying it won't work or won't be an improvement, but it won't get its full potential without those. But again, correct me if I'm wrong.
I have a 3060 and would sooner upgrade to a 3070 or 3080 before going into the 40s. I've even thought about going to a 2080 or something like this since I'm still only able to use PCIe 3.
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With the 30-series cards, the difference between PCIe 3 and 4 isn't large. No clue about the 40-series (obviously), but there might not be that big of a jump. I wouldn't be concerned about DDR5, either.
The factor's I'd look at are more related to your display and what types of performance you care about. Resolution, refresh rate, your personal sweet spots (and tolerance) for FPS, and whether you care about ray tracing.
 
Domingo said:
With the 30-series cards, the difference between PCIe 3 and 4 isn't large. No clue about the 40-series (obviously), but there might not be that big of a jump. I wouldn't be concerned about DDR5, either.
The factor's I'd look at are more related to your display and what types of performance you care about. Resolution, refresh rate, your personal sweet spots (and tolerance) for FPS, and whether you care about ray tracing.
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That's what I've heard and I don't really see PCIe 4 necessary for my situation.
I run two 1080p displays, primary monitor (mainly for gaming) at 165 Hz and secondary at 75 Hz. Ray tracing is preferred if I can but not critical. Of course I'll take the best frame rates I can get, which usually end up somewhere in the 70s with my 3060 running about 50% load. From the bit of research I've done, going to the 20 series is a definite no, upgrading within the 30 series isn't really worth it, so maybe waiting for a lower-mid 40 series or switching to RX would be the better options.
 
Sergius648 said:
Wow... so many supporting spending a grand on a video card.
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PC gaming has become a rich man's game no doubt. Prior to my 3090, I would have never bought any card north of 1K. I guess I drank the Kool-Aid. And frankly the only reason I bought it was to play a sole game at 4k with decent FPS. Won't be doing that again.
 
celwin said:
PC gaming has become a rich man's game no doubt. Prior to my 3090, I would have never bought any card north of 1K. I guess I drank the Kool-Aid. And frankly the only reason I bought it was to play a sole game at 4k with decent FPS. Won't be doing that again.
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About six years ago when I built a SFF PC the GPU was the most expensive part. It was a GTX 970 and it cost somewhere around $320. The whole system came in right at about $1K. Granted, it was a mid-range PC at the end of the day, but it was the most I'd ever spent on a computer (until recently). I think PC gaming has sort of always been a 'rich man's game' in a sense, most consoles have never come close in potential power/performance in my opinion until the last couple years, and even that's debatable.
 
celwin said:
PC gaming has become a rich man's game no doubt. Prior to my 3090, I would have never bought any card north of 1K. I guess I drank the Kool-Aid. And frankly the only reason I bought it was to play a sole game at 4k with decent FPS. Won't be doing that again.
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It certainly has been a richer mans hobby to a point. I was out of the PC gaming loop for a while and got back in a few years ago, and it has been more expensive than I can ever remember. I went pretty high end this time around since I'm gaming in 4K as well.
 
It's always been a rich person's hobby it's easier to forget these days. My family certainly didn't get a PC before my dad got a job at a local repair/Dial-up ISP.
 
Tactlesss said:
It's always been a rich person's hobby it's easier to forget these days. My family certainly didn't get a PC before my dad got a job at a local repair/Dial-up ISP.
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Mid 2010s was a completely different beast. Top end CPU for 300€ and top end GPU for 400€. Now these figures are double-triple. Current situation is similar to 1990s, when you could say it was a rich person's hobby.
 
I usually do a flagship every 5 or 6 years but thanks to Intel stagnating on quad cores for a decade, plus general process improvement slowing, its over double that this time.

I'm considering an AMD build with an oled, just the timing is terrible. That said, ddr5 has little advantage for a while and pcie4 isn't saturated, so what do I care for pcie5? Weird position to be in.

Considering a used am4 cheap build to hold me over but oled really wants hdmi2.1...
 
Tactlesss said:
It's always been a rich person's hobby it's easier to forget these days. My family certainly didn't get a PC before my dad got a job at a local repair/Dial-up ISP.
Click to expand...
Top games by current player count
CURRENT PLAYERS​
PEAK TODAY​
GAME​
728,848​
815,825​
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
617,779​
635,992​
Dota 2
341,851​
341,851​
Lost Ark
255,497​
341,580​
Apex Legends
247,155​
371,394​
PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
95,886​
105,547​
Grand Theft Auto V
93,648​
93,648​
Rust
90,562​
90,562​
V Rising
85,986​
89,290​
ELDEN RING
71,075​
77,387​
Path of Exile


How many of those can be played well enough on a used system cheaper to buy than what one would need to pay to get a new PS5 ? Looking at the system requirement we still see Intel Core 2 Duo and 2GB of ram type of things, DX 9.0 video cards

Philippines/indonesia/thailand/india are among the country with the largest by capita pc gamers in the world:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/748639/pc-gaming-markets-worldwide/#:~:text=PC gaming reach in selected markets worldwide 2020&text=A global September 2020 survey,percent PC gaming penetration respectively.

4core/1080p is still the most common gaming pc out there. Piracy aside with epyc free games, humble bundles, free to plays, it is really not a rich person hobby, it is obviously easily at the reach of westerner middle class and their kids, but even in the developing world.

Caring about hardware, chasing to play over 1080p-mid setting and AAA titles can become something only people with means or really love it do, but more time pass, larger the library of title cheap to play get and more powerful used cheap work laptop/desktop has well.

Even in the late 80s/early 90s, it was a high priority for them family hobby, not just a rich family hobby, we were certainly not rich and we had a very expensive 20mhz, 4 meg of ram PC we gamed on, that replaced the 8086 and vic 20 we played on before that and I am sure a lot of older people in HardForum are the same.

Searching Gaming PC on Alibama:
https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?IndexArea=product_en&SearchText=gaming_PC&CatId=701&f0=y

Give some idea of what some people in 2022 buy for playing PC games, it is cheaper that filling some pick-up gas tank right now.
 
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LukeTbk said:
Top games by current player count
CURRENT PLAYERS​
PEAK TODAY​
GAME​
728,848​
815,825​
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
617,779​
635,992​
Dota 2
341,851​
341,851​
Lost Ark
255,497​
341,580​
Apex Legends
247,155​
371,394​
PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
95,886​
105,547​
Grand Theft Auto V
93,648​
93,648​
Rust
90,562​
90,562​
V Rising
85,986​
89,290​
ELDEN RING
71,075​
77,387​
Path of Exile


How many of those can be played well enough on a used system cheaper to buy than what one would need to pay to get a new PS5 ? Looking at the system requirement we still see Intel Core 2 Duo and 2GB of ram type of things, DX 9.0 video cards

Philippines/indonesia/thailand/india are among the country with the largest by capita pc gamers in the world:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/748639/pc-gaming-markets-worldwide/#:~:text=PC gaming reach in selected markets worldwide 2020&text=A global September 2020 survey,percent PC gaming penetration respectively.

4core/1080p is still the most common gaming pc out there. Piracy aside with epyc free games, humble bundles, free to plays, it is really not a rich person hobby, it is obviously easily at the reach of westerner middle class and their kids, but even in the developing world.

Caring about hardware, chasing to play over 1080p-mid setting and AAA titles can become something only people with means or really love it do, but more time pass, larger the library of title cheap to play get and more powerful used cheap work laptop/desktop has well.

Even in the late 80s/early 90s, it was a high priority for them family hobby, not just a rich family hobby, we were certainly not rich and we had a very expensive 20mhz, 4 meg of ram PC we gamed on, that replaced the 8086 and vic 20 we played on before that and I am sure a lot of older people in HardForum are the same.

Searching Gaming PC on Alibama:
https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?IndexArea=product_en&SearchText=gaming_PC&CatId=701&f0=y

Give some idea of what some people in 2022 buy for playing PC games, it is cheaper that filling some pick-up gas tank right now.
Click to expand...
The thing is, any hobby is basically as expensive as you make it. The amount I have spent on my anime figurine collection probably eclipses what some people have spent on computers throughout their entire lifetimes. The amount that someone has spent on PC's probably eclipses what I have spent on my figurines. The amount that some people spend on audiophile gear eclipses what some people have spent on private property (assuming they have ever purchased or mortgaged any).

So yeah, someone could spend minimum budget on nothing but "prize figures" and build up a pretty large collection on the cheap. Someone could build budget PCs and play old games and not need anything expensive at all. That's why it's important to set qualifiers and criteria when making any sort of statement, I guess. Like say, setting the minimum standard for a statement to "playing the latest, most demanding game at maximum settings". What would that cost throughout the ages, given a certain system part update interval?

Frankly, PC gaming, much like audiophile world, much like everything else, has diminishing returns for spending more anyway. The baseline product does something, you're paying more because you want better... putting aside warranty and reliability anyway, at which point you're into MTBF statistical analysis and it's a whole can of worms...
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Someone could build budget PCs and play old games and not need anything expensive at all. That's why it's important to set qualifiers and criteria when making any sort of statement, I guess. Like say, setting the minimum standard for a statement to "playing the latest, most demanding game at maximum settings". What would that cost throughout the ages, given a certain system part update interval?
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Exactly with an asterix, because PC gaming became so much not a rich people/rich country hobby in the last 30 year's we are not talking only old games, some of the most popular new games does not require much. PUBG battleground/fornight/Diablo 4 type.

The keeping up playing the latest at extreme setting on the more extreme monitors (VR or trying 4K high enough FPS) is a different hobby than PC Gaming and I feel quite different (in the sense I am not sure most that do that play that much versus the regular 2013 PS4 players, the hardware being in large part the points, I am like that anyway, do not play much since turning 18-19 but still care about hardware and still launch title from vast Steam collection with many never even installed).

Right now the collection of games playable on a simple 5600G or 12100K with the cheapest you can find GPU, because PC gaming go so stable over time win32-64/age of the oldest DirectX still supported on new card, sound, etc... (was there ever an era that you could be confident that a 15 year's old game would launch without any issue? Not needing an virtual machine/emulator), could make right now inflation adjusted on the cheaper side of things, PC gaming wise of the last 40 year's. On the other way around, because pro-regular line merging, it open the door to I imagine some of the most expensive system has well.
 
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I'm not sure I'd want to spend more than I spent last gen on a card which netted me a 3060 ti, but at what point does that money become not worth it? How long until the 50 series cards are at that price bracket and there's no real performance gain gen on gen? Hell in 10-20 years from now, will any graphics card be "affordable"? I just don't see how prices can continue to rise for forever, maybe if wages inflate along with the rest of the economy but it hasn't happened yet.
 
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