Upgrading my PC Graphics card: want feedback and experiences

I currently have two GTX 970’s, I’ve had them for about 3 years now, and they’ve been getting around 30fps on ultra settings @ 1920x1080 resolution. I’m thinking about buying some new cards and an SSD at this point but I’d like to hear from some NVIDIA customers on what you think about their newer cards.

I’d like to be able to play most games at 4k with ultra settings and still get close to 60fps but if I can’t do that with the most demanding games, I can live with that. I was going to get two 1080’s but the 2070’s are about the same with upgraded memory speed and the same amount of memory. The 1080ti and 2080 are too expensive to get more than one, so I’m going to pass over them(unless they’re really, really good?). Has anyone else used any of these cards and which gives you the best performance for the price?

Using a 2080 TI as I type this. It’s amazigness, runs everything I need and then some on two 4K displays, but stupid expensive. Your call if you can justify the huge splurge.

Best bang for your buck I understand are the new 2060’s which I hear benchmark higher then the 1070s and are pretty dang affordable ($300? ish?).

SSD for sure if you aren’t already running one now. If a MOBO upgrade is in the cards, consider getting a MOBO with an NVME M.2 slot and getting an NVME M.2 cause those are also pure amazingness. Otherwise, get that SSD like, yesterday.

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I’ve had the SSD picked out for weeks. lol

The card is the only thing I’ve had to think about. Are the 2060’s faster than the 2070’s? I was going to get two of those if they can handle 4k alright. Maybe I should just get the 2080ti if it can power through like that though. Can it handle Conan in 4k at a decent framerate?

edit: Wait, the 2080ti is $1300 though right? That would still be a lot more than two 2070’s.

I’ve used GTX 970 (older PC), GTX 1070 (laptop), and GTX 1080Ti (current PC) and all ran above 90fps on ultra @1920x1080.

The 1080Ti obviously is the best out of the lot with framerates usually above 140. Dunno about 4k on any of them. I’d imagine anything above a 1060 would be fine with it.

I’m curious to why your current dual 970 setup is having issue. Have you tried running a single one to see if the game just isn’t taking SLI well?

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No the 2060s aren’t faster then the 2070s, just mentioned them because of their bang for buck status and compared them to the previous generation.

Yes, I paid around $1300 for my 2080 ti (EVGA ftw 3). The normal 2080s benchmark only slightly higher then the 1080s but the 2080 ti blows them all out of the water, as expected, but you are definitely paying for the premium in that, no bang for buck to be found anywhere.

I’m a fan of single GPUS myself, but I don’t know how two 2070s vs one 2080 ti compare, I’m sure benchmark websites could tell you though.

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Hmm, no - not any more than I was using a mechanical harddrive. Because those will also fail eventually. I’ve been using PCs long enough for that to happen a few times - though in all fairness my drives often outlive the PC they came with/were bought for by a significant margin.

Just about anything on my C: drive (which is a 1TB SSD) is fungible anyway, and the things I need to keep for the long run are backed up in the cloud (as well as on offline storage).

Not yet. But then my SSD’s have been replaced for being too small (in terms of storage) before they had a chance to wear out. I have used one as my main drive for ~5 years until last year, and it still works (though it’s now disconnected for the above reason).

Hence why I keep “data” (such as documents) backed up either in the cloud, or on external drives - preferably both.

It’s possible to occasionally take a snapshot of your entire OS drive and put it somewhere safe, but personally I only use that when migrating to another drive.

There’s also a plethora of paid (probably free too) softwares and services that can handle the whole thing more or less automatically, but I don’t have much (in fact, any) experience with those as I prefer to handle it myself.

I have two machines I use for CE play, real-time recording and editing. One is an ASUS notebook with a 960M, 4GB. The other is a custom specced by ASrock as a direct step up from the 960. (Not the M, which is somewhat more limited being a mobile chip, but still 960 to 1060.) The 1060 is 6GB EVGA brand.

No overclocking:
On the 960 I can get 720p with 35-45 reliable frames, using medium settings in CE. This is variable. It does stay above 24fps.
On the 1060 I get 1080p on High/Ultra at 60 frames solidly. Some patches have dropped me to 45 frames, but that’s still well above 24fps.

Overclocked:
The 960 can push 720p on High at 35-45 frames.
This 1060 is very limited in its OC ranges, and can cause stability issues which have equated to more of a pain than anything. 1080p at 60 frames is fine enough for me at this stage.

It does come down to price versus configurability for the 1060 by EVGA. Great bargain, not as flexible with the OC. The ASUS 960M was premium all the way, and its extra OC ability makes it shine as a 720p desktop replacement.

I replace all our remaining medium-use hard drives well before the 10,000 hour mark, usually in sync with a new PSU. Any non-hybrid hard drive used for retrieval and replay of media like movies or large audio files (that’s not specifically designated a media-use hard drive) can expect 40% fewer hours of reliability.

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Well, I’m still using a mechanical disk drive but wouldn’t that only affect start-up speed?

I tried it again, I seem to get anywhere from 32-57fps, but in some areas I get a drop to 10 for a couple seconds. I don’t really know, I assumed this was normal performance with a 970. Maybe Conan isn’t set-up to use SLI? I actually haven’t noticed much of a difference compared to a single GPU.


My settings
My current build. It looks like my CPU and Drive are under-performing, at least according to UserBench.

What about stock fans vs cooling solutions you buy separately? If I upgraded from 970’s to 2080’s could I reuse my old GPU fans?

Probably not, but maybe. I would just make sure and pick out a good cooling solution that comes built into the GPU, make your life easier.

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I found a 970 with three fans, I’m also getting some thermal paste but I probably won’t need it. One last thing, is it possible to move my OS and Steam only to a new SSD and leave all of my other files and programs on my HDD? If not I’ll need a 2TB drive instead of a 1TB.

I wouldn’t move your fans from your 970 to a 2080 if the 3 fan setup was prebuilt for the 970. The 2080’s run much hotter. I thought you had maybe a custom setup with like a water block or something. I absolutly don’t recommend doing that, use what comes with the 2080.

As far as having two drives, yes you can, though you’ll probably want to reformat your HDD’s to clear off your OS and stuff you don’t need on it. So you may have to do some back and fourth file backups and stuff.

My bad I meant the three fan set-up comes with the new card. I guess I’ll stick with that.

Can’t I just delete the old files after I move them?

Do you have any recommendation for programs to move an OS over? I know Windows had some program that let helped you migrate files over to a new OS. Would that work here?

That sounds good, I could keep some of my less demanding big games on my HDD. I mean I probably won’t need to run Sims 3 off of my SSD. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Its the same PC, I’m just adding an SSD and new video card.

This is really messed up. I haven’t bought a card yet, but SLI isn’t enabled for 2060 or 2070’s so so much for matching for that. Also, the last gen 1080ti is somehow still selling for $1100 or more new and NVIDIA is no longer carrying them at their MSRP of $699. Hm. I wonder what they’re trying to push on people here?

This is frustrating.:expressionless:

Plus the 3 free AAA games is the best deal around atm. 90% of the RTX 2080 performance for less then half the price.

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