Price drop on GTX 1080 after Vega, 1080ti release

Ok - point taken. I think I paid £280 for my 970. Have reserved one to pick up from the store tomorrow. If it's £400 in a fortnight I'll unselect your "Pick as Solution" button. Ha, but no, seriously, thanks for the input on this...and for helping me pick a card. Much appreciated.

Ducked out of work early, got a taxi to an out of town place that had the Strix A8G in stock and bought it. I think I was spending 2hrs a day monitoring prices on NewEgg/Amazon/local UK vendors....the way I see it, I've actually SAVED money by buying it because I've gained 10hrs during the working week. I wonder if my girlfriend will see it that way....perhaps she won't notice the card?

...and Firestrike score of 17,000. Boom. GPU-Z's saying that the ASIC quality test isn't available on this card....hmm. Anyway. Very pleased with results

i7-4790k. No overclock at the moment though I've had it running sub 70 degrees under stress boosted to 4.7ghz in the past. I'm guessing this processor will never bottleneck a single card.

One thing I'm surprised at is that many people consider the GTX 1080 overkill for 1080p. I'm using a 144hz gsync monitor and I've found that if you want to keep games above 80fps with ultra textures, 8xmsaa, ultra detail etc the GTX 1080 is about right...no where near overkill. If you want to enjoy all the eye candy modern games offer whilst also getting a perfectly smooth experience this is probably the right card.

Urgh. 1080ti and price drops announced literally 5 days after I bought a 1080. I can still take the card back to the store within 14 days of the purchase.

Prices in the UK haven't really moved yet....and the availability of 1080ti cards with 3rd party coolers is still not known...but my main thinking is that if the 1080ti is 35% faster and only £100 more than I spent on the 1080 that's probably value for money when upgrading.

Anyone seen any changes in UK prices yet?

I've started to see the prices move down at the retailers I follow in the UK...looks like the least desirable 1080 are pricing around the £500 mark, and the most desirable ones are staying around the £600 mark (with silly top-binned versions staying around £800!). I would guess that if the US retail price is going to be $500, with VAT at 20% and the GBPUSD exchange rate approx. 125c the majority of current gen 1080s are going to price around 500*1.2/1.25= £480 for the founders edition/basic types, and a premium of 15% for the better after-market coolers. I'm gaming at 1080p/144hz, and to be honest the 1080 is fine for that, but by no means overkill...and I've actually seen issues trying to keep frame rates north of 80 whilst enabling 4xMSAA at ultra settings.

It's not so much the price drop that's p1ss1ng me off....I can handle losing £100 or so...it's more that the 1080ti is so close to the price I paid for my 1080. I was fully expecting the 1080ti to price somewhere around £850...a price point I feel is ridiculous for a PC component. My original plan was to pick up a 1070...but I sort of...convinced myself that a 1080 would make the next year/18 months a better experience gaming....and now I'm contemplating sending this card back to buy an even more expensive card.

This is my first time participating in the GPU update cycle as the manufacturer releases it, and it feels like a game Nvidia have played many times before. I get the impression the only reason Nvidia have put so much computing power in to the 1080ti is because the specs on the AMD Vega 10 chips look like they might push 12tflops, and they want to compete at that level at a price point that will prevent them from stealing the market.

Anyhow....the retailer I purchased my 1080 from (Aria PC UK) told me I could return within 14 days provided the packaging was perfect....but the small print on the website states that I can't install the card if I intend to return...if they enforce the no-installation clause I can't upgrade anyway, which in a way would be a relief. If I can upgrade I have until next Friday to do so, and I have cleared my diary this weekend to sit and play games....so I see little point in returning straight away. My plan is to use this card over the weekend, see what the pricing on the 1080ti looks like in UK terms early next week, and then make a decision.

So many people have told me not to bother thinking about the upgrade cycle and to just buy what suits my budget when I want to upgrade, otherwise I'll go mad (and broke) chasing the best possible performance. If only I'd listened. One thing's for sure....I'm not playing the Volta upgrade like I've played Pascal.

Contacted Aria PC (Manchester, UK) to see if I could return 'as new' and they said if it's been installed there will be a 25% restocking fee....IE £150/$190. I've peeled the plastic of the back-plate, and I'm pretty sure that the drivers that now live on it are different to the drivers that it shipped with. In short, I think there's a very low chance of being able to return the card.

Ah well. A 1080 is a good card, and for gaming at 1080p although it's certainly not overkill it'll run everything I want to run with good frame rates.

I don't suppose anyone knows what's on the card when it ships, driver wise?

Sounds like a good plan. I'm going to stick with my 1080 running on a 144hz 1080p monitor and probably buy a VR headset later in the year. My next upgrade will almost certainly be when Volta is released, and I'll probably wait until the 1180ti edition comes out (non-founders edition). I'm guessing that will be around the same time as Cyberpunk 2077 is released (2019?!?).

But yes - I think you're right...waiting for the price drops when you'll only be happy with the best performing card is not the way to go...buying a month after the new card is released sounds sensible. I've now realised that I'm not happy running at anything under 90fps with everything maxed out, so I'm not going to bother upgrading to a 1440p ultrawide or 4k ultrawide until there's a card that can push that many pixels. I imagine 4k ultrawide will be accessible in 18-24 months at a significantly lower price point as well.

This was my first time trying to get bleeding-edge performance, and it's certainly been a learning experience!