Used 2 year old 980ti or a new 1060 6GB. Want to be able to sell and upgrade again when volta releases.

puneetspatel

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Oct 2, 2017
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Hi, I am from UK and prices of GPU's are quite high over here. I am making a new PC since I need one for UNI (games development) and I cant wait any longer for new parts to arrive.

I have a total(present+upgrade including resell) budget of £500

I am confused among 3 different options right now.

1: Should I buy an older card 980ti for £300 or an older 970 for £140 and then upgrade to volta in 6 months?

2: Or should I get a 1050ti for £140 or a 1060 6gb for £300 and then upgrade when volta launches.

3: Or should I bite the bullet and get a 1080 for £500 and forge about volta. (Hoping volta 2080 does not outperform 1080 by > 25%)

Which of these options will give me best value for my money and which cards will resell closer to their buying value.(1060's are inflated right now so once the mining craze goes down their resell value will also drop)

Will I be able to sell 1080 after 6 months for ~ £400-350 if needs be i.e: if volta is >40% performance boost over pascal.

My other specs are :
ryzen 1700
16gb ddr4 3200
asus strix b350-f

Thanks for looking into this and your time. This is my first post here.
 
Solution
I would discard the 980 Ti since it is a little old now.

The 1060 would be a good choice since fit in your budget and it very good in performance. Now, if you want (and can) extend your budget and get the 1080 that would be better option. Do not worry about Volta, nVidia will not shoot him self sell it a CPU that outperform all the past generation by a margen like that maybe 10% a little more but not that 25% or more.
I would discard the 980 Ti since it is a little old now.

The 1060 would be a good choice since fit in your budget and it very good in performance. Now, if you want (and can) extend your budget and get the 1080 that would be better option. Do not worry about Volta, nVidia will not shoot him self sell it a CPU that outperform all the past generation by a margen like that maybe 10% a little more but not that 25% or more.
 
Solution
Currently, according to 3D Mark, the 1070 is the most popular video card and the 1060 is the second most popular card. How well that will benefit you when you decide to sell it is unknown. If you plan to sell in 6 months or so, you might want to purchase the less expensive card now because if you lose money selling, you should lose less.

Depending upon your computer monitor resolution, for games development you would probably be better off with the 1060 over the 980 Ti because of newer hardware and Nvidia tends to provide better [faster in gaming] drivers for newer products. [Note: AMD does not reduce support for older hardware as Nvidia does, that is why older AMD GPUs perform better as they age - because AMD continues to fully support older hardware with good driver support].

I am not going to sell my GTX 980 Ti Lightning LE any time soon because, when clocked to Lightning default speeds, it performs about the same as the fastest GTX 1070 in games.

Much is dependent upon what monitor you will use. If you will be using 1080p @ 60Hz [pixel refresh rate] as your monitor resolution a GTX 1060 is as low as I would go for gaming or programming for games and will prove satisfactory. 1080p @ 120 or 144Hz or 1440p at 60Hz I suggest a GTX 1070. At 1440p at 120 or 144 Hz I suggest a 1080 Ti, although a 1080 should work strictly for programming because the fastest speeds are not as important to programmers as pure gaming satisfaction is to a consumer [almost every gamer hates chop].

Sources to consider to help you make a decision https://www.3dmark.com : Create an account [it is free to create]. Click on Results [upper right on screen] Use Fire Strike, Advanced Search, type in the full name of the CPU and GPU and the number of video cards [in your case, 1]. This will take a little time, however, it is raw data, not something being claimed on youtube for example. However www.youtube.com is an easy source of information as is a search on Google or your favorite search engine and type in your CPU and GPU game benchmark review.

This was a bit lengthy, however, your question was broad regarding the choice of GPU and you did not include the video resolution you will be using.

I hope this information will be enough to help you answer your GPU needs.
 

samyakjain222

Prominent
Oct 6, 2017
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710

According to me, you will waste your money in this buying and selling process.If I were you, I should have waited 6 months till volta releases.Save your money and buy some thing needful for your PC. After 6 months you can buy Volta easily
 
If the price between 1060 and 980ti is the same i will take 980ti over 1060 any day. In your case the only minus point on the 980ti is the card is used. So warranty might be an issue.

@Danra

When it comes to older hardware i don't think there is any different between nvidia and AMD. Both company give more focus on their new product. The thing that happen with kepler is not because nvidia no longer supporting the card. But it was direct impact when AMD GCN is being used in two major console. And when games being develop with AMD GCN in mind that is the "fine wine" effect that we see in certain games.
 


i'm not denying the performance advantage AMD GCN over kepler have over the time but most often i see people just take it as nvidia abandon kepler (worst they assume nvidia did it on purpose to sell new hardware). people said AMD support their older hardware better but history clearly shows that AMD has always been the one that will drop driver support first. just look at AMD 5k and 6k. AMD completely drop driver support in late Q1 2016 where as nvidia GPU from that generation still supported in main driver even today. same thing with GTX 200 series vs AMD 4k series.

and as i said both company give focus on their new hardware first. look at forza horizon 3 at launch for example. both RX480 and GTX1060 was about equal in that game. then what about cards from one generation behind from AMD and nvidia? Digital foundry did a test with RX480, GTX1060, GTX970 and R9 390. since the game is pure DX12 games some people expect R9 390 will murder GTX970 in that game. well it did not happen.

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofFpnArXbJ8&t=221s"][/video]

another example is Oculus ASW support. when Oculus officially launch ASW the feature is only being enabled by AMD for the RX400 series hardware.

The hardware requirements for ASW are modest. This functionality has been enabled on all current-generation AMD GPUs (RX 400 series) and previous- or current-generation Nvidia GPUs (GTX 900 or 1000 series).

source