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What makes an $800 GPU worth it over a $400 one? (Dieshrink Telegrams) (Patreon)

Published:
2020-12-03 04:54:45
Imported:
2021-12

Content

With so many GPUs this year not reaching their MSRP, and on the cusp of the launch of the $1000 6900XT - let's talk about what makes one decide (or not decide) an expensive GPU is worth the money...

This isn't strictly about price/performance either - there are many reasons one might decide to "treat yourself", or conversely that it is just silly to splurge this much on a component.  This is a Die Shrink dedicated to discussing what makes something expensive "worth it" for you in general, or literally from examples in your past!

(feel free to talk about non-GPU components as well)


Be thoughtful, use good grammar, and put some effort into it :).  We will select from comments below!

Comments

Nils

If my $800 GPU has enough VRAM and power to reasonably play things for 3 or 4 years with high/ultra, but not the absolute max settings of latest titles vs 1-2 for the $400 card, I'm going $800.

Anonymous

This sounds like more of a question of your financial means than your interest in gaming. Given unlimited money anyone with an interest in gaming would likely choose to do so in the way that would be most enjoyable. A rich person wouldn’t likely try their first game on a greyscale CCTV monitor with no sound. (I had to do this sometimes as a kid on N64, not enough TVs). Even if you knew nothing about gaming or hardware you know that Best Buy lackey is gonna try to sell you the most expensive thing he can. Anyways to answer your question personally, nothing. No matter how I slice it even $400 is my absolute max for a GPU. It’s just all (aka more than) I can justify spending within my budget. It would be lower but the stimulus came right when I was ready to finally upgrade from that ol G3258 / GTX970 rig and play some better games.

Anonymous

What i look for in a new gpu is that it has good performance increases over my current cards performance. I currently have a 1080ti Last generation cards weren't even worth the upgrade. Any graphics card choose to get should have more memory than my current card. And unfortunately in Australia we kinda get shafted at launch of products due to how isolated we are and how vast our country is. The only cards I can buy at the time of posting is rtx 3090 they start at a solid $2500. The new 3060ti looks good but its not on sale anywhere in Australia yet feels like hell of a paper launch for me.

Anonymous

I think its mostly a slippery slope. I know I talked myself up from a 1060 to a 1070ti when I built my first computer. If you already start at a $500 card as "reasonable" an $800 card will soon not seem so bad.

Anonymous

I'm gaming at 4K on the 48 inch LG CX (amazing display btw) and I do see 4K being the de facto resolution in the near future and I'm simply trying to get ahead of the curve. While I'm not exactly thrilled paying $800 after tax for my 3080 given its' 10GB VRAM, I'm more than happy with the performance and am willing to turn down settings in the future to make it last. It's not so much "future proofing" since I've been listening to you and I expect that the GPU war is going to ramp up and make this card obsolete in 3-5 years, I do want something that will help me weather the storm. I plan on this being my LAST $800 GPU I'll ever buy before I return to sub $500 prices for good 4K gaming.

MyLittlePwny

I usually buy the flagship tier GPU each generation and other hardware due to playing in 4k and wanting the best frames possible. But more than that, I like benchmarking and extreme overclocking to try and get the highest scores possible.

Anonymous

Hi Tom &amp; Dan, Well, firstly, I was fully prepared to spend ~$1,000 on a GPU so the fact I was able to get a 3080 FE for $700 MSRP was awesome for me. As a console player my whole life I wanted something powerful enough that could completely blow me away and play competitive games at ultra/high settings over 120fps at 1440p for maybe 3-4 years. Sure I’ll still play other types of games on PC but I fully plan on getting a PS5 for exclusives and other single player titles. The last component was that I was willing to spend more to hopefully experience some better ray tracing. Time will tell if that’s going to be worth it or not but we’ll see what happens. To summarize - I would rather spend $800 on a GPU knowing it’s going to blow me away and beat what performance I’ll see on PS5 versus spending $400 and getting similar performance. (Plus not being able to run a game on high/ultra with a new card would annoy me). As always, thanks for the content. Edit: I wanted to add that in most cases I tend to purchase things more on the high-end or somewhere between mid and high - but usually not the absolute most expensive thing.

Josh Law (adn)

ultimately to me it just depends on what you want to do and budget. a 400$ gpu now can play every game an 800$ gpu can, and still play them well. an 800$ gpu would need better performance per dollar, and maybe be able to handle more bells and whistles. perhaps even a better thermal profile would be interesting, the 800$ gpu performing better but also not kicking as much heat or not much more heat into the room you're using the PC in. thinking outside of strictly gaming having maybe something useful like a temperature indicator of a system resource monitor on the side of the card (as apposed to pretty but useless RGB) would also be interesting. for me the performance of 400$ gpus is adequate, as expected basically. and i wouldnt expect to hold onto an 800$ gpu any longer than a 400$ gpu since new gpus usually grind the old ones into dust in terms of performance anyway

Anonymous

I guess in my case, I got interested in PC gaming just as dedicated graphics cards were becoming a fixture in the market. I remember excitedly reading in PC Gamer about how the new Nvidia GeForce 3 card would make graphics rivaling Jurassic Park possible in real time and thinking how astonishing that was considering all of the flat pixelated games of that era, and the first tentative steps into crude 3D taken by the PlayStation and Nintendo 64s. Obviously marketing exaggerated then as it does now, but it was an extremely exciting time to be interested in PC games. While my interest in PC gaming ebbed and flowed through the years, I always considered it the pinnacle of gaming, even if that came with a high cost for the very best performance which was true then and now, as the GeForce3 cost $500 at launch, which is $735 adjusted for inflation. It's empowering and exciting to feel like you are on the cutting edge, that you can play any game without worrying about tweaking settings or feel like you have compromised your experience in any way, even if those compromises wouldn't really be noticeable to yourself or 99% of people. No one likes turning a graphics preset slider down from Ultra down to High then down to Medium, then eventually Low. It will always bother me knowing I’m not getting every last bit of the gaming experience, even if that experience is fantastic. I just feel like I might be missing out on some small part that someone else has. When I built my first PC in early 2016, the top end card was a 980ti. This was getting close to the launch of the Pascal architecture, but I figured if I waited for every new release, I'd never build the thing. In hindsight of course I wish I had waited the couple months for the big leap forward that came with the 1080, and I was determined not to make the same mistakes for my next one. As my 980ti build started to age, and I had to keep lowering settings to render games in 1440p and above 60fps, I realized I wanted to be back on that cutting edge. I’m lucky enough to have the means to spend $2000ish on a new PC, so I started gathering parts at the middle of this year. I knew there was a new generation of Ryzen coming, and people universally liked that so I grabbed a highly rated x570 board in preparation, and I knew Nvidia was cooking something up with Ampere and from the leaks and rumors it was going to a big step forward in the way Turing wasn’t. I was lucky enough to grab both a 3080FE in early October from Best Buy (they do exist!) and a Ryzen 5800x on launch and am in awe of the power I now have. A month in with this new rig and I couldn’t be happier, even if some people are disappointed in the marketing not living up to reality, which, of course it didn’t, they never do. My old Evga 980ti FTW cost me $629 back in February 2016, which when adjusted for inflation would cost about $685 today. So $14 more for my 3080 Founder’s Edition seemed perfectly reasonable to me. What makes it worth twice the price of a 3060ti, which is a fantastic card and something I’d recommend to friends just as I’m sure I would Navi 22 when it releases, I just like being on that no compromises cutting edge, and I’ll likely hold onto my $800 card longer than I would my $400 one. Now I’d never argue the $800 card is a better value in the short or long term, but it gets me closer to the performance peak without getting burned on $1,200+ cards which are just an awful deal in all regards. Just to add some numbers. Let’s take a look at Techspot/Hardware Unboxed’s 3060ti review. Looking at the 18 game average rankings at 1440p, the 3060ti gets 114fps on average, which is fantastic, but 40ish frames below the 3080 &amp; 6800XT. Now neither I nor anyone else could tell 4fps between the 6800XT and 3080, but many of us could likely tell the 40fps difference between the 3060ti numbers and the 3080’s. It’s just be smoother overall with fewer noticeable dips and more competitive longer. Because compared to the entry on the very bottom of that list, a 980ti averaging 56fps (which, how? Mine was barely getting 30 in most games), these cards are in a whole new world of performance, and new worlds should be exciting, even if you have to pay to get there. Sorry this is way too long to read. Hopefully you can grab a few high-level points. Thanks for all your great coverage and discussions. Try not to get jaded, remember tech is supposed to be enjoyable. Take care and stay safe.

Anonymous

To me it has nothing to do with anything extra, just since I use my PC in basically 100% of my free time, I can justify the price as long as it isn't that far above a down-payment on a car. I got a 3090 for example and though that's a bit above my price comfort, since 3080s just aren't available I decided to just move up a tier and possibly hold onto it another year more than normal. Since I have a 4K 144hz monitor and lower resolutions do look far worse even 1440p, I can justify it to run 4K in more games. Though personally I don't really ever want to pass the $700 price range. That's just a bit too steep for one part. Again only got a 3090 as my 1080 wasn't nearly enough for most games at 4K and there were already a few games where VRAM was causing stuttering. FF15 uses up to 13 GB of VRAM in 4K and just over 9 at 1440p for example. I only expect that to get worse. Plus the 3090 is more than double my 1080 so now I get better 4K performance than I used to get at 1440p.

Anonymous

Features that complement gaming performance. On the nvidia side you have rtx voice, rtx IO, full hdmi 2.1 48gbit and gsync compatible with most freesync TVs. While AMD should have the same, I have yet to see reviews focus on these that apply and actually more reports are coming in about VRR not working and hdmi broken, HDR being somewhat wonky. Brand choice aside, why go for 6900xt class, or 3080ti: simple, there's nothing better out there and when you're targeting 4k 120hz hdr vrr, every little bit of extra performance counts. Also it's much easier to reach that point where you start a game and maybe spend as little as possible in the settings menu since you are rocking the best perf and should brute force it anyway to high fps.

Anonymous

Future proof to last many years

Anonymous

Hey Tom and Dan, This one’s easy for me as I use my PC predominantly for work. If there is a specific component I can get that will allow me to work more efficiently and effectively, it almost makes no sense not to buy it. Having excellent gaming performance is just a nice bonus 😊 Of course, in this case you need to be familiar with your specific workloads to know the point it is worth it to spend more. I’m working on a new build right now and I decided to splurge on the 5950X (finally got one in the mail!) as I can make use of the high core count. Didn’t need to go as crazy with the GPU and managed to snag a 3070 FE on launch day, which will be more than enough for what I need it for. Also, the more expensive parts tend to use better components and have a higher build quality. It’s worth it to me to spend a bit more on something that will be less likely to give me headaches or costly downtime. As the old saying goes: “Buy it nice, or buy it twice.”

Anonymous

So at the moment, I am sitting here with both the RTX 3070 FE and the RX 6800 and although these two were bagged for MSRP - £469 for the 3070 and £529 for the 6800 even at those prices they are not fantastic value... But anything above for me starts to descend into the realm of severely diminishing returns for all but a few use cases. Ignoring genuine "Prosumers" for a moment, for me a "top tier" graphics card would only make sense to the person who has it all as a hobbyist and has optimized their full system to a stage where there is no where left to turn. How is your internet connection? Your Peripherals? Your desk &amp; chair? - The items you constantly use when at your PC regardless if you are gaming or not are often ignored in favour of a panel off photo designed to get likes and a virtual pat on the back on reddit and to me that makes no sense as each directly contributes to the enjoyment you get from a gaming session. Most importantly though, I would say how is your monitor... The thing that you are actually visually interacting with your graphics card through is something that, lets face it, is for the majority of people much more boring of an upgrade than saying you run the highest tier GPU but in reality that makes the biggest difference to the visual fidelity of your gaming experience. I know for me personally the biggest "wow" moments - the memorable and tangible upgrades that stick out in my mind have all came through the use of display technologies rather than graphics card grunt. First monitor with really good color reproduction, First time with Freesync, the first time in Ultrawide, the first time with a 32" 1440p monitor, I can tell you which game I tried first and remember the feeling of each. I couldn't tell you which game I first played on my 8800GTS, 5850, 280X, 980Ti, my Vega64, 5700XT ...or even the 3070 &amp; 6800 (That said I can't remember my first 4K experience either as it was underwhelming compared to other "firsts") At this point the only way I'd see the top tier cards being a "good buy" is if you already have a top notch 4K panel.. and even then that's only because its out of necessity of the situation rather than because it's the best way to play.

The Immortal Cameraman

Simply put, a $700-tier (or greater) GPU will be within the upper echelon of gaming performance. Splurging on components in this pricing tier will give the purchaser the intangible feeling of being elite; the tangible proof of status in the component and present performance itself. It's like going to an auto dealer with the intent of purchasing a stock Chevy Malibu and leaving with a Cadillac Escalade EX with all the options checked. Another reason to consider is one's desire to "future-proof" their build to whether the inevitable advancements of technology for a perceivably longer period of time versus mid-range products. A good example is a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition paired to a Core i7-2600K still holding its own in 1080p gaming to this day when it was arguably the upper echelon of gaming performance nearly a decade ago. Conversely, there are others who take pride in making more frugal purchases. Whether that entails researching the best price/performance in the $300-$500 tier, or just having the budget to have a well-balanced mid-tier setup depends on the knowledgeability of the purchaser. Either way, getting the most for your money is typically the mindset of more budget-conscious and budget-limited gamers willing to forego the premium of having the pinnacle of performance for a more grounded setup. Depreciation is also another factor that goes into the purchasing decision of mid-range components versus high-end since mid-range components lose far less value than their high-end counterparts. The RX 5700 XT with its $400 MSRP stands to lose far less value than a 2080 ($700 MSRP) or 2080 Ti ($999 MSRP, $1199 actual price) while still being capable of entry-level 4K gaming. Keep in mind that it's definitely a lot easier (and cheaper) to upgrade $300-$500 components every few years with the prior components retaining most of their value than to regularly upgrade $700+ components that quickly depreciate as soon as the next flagships appear close to launch. Flagship components require cheaper backup components in order to resell said flagship parts at around full value prior to the launch of the next flagships. Unless one is willing to slum it without components for weeks-to-months, extra purchases are required in order to perpetually maintain flagship purchases at minimal cost. At least, if one is being more frugal with their flagship purchases. There are others that simply have more money than sense and will spare no expense for the best, regardless of depreciation in value of previous flagships.

John Dorman

Whether a GPU is worth it or not depends entirely on your rig and monitor. If you have a 1080p60, no a 3080 is obviously not "worth it"

Anonymous

My choice of gpu is almost wholly dependent on my choice of monitor: resolution, refresh rate, G-SYNC and/or FreeSync, and now HDR. My first $800 GPU was the 1080ti and it was better than the titan for gaming when it came out, and was sorta the entry point to 4K60. While my monitor wasn't quite that mumuch resolution, I had just upgraded to a 1440p Ultrawide monitor overclockable to 100Hz. This is what drove me to go for both that monitor and that GPU. It was the ultimate setup and balance between framerate and resolution. I still use the monitor and GPU today. I've nly recently had to sacrifice on some quality settings to maintain &gt;60 fps in my favorite titles. I feel it was worth it, today.

Anonymous

For me it is always about what I want my PC to do. I will wait longer and save more money if I have to, or will settle if a cheaper component meets my needs. Currently my desire for my next big PC update is to do 4K, 90+FPS with ray tracing on in fairly demanding games. This isn't quite yet achievable in my opinion so I will wait until next gen GPUs and likely spend $800-1000 on that GPU, and then not upgrade for another 4ish years. In cases like with the 3090 where you're getting a 10% uplift in performance for an 90% uplift in price, even though it is getting close to what I want, the premium is obscene. I will absolutely regret that purchase when next gen GPUs hit the same performance for likely 30-40% of the price.

Mican Andrews

No gpu should be over 699 the 1080ti was 70% faster than previous gen, Nvidia effectively gave us a Titan for 699. People are just ok with 600$ 70 class cards and 500$ 60 class cards. Raytracing is a not gonna happen till next gen at least no point in buying these cards.

Jeremy Lamb

Why do people continually get mad at suppliers for high prices? If the prices were lower they would sell out even quicker and cause more scalping. For prices to come down supply has to exceed demand. Very frustrated CPA here who doesn't see many people understanding supply/demand and economies of scale. You did a good job in your last video explaining pricing and shipping but could you expand on how you calculate BOM's and how economies of scale work with hardware pricing? There are still so many that don't seem to understand these concepts.

Anonymous

I built my first PC August of 2019 (9900k, 2080). Im just a college student so this represented a significant investment. When they announced the Ampere cards in September I rushed to sell my 2080 in anticipation of the new gen, and spent nearly 2 months without a graphics card. I even bought a filler 1650 super. Luckily i found a 3070 for near MSRP at microcenter last week and my build is complete again. This message is for the newer PC builder that experienced FOMO like me: what you have now is perfectly fine, and spending a ton on a gpu wont make you feel better when better ones come out in the following months/years. This lesson, having my PC out of commission for months for only a 20% or whatever improvement, has made me appreciate what i have, and i know when new cards come out, i can be impressed without itching to buy it. I bet many people who buy new graphics cards, especially high end, aren't the richest. They probably are passionate gamers like me (cringe) that spend a significant amt of their income on upgrades. Anyway, rant over. I thought my inexperienced view of this situation may be interesting/help other newer builders not feel like they need the best thing always.

Kiwi Phil

I believe a bit of nostalgia for those of us old enough to recall the last time AMD Took the crown. Of course, also as a PC flipper its pretty much why I flip as well to maneuver up the stack. And now with less and less time as a Gamer its always niceto just hit the button for High or ultra and just enjoy rather than constantly tweaking or adjusting for playable frames.

Anonymous

Value can be easily compared within a product space. We see this all the time with fps/$ charts. However it's near impossible to know the value of a given product to a given individual. I have a 49" 1440p super ultra wide monitor that really improves my productivity at my job. For gaming, my only real hobby during the pandemic, this means close to the pixel count of 4k. I play AAA titles and enjoy eye-candy but my monitor flickers if my %1 lows drop below ~48 fps. So while I don't "need" anything related to gaming, I needed a next-gen GPU to have a good experience. I went into MicroCenter to get a PSU, saw a $750 3080, and snagged it without a second thought. Totally worth it to me. I have the savings for it, I'll get years of enjoyment out of it, and it fits my build. Also, being a PC HW nerd is WAY cheaper than my previous life being a car modding nerd.

Anonymous

This year I built a new PC including an upgrade to a 4K monitor. I bought an RTX 3080 to play games at 4K. I had my previous 1440p 144Hz monitor for 5 years. In 2017 I bought an OLED TV and I think HDR is the most noticeable visual upgrade of any 4K screen. I chose to spend $1000 dollars on an Amazon renewed Asus PG27UQ including a 5 year warranty. I chose this monitor because it has the best HDR performance of any monitor currently available. I absolutely love this monitor and plan on keeping it for 5 years, which is how I justified spending $1000. I justified the $700 for the 3080 to drive this monitor and I have been very impressed so far. I am glad that AMD is competitive again in GPU market, but I went with Nvidia again. My monitor has G-Sync Ultimate and I prefer G-Sync to Freesync. I also like the Nvidia software stack for the RTX GPUs more than what AMD is offering currently. I wouldn't consider myself a Nvidia fanboy by any means, I just buy the products that I prefer or like the features of at the time of purchase. It just so happens, that every time I am in the market for a new GPU I have preferred Nvida's offering. I am of the opinion that everyone should be able to use whatever product they prefer for whatever reason they have without being attacked or harassed about their preference. My opinion differs from you and Paul at NAAF on Ray Tracing. I have played Control and all of the DLC and most of the side missions, it is one of my favorite games. I played through the base game on my previous PC which had a 1080Ti and I played the DLC on my new PC with the 3080. I really enjoyed it with the ray tracing and thanks to DLSS my frame rate was well above 60fps. If I had kept my 1440p monitor longer then I wouldn't have purchased a 3080 and probably would have been fine with a lower tier card. The main features that drove my purchase of a 3080 are G-Sync and a 4K 120Hz HDR monitor in addition to liking the Nvidia software stack. One of the reasons I built this new PC was for Cyberpunk 2077, a game that has me more hyped than I was for Destiny 1 and as hyped as I was for the original Mass Effect. I know that I could have played Cyberpunk 2077 on my old PC, or on an AMD card and it would be the same game. I like the image quality of good DLSS implementations, and I wanted to play the game at 4K with HDR and Ray Tracing. The only option for doing this at launch is a PC with an RTX 3080 or 3090. The PS5 and Xbox Series patches won't be out until next year, and I don't know when CDPR will support the current and future features of AMD cards. I genuinely hope that CDPR provides support for Ray Tracing and whatever AMD's DLSS competitor is in future patches. The image quality of a game creates greater immersion and improves the experience for me and I want to have the best experience I can afford. These are the reasons that I purchased a 3080. These are my preferences and opinions and I hope that everyone has happy holiday season and can enjoy playing some games.

Valko Milev

I was going to buy Ampere TITAN for my A.I. research/training but when Nvidia decided to cripple it all aspects I have decided to to buy 3080 because I am not going to pay for the thing that was going to be the TITAN and I will not support their actions.On more detail level the performance of 3080 compared to 3090 is almost the same when we look at some A.I. benchmarks.The biggest differince is the memory size and to put it simply if you want to use the majority of the image datasets at once you will be better of with 3090 in all other cases get 3080 or two of them for the double speed(A.I. workload scales very well on multiple gpus) . I am hoping for a Hopper TITAN pls pls pls.

Anonymous

Hey Tom (and Dan ?), I really appreciate your content. Coming from Quebec, It really helped me improve my english. Nonetheless, being a full time student, I was never really able to afford something expensive, my first build consisted of an fx-6300 and a radeon r7 370. Thankfully something good came out of this worldwide pandemic and I was able to get a pretty nice job last summer, giving me the ability to afford a new build. I made this build with the fact in mind that the new generation of GPU’s were coming, so i got a cheap rx 580 as a placeholder in my build waiting for the next gen. Sadly, when they announced the new ampere lineup, I felt like it wouldn’t age well in higher resolution compared to whatever Amd had to offer due to VRAM, so i skipped it since i’m looking for something that will age well. Now that the 6000 series have been announced, I'm trying to get my hand on an rx 6800 xt to pair it with a 1440p 144hz monitor and a 4k 60hz monitor to fully enjoy my christmas vacations, but since i live in Canada, i don’t even know if i’ll be able to get one in the near future.