Interesting question. Someone was writing me "he was getting a 3080/10 GB instead of a 3080 TI/12 GB because it was only giving 10 extra frames with a price increase of 100 CAD and he did not see the value there." As he was asking me for my opinion i generally said i would rather go for a 12 GB card and in general myself i would rather pick the 3080 TI if i could afford it.

Now, what do people think? What is the better deal? In the end my opinion does not matter anymore... just a lot of unnecessary questions and people still "get what they want"... so why even to ask.

Anyway, what do people think. Just curious.

1. 3080 or 3080 TI with 100 CAD difference?
2. Lets say you could get a card with +100 FPS but it will cost you +1000 coins, if you could afford it, is it "deal or no deal"?

If someone can not afford it... the entire evaluation would be pointless anyway... no one can get something they can not afford.

Yes: 10 crappy First-Person Shooters are worth 100 pages of Ctrl+Alt+Del 1.0.

Neither 10 fps nor 2 GB VRAM worth the price, especially for about 5 year old cards.

Preference and boredom? Small margins could lead to a smooth experience......you gotta use enough chapstick......lol

No way. Just by asking that question you are proving that we both live in totally different worlds because I would never pay 1000€ for a graphics card.

Hmmm... so far the answers are not always clear but the majority seems to say "no deal".

I may indeed life in a different world because if we look at what is happening now, the flagship card priced at 2000-3000 and even the older flagship was 2000.

Then my flagship, the oldest viable in my view, a 3000 series, i would not go older than that, to less RT performance, no good support anymore: I paid close to 1300 coins for it, however... that was several years ago in a new condition, not a used card. It was a lot, yes, but considering for how many years this card is now serving me well i see it as something valuable, something useful to me.

It does not matter this circumstances, as long as something is not affordable, then no need to talk about.

There are bigger costs in my life, certainly... in fact my living expenses every month are several times higher than the coins i had to spend for this card (1300): I do not live inside the Rainforest somewhere in Brazil... i live at a very expensive place.

Question is still: Is it worth it to you... if you could afford it. There are many other costs maybe able to exceed this price, so it is a valid question.

At least according to Nvidia... which is taking a huge margin on many cards (70% or even higher) such a card is "worth it" and it seems their financial data is with a skyrocketing language. Well it is somehow a weird situation because all those years PC gamers always said, if they had any real reason why not to buy a console "a PC is way more powerful"... but nowadays, way to many PC users either got a weaker PC vs. the newest console generation or are even happy with having a weaker machine. It kinda sounds to me like "the costs of high end was now exceeding their pain threshold, so they kinda are now giving up"... and either may use dated cards or are not buying anything higher than "lower-midrange"; such as RTX 5700.

For sure, anyone having to "fight" for every single coin, i would not be a good person to ask for because i would probably just "give up" already and buy some noodles with... and if not... i may ask for noodles somewhere so i could put every single coin "saved" into a hardware i actually enjoy.

Yet my best advise for now: Do not buy anything except a 30 TB HDD... because hardware is not worth it, but the lowest value are GPUs, any of them. Very unfortunate, because gamers need them the most of all "consumers".

My view is that dedicated graphics cards in general haven't been worth it for quite a number of years and the situation is basically certain to continue for the foreseeable future. In the days when the top tier was about $700 and the third or so in line was about half that and gave you a nice balance between performance and cost and power consumption, it was one thing, though these days the power consumption alone would make it questionable, but now when any decent current card goes in the thousands, screw that. Stick a top tier APU in it, keep a monitor with a lower resolution, play older games and/or on lower settings, wean yourself off eye candy, and be done with it. That sort of cost, both upfront and running costs, isn't worth it for just playing games. Or, more exactly, if you can afford that, I have a long list of causes and quite a few billion people who'd deserve your money a heck of a lot more than greedy manufacturers (and power companies).

Nah, the most powerful cards are not used for playing games anymore, this is gone for many years already. My 3090 TI actually was priced over 3000 for a while... and why? Because the buyers did usually not play games with, they was doing "crypto mining". However... 3000 is a bargain if we take into account: A data-center card will cost up to 40 000 and the megacorps are able to afford it.

So there is a high relativity but it seems that most consumers already reach a pain threshold at 1000 and Nvidia is enjoying it to "rape it"... as they apparently can not produce enough cards anyway.

It is always weird as soon as Nvidia is making the newest announcement and is setting a certain price: Short time after the reality seems totally different and the price is usually way higher than the MSRP. We live at a age of "money bloat" and maybe, as long as there is no market-crash, it will not stop anymore.

However, who is deciding "how useful something is"? Is making money in some way always the most useful thing a human could do and "having joy playing games" not much use? Everything is based on perception and value is not a "normalized" thing, yet, usually the society is trying to normalize the "fiat coins" with full force. Reason why it can even resist "massive bloat" which usually would result into the loss of any value, at some point... yet it does not. It surely was losing a lot of value, yet way lesser than any common sense would "allow".

Yeah, that's what made the prices explode. And now you have AI too. But your question was whether it was worth the extra cost for smoother gaming.

Well the answer is leaning toward: Not really worth it for gaming but if i look at the overall-behavior of all humans, most humans would consider very high prices as soon as they can make "real money" with. Sad somehow... because it does directly show what they "value the most".

However... i can totally understand when some gamers say: They just do not want to throw so many coins into the throat of greedy companies.

It's one of the most harmful things one can do. Hence, get by with as little as possible, getting rid of things that make you need to earn more.
There's plenty of enjoyment in games with lower requirements, and several years old, or played on lower settings. And, mainly if DRM free, a game that requires too much now will still be there several years down the line when your next computer, or the one after that, will be able to play it even if it'll be relatively low-end compared to what the market will offer at that point. (If you're thinking that you may not still be here by then... Well, in that case it doesn't much matter, and there are more worthy things to do with your time until then than strive to play the newest games.)

Not possible, there are certain living expenses that remain pretty solid and those are several times higher, every month, than a already expensive GPU. It may not be the case for you but my situation is different.

I would simply sacrifice my "game quality" with rather limited save up if i look at my overall costs. Do you think maintaining a car is cheap? Maybe where you live i dunno... not at my place.

How much do you think is my health insurance? I tell you: Close to 500 USD a month, and it only goes up.

Guess my "cost of living" is simply beyond sane but thats simply how it is and a high priced GPU every 4-5 years may not really change a lot at all... considering the overall costs.

Nonetheless... Nvidia and even AMD to some extend, remains greedy.

You may be able to trade in a lot of "life quality" by cutting this "GPU corner" but, it is not really the case for me. I still try to save up as much as possible but in general, if it does hurt my "quality of living" it is rarely worth it, life is just to valuable and time is more value than coins in general.

If a game plays crap... and a good GPU may cost 3 months of health insurance... it is already hard to say "No" to it... but perhaps no hard decision for someone having the "Romanian living expenses" where it could mean a entire year of health insurance.

Yes, everyone is living in different "worlds"; definitely... yet... the world the Nvidia chef is inhabiting is so far away from any "commoners" world... we may not even be able to imagine this world.

Ultimately, a lot of decisions, no matter good or bad, are being made out of the lack of appreciation... because there is no "experience" for... and naturally humans are using the stuff "accessible" to them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5aAg5Mu41s

Enjoyment vs money spent is always subjective. However, the problem with the GPU "rat race" is it's turned into an insane self-fulfilling prophecy "race to the bottom" downward spiral of self-destruction, ie:-

- "We invented DLSS and $1000 250w GPU's to make games run better @ 1440p on low-end GPU's, and because of that they optimised less..."
- "So we invented DLSS2 and $1500 300w GPU's to make it even 'easier' for them, and because of that they just optimised even less..."
- "So we invented DLSS3 and $1600 400w GPU's and because of that they just stopped optimising altogether..."
- "So we invented DLSS4 and $2000 575w GPU's and now we're actually seeing games regress all the way back to 1114x626 pixel native rendering" (Healthy reality check - even 1990's CRT monitors enjoyed 1024x768, 1280x1024, etc, native rendering...)

It's up to you what you want to spend your money on but personally speaking, stepping out of that mindless AAA rat race and focusing on Indie's / older games that play well even at 1440p on a 120w 'budget' GPU is one the healthiest and sanest things I did. A lot of people asking "Is it worth it" for high-end GPU's are more seeking validation than anything, ie, want to be told "Yes", but only you can answer that for your own circumstances. Personally I can afford such a card, but even if I had billions in the bank, I still wouldn't feed the above industry enshitifcation purely on principle.

I don't have such a luxury problem either.

The last major leap in raster graphics performance was the GTX 1080. Since then, not much has changed in terms of efficiency. The increased performance has simply been stacked on top of the performance and paid for with power costs. As far as I know, the only other additions worth mentioning are DLSS and RTX (ray tracing).

Since I still play in FHD and am completely satisfied with it, my 1080 has been able to run all games without any problems so far.

I would never pay 1,000 bucks or more for a graphics card. I bought my 1080 used for a very reasonable price (250 bucks) back then, and fortunately, it runs flawlessly.

Just my 2 cents