RTX 4XXX Thread

[Spinelli]

Hi all, been lurking on this thread for a while as been wanting to upgrade my 6900xt for better VR performance. Can anyone tell me though whether it's actually worth spending several hundred more £ on a 'better' AIB card? For instance there's a Gainward Phantom for £1549 here in the UK, vs a MSI Gaming X Trio for £1748, or at the higher end a Suprim X for £1899, all have solid reviews, but can anyone suggest I will be getting better real world performance for the extra £? For the record I'm not super bothered about noise as running a wind sim which will drown out anything (rig only used for sim), and heat shouldn't be too much of a problem as case is very cooling focused. Are there any other things I should consider? (Aside from the fact they are still ridiculously expensive!)

No. They're identical. Literally a waste of money unless...maybe...if you go down to the absolute lowest models then...maybe...they won't be safe if you want to run the card at 600 W even that I doubt but...maybe.

I have the MSI Gaming non-X Trio (non-'X" means non-"OC" model). It doesn't have the vapor chamber cooler, it also won't allow you to go past 450 W (even though it's supposed to allow 480 W with the power limit slider). Further more, it only comes with a 3-PCI-E adapter instead of 4 which sort of hard-limits it to 450 W.

I got a 4 PCI-E adapter and first flashed the MSI Suprim X BIOS for 520 W out of curiosity, and then the Gigabyte Gaming BIOS for 600 W. Now I can run the card to it's fullest. I have the memory at +1000 and the core OC'd so it always runs close to 3100 MHz without dropping thanks to the power limit...all while staying in the 60s degrees.

Those clockspeeds are not any better than with the original BIOS overclock but now the core clock speeds don't drop, or barely do, unless reaching 600 W which 99.9 % of games won't do.

Anyone paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars more for higher models is LITERALLY wasting their money for absolutely nothing. Think of the stupidly, ridiculous huge and expensive ASUS ROG Strix. Humungous card but, what's worse is it's absolutely insanely overpriced price while, in reality, offering nothing except e-peen.

With regards to overclocking:

- unlike most cards, the 4090 usually gains more from memory clocks than core. If you get a card that, say, allows +1500 MHz on the memory but can't do more than, say, 2975 MHz on the core, you got a good card

- don't waste your money paying extra for the more overclocked versions like the "OC", the "X", etc. You can literally do the same with an OCing program like MSI Afterburner. Those cards, nor higher model cards in general, don't have any better chance to overclock more than non-"OC" chips. It's literally just a money grab directed towards uneducated consumers. The models that have chips which are tested to be able to overclock more (AKA binned chips) are usually only special, highly limited edition cards like EVGA "Kingpin" cards of previous generations. I don't even think the limited edition Galax OC Lab / OC Lab Plus 4090 with 666 W power limit and 2x 12VHPWR connectors is binned (but not 100% sure).

- with regards to binning and 4090s, there are people suggesting that Nvidia is keeping the better chips for themselves for their 4090 FE versions - especially with regards to memory. Some people have said that the FE cards have a higher chance of OCing the memory to the +1400 - +1800 range than non-FE cards but take this with a gran of salt; it's what some people are saying but I haven't researched it enough (nor do I care to) to be entirely convinced of it.

P.S. You can still easily be GPU-limited with a 4090.

 

[Neilski]

So I guess you'll have to decide whether or not to buy a GPU within the next 5 years or not, lol

Agreed. I think I'm gonna pull the pin sooner rather than later, still unsure what it'll be though

But we only tested Flight Simulator, where you don't really have fast paced inputs

Mmm, I'm fairly confident that one of the games with nasty FG artefacts was indeed Flight Simulator - things like text overlays were getting somewhat scrambled and glitching.
I no longer remember which review video showed the artefacts though, and I guess with any luck tweaks to the game + drivers should eliminate this kind of issue... The fact that you didn't spot problems may in fact mean that they were already cured by the time you made the tests.

 

[pattikins]

Well, with the thread now around 10 months old, I find that I'm getting an itchy trigger finger, since a GTX 970 is not quite up to snuff in 2023.
In the last month or so, the 3060 Ti supply in the UK has finally dipped again below £400 (plenty of them available on Ebuyer at <= £399.99 for example), but with the passage of so much time I've become less sure that I want to upgrade to an 8 GB card ... (Also the damn thing still hasn't hit my notional target price of £350, but I guess I could stretch a point with inflation.)
This is making me consider (somewhat to my horror!) the 4070, despite it costing at least double what I'd regard as an acceptable price for a GPU (They start right now at £565 from the same vendor.)
It does have an even better power-consumption/fps and fps/price ratios than the 3060 Ti, even neglecting the DLSS3 & FG stuff which I won't trust to be useful until/unless I see it with my own eyes (nervous about artefacts having seen some nasties in reviews).
Throw in the sensible 8-pin power connector on many AIB cards, a sensible physical size, and it's basically just all great, bar the unlovely price.
In recent weeks I had pretty much ruled out any of the other 40 series cards being an option since the 4060/4050 were expected to have only 8 GB, but the bizarre news in the last 24 hours is that one of the 4060s will have 16 GB (wtf).

If you're still considering the 3060 ti @ £399..., there's a 3070 selling for £413 on Amazon. It uses less energy than the 3060 ti. That said, given the current value of second hand Ampere cards, and the hullabaloo over 8gb vram cards recently, I'm not sure either card represents good value.

 

[Neilski]

If you're still considering the 3060 ti @ £399..., there's a 3070 selling for £413 on Amazon. It uses less energy than the 3060 ti. That said, given the current value of second hand Ampere cards, and the hullabaloo over 8gb vram cards recently, I'm not sure either card represents good value.

Thanks, but am slightly confused because articles with both nominal and measured power consumption info for those cards seem to say that the 3070 has higher consumption than the 3060 ti.
I guess you probably mean that it uses less energy for a given set of graphics settings? (That would no doubt be correct given it's higher performance.)
Sadly though, the offer you found must have been short-lived - that link is currently showing a price of £740.

 

[pattikins]

Thanks, but am slightly confused because articles with both nominal and measured power consumption info for those cards seem to say that the 3070 has higher consumption than the 3060 ti.
I guess you probably mean that it uses less energy for a given set of graphics settings? (That would no doubt be correct given it's higher performance.)
Sadly though, the offer you found must have been short-lived - that link is currently showing a price of £740.

If you're still looking @ the 3060 ti, Scan are selling the newer faster memory (Gddr6x) version for £369. However, depending on the type of games you like to play, there is a chance that the 3060 ti will be minimum spec.

 

[RCHeliguy]

So Nvidia is considering a new Titan GPU with up to 48Gb of VRAM mostly for professional use.

My 4090 will definitely hold me until the 50 series comes out.

 

[Bob Gnarley]

ARE YOU INTENDING TO GET A 40 SERIES GPU​

My vote is in (literally!)

Sapphire Pulse 7900XT. Happy days!

 

[RCHeliguy]

Interesting..

So DDR7 should be able to outrun GPU cores for quite some time and use less power!
And he mentioned that Nvidia may be using this memory in the upcoming 50 series in 2024.

It's always great when they can squeeze more speed out of something and use less power!

 

[RCHeliguy]

 

[pattikins]

After reading some of the reviews for the RTX 4060ti & RX 7600, those poor sales figures aren't going to improve anytime soon.

 

[Terry Rock]

After reading some of the reviews for the RTX 4060ti & RX 7600, those poor sales figures aren't going to improve anytime soon.

You couldn't pay me to buy either of those cards.
As the guy says...."nothing burgers"
Cut-down bus width coupled with 8GB VRAM...in 2023.
Horrible crap and yet Nvidia has the audacity to ask for $400.
They must really believe their target audience to be stupid or ill-informed.

 

[pattikins]

You couldn't pay me to buy either of those cards.
As the guy says...."nothing burgers"
Cut-down bus width coupled with 8GB VRAM...in 2023.
Horrible crap and yet Nvidia has the audacity to ask for $400.
They must really believe their target audience to be stupid or ill-informed.

Agreed, the 4060 ti is too expensive given that they've stripped away more features than they've added. I'm sure it's not lost on Nvidia that those who want to play with ultra settings @ 1080p & or 1440p further down the road will have to upgrade sooner than later. Unfortunately, most reviewers tend to focus on ultra quality settings (single player games), so it's difficult to gauge what the 4060ti could deliver with games more focused on higher frame rates, epsorts/multiplayer games (quantity vs quality) where the extra L2 cache could shine.

That said, compared to the 3060ti, the 4060 ti is a poor replacement. Looking under the hood, it seems to be more in line with generational improvements vis a vis the 2060s card, rather than the extra shading units, TMUs... that the 3060ti received.

The 4060ti has twice the number of shading units, half the tensor cores, otherwise it mirrors the 2060s (should be called '4060s'... it also has fewer ROPs to rub salt in the wound, & to separate it from '70 class cards). I suspect the next generation of cards will follow the same path, with the 5070ti getting a trim.

On the bright side, the 3060ti prices seem to be falling in the UK.

 

[Neilski]

On the bright side, the 3060ti prices seem to be falling in the UK.

Yup, price cuts seem to have kicked in at a few UK retailers in the last 48 hours or so and I'm guessing it's universal(?). Ebuyer has that same Asus card even cheaper* in fact (£316, or £291 with the cashback). I guess the stock will dry up pretty fast of course.

It makes the 4070 a considerably harder sell to my skinflint side... Do I get the cheaper, slower card that will need replacement sooner, or the faster (~1.5x), pricey (almost 2x!) card that barely has VRAM headroom even today? Hmmm.

*Edit: ah, no it's the same price in fact; the MINI version of the DUAL OC is £316/£291, the DUAL OC is £326/£301)

 

[Bob Gnarley]

What an awful time to be in the market for a new card. It comes down to which purchase will make you feel the least bad.

Nvidia's treatment of it's largely loyal customer base this time around is downright abusive. After baulking at the 4090 launch it turns out to be the most honest card in the stack. It only has a questionable price. Below that it's questionable prices for questionable specs. Thankfully sales are taking the kicking they deserve.

I find AMD even more disappointing. Due to the chiplet approach and other manufacturing differences AMD cards are more cost effective to produce than the equivalent Nv card. Between that and the golden opportunity handed by Nv's offerings they were perfectly positioned to take mind and market share. But the greedy/lazy arses in the marketing department went with the usual "we'll just make ours 20 or 30 bucks less than theirs".

Being a little bit cheaper doesn't really cut it when the high end cards can't compete at RT and the low end cards can't compete at upscaling. How many people have waited through the mining boom and other price fluctuations, then for this... poop show of a generation. All they needed to do is offer a fair deal and they would have walked away with this gen.

And headline grabbing price drops don't mean much when they only amount to something being of slightly less poor value. This gen so far is a hard fail on both sides.

Anyone needing a new card is between a rock and a hard place right now. Good luck out there!

 

[Rebel_488]

My buddy on rf2 says intel is the way forward for next gen. Maybe they do something special…

 

[Terry Rock]

My buddy on rf2 says intel is the way forward for next gen. Maybe they do something special…

Your buddy may be right...at least initially anyway.
With the massive upcoming demand for graphics processors for A.I incoming, we could soon see another round of overly inflated prices.
We already know how that played out during the demand for Crypto-mining GPUs.
As to Intel...
I'm almost certain they would join the existing trend set by Nvidia and AMD if the demand was there.
We at least have a grace period for now while they polish things and try to garner interest.
The existing ARC A750 and A770 are sometimes behind In terms of peak fps numbers but that does not represent the full picture.
I run AMS2, ACC, AC, RF2, RRE, AMS, GTR and I can personally report every one of those titles run extremely smoothly in my A770 based system.
No instability...and WMR works with every title I own that supports it.
I cannot complain at all for a card in that price category.
Heck! I've got just about every setting to EPIC in ACC and it is still smooth at 1080p.

 

[Bob Gnarley]

Considering a 4060Ti with PCIe 3.0?

 

[pattikins]

It makes the 4070 a considerably harder sell to my skinflint side... Do I get the cheaper, slower card that will need replacement sooner, or the faster (~1.5x), pricey (almost 2x!) card that barely has VRAM headroom even today? Hmmm.

Looking @ Steam's Hardware Survey, with less than 3% of players using over 12gb of vram (for that matter, 18% over 8gb), in addition to both AMD & Nvidia having just released two mid range 8gb vram cards, I get the feeling that the 8gb vram 'issue' has somewhat been over played by tech journalists/youtubers...

I've upgraded from a 3060ti to a 4070 ti, so I'm probably biased. For all but a handful of titles, the 3060 ti has been more than good enough to knock out a decent frame rate in all the games that I own. In a few VR titles, however, the 4070 ti has been a game changer (ACC, MSFS, Overload...). Both the 4070 & 4070 ti also seem to do well in driving games...

'skinflint' - I'm still using a P180 Antec case, circa 2005/6.

 

[RasmusP]

I don't really think the 8 GB vram will become a major issue anytime soon either.
The problems, afaik, only show in the latest titles with everything set to max and older titles with massive textures.
I'd rather turn down a few settings and get DLSS+DLDSR for Anti Aliasing than to run 8k texture packs.
Especially for VR I often read that Nvidia has quite an advantage overall so there the vram issue has no priority.

If you're running triple 4k or 1440p with max textures, it might become an issue but I highly doubt that buying a lower tier card or a 5000 series card with more vram will have a better price per fps!

It reminds me of the 3.5+0.5 GB "scandal" with the GTX 970. The issue basically only showed when your fps dropped from an average of 30-40 down to 2-10 fps.
But who plays with texture packs at 30-40 fps?!

 

[Novopaine]

I don't really think the 8 GB vram will become a major issue anytime soon either.
The problems, afaik, only show in the latest titles with everything set to max and older titles with massive textures.

The issue isn't so much that 8GB isn't enough, it's that the pricing reflects that of a higher tier product. For the money being asked it should have included more VRAM. Even it was only 10GB, it would have been a step in the right direction.