GPU upgrade - buy 7900xtx or 4080 Super now or wait for next gen release in 2025?

[AnomalouS]

Just built a 9800x3d, Asrock x870 Pro RS and TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan DDR5-6000 setup. Play mainly FPS, light video with DaVinci and some 3d modeling @ 1440p.

I have a RTX 2080ti that is limping along pegged at 100% utilization, been looking at either a 7900 XTX or 4080 Super and seeing decent pricing on them now. With the RTX 5000's and AMD 8000's releasing early next year, I am on the fence if buying now or waiting is the best option.

A couple thoughts:
-Nvidia stops producing 4000 series cards, keeps stock low and prices likely don't move.
-I will not pay $1400 for a 5080, I might pay $1100.
-I can get a 4080 Super for $950 right now.
-I can get a 7900 XTX for $839 right now.
-Is there enough benefit with pcie 5.0 GPU's upcoming?


Love to hear your thoughts.

 

[Blaeza]

Just built a 9800x3d, Asrock x870 Pro RS and TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan DDR5-6000 setup. Play mainly FPS, light video with DaVinci and some 3d modeling @ 1440p.

I have a RTX 2080ti that is limping along pegged at 100% utilization, been looking at either a 7900 XTX or 4080 Super and seeing decent pricing on them now. With the RTX 5000's and AMD 8000's releasing early next year, I am on the fence if buying now or waiting is the best option.

A couple thoughts:
-Nvidia stops producing 4000 series cards, keeps stock low and prices likely don't move.
-I will not pay $1400 for a 5080, I might pay $1100.
-I can get a 4080 Super for $950 right now.
-I can get a 7900 XTX for $839 right now.
-Is there enough benefit with pcie 5.0 GPU's upcoming?


Love to hear your thoughts.

Definitely wait. this gen should drop in price and you'll have next gen to look at too.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Yeah it's close enough that I'd wait. Buying 800+ gpus when they are almost EOL is almost never a good investment unless you find a crazy good deal like 600-700 for a 4080 super....

 

[Macro Device]

-Nvidia stops producing 4000 series cards, keeps stock low and prices likely don't move.

True.

-I will not pay $1400 for a 5080, I might pay $1100.

Then you wait till RTX 6000 series rolls out. Unless they gimp 5080 out hard enough for it to be slower than 4090 so they could ask for a "reasonable" payment.

-Is there enough benefit with pcie 5.0 GPU's upcoming?

PCI-e 4.0 is already overkill if you have all 16 lanes up'n'running. GPUs need to be at least FOUR times faster for PCI-e 5.0 to matter for them. Not gonna happen in 2020s.

-I can get a 4080 Super for $950 right now.

-I can get a 7900 XTX for $839 right now.

They're roughly the same performance BUT in case you have to fall back to upscaling then 4080 is a no brainer. Unless AMD steal the DLSS department from NVIDIA, I don't see FSR at least remotely resembling a proper upscaler. Even Quality at 4K is hideous. XeSS is also flawed and is slow on AMD GPUs.
RT is probably irrelevant, yet AMD GPUs just can't do it.
Frame generation is garbage as of today. Might become better later but they need to subvert the whole idea thereof. Still not that awful on NVIDIA GPUs.
4080 will also pay for itself hard if your electricity pricing is ridiculous. Energy efficiency is night and day.
Is 110 hard earned dollars worth it? You decide.

Frankly, I'd wait for GPUs of 4090+ level performance being affordable if I were you. 2080 Ti to 4080 is a noticeable uplift but it's nowhere near remarkable.

 

[Vya Domus]

Next generation is shaping up to be pretty grim, not much in the way of performance improvements and the prices will go only up, waiting might turn out to be a total waste of time unless you have 2K$ to spare.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

From the rumors (I know...grain of salt here), they're only launching 5090 and 5080 in the next 2-3 months.

I agree with what Macro Device said above. with a slight caveat.

Things we don't know: Will 5080 outperform 4090? What will pricing actually be? We know people will sell 4090's and buy 5090's no matter what. Doesn't matter what the price or performance is, there will be people upgrading. So there might be some decent priced used 4090's. That's a bit of a gamble (at least, hoping for a used one under $1200 when you can't even buy new ones anymore for non-scalped prices lol), but that might be a bang/buck option on the table after 5090 launch. I can't see 5080 launching cheaper than 4080 did, so you might be in trouble there. it'll have less memory (that's slightly faster) and allegedly ~35% less cores than 4090, so how much IPC is there to help it compete there I just don't know. I bring this up because Nvidia has been consistent the last few launches with little-to-no Price/performance increases. Thew new cards just come in at higher tiers and higher pricing. They then leave some of the old skus in those lower tiers and say "oh, we have this great option, just buy that". It does seem like their ramping down production of 4000-series though, so maybe they're not planning as much of an overlapping availability at different prices this time. Makes it harder to justify waiting though as sometimes it only gets worse. Also, if you're in the US, there may be price increases on everything next year if we get some new tariffs.

Another question: Does your software use CUDA? Some rendering does and it can make a difference when choosing Nvidia vs. AMD...and that's for your professional workloads because macro device already gave you gaming reasons.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Frankly, I'd wait for GPUs of 4090+ level performance being affordable if I were you. 2080 Ti to 4080 is a noticeable uplift but it's nowhere near remarkable.

In heavy games it's twice as fast. Getting double the performance these days is a luxury most are lucky to get 30-40% even after multiple generations.

2060 super to 4060ti is only like 55%

My only concern with the 7900XTX/4080 is they already struggle in a lot of 2024 games. Both are squarely 1440p cards these days and that's with upscaling or reducing settings with some games which never feels good after spending 800+.

Will next generation bring anything better nobody knows RDNA4 looks like a bust for anyone who wants somthing better than a 4070ti super and the 5080 will probably be a 4090 but at least be faster than everything else but what will it cost. It's what else Nvidia offers is what I'd be waiting for more than performance a 5070 will likely be ball park 4080 super and I doubt it'll cost more so there's that also although knowing Nvidia they will do something stupid like give it 12GB.

Regardless I'd still wait.

 

[Macro Device]

Getting double the performance these days is a luxury

So maybe you shouldn't upgrade every couple years? Be patient, use it till it breaks, then buy the best stuff you can afford.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

So maybe you shouldn't upgrade every couple years? Be patient, use it till it breaks, then buy the best stuff you can afford.

If this was the start of the generation I would say go for it..... Being at the end of the generation it makes less sense even getting likely double the performance in a lot of games.

How long is one supposed to wait to get a worthwhile upgrade lol half a decade...... 8 years...... People should upgrade when they A have the money and B want the extra performance how short or how long that is comes down to everyone's own use case and disposable income.

That being said the 2080ti is 6 years old not sure when the OP actually bought it but I do not see either of these giving the same longevity is the biggest reason I'd wait.

 

[kapone32]

In heavy games it's twice as fast. Getting double the performance these days is a luxury most are lucky to get 30-40% even after multiple generations.

2060 super to 4060ti is only like 55%

My only concern with the 7900XTX/4080 is they already struggle in a lot of 2024 games. Both are squarely 1440p cards these days and that's with upscaling or reducing settings with some games which never feels good after spending 800+.

Will next generation bring anything better nobody knows RDNA4 looks like a bust for anyone who wants somthing better than a 4070ti super and the 5080 will probably be a 4090 but at least be faster than everything else but what will it cost. It's what else Nvidia offers is what I'd be waiting for more than performance a 5070 will likely be ball park 4080 super and I doubt it'll cost more so there's that also although knowing Nvidia they will do something stupid like give it 12GB.

Regardless I'd still wait.

What Games do the 7900 series struggle with for you? Why would you say 4K high is not achievable. Do you mean Raiden 5, that is the newest Game I own and it runs at 135 FPS at 4K. The only Game I know that pushes modern GPUs is City Skylines 2. Those cards have 24GB of VRAM with 2.5-3 GHZ clocks.

 

[eidairaman1]

Have fun now, buy a card at better pricing

 

[kapone32]

Have fun now, buy a card at better pricing

The hype train is insane. When I built my AM5 system I was not on here for about 4 to 5 months. The modern parts are actually that good that for the first time in this journey I am pretty much sated. I love the colours on my Mini LED monitor, Love 144hz refresh rate, Love my 7900XT and play more Games all the time nowadays.

 

[jormungand]

what about used market for 3080s/90 ti?? you can sell your 2080 ti grab a good 3080/90 for less money and wait for the upcoming cards.
I agree on not paying top dollar atm for neither nvidia or amd. Even though ill keep an eye on the amd cards price sometimes they surprise
with some decent price cuts. Do not expect that on the 4080 super. My opinion of course

 

[Dr. Dro]

IMHO: hold for another 6 months or so. Right now is not the time. You will soon find sales across Ada tiers and used cards in great condition from people upgrading will appear in the market; you may even find yourself with someone's lightly used RTX 4090 for a dam nice price.

AMD will also likely respond with aggressive pricing to the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti series by slashing prices in the RX 7900 series. RDNA 4 is some time away and it's already known and admitted that it will not be looking to take the performance crown from the green team anymore, so they will have to compete on price alone.

what about used market for 3080s/90 ti?? you can sell your 2080 ti grab a good 3080/90 for less money and wait for the upcoming cards.
I agree on not paying top dollar atm for neither nvidia or amd. Even though ill keep an eye on the amd cards price sometimes they surprise
with some decent price cuts. Do not expect that on the 4080 super. My opinion of course

RTX 3080 Ti/3090/3090 Ti is only worth it if native Windows 7 compatibility is paramount. Otherwise, a lower tier Ada is faster and more efficient in virtually every workload (eg. 4070 Super).

 

[AnomalouS]

That being said the 2080ti is 6 years old not sure when the OP actually bought it but I do not see either of these giving the same longevity is the biggest reason I'd wait.

I bought it new in Oct 2018 just after release, it has served well and to date runs everything ok but it is time to update.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I bought it new in Oct 2018 just after release, it has served well and to date runs everything ok but it is time to update.

I feel you man, went from a 2080ti to a 3080ti to a 4090. Although typically my main reason for upgrading is my secondary gpu so technically a card last me two generations or 4-5 years just spread between 2 systems.

The games those two gpus struggle in are ue5 titles which the majority of games seem to be using going forward I would look at Black Myth Wukong and Hellblade 2 performance even if they are not games you plan to play i feel they probably represent how games are likely to perform going forward especially ones that push the bar graphics are subjective though so you really got to dig into the games you plan on playing with how you game.

At the end of the day only you can really answer if somthing is worth your hard earned cash or not.

If someone stuck a gun to my head and said pick one it would be the 4080 but only becuase it better supports upscaling which i feel will be needed sooner rather than later and RT much better if you are someone that is ok running medium/high settings both are fine though.

 

[Marcus L]

Just buy now, 5000 series will be more expensive for more performance and prices of used 4000 series will be high due to low availability of 5000 series, unless you plan on dropping $1200+ for a 5080 grab whichever one you prefer from 7900xtx or 4080 Super, which incidentally is 2x performance of a 2080 Ti not sure how someone can claim it's not a worthwhile upgrade

 

[Frick]

Just buy now, 5000 series will be more expensive for more performance and prices of used 4000 series will be high due to low availability of 5000 series, unless you plan on dropping $1200+ for a 5080 grab whichever one you prefer from 7900xtx or 4080 Super, which incidentally is 2x performance of a 2080 Ti not sure how someone can claim it's not a worthwhile upgrade

The question is is it worthwhile when the next gen is so close? But yeah this is basically what I assume how it'll be. The 5080 will be X% faster while costing something like X-5% more. It's just an assumption though, that could be wrong.

As for 4080 Super vs 7900XTX, I'd get the ............. at those specific prices today I'd lean towards the 7900XTX, but generally I would favour the RTX4080.