Is It The 1080 TI The Best GPU Ever?

[#22]

A few memorable cards of their time for me personally, either for outright crazy performance at the time, or value offered, special mention for efficiency.

• GeForce 4 Ti 4200 - value and performance
• Radeon 9700/9800 Pro - value and performance
• GeForce 6800 Ultra - performance - this is my personal favorite GPU of all time, such a rich story to be told in that era
• GeForce 6600GT - value
• GeForce 8800 GTX/GT - performance / value
• Radeon 4870 - value and performance
• Radeon 5870 - value and performance
• GeForce GTX 460 - value
• GeForce GTX 750Ti - efficiency
• GeForce GTX 970 - value
• GeForce GTX 1080/Ti - performance and efficiency
• GeForce GTX 1060 - value
• GeForce RTX 3080 - value and performance (for those few who got it at launch at MSRP like me)
• GeForce RTX 4090 - performance

It's totally subjective, but I mostly like this list and it highlights especially recent sad tendency with every next generation being harder to find value in anything other than top products (btw tending to last well for longer and longer) and value in general shifting toward scaling with raising prices, so total upselling. Or more like let's make the best flagship as we can and then add more and more dissapointments with every other model going down - to the point it's hard to imagine arrival of next rock solid midrange card with potential to became legendary like e.g. 1060. The worse is tendency already lasts for years (imo last solid lower-end offerings were 970, 1060 or 16XX Super cards), so it doesn't look like Nvidia and rest experimenting with offer obviously unattractive for us, but such selling well...

 

[Ruru]

It's totally subjective, but I mostly like this list and it highlights especially recent sad tendency with every next generation being harder to find value in anything other than top products (btw tending to last well for longer and longer) and value in general shifting toward scaling with raising prices, so total upselling. Or more like let's make the best flagship as we can and then add more and more dissapointments with every other model going down - to the point it's hard to imagine arrival of next rock solid midrange card with potential to became legendary like e.g. 1060. The worse is tendency already lasts for years (imo last solid lower-end offerings were 970, 1060 or 16XX Super cards), so it doesn't look like Nvidia and rest experimenting with offer obviously unattractive for us, but such selling well...

2060 would've been an okay card with a lower price tag as well.

 

[#22]

2060 would've been an okay card with a lower price tag as well.

I agree, but price bump and no VRAM uplift imo makes it not worthy successor of 1060. It's exactly the thing - we just don't get anymore in lower end of the stack cards being value performance-wise and overally solid, so without mentioned dissapointments like feeling low on VRAM, having insultingly narrow bus or cut-down PCIe. Cheap or heavily discounted Radeons used to be something recently, but sadly mostly as an answer to Nvidia's offer. Not AMD being nice guys giving you nice cards, but only ones seeming a little better than what Nvidia has proposed first. And I personally find a turn off lack of DLSS and RT capabilities no matter what range of cards we talk about.

 

[rusty caterpillar]

4) Forced generations. We're well into the 4xxx series...but the 1660 and 3060 are still huge hitters...seems like they either have staying power...or the "new features" aren't ready to drive sales yet


As such the survey absolutely shows popularity, can give a soft representation of value, and shows what is "best that people can afford." That last one assumes a bit...but it's how companies like Nvidia and AMD can put price points to relative performance based upon real data. While it is by no means a 1:1 representation, there's good reason to conclude that the 3060 is a great performer at whatever its price point is...just based on how many are active. It pains me to say this...but sometimes the data is clear. I think the 3060 is overpriced for its relative performance...but the market states its the best current option. This is from someone whose most popular GPU is about half as represented as the 3060...but I'd still say that the 3060 is a better value to performance ratio than most other options on the market.

IMO I really don't think Steam survey is a valid image in your context. To put it simply because of prebuild systems that are present among Steam users and those prebuild systems I believe are in high % .

Let me explain when: grandparents or parents buy to their child a gaming PC they prolly get a prebuilt. Also if you take average person that have very little knowledge about a gaming PC will just pick a a PC gaming PC from the shelf not knowing that the PC gaming he just picked has a high end CPU(brain) with disability issues on eye sight(GPU and Screen), hands( not enough RAM and in single channel) and legs(slow HDD 5200RPM instead of 7200RPM) not enough cooling etc.

The seller will equip the prebuilt system with high end CPU but weak GPU, not enough RAM and maybe a bad PSU and case.
Why? Because the said GPU is highly available (1660, 3050,3060) but also to favorize future upgrades at high prices for that PC gaming they just sold, so is more profit to be made.
For example: in 2004-2009 those marketing practices around CPU only was highly present on the market: Intel core DUO that, latest Intel technology that and the rest, the support for that CPU was very weak.
I use to call the "Wheelchair PCs".

The marketing point is the around the high end CPU and some flashy leds. To overcome the GPU disability they will throw a cheap screen with HD resolution instead of FHD, that given GPU will not struggle in HD, users will see enough FPS in Fortnite and are happy, some of the users will see the weakness in their GPU and they will proceed, maybe, to upgrade if they have the funds and the courage but till than they will be surveyed by Steam showing cards like 1660 and 3060 - the fore mentioned "hitters".
Now those users might be able to afford 3070 instead of 3060 if, the PC Prebuilder chose to lower the unnecessary expenditure on the latest CPU, equip the Gaming PC with a more balanced CPU/GPU ratio.

In conclusion what you see on the Steam Survey is not what people can afford or GPU wants in their Gaming PC, but what is given to them.

Also, I really don't think, you can say 1660 and 3060 are the most popular but, what Companies like Dell or Cyber Power PC, etc, chose to equip the average Gaming Pcs with, in order to sell more and fast, make more profit and suck some more profit in the future trough the upgrades.
Those hitters makes more profit to them and are highly available is not necessarily the best deal for $.


Regarding 1080Ti > for me is Longevity

I'm happy with my 1080 Ti FTW3 even that deshrouding cost and thermal putty cost made it more expensive.
I bought it used for 425£ in Scalping times 2021 and sold my Zotac 1060 6GB with 215-230£. I have to add the cost of 3x Noctua 92mm + putty adds another 70£ minus 12 £ for selling the original shroud and fans.
However with the deshrouding and thermal putty instead of the leaky thermal pads I can safely HASH this card with VRAM in benchmarks and gamin being 5-7C lower than GPU temps.

Gaming at 1440 P 60-80 FPS any game I want including late titles, like AC Mirage with low temps, 50-60C

Longevity of this card is great, the only concern is is the high power draw compared with a 4070 for example.

Question: Anybody knows Watt /frame on the 1080 Ti ?
I believe is lower than of 2080 Ti which is 6.4W but, I would like to know the exact figures. Thanks.

 

[bobbybluz]

I don't know if I responded to this thread earlier but I've scored 4 1080 Ti's for $150 or less in the past two years including a liquid cooled EVGA in mint condition for $75 from a 15 year old kid on Facebook Marketplace. The PC I'm on at the moment has a 1080 Ti FTW3 in it (I have two more of those as well) and I'll run it until it stops working. I'm not a gamer and using 50" Vizio M-series 4K TV's for monitors the 1080 Ti is great for web browsing and watching movies. While my Asus 4090 Tuff OC is 4x faster at video upscaling I don't have any reason to use that PC on a 24/7 basis like I do this one. I also have rigs with XFX 6800 XT & 6900 XT GPU's I use for A/V production. I will say the 1080 Ti has better image quality than the 16GB ATI Vega Frontier Edition I have stashed away as well as a XFX 6700 I used for a short while.

For the prices I paid the 1080 Ti's are stellar deals for use in systems that don't have PCIe 4.0. I have several former top-end GPU's going back to an ATI Radeon 9800 in my collection and nearly all of them are retired for good.

 

[agent_x007]

Question: Anybody knows Watt /frame on the 1080 Ti ?
I believe is lower than of 2080 Ti which is 6.4W but, I would like to know the exact figures. Thanks.

Unless you lock all variables like power limits, voltage limits, frequency limits, cooler/temp limits, etc. - it's impossible to do this reliably.
Also, due all cards boosting till end of V/F curve this WILL get biased to all cards being the same (assuming CPU is fast enough).
Have an attempt at it though (higher = better) :

Since this is FPS/W, you have divide 1 by number from graph