What's your GPU upgrade threshold?

[Beginner Macro Device]

for genAI VRAM is everything

Why doncha get a 3090 series GPU?

which gen should it be

Considering recent trends... xx70 of this potency will probably come up 20 years from now.

 

[QuietBob]

For me a GPU upgrade is only justifiable when the new card offers at least double the performance (+100% or more) of the old one.

That said, my current GPU may as well be the final upgrade, as 99.9% new game releases simply aren't for me. And I don't need a faster card to play older titles in 4K60, which is my target.

I am also deeply distasted with the current state of gaming. I see no reason to continue upgrading to appease the inexcusable graphics requirements. I refuse to support studios which cannot optimize their game to run in 1080p60 on a mid-range card. Nor will I give my money to bigtime publishers who have the audacity to demand $60+ for turds that shouldn't have left the alpha.

To the contrary, there are many creative indie titles that cost no more than $10-15 and run well on older hardware. Those developers deserve to be financially rewarded for their dedicated work.

As it is, I've got a big backlog of games and plenty of older hardware to play them on. I will not pay extra for features that are meant to compensate for the developer's lack of effort and/or skill, whether due to bad project management or the publisher's greed.

 

[Klemc]

For me a GPU upgrade is only justifiable when the new card offers at least double the performance (+100% or more) of the old one.

That said, my current GPU may as well be the last one I've upgraded to. 99.9% of major new releases aren't for me. And I don't need a faster card to play older titles in 4K60, which is my target.

I am also deeply dissatisfied with the current state of gaming. I refuse to support studios who cannot optimize their game to run in 1080p60 on mid-range hardware. Nor will I give my money to bigtime publishers who have the audacity to demand $60+ for turds that shouldn't have left the alpha.

To the contrary, there are many creative indie titles that cost no more than $10-15 and run well on older hardware. Those developers deserve to be financially rewarded for their dedicated work.

As it is, I've got a big backlog of games and plenty of older hardware to play them on. I will not pay extra for features that are meant to compensate for the developer's lack of effort and/or skill, whether due to bad project management or the publisher's greed.

Silent Hill 2 Remake best fix is an argument ( -UseFixedTimeStep) on top of hard-lock FPS to 30, yes, 30, like the original !..
... it apprently stutters ans all like Jedi Survivor, you're not missing good well made games by skipping all newest entries from a few years ago, UE6 is anounced, lol.

+ UE5 Delta times +

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

I will not pay extra for features that are meant to compensate for the developer's lack of effort and/or skill, whether due to bad project management or the publisher's greed.

Yeah, this clown fiesta must go away. Totally agree.

best fix is an argument ( -UseFixedTimeStep) on top of hard-lock FPS to 30

It's not a fix, it's an insult to gaming. Nuke the devs until they release something that can do 100+. On existing hardware, preferrably, but I don't believe in them that much.

 

[Vayra86]

At the very least I want +50% and if I jump on that kind of upgrade I also still have a solid resale price on my last gpu to sweeten the deal.

The last upgrade though was about +150% though because quite simply there wasnt a good deal until then. Im that patient. Not for a lack of money, but just because I know you need a major boost these days to make a notable dent in your established gaming experience.

Now, Nvidia tries to upsell some weird kind of overexpensive lighting, and it kills that gen to gen perf increase... the logical result is Im not buying; it doesnt improve my gaming experience. All that reallly counts is raw performance and improved efficiency on what can be considered 'a lossless' graphics implementation. We are entering the age of 'mp3 128kb/s quality' graphics now; between TAA and upscaling yes you can see the image, but its a blurry mess where lots of fidelity gets lost. I want my gaming at the very least to be at the mp3 320kb/s level; and its even better if its flac. I only judge gpus on their capability to run lossless graphics; ergo native res without temporal junk.

Its the only fair comparison. Im not going to waste my energy figuring out why games on upscalers look weird or shitty because info got lost in translation, and it wont affect my purchases.

 

[Klemc]

What's the percentage needed to go from native 1440p 120 FPS to DSR 4K 120 FPS ? 100% ?

That's the idea.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Whenever I need/want more performance has been my threshold in the past........

With the gpu's in the performance bracket I want starting to exceed 1500 usd I may have to spread them out a bit more than in the past unfortunately. The last 4 generations have been $1200 2x 1080s-$1300 2080ti-$1400 3080ti-$1700 4090 for me with prices only seemingly getting worse.

I've always purchased multiple cards each generation but I'm only counting my first purchase of each generation for the last 4.

My min target has always been at least 30% with preferably 40-50% but when you upgrade almost every generation you just take whatever you can get lol. Whenever I do upgrade both my primary and secondary systems get upgraded though so the net benefit is higher.

What's the percentage needed to go from native 1440p 120 FPS to DSR 4K 120 FPS ? 100% ?

That's the idea.

Probably 70-80% at least from what I've seen it does not scale linearly up even if you are trying to push double the pixels/fps it isn't always 100% more performance needed it also depends on game UE5 needs a lot more juice to do it than a typical game for example.

 

[Zazigalka]

+50% performance, or +30% perf with lower power.

 

[Solaris17]

Silent Hill 2 Remake best fix is an argument ( -UseFixedTimeStep) on top of hard-lock FPS to 30, yes, 30, like the original !..
... it apprently stutters ans all like Jedi Survivor, you're not missing good well made games by skipping all newest entries from a few years ago, UE6 is anounced, lol.

+ UE5 Delta times +

Im not sure that video is correct. I have seen these before and it usually requires an additional option to count against. This post explaines it.

Fix or cap time step for debugging purposes

Okay after some more digging I found what I was after, some largely undocumented command line arguments. Adding the following 2 command line arguments: -UseFixedTimeStep -FPS=30 will guarantee that every world tick function is called with a DeltaSeconds of 1/30, or whatever you specify. Note...

forums.unrealengine.com

The option has no effect on the FPS you see on screen, it simply sets global time rate triggers.

As for GPUs its not as clear as % uplift. Im chasing vram, features and performance most of the time. but I do always tend to go with the high tier and then sit there for a release or two until there is something I want or the performance is acceptable for the spend.

 

[Klemc]

Next GPU that will play SH2R at 240 FPS 1440p stable, that's a long time to wait !

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

Next GPU that will play SH2R at 240 FPS 1440p stable, that's a long time to wait !

Are you by any chance French..?

We are entering the age of 'mp3 128kb/s quality' graphics now

I literally prefer recent rap to recent games at this point. This is unironically how bad it's become.

 

[_roman_]

I mean, how much more performance your not yet purchased GPU should provide compared to your older one for that to justify the effort.

I voted below <15%. - Build quality / Fan noise / RGB bar are bigger criteria here. Fans are useless when after 40Percent according to the windows driver it gets unacceptable. -

I sold a MSI Radeon 6800 Z Trio after two months because of the bad build quality, the worst W10 Pro drivers, the no existing RGB software for gnu linux, loud fans at 40% or more fancurve according to windows software, RGB bar which was always on.
I later bought a Powercolor 7800XT hellhound. I'm very happy about the low noise and no RGB.
I consider this as a sidegrade.

 

[Klemc]

Are you by any chance French..?

I literally prefer recent rap to recent games at this point. This is unironically how bad it's become.

Yes, it's not in the profile ?

Yes, a totally French guy.

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

loud fans at 40%

What a sensitive pair of ears you have here. My card is at least two times louder and I don't even consider it loud. Just audible. As I'm virtually always gaming with my headphones on I don't care about it.

Yes, it's not in the profile ?

Nah, you haven't specified it. I could tell by your spacing before interrogation and exclamation marks but no spacing before full stops which is only correct in French. English doesn't allow any spacing no matter the punctuation mark.

 

[Hankieroseman]

I am a hardware geek and i like new shiny things.. Yes, i have a problem

Me too, problems with shiny new things. Not much else excites a 70 year old. Computers are right up my alley

 

[Klemc]

What a sensitive pair of ears you have here. My card is at least two times louder and I don't even consider it loud. Just audible. As I'm virtually always gaming with my headphones on I don't care about it.

Nah, you haven't specified it. I could tell by your spacing before interrogation and exclamation marks but no spacing before full stops which is only correct in French. English doesn't allow any spacing no matter the punctuation mark.

Oh, i added.... you're smart to know identify this details

What's YOUR, percentage ?

 

[Vayra86]

+50% performance, or +30% perf with lower power.

Good point. A major performance/w improvement can also nudge me to an upgrade more easily

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

Oh, i added.... you're smart to know identify this details

That's probably the only thing I know about French. Can't speak it for shit. xD

What's YOUR, percentage ?

I wouldn't bother with an upgrade, unless a new toy is 5+ times better than my current one.

 

[Hankieroseman]

Display Port 2.0? RTX3090, 4090, what's next? Come on RTX5090. Your 57 inch Odyssey Neo G9 is waiting.

 

[Klemc]

That's probably the only thing I know about French. Can't speak it for shit. xD

I wouldn't bother with an upgrade, unless a new toy is 5+ times better than my current one.

I'm of the ones that voted 200% +

 

[sn2x]

My last upgrade was 3060 Ti to 4070, so I guess 31-50%.

Hoping my next GPU is on par with an RTX 4080.

 

[Pumper]

Used to be 40-60%, back when GPU prices were reasonable, but it looks like I'll be upgrading less often now, so will be expecting a better upgrade for the money.
Not that I'm gaming much these days, especially demanding AAA stuff.

 

[mtosev]

I went from a Radeon hd 5970 to a RTX 2080 Super in 2020 when I upgraded my computer.

 

[JIWIL]

~50%

I try to pick a higher end card every other generation. If there were a generational gap where I would question the worth of an upgrade, I probably wouldn't have the self control to abstain.

Nvidia 4080
Nvidia 2080ti
Nvidia 980
Nvidia 670
AMD 5870
AMD 4850
Nvidia 6800GT
ATI 9800
Nvidia Geforce 256 (SDR)
Matrox G200
3DFX Voodoo 1
Quite a few Radius cards in mac workstations (not really GPU.. they were more like photoshop accelerators)
... and the glory days of onboard video memory.

 

[kilo]

You should include an option for "only when a game needs it." I've been on my 2070S and haven't seen any games worth the upgrade, which it can't handle.