2070 or 2080

Hi all,

I'm speccing up a new PC to buy in the near future and I'd like some advice. I'm currently playing in VR using a GTX 970, so whatever I get will be a huge upgrade.

I'm looking at either a 2070 or a 2080. There is quite a big price difference between them and the 2080 is really stretching my budget. From what I've read, the 2070 should be good enough, it beats the old 1080 hands down (although comes in a bit behind the 1080 Ti).

Does anyone know the actual performance differences in DCS VR between these two cards? Is there a solid reason I'm not aware of for me to spend more on the 2080?

Imo (with Rift in thought) to be enough happy :

You need at least 45fps stable (for ASW to work).

You need a minimum quality in clarity and smooth picture (at least a bit of supersampling (1.2 / 1.3 PD mini) plus 2X antialiasing). For the rest compromize is easy to find.

1080Ti allows a bit above that (I'm actually very happy) - so a 2070rtx should be absolutely OK for "my minimum", 2080 and above will be better no doubt but expensive.

Thanks, that's more or less what I was thinking although the 1080 Ti specifically has the advantage of 11GB VRAM vs. 8GB for both 2070 and 2080. Some people say this makes a lot of difference but there's no way I can get an 11GB card anyway.

Thanks, that's more or less what I was thinking although the 1080 Ti specifically has the advantage of 11GB VRAM vs. 8GB for both 2070 and 2080.

does DCS have special coding to use the extra 3GB of vram?

most users don’t have it, so it’s unlikely DCS would need or depend on it.

does DCS have special coding to use the extra 3GB of vram?

 

most users don’t have it, so it’s unlikely DCS would need or depend on it.

I don't know, just recall some anecdotal stuff, a few posts here and there with people saying DCS uses up to 10GB of VRAM at times.

I would love to see actual benchmarks for these cards specific to DCS, but I haven't been able to find any, most likely because DCS is a small community.

Yes SP 6 to 8GB VRAM depending on mission, MP will use up to 10GB+ VRAM although I don't know if that is going to make a significant difference if your GPU has say 8GB . Just saying it can and does use over 10GB.

FWIW I'd try and gauge peoples experience who might have done a similar upgrade.

What CPU do you have?

I'm looking at an i5-9600K.

The trouble with people's experiences is that they are so subjective and dependent on other factors. At one end of the scale you have people with 2080Tis and i9s saying they still can't max the settings they want and get the FPS they want, then at the other end there are people with 1070s saying they're perfectly happy.

I'm looking at an i5-9600K.

 

 

The trouble with people's experiences is that they are so subjective .

That is it in a nutshell...

We're perfectly happy because we saved a thousand dollars not getting a 2080ti :)

Oh no doubt, and I'm happy enough for now on a 970 but I'm due an upgrade so I'm trying to get the most I can without going really overboard on spending.

VC,

This sort of question answers itself. Get the 2080, because it's faster! :)

I have a GTX 1080 Ti and it's supposed to be roughly on-par with the 2080, although the 2080 has real-time raytracing, which DCS World doesn't use.

2080 or bust, you wouldn't be asking if you didn't consider it an option. :)

Alternatively, if DCS is your main bag and even if you play other games, get a GTX 1080 Ti used for a decent price if you can find one. You'll be delighted with its performance, and you won't be paying lots of extra dough for raytracing you can't use (and doesn't seem to make much difference in the demos I've seen, not to mention the crappy framerates in games that actually do use it.)

As for the CPU, just get any K-type. Uber-expensive ones (i7/i9) with lots of cores/threads won't improve DCS, but you *need* a very high core clock speed. So, anything fast will do. I'd get the i3-8350K, a nice cooler on it, and OC it to 5.0 GHz or close. If you wanna rock big time, get an i5-9600K :)

AD

Bang for buck currently,..

9600K mild/mid ++ OC.

2080 GPU OC

32GB

Who cares ATM,..

9900K mild/mid ++ OC.

2080Ti OC

32GB

YMMV. :thumbup:

FragBum,

As far as bang-for-buck, the i3-8350K has 4 cores & threads, defaults to 4.0 GHz and will probably hit 5 without trying too hard. The 4-core CPU will be great for DCS and any other game. It has to be fast, but not necessarily run tons of threads.

Leaves extra bread for a heftier graphics card, which is a *must*. If you're building an expensive PC for gaming, you're better going overboard on the graphics card, not on a really costly CPU.

Mind you, the i5-9600K *does* indeed look like a great CPU. I wouldn't mind one myself, but I spent the last of the bread I had on a used 1080 Ti ;)

AD

My general philosophy of shopping for hardware is to get the best that's within your budget. Don't starve your kids. Not being a family man, I may or may not have resorted to ramen noodles for cheap food to get hardware sooner than later. :music_whistling:

Also, spreading part purchases out over time can reduce the impact of the total cost of a system if you've got something that will let you get by for the time being.

My initial investment into my current rig was $1300 spread out over about 3 or more months, first I bought the CPU ($420 at the time), next month I bought the case, then the ram, then the mobo taking the gpu, and drives from my old build. Somewhere in there I squeezed in my liquid cooler.

With all the hardware currently listed it's taken me over a year to get to this point and I'm more like $2700+ USD just for what's in the PC case not including the two SATA III SSD's from my old build and I don't anticipate a need for major hardware upgrades until at least 2023 hopefully. With the cost of the new WD Blacks driving the cost of NVME prices down to what I paid for sataII/sataIII ssd's when they were newish technology, I'm probably going to readdress my storage configuration, but not because of necessity.

I also tend to use a little math to justify to myself the cost of hardware, that even with everything I use to fly in DCS or enjoy other games, it's less expensive and allows for more time spent with it than having a night life, or being an RC plane hobbyist, or beefing up a car (hopefully for track racing of course).

If you got the dough for the 2080 over the 2070 I'd say go for it. It will likely last you longer.

2080 or bust, you wouldn't be asking if you didn't consider it an option. :)

While I admire the sentiment, and you're right I do want it, there's a price involved. I'm asking because I'm trying to ascertain if the 2070 is "good enough" so that I don't have to go too far over budget.

2070 is plenty for a Rift or Vive , 2080 additional performance would be helpful for an O , O+ or Vive Pro .

... without going really overboard on spending.

that's the tuff part :music_whistling:

that's the tuff part :music_whistling:

Actually, that's the easiest part :)

AD

Regarding Gpu's Vram usage, it's directly related to resolution/SS/pixel density (and also complexity/number of objects of mission).

In single player you can go over 8GB usage easy.

Btw I don't know what happens (in term of négatives) when Vram usage maxout your amount.

IMO not much (I've already seen in DCS +11GB Vram usage in afterburner, maxing out my amount, and … nothing special with perf), so I think maybe something takes relay to Vram (video memory is a thing, but you also have graphic memory available, with is greater in amount than Vram, I have 11264 Mo video mem and 27627 Mo graphic memory available in nvidiaCP system info … but it's something I don't really understand). Also DCS shows video mem usage being a combination of Vram + Graph.ram (watching numbers shown by DCS's overlay)

So a test of what occurs with 8 Gb 2070 or 2080 maxed out could be interesting for you VC. But I think it should be ok ?

I'm assuming it will be OK as not everyone has the 11GB cards. I might just need to optimise and turn something down. But since the 2070 and 2080 are identical in this respect (8GB), this doesn't really feature into my choice anyway, for better or worse :)