Graphic Card Advice

[danmand]

Greetings All!

Just coming back to flight sim after a long break.
I want to upgrade my GTX 900 series to something new that will benefit both P3D v4 and the upcoming FS2020.
I can currently afford a GTX 2080 or the 2080 Super.
Would you folks recommend one of those or something entirely different?

Also, once I do purchase a card, I'll probably be asking for help on optimum settings.

Thanks!

[clarkejw]

Hello, and welcome back!

I have no doubt that you'll receive a wealth of advice from people with far more experience and knowledge than I, but here goes. When I was researching upgrading my PC a couple of years ago, I found out a couple of things.

1. Changing over the graphics card for a more powerful one does not always give the desired effect. This can be linked to..
2. The CPU "throttling" the card. I my case, I wanted to upgrade to a Nvidia GE Force 1080ti, THE card a couple of years ago. I found that my old i7 processor wasn't really powerful enough to do the card justice, so I upgraded to an i7 7700k. This gave the card the support it needed.

I might add, that at the time, I decided to really refresh the PC, so I added 32GB of DDR4 RAM. This might be seen as overkill by some, but the overall modifications allow me to run P3Dv4 and X-Plane 11 in 4k resolution on the highest settings.

That aside, before you upgrade your card, check to see if that's all you need to do. the 2080 or 2080ti would be wonderful. the ti is my next card!

As I said, you'll get lots of helpful advice on this forum. I only hope they agree with me!

Good luck.

[bladerunner900]

I can thoroughly recommend a 2080 Ti. Coming from a system with two 980's in SLI and using my old settings, my FPS in P3D more than doubled, everywhere. Other games reap the benefit more. As an example, running the benchmark in Rome II Total War gave me an average of 147 on Ultra settings. Bear in mind though, that my results are on a new system, with fast 3200 Mhz RAM, overclocked i9 CPU and M.2 type SSD's.

Steve.

[danmand]

The TI is a little out of my price range at the moment.
The rest of my system is an i7 5820k with 32 Gig RAM
I'm running p3d v4 on an SSD drive.

I don't know what other info might be relevant.

[bladerunner900]

I admit I like, what some call eye candy. So I have lots of add-on scenery like Orbx True Earth for the UK. With a fresh install of P3D I was seeing FPS of 150+. Afterwards, it dropped to more like 35 - 70 with sliders at MAX and depending of where you are flying. So you see, P3D and FSX no doubt, can still crush your system. They are still so inefficient. One reason I am looking out for reports on how MSFS 2020 treats today's hardware.

Steve.

[danmand]

hmm. You made an excellent point.
I've been thinking along the lines of whether the 2080 would be overkill or not for P3d and sufficient for FS2020. I should be preparing for what's to come. So I'm going to save a bit more for the ti.
I also like eye candy but I'm going to hold off on getting anymore scenery for now.

Thanks for the help.

[bladerunner900]

The 2080 would be an excellent choice. Nothing is 'overkill' for long. In my 30 years+ of computing I've seen demand on computer power increase not diminish. Some chap once said that the old Pentium II 400MHz chips were overkill and that you would never use them to their full potential. I wonder where he is now?

[EnDSchultz]

The 2080 would be an excellent choice. Nothing is 'overkill' for long. In my 30 years+ of computing I've seen demand on computer power increase not diminish. Some chap once said that the old Pentium II 400MHz chips were overkill and that you would never use them to their full potential. I wonder where he is now?

While this is true, I will add that I find it hard to economically justify the top of the line. An RTX 2080 is only a few percentage points better than a 2070 but costs up to twice as much.

Now, it certainly isn't worth it anymore to try and buy last generation's hardware to save money (E.g, you will pay about the same for a 1070 as you will for a 2070).

But paying such a steep premium for the top of the current generation GPU just doesn't make economic sense to me, personally.

[Dominique]

The flight simulation landscape will be largely redefined, in 2020, by the new Microsoft simulator. The developers said that It will use the graphic card GPU in much more intensive way. So you cannot be wrong in getting yourself the strongest GPU possible and amount of VRAM according to your means. So the 2080ti.

And then raytracing becomes a common feature of new games, here also a powerful GPU is in order.


On a personal note, I’ll be waiting to see the early returns on the specs to decide on my new computer. And, as I understand, Nvidia should annonce the 3080 in the following months.

[Lewis - A2A]

If you can afford it without meaning you dont not eat or anything silly then for sure 2080Super will be of great benefit for you. I did similar this year 9xx series to 2080 and I am very happy with the upgrade by skipping the generation. Price was obv stupid high but cant complain on performance of the thing.

The super isnt too far below a Ti, and is def the way you want to go. Dont get a non SUPER variant, not worth it anymore.

thanks,
Lewis

[bladerunner900]

If you can't afford it, you can't afford it and you buy something you can afford. Simple as that. If you can afford it but can't justify it, that's something else and up to the individual. Wait six - ten months and it may be cheaper, especially if something new and better comes out. I too skipped the 10 generation and my system now "rocks", but in a years time it will be old news. Perhaps I'll look at a 3080 if it comes out. Who knows.

Steve

[Lewis - A2A]

Justification, for sure

Like you I skipped the 10 series and because its been such a nice experience I might have to skip the next gen too and try the same, as it worked quite well

cheers,
Lewis

[danmand]

I can afford it.
It's either a new video card or or more A2A aircraft.

I just need another week to have the extra cash for the 2080 ti.

[danmand]

The 2080ti came in and it's now installed!
I only saw about a 15 - 20 fps increase. I then moved up all the sliders and I'm still getting 10 - 15 fps better.
I guess the CPU makes a difference? Or I'm just missing something. Looks great though

[Hook]

The 2080ti came in and it's now installed!
I only saw about a 15 - 20 fps increase. I then moved up all the sliders and I'm still getting 10 - 15 fps better.
I guess the CPU makes a difference? Or I'm just missing something. Looks great though

Thanks for the report!

But paying such a steep premium for the top of the current generation GPU just doesn't make economic sense to me, personally.

I usually look for a "knee" in the pricing to determine what to buy. I've had good success buying the best I can get before the price takes a major jump.

Some good advice I read in the late 80's or early 90's was to buy what was last year's development system. While that is probably still a good rule of thumb I'll still use the price jump strategy.

Hook