Question Cheap "like new" RTX 3080 or new 4080/4090?

[samsungpos]

HI,
My current gpu occasionally crashes when gaming. Screen goes black, gpu fans spin so fast it sounds like my PC might take off, can still hear music etc but computer doesn't respond to anything and I have to turn it off by prssing power button. I have a completely new system except gpu and monitor. I've even done a fresh Windows install. It's fairly rare (once a month maybe) but really irritating when it's in a PVP game.

I've seen a "like new" RTX 3080 from a reputable reseller for around £650 which is the cheapest of my options. Cheap being a relative word here.
I'm also considering a new RTX 4080 which start at £1179 for the Founders edition and then there's the 4090 starting at over £1500.

I play a mix of games including the PVP shooters at 3440 vs 1440 UWQHD. The 3080 gives me budget to spend a bit more on my PC/other hobbies this year. The 4080 means I can't go crazy and buy an alpha detecting geiger counter (I collect uranium glass and uranium-glaze pottery) this year buth no impact on teh rest of hobbies and the 4090 wipes out pretty much my entire "buy myself toys" budget and means if my CPU catches fire or I smash my mouse into my screen in rage, then I have to live with a dead screen.

What would people advise?

Current system:
RTX 2070 Super
i5 11600K
16Gb DDR 4 RAM
Corsair RM850x psu
Monitor: 3440 x 1440 UWQHD

 

[punkncat]

Like new "" used GPU in the current market is almost assuredly a (cleaned up) mining card unless you specifically know the person and their use case.

 

[samsungpos]

Like new "" used GPU in the current market is almost assuredly a (cleaned up) mining card unless you specifically know the person and their use case.

Thanks for the response punkncat
It's from a store rather than eBay etc apparently a gpu that's been unboxed and the returned under the store's policy. Could be that it din't fit the case of maybe it's got a horrible case of coil wine. There's a 1 year guarantee from the store. But yeah I'd be wary of anything from eBay etc.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

By all means be wary of eBay but for the record I sold my 3090 on eBay recently and that card was in fact lightly used... as in... it had never been mined with and spent the better part of 2 years playing WoW which can run on a potato along with a little MS Flight Sim thrown in.

Not every card for sale has been mined to death.

To answer your question OP... go 4090. You won't regret it.

 

[punkncat]

Not every card for sale has been mined to death.

Without knowing the further details that OP offered, I cannot in good faith recommend anyone purchase a used card of that power and availability during the mining boom.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

Without knowing the further details that OP offered, I cannot in good faith recommend anyone purchase a used card of that power and availability during the mining boom.

Nah I get it. I think what helped me is I have a good eBay seller reputation. I would definitely be wary of the guys selling cards with no previous seller history.

 

[Eximo]

Retail store is a pretty safe bet. Worst case it blows up and you claim the 1 year warranty. Best case it lasts more than year and you can buy a 50 series card or something to replace it.

 

[cryoburner]

I've seen a "like new" RTX 3080 from a reputable reseller for around £650 which is the cheapest of my options.

You do have other options. A used 3080 for "around £650" actually seems like a somewhat poor value when you consider that a brand new 4070 (non-Ti) with a full warranty can likely be had for less, and tends to perform very similar, with a bit more VRAM than the 3080 as well, along with some other minor features like frame generation and new video encoders. There's also the 4070 Ti, which tends to be around 20% faster than either of those cards, with prices starting around £800.

The newer cards are far more energy efficient too. A 3080 can draw over 320 watts while gaming, while the 4070 offers very similar performance at just 200 watts, and the 4070 Ti offers more performance at around 285 watts. The lower efficiency of the 3080 not only results in higher energy costs if you do a lot of gaming, but also more heat being dumped into your system.

You might also look into why your existing card is crashing. Is it overclocked? If so, drop it back down to factory settings, or maybe cut a factory-overclocked card down to stock clocks and see if that helps.

 

[artk2219]

As others have stated, have you tried blowing it out and repasting it? What do your temps looked like, and is it running over clocked? You could try a bit of maintenance to see if that fixes your issue.

Honestly I don't think any of those are particularly good deals, you could pick up a brand new RX 6950 XT for 600 pounds. In any non ray traced games it's faster than the 3080, on par with the 4070 ti, and it has more vram than either. The next step up I would say is the RX 7950 XTX around 950 pounds, 100 pounds cheaper than the cheapest RTX 4080, a smidge faster in non ray traced games, again more vram. Finally, yeah, the 4090 is definitely unmatched, but you'll be paying for it, do you really want to?

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#c=492,507,516,549,542,539,496,498,524,547,548&sort=price&page=1

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Review: A Costly 70-Class GPU

Open up your wallet and say ouch

www.tomshardware.com

 

[samsungpos]

I've blown it out a few times. Temps all look normal (never really higher than 60s) when I'm running it and I cant see any evidfence of temp spikes when I look at logs that were running when a crash happened.

It's really random too. sometimes it will be fine for months and months and months. Then I'll get a cluster of crashes for a week or two.

I started off changing various components out and then just tried it in a whole different rig with a clean Windows install on but still got the random crashes.

Some good suggestions by all. RX could be a good shout

 

[thestryker]

Black screen and max fan speed is a power problem so if you wanted to try to get it repaired you'll have an idea of where to start.

 

[Karadjgne]

Ask yourself 1 question. How long before you plan to upgrade again?

With the general trend towards intensity of some games, especially at 4k, the 4090 stands the best chance of surviving the next 5-6 years ±, the 3080 is only a mid grade 4k card, good for potato games but can struggle with games like cyberpunk, especially at ultra with Ray tracing, it's generally better to reduce that to high and only use partial RT.

So ignore the budget, think value. Not much point to buying a 3080 for £800 now, then spending another £800, 2 years from now on a used 4080, when the £1500 4090 ends up not only cheaper overall, but in 2 years time a better card than the replacement.

But if only playing potatoes for the next 4 years, the 3080 is the better value at half the price of the 4090 and 80% of its performance

 

[artk2219]

Ask yourself 1 question. How long before you plan to upgrade again?

With the general trend towards intensity of some games, especially at 4k, the 4090 stands the best chance of surviving the next 5-6 years ±, the 3080 is only a mid grade 4k card, good for potato games but can struggle with games like cyberpunk, especially at ultra with Ray tracing, it's generally better to reduce that to high and only use partial RT.

So ignore the budget, think value. Not much point to buying a 3080 for £800 now, then spending another £800, 2 years from now on a used 4080, when the £1500 4090 ends up not only cheaper overall, but in 2 years time a better card than the replacement.

But if only playing potatoes for the next 4 years, the 3080 is the better value at half the price of the 4090 and 80% of its performance

Are you intentionally ignoring the fact that the RX 6950 XT and RX 7950 XTX exist? Because if you're talking value then an RX 6950 XT with more vram than anything short of an RTX 4090 on the Nvidia side, and performing similarly to an RTX 4070 ti, while whipping an rtx 3080 silly, for less, sounds like value. Or having 83% of an RTX 4090 for 60% of the price sounds like value, same amount of vram, and by the time that 17% performance difference becomes relevant both cards would be obsolete anyway. Dont get me wrong Nvidia makes great chips, and if you really care about ray tracing or if you leverage any of their proprietary features then by all means go for it. But they're horribly positioned when it comes to pricing and value at this moment.

 

[Karadjgne]

Are you intentionally ignoring the fact that the RX 6950 XT and RX 7950 XTX exist? Because if you're talking value then an RX 6950 XT with more vram than anything short of an RTX 4090 on the Nvidia side, and performing similarly to an RTX 4070 ti, while whipping an rtx 3080 silly, for less, sounds like value. Or having 83% of an RTX 4090 for 60% of the price sounds like value, same amount of vram, and by the time that 17% performance difference becomes relevant both cards would be obsolete anyway. Dont get me wrong Nvidia makes great chips, and if you really care about ray tracing or if you leverage any of their proprietary features then by all means go for it. But they're horribly positioned when it comes to pricing and value at this moment.

No, I'm not intentionally ignoring anything. OP asked about 3 cards, the 3080, 4080, 4090. I offered my opinion and thoughts according to his question, he didn't ask about AMD cards, which is his prerogative, for all I know about pricing in the UK they could be considerably higher than US pricing, or OP has other needs like NvEnc use or simply is predudice against AMD and wants an intel/nvidia pc...

Which leaves me Not assuming anything or ignoring options, just simply answering the question as asked.

 

[samsungpos]

Is it worth paying more for a branded GPU with more VRM than paying for a Nvidia FE or AMD refernece card?

 

[thestryker]

Is it worth paying more for a branded GPU with more VRM than paying for a Nvidia FE or AMD refernece card?

Post 20 series nvidia no, but AMD it varies. Sometimes AMD has a pretty good reference design, but sometimes it's bottom barrel. I'd suggest checking out reviews with regards to AMD cards on this front.

 

[Karadjgne]

Nvidia has tight reigns on designs, so a 'branded' gpu isn't going to have more vram, but might have higher rated VRM's on a custom pcb which when coupled with more effective cooling designs can get you higher boost clocks, higher power limits, more fps, even if temps stay the same.

On the other side of the coin, better cooling potential means slower fans and less noise when not pushing the gpu to it's limits, even if temps stayed the same, and you'd still gave higher fps because of the increased boost afforded by better cooling.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Is it worth paying more for a branded GPU with more VRM than paying for a Nvidia FE or AMD refernece card?

I don't think so. I've never cared about what "brand" my card is. I've used Albatron, XFX, Gigabyte, Dell, Sapphire and PowerColor. I'm currently using an OG ATi RX 6800 XT reference model and it's fine. I can play GOTG at 4K Ultra with the minimums being over 60FPS all day long.

They've all been making cards for decades and know what they're doing. When I worked for Tiger Direct I was never able to notice any trends as to which cards where better and which ones were worse. They were all good so ignore the branding. After all, the important part of the card, the GPU, will be AMD, Intel or nVidia anyway.

 

[Karadjgne]

Well, brands as such, can matter. All the brands have several models, if not all their models, that are nothing more than the stock reference board with a different cooler attached. There are some brands that use custom designed pcbs with better components as well as the better cooling.

I find Gigabyte disappointing. Their customer service is beyond dismal, great performance cards, but their fan design almost always has a drone that sits wrong with my ears. Sapphire is great for customer service, but can have driver issues with their custom pcbs. Asus is hit or miss for performance, some models are top line, some no different to an FE. PNY is reference. Zotac has excellent performance, bring ear muffs, they get Loud.

So yeah, brand can matter, model can matter, do your research because it's a lot of money to spend and have just 1 quirk that makes it miserable.