Question Used 3090 or new 4070ti?

Mar 1, 2023
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Hi all,



I have a question related to which graphic card to choose? Used 3090 for 980€ with 12 month warranty or new 4070ti for 1125€? So its battle between more VRAM or faster and more efficient GPU? What would you choose for productivity CAD and in Lumion, Keyshot? Not such for a gaming.

Or maybe with investing 1600€ in 4080 is a good choice?

System would be as new build:

i7 13700K

64GB DDR5

MSI Z790 Pro-A

990 Pro 2TB

Corsair RM1000x shifted



Thank you in advance.
 

QwerkyPengwen

Splendid
Ambassador
I'm not going to give my opinion on 40 series expensive this, and AMD better that.
I will however provide you with my opinion on the two choices you listed in your title which is a 3090 or a 4070 Ti, and while the 4070 Ti might not have quite as much raw rasterization horsepower, it has newer RT and tensor cores, and access to DLSS 3.0 frame generation which is pretty sweet, so personally I would pick a 4070 Ti over a 3090 because of that.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure it also has dual NVENC like how the 10 series did, and can do AV1 hardware encoding which is cool if you're interested in such stuff.
 
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Tac 25

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Jul 25, 2021
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OP

it's also a battle of having warranty and not having warranty.

in this situation, you will have better peace of mind with the new 4070ti. Assuming it has warranty, and can be rma'd if something goes wrong.

"used" gpu's carry a danger of being mined to near death, or have some other problem that the seller won't say to you.
 

KyaraM

Admirable
Are those normal prices in your country? Here in Germany you can find the 4070Ti for under 900€ now, which means it's below MSRP (the difference to Dollars is due to taxes...). I got mine for MSRP and have seen several sales etc. since. Unless those prices are normal in your country, I would buy neither. If you are unfortunate and they are indeed normal, go with the 4070Ti all the way. I like mine more and more with every day and every crapper bashing me for buying it. It's a great card especially for 1440p, with performance on par with the 3090Ti most of the time for less money and less energy cost. A new card also definitely was never mined on, another plus. @QwerkyPengwen also gave a very good overview over other advantages the card has. At this point in time, it really isn't a question anymore in that price bracket. The 4080 is way overpriced for performance relative to any other card, too, so it's pretty bad value and not worth it. Only real competitor is thr 7900XT, but only when you don't care about RT or Nvidia specific advantages like productivity stuff or DLSS 3.0, which is a pretty nice to have bonus.
 
I would take the RTX 3090 over the RTX 4070 Ti any day of the week and twice on Sunday. The performance will be about the same but there's a BIG problem with the RTX 4070 Ti, the lack of VRAM.

The RTX 4070 Ti has only 12GB of VRAM and that's not nearly enough for a card with its level of performance. The RTX 3090 has 24GB of VRAM, which is probably more than it needs but it's the less expensive card so who cares? The fact that the RTX 4070 Ti only has 12GB of VRAM while the RTX 3090 has 24GB means that the RTX 3090 will live a lot longer than the RTX 4070 Ti.

What good is 4K and RT performance if your card doesn't have enough VRAM for it? Just look at the joke that has been the GeForce lineup over the past two generations:

RTX 3050 - 8GB
RTX 3060 - 12GB <- I still don't understand why nVidia did this.
RTX 3060 Ti - 8GB
RTX 3070 - 8GB
RTX 3070 Ti - 8GB
RTX 3080 - 10GB
RTX 3080 Ti - 12GB
RTX 3090 - 24GB
RTX 3090 Ti - 24GB
RTX 4070 - 8GB <- Expected because of information leaks
RTX 4070 Ti - 12GB
RTX 4080 - 16GB
RTX 4090 - 24GB

Now look at the Radeon equivalents:

RX 6600 - 8GB
RX 6600 XT - 8GB
RX 6650 XT - 8GB
RX 6700 - 10GB
RX 6700 XT - 12GB
RX 6750 XT - 12GB
RX 6800 - 16GB
RX 6800 XT - 16GB
RX 6900 XT - 16GB
RX 6950 XT - 16GB
RX 7900 XT - 20GB
RX 7900 XTX - 24GB

The RTX 4070 Ti has 12GB and costs $800+
The RTX 3060 has 12GB and costs $343
The RX 6700 XT has 12GB and costs $345

Do you see a problem here? I sure do!

You're completely screwed when it comes to VRAM if you have an RTX 3060 Ti, 3070, 3070 Ti, 3080, 3080 Ti, 4070, 4070 Ti or 4080. The only cards that guarantee that you'll always have enough VRAM are the RTX 3060, RTX 3090, RTX 3090 Ti and RTX 4090.

I would take double the VRAM over better RT performance and DLSS3 without hesitation. The lack of VRAM on the GeForce models I listed is guaranteed to cause problems long before the GPU is no longer potent enough for 4K gaming. The RTX 3090 will be a good 4K gaming card long after the RTX 4070 Ti is relegated to 1440p. The difference in VRAM is so big that the RTX 3090 might be able to still game at 4K when the RTX 4070 Ti is no longer able to handle 1440p.

When choosing a card, ALWAYS take the amount of VRAM into account because the amount that a card is born with is also the amount it dies with. Software frills like DLSS and RT can always be improved but the amount of VRAM a card has can't be.

Hope this helps you! ;)(y)
 

KyaraM

Admirable
I would take the RTX 3090 over the RTX 4070 Ti any day of the week and twice on Sunday. The performance will be about the same but there's a BIG problem with the RTX 4070 Ti, the lack of VRAM.

The RTX 4070 Ti has only 12GB of VRAM and that's not nearly enough for a card with its level of performance. The RTX 3090 has 24GB of VRAM, which is probably more than it needs but it's the less expensive card so who cares? The fact that the RTX 4070 Ti only has 12GB of VRAM while the RTX 3090 has 24GB means that the RTX 3090 will live a lot longer than the RTX 4070 Ti.

What good is 4K and RT performance if your card doesn't have enough VRAM for it? Just look at the joke that has been the GeForce lineup over the past two generations:

RTX 3050 - 8GB
RTX 3060 - 12GB <- I still don't understand why nVidia did this.
RTX 3060 Ti - 8GB
RTX 3070 - 8GB
RTX 3070 Ti - 8GB
RTX 3080 - 10GB
RTX 3080 Ti - 12GB
RTX 3090 - 24GB
RTX 3090 Ti - 24GB
RTX 4070 - 8GB <- Expected because of information leaks
RTX 4070 Ti - 12GB
RTX 4080 - 16GB
RTX 4090 - 24GB

Now look at the Radeon equivalents:

RX 6600 - 8GB
RX 6600 XT - 8GB
RX 6650 XT - 8GB
RX 6700 - 10GB
RX 6700 XT - 12GB
RX 6750 XT - 12GB
RX 6800 - 16GB
RX 6800 XT - 16GB
RX 6900 XT - 16GB
RX 6950 XT - 16GB
RX 7900 XT - 20GB
RX 7900 XTX - 24GB

The RTX 4070 Ti has 12GB and costs $800+
The RTX 3060 has 12GB and costs $343
The RX 6700 XT has 12GB and costs $345

Do you see a problem here? I sure do!

You're completely screwed when it comes to VRAM if you have an RTX 3060 Ti, 3070, 3070 Ti, 3080, 3080 Ti, 4070, 4070 Ti or 4080. The only cards that guarantee that you'll always have enough VRAM are the RTX 3060, RTX 3090, RTX 3090 Ti and RTX 4090.

I would take double the VRAM over better RT performance and DLSS3 without hesitation. The lack of VRAM on the GeForce models I listed is guaranteed to cause problems long before the GPU is no longer potent enough for 4K gaming. The RTX 3090 will be a good 4K gaming card long after the RTX 4070 Ti is relegated to 1440p. The difference in VRAM is so big that the RTX 3090 might be able to still game at 4K when the RTX 4070 Ti is no longer able to handle 1440p.

When choosing a card, ALWAYS take the amount of VRAM into account because the amount that a card is born with is also the amount it dies with. Software frills like DLSS and RT can always be improved but the amount of VRAM a card has can't be.

Hope this helps you! ;)(y)
People still not getting the fact that RTX cards use less memory than AMD I see. This is misinformation. There are tests out there proving you wrong. Stop spreading your nonsense.
Example:
View: https://imgur.com/gallery/pTPuJLW

You can see VERY clearly that Radeon cards use more VRAM. Unless, of course, you are a fanboy... they measured actually used VRAM, btw, not reserved. I can provide the full breakdown for the 4090 from that article as well, and the ones for 1440p and 1080p if that is not enough for you.
 
RTX 40 is way overpriced. If you can find a RTX 30 card, with the performance that you want, for less money than an equal performing RTX 40 card, then get that instead.
Do you know the OP's resolution?

RTX3090 MSRP: $1500
RTX 4070 Ti MSRP: $800

average-fps_2560_1440.png


power-gaming.png
 
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KyaraM

Admirable
Do you know the OP's resolution?

RTX3090 MSRP: $1500
RTX 4070 Ti MSRP: $800

average-fps_2560_1440.png


power-gaming.png
I didn't even touch on that, but I just ran the numbers, actually. For where I live, I got a pretty decent price for my energy bill of 28 ct/kWh (€). With my play hours, a 4070Ti costs me between 73-110€ a year in real world power draw, not benchmarking. A 3090 would cost me 160-235€. That is a very considerable difference, and that's not even cinsidering that the claim that "the RTX 3090 might be able to still game at 4K when the RTX 4070 Ti is no longer able to handle 1440p" is utter, complete bs. Even if it would be even remotely possible, ny that point in time the 3090 will have cost so much more in energy costs that it is literally irrelevant that you had to replace it sooner. That is, of course, IF that was even a valid claim, which it is not.
 
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