[SOLVED] VRAM and other misc vs Core Clock

[Just Wyvern]

So I am currently sitting on two cards, a Gigabyte RTX 2070 GAMING OC WHITE and a ASUS DUAL RTX 2080 ti and am having a hard time deciding which one I should use for my pc.

On one hand, the 2080 ti has a fairly substantial advantage in VRAM (11GB), and basically doubles its cores (4352 respectively), but suffers from a really low boost clock of 1560 MHz.

On the other hand, the 2070 has a lower VRAM count (8 GB), on top of half the cores (2304 respectively), but has a much higher boost clock of 1725 MHz.


The type of games I play tend to be high resource demand and heat up both fairly decently (games like heavily modded Skyrim Special Edition, War Thunder, Space Engineers, etc.)

It's honestly a hard decision to me, because it feels like the 2070 runs better but I also prize the longevity that will come with having a 2080.

(As far as PC specs go, if this matters, I'm running a 2700x on an Asus PRIME X470-PRO w/ 16GB RAM (2x8 G.Skill 3400MHz sticks) and a 1 TB SSD (plans to get a 1 TB 970 M.2 are in the making))

 

[13thmonkey]

Feels like it should or does? The simplistic calc of cores x speed should give you an idea of the difference in performance, and the 2080ti should come out on top by a long way. Core speed matters less in the highly parallel tasks that get passed to the GPU. I don't recall any reviews where the outcome was that the 2070 is better than the 2080ti, in fact across 10+ years of GPU's that's never happened where a card lower in the stack outperforms a higher one.

It could however be 'choppier' if the GPU is the constraint in the case of the 2070, and that is consistent and the CPU can keep it fed (single core speed), but under the 2080ti the CPU's single core speed could be the constraint and the 2080ti can sometimes run at full speed and sometimes is waiting for the CPU to pass insructions. So 60 FPS could feel subjectively better than something that flits between 70 and 90 FPS (for example).

 

[Just Wyvern]

Feels like it should or does? The simplistic calc of cores x speed should give you an idea of the difference in performance, and the 2080ti should come out on top by a long way. Core speed matters less in the highly parallel tasks that get passed to the GPU. I don't recall any reviews where the outcome was that the 2070 is better than the 2080ti, in fact across 10+ years of GPU's that's never happened where a card lower in the stack outperforms a higher one.

It could however be 'choppier' if the GPU is the constraint in the case of the 2070, and that is consistent and the CPU can keep it fed (single core speed), but under the 2080ti the CPU's single core speed could be the constraint and the 2080ti can sometimes run at full speed and sometimes is waiting for the CPU to pass insructions. So 60 FPS could feel subjectively better than something that flits between 70 and 90 FPS (for example).

Hmm, ok. The thing is both seem to hold similar framerates, but yeah the 2070 feels like it holds them more stably. I seem to have lost the silicon lottery on the 2080 ti though, as it is performing a fair bit below spec.

Then again, my main tests have been on my modded skyrim, and skyrim runs almost exclusively on your GPU.

Does this mean the bottleneck at this point possibly lies with my board and/or my CPU? I figured it wouldn't have much a problem at all as far as CPU goes; it is still a very comparable value to the modern 3k series @ 4.3 GHz boost (with tons of headroom for OC).

 

[13thmonkey]

It would have to perform a lot below to make it worse than a 2070, and the silicon lottery really only minimises OC or boost potential.

 

[Just Wyvern]

It would have to perform a lot below to make it worse than a 2070, and the silicon lottery really only minimises OC or boost potential.

Alright, maybe I'm just being skeptical of my most recent pickup.
(Managed to nab it for $250 less than normal sell price because I yoinked it off a benchmarking company that was liquidating. Basically brand new, had only run 1 test on it.)
It has coil whine, but all that adds is a little bit of annoyance when my headphones aren't on. Hopefully it turns out to be a good choice!