A Blast from the Past: GeForce GTX 980 Ti vs. GTX 1660 Ti vs. RTX 2060

[Aus spot]

Thanks for a look back. More please.

 

[pcnthuziast]

Nothing leads me to believe graphics card prices will ever be "reasonable" again and in fact will continue to inflate with every new generation. Not talking production costs, but demand based arbitrary inflation and outright gouging by retailers.

 

[tkabou]

Nice review, was actually waiting for something like this! Picked up a STRIX 980 Ti in January for $226.00. Shreds most games, old and current, and the reviews seem to confirm it.

 

[Adi6293]

When I bought my Titan X there were so many people who told me I was wasting money and that I should have bought two 980Ti instead.

When I bought my Titan XP, there were so many people saying "o that's overkill" and I should have bought a 1080Ti instead. "No one needs all that memory".

NOW... despite the fact the RTX 2080Ti is $1300 - pretty much on parity with the cost of the Titan X and the Titan XP ...no one bothers saying the 2080Ti is overkill because for the most part, it's the only card that can get 60FPS or better in 4K on new games while ray tracing is on and maintains solid 2K scores while ray tracing is on.

The RTX Titan is priced so ridiculously high that it's out of the budgets for most.

Amazing how they get us to spend so much money for this stuff.

RIGHT NOW I am building a second computer and I'm on the shelf as to whether I should go with a 2060, 2070, 2080 or 2080Ti.

I can get the 2070 for $500. I can get the 2080 for $700 or 2080Ti for $1000.

I've seen NOTHING that justifies the price of the 2080Ti because most gamers who have gaming monitors have widescreen 2K monitors - and most are not running monitors in 4K. Most gamers are running their games in high settings but in 1440p (or less).

If I had it to do all over again, I'd probably have not bought my 2080Ti and just gotten a 2080.

These games aren't very demanding.

I just spent the extra for "future proofing".

But you did over paid for the Titan, GTX1080Ti would of been a much better buy

 

[TomSEA]

No mention of Vega 56 smoking everything on several test..... how "typical"

"Smoked?" That's pretty funny. Out of the 12 games they ran these tests on, the Vega 56 only came out on top 4 times. And in only one of those tests (Forza) was the difference significant with a 97fps vs. 88fps to the runner-up card. The other 3 times it was for 4 frames or less difference.

I swear...AMD fanbois.

 

[dogofwars]

The 980Ti can't Trace Rays.

Case closed.

Now that Nvidia has basically invented a new setting meme, you can't brag about "running in maximum settings" without having something capable of Ray Tracing.

Nothing from the 980Ti to the Titan XP is good at Ray Tracing. You just gotta step up to the 2000 series.

I've been seeing plenty of evidence that says the 2060 is a better value than the 2070 and 2080 - and just about everything from the last generation.

It would be better value if it had 8GB and not 6GB. With 6GB in 2 years you might need to upgrade or reduce your settings as to with the 2070 you can have it for 2 more years if not more.

 

[dogofwars]

Nobody in their right mind would pay $235 for a 980 Ti--buy a used 1070 instead. They sell for around $200 at the moment, use loads less electricity, and generate a ton less heat. And they're basically equivalent performance-wise, as shown in the article. How could the author miss this obvious conclusion?

You are right but I think he went on a tangent. It was basically to see if it was worth upgrading.. Which is not.

 

[dogofwars]

Framerate, maybe, but not with RTX ON

Well, actually, it provided BETTER framerates than if ray tracing was enabled - that kills performance....

And as there is 36GB of VRAM, it's probably better in the future proofing provided you don't care about ray tracing...

36Gb vram? I don't think vram stacks in SLI. Does it?

On DX 12 and if optimized for it in theory.

 

[Adi6293]

Vega56 for under £300 looks tempting to me if you can get one.
A little undervolt would narrow the power draw gap and enable consistent higher clocks if you're prepared to have a play with it.
And why wouldn't you if you're an enthusiast?

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapp...ess-graphics-card-11276-02-40g-gx-38f-sp.html

Under £300, in stock, with 3 games and its an aib model ;-)

 

[amghwk]

Saying that, all 3 in SLI provided 2080Ti performance 4 years ago

Framerate, maybe, but not with RTX ON

I'm surprised people are still carried away with the so-called "RTX", which still seem to be in infancy, and currently it's hardly noticeable in differences without it.

 

[Bullwinkle M]

And I'm still using a GTX 780... lol. No problems with VR gaming which is all I do now. I do have a 1080p 40" TV as my main display but I just don't game on it anymore. At this point I really have no reason to upgrade either as all my games run smooth. And I'm still running a i7 4770K. I'm running a dinosaur rig compared to many of you I'm sure.

I'm running a Sandy Bridge 2500K with an NVidia 750Ti

Long external Sata+Power cables allow me to swap Hard drives, SSD's and thumb drives to boot to anything from DOS to Linux to Windows 10 without opening the case or going to the BIOS as it will simply boot to whatever drive is plugged in

I have TWO HDMI cables going to a 4K - 65" TV that has 3 HDMI inputs
One cable is on the internal motherboard graphics port and the other one is on the NVidia card

I can easily swap video outputs with the TV's remote control so I can run Windows XP-SP2 without any NVidia drivers by using the motherboards graphics port and switch to the NVidia card when running Windows XP-SP3, Windows 7, 8.1 or 10

This setup works great even though the NVidia card only has drivers for XP-SP3 (not SP2)

The 1660Ti is likely the best card available that is still usable with this ancient hardware as anything in the RTX series would be limited by the CPU

Virtual machines never did work correctly for many utilities, graphics/games and audio so maintaining Native boot for Windows XP is a must

I'll try the 1660Ti next month
If it doesn't work, I'll just keep it for a new rig
If it does..........?

PERFECT!

 

[Nayeem335]

Vega56 for under £300 looks tempting to me if you can get one.
A little undervolt would narrow the power draw gap and enable consistent higher clocks if you're prepared to have a play with it.
And why wouldn't you if you're an enthusiast?

Rtx 2060 is cheaper than Vega 56 in most of the countries. As steve have mentioned hundred times, it's hard to find Vega 56,and even if someone can find one, it's 400$+. Only in UK region,it can be found for cheaper price,other than that, it costs way more than rtx 2060. And 2060 is much more power efficient, latest offering and has future tech like rtx and dlss which is atleast better than not having anything at all like Vega 56. And as far as enthusiast goes,rtx 2060 can also be overclocked and destroy overclocked+undervolted Vega 56. So why would anyone buy Vega 56? Most the most part of the world, Vega 56 is out of question due to unavailability and excessive pricing.

 

[Nayeem335]

No mention of Vega 56 smoking everything on several test..... how "typical"

Hahahaha,nice joke. Joke of the year 2019. I guess this is the first time you visited and read this website. People who regularly follow techspot and hardware unboxed,we know exactly why Vega 56 wasn't included and totally agree with techspot/hardware unboxed's decision.

 

[Nayeem335]

Saying that, all 3 in SLI provided 2080Ti performance 4 years ago

Framerate, maybe, but not with RTX ON

I'm surprised people are still carried away with the so-called "RTX", which still seem to be in infancy, and currently it's hardly noticeable in differences without it.

Metro exodus disagrees with you.

 

[Nayeem335]

Vega56 for under £300 looks tempting to me if you can get one.
A little undervolt would narrow the power draw gap and enable consistent higher clocks if you're prepared to have a play with it.
And why wouldn't you if you're an enthusiast?

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapp...ess-graphics-card-11276-02-40g-gx-38f-sp.html

Under £300, in stock, with 3 games and its an aib model ;-)

Vega56 for under £300 looks tempting to me if you can get one.
A little undervolt would narrow the power draw gap and enable consistent higher clocks if you're prepared to have a play with it.
And why wouldn't you if you're an enthusiast?

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapp...ess-graphics-card-11276-02-40g-gx-38f-sp.html

Under £300, in stock, with 3 games and its an aib model ;-)

Only in uk :3 while in the rest of the world,rtx 2060 is 350$ and Vega 56 is 400$+.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

As I live in the UK I can only go on that.
A similar AiB 2060 to the Sapphire Pulse is £50 more.
RTX is not worth it this generation in a mid range card and DLSS performs worse than game scaling, plenty of info around about that.

Vega56 is a perfect card to tide me over until Arcturus or RTX 3070/4060.

 

[Stark]

When I bought my Titan X there were so many people who told me I was wasting money and that I should have bought two 980Ti instead.

When I bought my Titan XP, there were so many people saying "o that's overkill" and I should have bought a 1080Ti instead. "No one needs all that memory".

NOW... despite the fact the RTX 2080Ti is $1300 - pretty much on parity with the cost of the Titan X and the Titan XP ...no one bothers saying the 2080Ti is overkill because for the most part, it's the only card that can get 60FPS or better in 4K on new games while ray tracing is on and maintains solid 2K scores while ray tracing is on.

The RTX Titan is priced so ridiculously high that it's out of the budgets for most.

Amazing how they get us to spend so much money for this stuff.

RIGHT NOW I am building a second computer and I'm on the shelf as to whether I should go with a 2060, 2070, 2080 or 2080Ti.

I can get the 2070 for $500. I can get the 2080 for $700 or 2080Ti for $1000.

I've seen NOTHING that justifies the price of the 2080Ti because most gamers who have gaming monitors have widescreen 2K monitors - and most are not running monitors in 4K. Most gamers are running their games in high settings but in 1440p (or less).

If I had it to do all over again, I'd probably have not bought my 2080Ti and just gotten a 2080.

These games aren't very demanding.

I just spent the extra for "future proofing".

TLDR : OP bought titan, is mad now cause people are not calling 2080Ti at same price..waste of money.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

TLDR : OP bought titan, is mad now cause people are not calling 2080Ti at same price..waste of money.

Too long didn't read: or too long COULDN'T READ?

 

[IISIRIDER]

TLDR : OP bought titan, is mad now cause people are not calling 2080Ti at same price..waste of money.

Too long didn't read: or too long COULDN'T READ?

You used to buy suboptimal parts, because you could afford to. Now you no longer can afford to.

So what? Buy what you want, no one cares. There was 0 insightful tidbits in your post.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

You used to buy suboptimal parts, because you could afford to. Now you no longer can afford to.

So what? Buy what you want, no one cares. There was 0 insightful tidbits in your post.

A suboptimal part is a Core i9 ex for $2000 and a 2080Ti?

UMMMM YEAH...sure bruh...

:rolls eyes:

 

[QuantumPhysics]

TLDR : OP bought titan, is mad now cause people are not calling 2080Ti at same price..waste of money.

2080Ti is the best video car there is under $1500.

The RTX Titan came out AFTER I got my 2080Ti.

Poor AMD has nothing to even hope to compete at this point.

 

[urbanman2004]

Moral of the story: my 1070 is gonna serve me just fine at gaming for the next 2 years

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Moral of the story: my 1070 is gonna serve me just fine at gaming for the next 2 years

There really isn't any game terribly demanding right now of more power.

A 1070 will be fine until it's not.

 

[jjkusaf]

The 980Ti can't Trace Rays.

Case closed.

Now that Nvidia has basically invented a new setting meme, you can't brag about "running in maximum settings" without having something capable of Ray Tracing.

Nothing from the 980Ti to the Titan XP is good at Ray Tracing. You just gotta step up to the 2000 series.

I've been seeing plenty of evidence that says the 2060 is a better value than the 2070 and 2080 - and just about everything from the last generation.

Also, can the 2060 really RTX? Sure, you can enable it ... but even at 1080p ... BF5 and even Metro Exodus brings the 2060 to its knees.

Now, I'm not saying you should get a 980ti instead of a 2060 ... but RTX as a "benefit" for the 2060 is kinda mute right now (until current/future releases allow for frame rates which aren't slaughtered).

Anyway, I'm keeping my 980ti until the next gen where hopefully optimizations are made. Right now, even though RTX looks nice ... it just kills performance (across the whole RTX line).

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Also, can the 2060 really RTX? Sure, you can enable it ... but even at 1080p ... BF5 and even Metro Exodus brings the 2060 to its knees.

Now, I'm not saying you should get a 980ti instead of a 2060 ... but RTX as a "benefit" for the 2060 is kinda mute right now (until current/future releases allow for frame rates which aren't slaughtered).

Anyway, I'm keeping my 980ti until the next gen where hopefully optimizations are made. Right now, even though RTX looks nice ... it just kills performance (across the whole RTX line).

The lowest level card anyone should be getting is the 2060 or 2070.

I wouldn't be dropping serious coin on a Titan X or Titan XP again...

It's about the FUTURE!