Ouch!! GTX 1080 Graphics Card

ARandomMiser

Thin end of the wedge mate!
Give in on this and in a few weeks he will be saying he needs more/better memory, then it will be that the motherboard isn't good enough, then the power supply upgrade and finally a better CPU to get the best out of the graphics card.

Years ago i had a similar issue with one of my boys. He kept telling me how he 'needed' a particular upgrade. I told him he didn't and he showed me all sorts of sites and boards telling him how much he needed the upgrade. It is amazing how some posters are very frivolous with other peoples money.

seatbeltnoob

blackste wrote: »

Terry.

The gaming pc market is a tough one. the prices are always high for the latest gear, and they always drop fast as items get a bit older. However, the latest games demand the latest gear to run at the highest resolution. You just have to jump into the market at the pricepoint you can afford, and live with it.
While your son may be building a gaming PC, it doesnt mean he needs a £600 gfx card. What is his budget for the rest of the system? If he is spending £500 on it, it will be a fairly respectable entry level system, but adding a £600 card will be like putting a V8 into a mini. If he is spending £3000, then adding a £200 card will be like fitting a mini engine into an aston martin.
PC systems are largely about balance. The right processor, on the right spec of board, with the right power supply, with well specced memory. Throwing money at 1 item can often be a waste. (and cheaping out can have the same negative effect).

yes an no.

and above average setup (mobo, cpu ram) with the latest gfx card will play the latest games perfectly fine.

Games dont demand too much from the cpu or onboard ram. They demand more from the gfx ram and gpu

GabbaGabbaHey

There's one for sale (a "Founders Edition", whatever that is) second-hand over on AVForums at £570.

Disclaimers: I know absolutely nothing about the seller, graphics cards or anything else! Also, you may need to register on that forum to view the ad.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-founders-edition.2045353/#post-23989316

OGR

Founders edition cards use the reference cooler design, this isn't going to be as good as the custom cooler on a 3rd party board and they may also come with an extra overclock.

The 1080 is a monster card and it may even give you playable frame rates at 4k on ultra settings in some games but like others have said the 1070 is probably the card of choice.

There has been some talk of card depreciation on here. Historically high end cards have held value well but with HBM2 cards just around the corner people might see GDDR5/GDDR5X as old hat and this generation may not hold on to it's price as long. We will have to see how that extra bandwidth affects things when Vega equipped cards start appearing early next year.

Think yourself lucky he didn't ask for a Titan X (Pascal)!!!

Cisco001

GabbaGabbaHey wrote: »

There's one for sale (a "Founders Edition", whatever that is) second-hand over on AVForums at £570.

Disclaimers: I know absolutely nothing about the seller, graphics cards or anything else! Also, you may need to register on that forum to view the ad.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-founders-edition.2045353/#post-23989316

New gigabyte with non reference cooler is only £600
No point of saving £30 for founder edition for something without warranty.

Lingua

If you are the one paying for the gaming computer, set him an overall budget, and let him decide then if he still wants the card. If you give him a budget of £1000 and he decides he still wants to splash out £600 on a single component, that's his choice!

However, if he's building it out of his own money and you have promised the graphics card as something towards that, then do some research on how the GPU will work with other components. Chances are, if he's building it himself he'll use average components and they will prove a bottleneck to the capabilities of the card.

Alternatively, admit to him that you didn't realise they were so expensive and simply offer a lower-priced card. If he still wants the more expensive one, tell him you're happy to buy it once it drops in price, or if he pays something towards it (e.g. a % of his pocket money each week). If he's building it from his own pocket and that is taking him some time, he probably won't have it finished for a while and that will give you time to find a good deal.


Good luck!

Lingua

Johnmcl7

RobTang wrote: »

This wont be popular but buying last gen tech (for graphics cards) is only worth it if you can get it dirt cheap second hand from people upgrading at retail the price / performance ratio is pretty bad.

I agree, a newer card with similar performance to the older card will normally run cooler, quieter and using less power plus there may be some new features the newer cards support.

John

Lemonsqueezer78

Another vote for the 1070 here. I'm building my own gaming PC right now and that's what I've decided on for myself - based on some comparisons on price/performance for my expected usage.

And believe me, I don't tend to deny myself these kinds of luxuries

But the 1080 is a pricey bit of kit. Very good by all accounts but probably overkill unless you are wanting to enter in to 4K or VR stuff. 1070 will still be great for some very high performance gaming.

Gavin78

I agree with what others have said I would ask your son for the specs of his pc build before paying out £600

If the specs are not upto much then the card will be underpowered and a waste of money as the machine will never use the cards power.

Can you post back on here what others have said with regards to the make of his motherboard/CPU/Ram/Memory and his Power Supply Make and Wattage and at what resolution his monitor he will be gaming at?

No point in spending £600 of the machine is only capable of running a £100 graphics card.

robatwork

Get him an AMD RX480 with the Polaris chipset.

Excellent value for money and he won't notice the difference