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>But bang for buck charts don't mean much even for Gaming I never understood why people even use them I've never bough the highest end card for gaming in my li

>But bang for buck charts don't mean much even for Gaming I never understood why people even use them I've never bough the highest end card for gaming in my life. The price premium is close to double and you get maybe 20-30% the performance. Worse, a lot of that performance is for gaming bragging rights like playing absurdly high resolutions or having very high settings. I can barely tell the difference between high and ultra in most games anyway. Medium to High can also be a crapshoot if medium is at a decently high resolution. Not to mention a lower tier card uses 60-100 watts less, which means I don't need to upgrade my mid-range power supply either. I find that high watt ps's are fairly delicate as well and blow frequently, but that may be only my experience. I have 400 and 500 watt ps's that run for nearly a decade with no issues but every 600+ I've had to buy blows by year two or three. Worse, the cards don't age well. A 980ti isn't going to be good for VR sooner than later because the 1000 series will support a single viewport for both eyes (SMProjection) which means a performance boost of anywhere between 20-50% in VR. You're better off spending your dollars on a 960/970 range card and just pocketing that extra $200-$300 for an earlier upgrade to the next series instead of sitting on the higher version of an old series too long. With SMProjection, even a 1060 is going to outperform a 980ti bought recently for VR. That'll be a $199 card killing a $600 card in VR.

BuckRogers 10y ago
Just to play devil's advocate if I may. Of course the longer you wait the more you get for your money. The difference is you didn't get to enjoy a 980Ti for a long time and someone who bought one did. Money can't buy that, it's priceless. The type of people running a 980Ti probably already have a 1080 anyway. :) While everyone else is snickering about how these wealthy folks somehow lost. People who have a Geforce 1060 budget, probably won't have a HTC Vive either to worry about beating 980Ti VR performance.. I think the PSU thing is anecdotal. Not enough information to explain that either way. I generally go for a decent wattage PSU but worry a lot more about the 12v rail. I've had my existing Corsair HX650 for many years now and among many reasons chose it for 52A single 12v rail. Rock solid PSU. I do agree that just recently has buying less-than-top end has started to make sense. But I disagree that historically that move has been as sensible as it is now. I agree with the OP. I always bought top tier hardware until recently because we actually needed the performance. I always paid the price when stepping down, that 20-30% was needed for a very long time. I've been using 256bit memory bandwidth GPUs since at least 2002. There was a huge gap between them and the lesser tier 128bit stuff. Again, some things are priceless. Every cent I spent on my original 3dfx Voodoo card in 1996 was worth it. Even if I could've saved a few bucks going with a Rendition Verite. Today, not as much as the market has matured if you discount VR. I'm probably done buying high end for desktop machines but I think for decades now, it's been well worth it. Example, I was dismayed at the slow FPS my Geforce 8800GT offered me. When I upgraded to the 8800GTX it was very much worth it. Even so, my PC spending is actually going up though from historic numbers. I'm buying gaming laptops from here on out, something I've never done before. Waiting for a Razer Blade with Geforce 1080M so I can use it with a Vive in a wirefree backpack configuration. Similar story to the above, it's expensive: but can you put a price on completely wireless roomspace VR? Not in my opinion. While I'll likely use this in VR then also have a docking station for it, for my 2nd PC, I'm moving to the Skull Canyon NUC and successors.

BuckRogers 10y ago

Just to play devil's advocate if I may. Of course the longer you wait the more you get for your money. The difference is you didn't get to enjoy a 980Ti for a long time and someone who bought one did. Money can't buy that, it's priceless. The type of people running a 980Ti probably already have a 1080 anyway. :) While everyone else is snickering about how these wealthy folks somehow lost. People who have a Geforce 1060 budget, probably won't have a HTC Vive either to worry about beating 980Ti VR performance.. I think the PSU thing is anecdotal. Not enough information to explain that either way. I generally go for a decent wattage PSU but worry a lot more about the 12v rail. I've had my existing Corsair HX650 for many years now and among many reasons chose it for 52A single 12v rail. Rock solid PSU. I do agree that just recently has buying less-than-top end has started to make sense. But I disagree that historically that move has been as sensible as it is now. I agree with the OP. I always bought top tier hardware until recently because we actually needed the performance. I always paid the price when stepping down, that 20-30% was needed for a very long time. I've been using 256bit memory bandwidth GPUs since at least 2002. There was a huge gap between them and the lesser tier 128bit stuff. Again, some things are priceless. Every cent I spent on my original 3dfx Voodoo card in 1996 was worth it. Even if I could've saved a few bucks going with a Rendition Verite. Today, not as much as the market has matured if you discount VR. I'm probably done buying high end for desktop machines but I think for decades now, it's been well worth it. Example, I was dismayed at the slow FPS my Geforce 8800GT offered me. When I upgraded to the 8800GTX it was very much worth it. Even so, my PC spending is actually going up though from historic numbers. I'm buying gaming laptops from here on out, something I've never done before. Waiting for a Razer Blade with Geforce 1080M so I can use it with a Vive in a wirefree backpack configuration. Similar story to the above, it's expensive: but can you put a price on completely wireless roomspace VR? Not in my opinion. While I'll likely use this in VR then also have a docking station for it, for my 2nd PC, I'm moving to the Skull Canyon NUC and successors.