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I believe gamers who spend that kind of money on a graphics card do it more for cultural than functional reasons. It's like buying a car model upgrade, that has

I believe gamers who spend that kind of money on a graphics card do it more for cultural than functional reasons. It's like buying a car model upgrade, that has little practical value, aside from showing off that you could afford it. It's weird, but that's human nature I guess.

modeless 10y ago
Sure, but gamers would buy the Ti because extra speed is more important than a bit of RAM for gaming. Even machine learning people who need lots of RAM will probably not decide to spend $500 on the Titan XP just for 1 GB.
- vitus 10y ago
  Yes, but it's not really $500 for 1 GB if you're getting the board for free. https://developer.nvidia.com/academic_gpu_seeding https://developer.nvidia.com/academic_gpu_seeding
jandrese 10y ago
VR is pushing higher end video cards at the moment. This card should be amazing at driving VR headsets at max settings.
- Vexs 10y ago
  Agreed, VR is the only thing that maxes out my 1080, aside from ultra-eyecandy shaders.
deevus 10y ago
I have a 980 Ti and it can't always get 60fps at 4K. So for me it's not just shelling out for the biggest card, I'm trying to get the best out of my hardware to make for a better experience.
nikcub 10y ago
My brother and his friends are PC gamers, and they were anticipating the Pascal 10x series for over a year because of the improved performance. Most of them upgraded from the two earlier series, because to get 1440p gaming on the new 144Mhz monitors and with high settings on modern games you really need these new cards. I had similar thoughts to your own re: the hype, until I saw the games. They are amazing - and I find VR boring after 10 minutes.
- dharma1 10y ago
  What games?
  - nikcub 10y ago
    Mainly H1Z1, Battlefield and Overwatch but I also saw GTA V, Fallout 4, FIFA, Battlefront and Witcher. Both the games that are designed for the higher resolution, as well as the games that 'scale up' (can't recall which was which) are amazing. It's a completely different gaming experience and I understand now how people become obsessed with frame rates, specs, cards, the unveils, the news and rumors etc. I was so close to pulling the trigger myself even though I don't have a PC. I could probably justify the $500 + $500 for card and monitor on an existing PC (or a Mac upgrade clears throat) but not an entirely new machine to play games. If you haven't seen cutting edge PC gaming go and check it out somewhere or somehow. There was this entire revolution happening that I knew nothing about.
    - dharma1 10y ago
      OK. I've got a PC with gtx970 I occasionally use for gaming, mostly Battlefront (at 1080p, haven't tried 4k). It's pretty good, wouldn't say it blows my mind like the HTC Vive demos I've tried though
    - iamatworknow 10y ago
      >It's a completely different gaming experience and I understand now how people become obsessed with frame rates, specs, cards, the unveils, the news and rumors etc. I also partly think this is cultural, as the original commenter noted. Last year shortly after Overwatch came out I built a new gaming PC, featuring an i5 6600K, GTX 980Ti, and 27" 1080p 144Hz monitor. My buddies gave me some flack for it because even at the time (~June 2016) these were not the top of the line options. Nevermind the fact that even with all settings on Ultra I was able to consistently get 120-140 FPS, and with settings turned down to their most basic (a common practice among competitive gamers to decrease input latency) I never dropped below 144, even in the middle of the most dense game play. Granted, I'm playing at 1080p, but I have yet to find a reason to want more than that, and the performance is where I want it to be, so I'm satisfied. Still, since I didn't trade hundreds of extra dollars for an i7 and a GTX 1080 I'm the noob.
Warp__ 10y ago
Personally, I play at 3440x1440. I want 0 bottlenecks and more power than I need, so a 1080Ti is perfect for me. Especially as in the UK I can get it for ~£30 more than I paid for the 1080.
simias 10y ago
I have a 4K screen and a GTX 1080, I struggle to play most high end games at a stable 4K 60fps with it. VR is an other use case where the extra power is probably not wasted. DOOM 2016 maxed out at 4k is a sight to behold.
- aquadrop 10y ago
  Can you tell me (honest question) what improves with 4k for games? I mean, for regular stuff you can see more details on the picture, but games usually just render essentially same picture only for larger resolution. And picture with fullhd and modern capabilities is also already pretty smooth, so does 4k bring anything (I guess it can add a bit of smoothness as additional step of AA)? Is it worth the trouble?
  - simias 10y ago
    At the current price I don't think it's really worth it, no. Really few games manage to take full advantage of 4K (Doom '16, as I mentioned, is one of them). Too many console ports with low texture resolutions and terrible optimizations these days. Older games will of course fare much better but the additional sharpness in the graphics is probably not worth the price of the hardware. For gaming I think 1440p and a high framerate are a better compromise at the moment. That being said I have some trouble going back to my 1200p screens at work after being used to 4k at home. Surprisingly even for emacs and other work-related things 4K makes a pretty huge difference in my experience. Everything remains razor sharp even with a small font. I can split my screen and display a few full page datasheets and schematics alongside my code. No need to zoom in or anything. No aliasing, no pixels, I find it very relaxing.
    - aquadrop 10y ago
      How does Doom take advantage of 4k?
      - simias 10y ago
        High resolution textures and detailed models coupled with good optimization that makes it run like a charm maxed out at 4k. I don't have very good screenshots available at the moment unfortunately but this should give you an idea of what's possible: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/100598881680786746/23C0353DF7CB1D6429DD0E14B9CEB73930F9848A/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/10059888168078... http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/100598881680077063/3DB5F81297251F0C848BDF3786A5788C11A5CCFA/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/10059888168007... Here's Dark Souls III which looks pretty great at 4K but unfortunately doesn't manage to run at a solid 60FPS on my GTX 1080: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/84843325410407869/0B2DC734AFE6076A973BF3B37329654B59E92A60/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/84843325410407... And here's an older game, The Witcher: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/84843969116367618/C5DBDC6BEF24EE1F6735AC16C2A7D40B60DE0093/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/84843969116367... Those hold up pretty well at 4K. In contrast I present to you Wolfenstein: The New Order which often looks very mediocre and yet manages to run worse than DOOM: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/100598881681325455/A500272E450E27287B08AEC48DDB5CE388E95446/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/10059888168132... Note the low polygon count on some of the models and the very low resolution of certain textures.
K0SM0S 10y ago
No, currently monitor technology is evolving fast so GPUs at the are struggling to meet the highest interface requirements, notably 3440x1440@144Hz and 4K@60Hz (and don't even think about more frames at 4K). I have a GTX 1070 mostly for deep learning, but I have to admit that piece of hardware was pleasing the casual gamer in me as well. It's only about 20% behind a GTX 1080 for gaming, a $500 GPU. Twice more than I had ever spent for leisure as a gamer. Well on my 4K display, I can push most pre-2014 games to 60 fps, but that's it. After that, for most AAA games, I have to resort to 1440p + some AA. And if I was really into gaming I'd have bought an ultrawide 1440p/144Hz monitor, no doubt about it, knowing pretty well I'd need a Titan XP or at least 1080 to see these framerates on newer titles. It's a space that's moving fast, both on the interface (monitor, VR...) and processing side (Nvidia makes a 20-30% leap each gen, kind of insane compared to Intel CPU gens for instance). We're only beginning to touch low-level APIs once again after a two-decades hiatus on the PC (DirectX being both great to make it easy to create 3D apps but at the cost of much performance/overhead, which DX12 is trying to address). I'm jaded about CPUs, honestly Ryzen is much welcome economically but nothing to be enthused as a nerd/engineer, however GPUs and display technology is where it's at these days. Can't wait for proper AR too (HoloLens-like technology, still a few gens away from a commercially viable product).
- Foxhuls 10y ago
  I'm sorry but while I agree GPU and monitor technology is getting improved quickly, I think you're giving some incorrect info. Ultra wide 1440p monitors cap out at 100hz right now, not 144hz. The currents cards are pushing the 100hz ultrawides pretty much to their max and the 1080ti will 100% any slack left. 4k is possible past 60hz and a single 1080 is doing fairly well at 4k as is. 1080s in SLI can easily push a 4k monitor past 60fps and Asus is releasing a 4k 144hz monitor around Q3 of this year because of that. The tech is moving fast but you're exaggerating quite a bit on how hard it is to push these new displays.
  - ptrptr 10y ago
    I have to disagree, there are couple consumer grade 1440p 144Hz monitors (FreeSync) - ASUS MG279Q, Acer Predator XF270HU and even 165Hz one - Acer Predator XB271HU (G-Sync) all IPS. There are also VA Ultra Wide panels like BenQ XR3501 and Acer Predator Z35 with 3440x1440px and 144Hz. Technology in this area is recently progressing with decent speed.
johanneskanybal 10y ago
Got the old Titan X. Serious Sam VR gpu speed detection: medium. feels bad.
Altay- 10y ago
Even dual 1080 GTX cards can't max out settings on the VR games currently available for Oculus / HTC Vive. As for traditional usecases, I have a 3x monitor setup ( 2K@144Hz/4K@60Hz/2K@144Hz) and my 1080 GTX can't max out everything smoothly while I stream/record high-end games. I would love it if all this was just vanity, but its my job. This stuff is an expense I'd happily avoid if possible. I don't own any nonsensical RGB lighted cases or non-essential peripherals.
- cjrp 10y ago
  Out of interest, are you handing off the encoding/streaming work to a separate device, or is that on the same PC?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
jamespo 10y ago
That's definitely true for some, as a quick look at all the "specs avatars" in PC gaming forums confirms.
hatsunearu 10y ago
Demonstrably false, 4K 60fps gaming on max settings on most games (1080p@60fps is nothing on most high end GPUs) is still not really possible, and a 1080Ti probably won't achieve it either since the Titan X wasn't quite able to. Also, VR gaming can never have enough GPU power, because supersampling increases the fidelity by a lot (first hand experience)
- Someone1234 10y ago
  > Demonstrably false, 4K 60fps gaming on max settings on most games (1080p@60fps is nothing on most high end GPUs) is still not really possible, and a 1080Ti probably won't achieve it either since the Titan X wasn't quite able to. You literally just argued why it is demonstrably true. If a Titan X, Ti, or standard 1080 can get to 4K 60 on max then buying an Titan X or Ti is nothing more than bragging rights. Nobody is arguing that the Ti isn't more powerful, just that that power likely doesn't buy you anything specific, all you've done is show how that is true.
  - hatsunearu 10y ago
    What? A 1080, 1080Ti, Titan X isn't "enough". So the closest you can get to "enough" is worthwhile.
sundvor 10y ago
Completely disagree. A single 1080TI will finally be "good enough" for a lot of high resolution / high frequency use cases where you had to go SLI before. I find it useful to multiply resolution with refresh rate to arrive at a number that indicates the number of pixels being pushed per second: 1920x1080 x60 = 124,416,000 2560x1440 x60 = 221,184,000 3440x1440 x60 = 297,216,000 3440x1440 x100 = 495,360,000 3840x2160 x60 = 497,664,000 2560x1440 x144 = 530,841,600 3840x2160 x144 = 1,194,393,600 So there you go - a maxed out 34" ultrawide has just about the same requirements as a 60hz 4k monitor. Yet a normal 27" 144hz will out-require both of them ... and they come in even faster variants yet! Edit: And then you start seeing 144hz 4k screens; you will still find yourself wanting with a single 1080TI.
plandis 10y ago
This might be the first sub $1000 card to drive games at 4K above 60fps, so that's kind of cool. Considering that there are a few 4K 144Hz IPS monitors releasing this year the card lines up nicely.
cgriswald 10y ago
I believe there is a subset of gamers who spend this kind of money for cultural reasons. But I build expensive beasts once and drive them until they run into the ground. My dual 690s handled "everything I could throw at them"[0] for years and years. I only just upgraded to dual 1080 FTW editions (also very expensive) and expect to run those for quite a few years as well.[1] [0] Caveat: I only ever run a single monitor on my gaming rigs. [1] Turns out I get VR sickness something fierce, so VR won't really be a driving need for me.

modeless 10y ago

Sure, but gamers would buy the Ti because extra speed is more important than a bit of RAM for gaming. Even machine learning people who need lots of RAM will probably not decide to spend $500 on the Titan XP just for 1 GB.

vitus 10y ago
Yes, but it's not really $500 for 1 GB if you're getting the board for free. https://developer.nvidia.com/academic_gpu_seeding https://developer.nvidia.com/academic_gpu_seeding

jandrese 10y ago

VR is pushing higher end video cards at the moment. This card should be amazing at driving VR headsets at max settings.

Vexs 10y ago
Agreed, VR is the only thing that maxes out my 1080, aside from ultra-eyecandy shaders.

deevus 10y ago

I have a 980 Ti and it can't always get 60fps at 4K. So for me it's not just shelling out for the biggest card, I'm trying to get the best out of my hardware to make for a better experience.

nikcub 10y ago

My brother and his friends are PC gamers, and they were anticipating the Pascal 10x series for over a year because of the improved performance. Most of them upgraded from the two earlier series, because to get 1440p gaming on the new 144Mhz monitors and with high settings on modern games you really need these new cards. I had similar thoughts to your own re: the hype, until I saw the games. They are amazing - and I find VR boring after 10 minutes.

dharma1 10y ago
What games?
- nikcub 10y ago
  Mainly H1Z1, Battlefield and Overwatch but I also saw GTA V, Fallout 4, FIFA, Battlefront and Witcher. Both the games that are designed for the higher resolution, as well as the games that 'scale up' (can't recall which was which) are amazing. It's a completely different gaming experience and I understand now how people become obsessed with frame rates, specs, cards, the unveils, the news and rumors etc. I was so close to pulling the trigger myself even though I don't have a PC. I could probably justify the $500 + $500 for card and monitor on an existing PC (or a Mac upgrade clears throat) but not an entirely new machine to play games. If you haven't seen cutting edge PC gaming go and check it out somewhere or somehow. There was this entire revolution happening that I knew nothing about.
  - dharma1 10y ago
    OK. I've got a PC with gtx970 I occasionally use for gaming, mostly Battlefront (at 1080p, haven't tried 4k). It's pretty good, wouldn't say it blows my mind like the HTC Vive demos I've tried though
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    >It's a completely different gaming experience and I understand now how people become obsessed with frame rates, specs, cards, the unveils, the news and rumors etc. I also partly think this is cultural, as the original commenter noted. Last year shortly after Overwatch came out I built a new gaming PC, featuring an i5 6600K, GTX 980Ti, and 27" 1080p 144Hz monitor. My buddies gave me some flack for it because even at the time (~June 2016) these were not the top of the line options. Nevermind the fact that even with all settings on Ultra I was able to consistently get 120-140 FPS, and with settings turned down to their most basic (a common practice among competitive gamers to decrease input latency) I never dropped below 144, even in the middle of the most dense game play. Granted, I'm playing at 1080p, but I have yet to find a reason to want more than that, and the performance is where I want it to be, so I'm satisfied. Still, since I didn't trade hundreds of extra dollars for an i7 and a GTX 1080 I'm the noob.

Warp__ 10y ago

Personally, I play at 3440x1440. I want 0 bottlenecks and more power than I need, so a 1080Ti is perfect for me. Especially as in the UK I can get it for ~£30 more than I paid for the 1080.

simias 10y ago

I have a 4K screen and a GTX 1080, I struggle to play most high end games at a stable 4K 60fps with it. VR is an other use case where the extra power is probably not wasted. DOOM 2016 maxed out at 4k is a sight to behold.

aquadrop 10y ago
Can you tell me (honest question) what improves with 4k for games? I mean, for regular stuff you can see more details on the picture, but games usually just render essentially same picture only for larger resolution. And picture with fullhd and modern capabilities is also already pretty smooth, so does 4k bring anything (I guess it can add a bit of smoothness as additional step of AA)? Is it worth the trouble?
- simias 10y ago
  At the current price I don't think it's really worth it, no. Really few games manage to take full advantage of 4K (Doom '16, as I mentioned, is one of them). Too many console ports with low texture resolutions and terrible optimizations these days. Older games will of course fare much better but the additional sharpness in the graphics is probably not worth the price of the hardware. For gaming I think 1440p and a high framerate are a better compromise at the moment. That being said I have some trouble going back to my 1200p screens at work after being used to 4k at home. Surprisingly even for emacs and other work-related things 4K makes a pretty huge difference in my experience. Everything remains razor sharp even with a small font. I can split my screen and display a few full page datasheets and schematics alongside my code. No need to zoom in or anything. No aliasing, no pixels, I find it very relaxing.
  - aquadrop 10y ago
    How does Doom take advantage of 4k?
    - simias 10y ago
      High resolution textures and detailed models coupled with good optimization that makes it run like a charm maxed out at 4k. I don't have very good screenshots available at the moment unfortunately but this should give you an idea of what's possible: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/100598881680786746/23C0353DF7CB1D6429DD0E14B9CEB73930F9848A/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/10059888168078... http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/100598881680077063/3DB5F81297251F0C848BDF3786A5788C11A5CCFA/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/10059888168007... Here's Dark Souls III which looks pretty great at 4K but unfortunately doesn't manage to run at a solid 60FPS on my GTX 1080: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/84843325410407869/0B2DC734AFE6076A973BF3B37329654B59E92A60/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/84843325410407... And here's an older game, The Witcher: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/84843969116367618/C5DBDC6BEF24EE1F6735AC16C2A7D40B60DE0093/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/84843969116367... Those hold up pretty well at 4K. In contrast I present to you Wolfenstein: The New Order which often looks very mediocre and yet manages to run worse than DOOM: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/100598881681325455/A500272E450E27287B08AEC48DDB5CE388E95446/ http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/10059888168132... Note the low polygon count on some of the models and the very low resolution of certain textures.

K0SM0S 10y ago

No, currently monitor technology is evolving fast so GPUs at the are struggling to meet the highest interface requirements, notably 3440x1440@144Hz and 4K@60Hz (and don't even think about more frames at 4K). I have a GTX 1070 mostly for deep learning, but I have to admit that piece of hardware was pleasing the casual gamer in me as well. It's only about 20% behind a GTX 1080 for gaming, a $500 GPU. Twice more than I had ever spent for leisure as a gamer. Well on my 4K display, I can push most pre-2014 games to 60 fps, but that's it. After that, for most AAA games, I have to resort to 1440p + some AA. And if I was really into gaming I'd have bought an ultrawide 1440p/144Hz monitor, no doubt about it, knowing pretty well I'd need a Titan XP or at least 1080 to see these framerates on newer titles. It's a space that's moving fast, both on the interface (monitor, VR...) and processing side (Nvidia makes a 20-30% leap each gen, kind of insane compared to Intel CPU gens for instance). We're only beginning to touch low-level APIs once again after a two-decades hiatus on the PC (DirectX being both great to make it easy to create 3D apps but at the cost of much performance/overhead, which DX12 is trying to address). I'm jaded about CPUs, honestly Ryzen is much welcome economically but nothing to be enthused as a nerd/engineer, however GPUs and display technology is where it's at these days. Can't wait for proper AR too (HoloLens-like technology, still a few gens away from a commercially viable product).

Foxhuls 10y ago
I'm sorry but while I agree GPU and monitor technology is getting improved quickly, I think you're giving some incorrect info. Ultra wide 1440p monitors cap out at 100hz right now, not 144hz. The currents cards are pushing the 100hz ultrawides pretty much to their max and the 1080ti will 100% any slack left. 4k is possible past 60hz and a single 1080 is doing fairly well at 4k as is. 1080s in SLI can easily push a 4k monitor past 60fps and Asus is releasing a 4k 144hz monitor around Q3 of this year because of that. The tech is moving fast but you're exaggerating quite a bit on how hard it is to push these new displays.
- ptrptr 10y ago
  I have to disagree, there are couple consumer grade 1440p 144Hz monitors (FreeSync) - ASUS MG279Q, Acer Predator XF270HU and even 165Hz one - Acer Predator XB271HU (G-Sync) all IPS. There are also VA Ultra Wide panels like BenQ XR3501 and Acer Predator Z35 with 3440x1440px and 144Hz. Technology in this area is recently progressing with decent speed.

johanneskanybal 10y ago

Got the old Titan X. Serious Sam VR gpu speed detection: medium. feels bad.

Altay- 10y ago

Even dual 1080 GTX cards can't max out settings on the VR games currently available for Oculus / HTC Vive. As for traditional usecases, I have a 3x monitor setup ( 2K@144Hz/4K@60Hz/2K@144Hz) and my 1080 GTX can't max out everything smoothly while I stream/record high-end games. I would love it if all this was just vanity, but its my job. This stuff is an expense I'd happily avoid if possible. I don't own any nonsensical RGB lighted cases or non-essential peripherals.

cjrp 10y ago
Out of interest, are you handing off the encoding/streaming work to a separate device, or is that on the same PC?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

jamespo 10y ago

That's definitely true for some, as a quick look at all the "specs avatars" in PC gaming forums confirms.

hatsunearu 10y ago

Demonstrably false, 4K 60fps gaming on max settings on most games (1080p@60fps is nothing on most high end GPUs) is still not really possible, and a 1080Ti probably won't achieve it either since the Titan X wasn't quite able to. Also, VR gaming can never have enough GPU power, because supersampling increases the fidelity by a lot (first hand experience)

Someone1234 10y ago
> Demonstrably false, 4K 60fps gaming on max settings on most games (1080p@60fps is nothing on most high end GPUs) is still not really possible, and a 1080Ti probably won't achieve it either since the Titan X wasn't quite able to. You literally just argued why it is demonstrably true. If a Titan X, Ti, or standard 1080 can get to 4K 60 on max then buying an Titan X or Ti is nothing more than bragging rights. Nobody is arguing that the Ti isn't more powerful, just that that power likely doesn't buy you anything specific, all you've done is show how that is true.
- hatsunearu 10y ago
  What? A 1080, 1080Ti, Titan X isn't "enough". So the closest you can get to "enough" is worthwhile.

sundvor 10y ago

Completely disagree. A single 1080TI will finally be "good enough" for a lot of high resolution / high frequency use cases where you had to go SLI before. I find it useful to multiply resolution with refresh rate to arrive at a number that indicates the number of pixels being pushed per second: 1920x1080 x60 = 124,416,000 2560x1440 x60 = 221,184,000 3440x1440 x60 = 297,216,000 3440x1440 x100 = 495,360,000 3840x2160 x60 = 497,664,000 2560x1440 x144 = 530,841,600 3840x2160 x144 = 1,194,393,600 So there you go - a maxed out 34" ultrawide has just about the same requirements as a 60hz 4k monitor. Yet a normal 27" 144hz will out-require both of them ... and they come in even faster variants yet! Edit: And then you start seeing 144hz 4k screens; you will still find yourself wanting with a single 1080TI.

plandis 10y ago

This might be the first sub $1000 card to drive games at 4K above 60fps, so that's kind of cool. Considering that there are a few 4K 144Hz IPS monitors releasing this year the card lines up nicely.

cgriswald 10y ago

I believe there is a subset of gamers who spend this kind of money for cultural reasons. But I build expensive beasts once and drive them until they run into the ground. My dual 690s handled "everything I could throw at them"[0] for years and years. I only just upgraded to dual 1080 FTW editions (also very expensive) and expect to run those for quite a few years as well.[1] [0] Caveat: I only ever run a single monitor on my gaming rigs. [1] Turns out I get VR sickness something fierce, so VR won't really be a driving need for me.