Upgrade from GTX 770 2GB to GTX 1080 - Worth it?

[brucewtb 249]

Just to put put this all in perspective I run a 770 4gb gpu at 4K with minimal issues  - with high end aircraft and scenery 30 fps plus in fine weather closer to 20 fps in heavy weather.   This is with a 4770K cpu oc to 4.5. IMHO the gpu requirements for 4K are greatly exaggerated.  These new 1080 cards are being sold at over 1300 Australian dollars - you would have to see a very dramatic improvement to justify that sort of expense.

 

Bruceb

[Christopher Low 5,353]

I run P3D just fine at very high detail levels with a 2GB GTX 770 card, although I only run at 1920x1080 resolution, and I generally stick to clear skies  :smile:

[captain420 3,099]

I'm in the same boat. I currently have an EVGA GTX 680 FTW+ Edition (4GB)... i7-3770k OC to 4.5GHz, 16GB Memory, and Win 7 Ultimate 64bit... running on a 30" Monitor @ 2560x1600 native resolution.

 

Would getting the GTX 1080 give me any noticeable improvements over my current setup?

 

And why is it so hard to find any place selling the GTX 1080? It's been out of stock for couple of months already.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Those of you wondering if your current card is "enough" (i.e. has enough VRAM for a given resolution or is just plain fast enough) can use a tool such as EVGA's Precision X to monitor GPU usage and VRAM usage.  See this guide from Anandtech to learn how to use it.  The guide is a couple years old now so the interface is a little different, but the basics are all there.  

 

What you're looking for are GPU usage values close to 100% (if your GPU is close to this value it means you're GPU-bound) and VRAM usage levels approaching the amount of VRAM your card has.  Example: if you have a 2GB card, you're looking for VRAM usage close to 2048 (as VRAM is measured by Precision X in MB rather than GB).  If you see VRAM usage staying below this number you've got enough, but if it hits this number you probably need more.  If you're thinking of upgrading your video card and monitor at the same time (say you want to move from 1080p to 4k) and you want to know whether or not a video card upgrade is necessary, determining GPU and VRAM usage will help you figure out if you need a new card or not.  

[TheFamilyMan 280]

Just adding to TechGuyMaxC post.  Run a GPU usage monitor program such as EVGA's Precision X or MSI Afterburner while flying.  If you hit stutters/low FPS, check if the monitor program is showing that GPU use is "flat-lined" at 100% use during that time.  If so, a gtx 1080 will give some to possibly lots of improvement in such situations.  If this 100% flat-line is not happening in such situations the gtx 1080 is not going to help much.