Hello,

I will be forced to upgrade my current gpu rtx 3060 after it was fried due to a recent storm surge. My current system is an i9-10850k and 32gb of ddr4 ram with 2-3TB ssds.

My question, what should I consider upgrading to? Rtx 3080-3080 ti? 4070?

Please let me know everyone’s thoughts.

I currently use p3dv4

Your power supply unit may be a limiting factor.  What PSU is in your computer?

750 watts

Yeah, you'll need to confirm the power supply will suit whatever GPU decided upon, else a new power supply is not all that expensive.

I run a 3080Ti with P3D v4.5HF3 where I have quite the amount of GPU power sucking customisations applied.

And while the 3080Ti is great, I still find I can max out the GPU both in it's ram and GPU usage, maybe a 4090Ti would take it to the next level where I can max out everything, or await the 5000 series ? ;-)

But still it's pretty great, I can enabled almost everything to the max except for the casting of vegetation shadows (sometimes) and autogen distance where depending on the area, medium/high are about the max unless you're flying in a place like Africa or South America or any other place where there would not be a lot of autogen to display.

Check out my vid links where the latest vids are running the 3080Ti, earlier ones are runnng a 1070Ti.

And here is a pic of Orbx True Earth GB South @ 4k with a 30Hz vsync on the 3080Ti providing for a very smooth 30 fps.

Cheers

I'd recomment to get a 4000 series card with at least 12 GB of VRAM or more, if you afford. I've read, that the 3000 series is even more expensive than the 4000 series now or no longer available. I also saw, the 4060 Ti is hardly better than the 3060 Ti. Maybe you can get a 3080 or 3090 second hand for a good price. I have the 3090 with 24 GB VRAM and this is pretty nice. 

As said by @stans your psu is rated rather low. Actually on my system I have a 850W psu. It depends on your cpu, how much this will use. My i9700K has a max tdp of 95 W and your 10850 already 125W. A RTX 3090 has 480 W and they recommend a minimum psu of 850W. The 4090 has 450W in the description. I expected it to be higher. 

Your old RTX 3060 had about 170 W, so you get about 310 W more for your psu with a new gpu. That's quite an increase and since my store recommends at least a 850W psu for 3090 or 4090 I'd even go for a 1000W psu, just in case you buy a new mobo and cpu in 1-2 years. Some new cpu's like the i13900K consume already 257W. 

There are fuses to place between your rig and the power-socket for the next storm. I have a power bar with this function, so all my pluged in devices are protected from lightning strokes.

Dan

The PSU that came with my computer, equipped with an EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3, was an EVGA 750 watt unit.  750 Watts is what was recommended by Nvidia.  My PSU lasted 2 weeks, might have just been a bad unit or the graphics card pulled a spike power draw and damaged the PSU.  I replaced it with an Antec 900 watt PSU that I just happened to have on hand and there have been no issues since.  It seems the rule of thumb for the 3xxx and 4xxx series of Nvidia cards and their tendency to spike power consumption is to add 150 watts to Nvidia's recommended PSU rating.  Many report no issues with using PSU's that are at the recommended rating, then there is the rest of us who had problems with recommended PSU's.  I feel it is better to be safe than sorry.

Edited May 28, 20233 yr by stans