Would this be a worthwhile (budget) upgrade for P3Dv5.4 use?

MSI GeForce RTX 3060 VENTUS 2X OC 12GB GDDR6 192-bit PCIe 4.0 Desktop Graphics Card

I currently have a GTX1080. The 8gb does limit me somewhat.

Thanks for any advice.

Ian, I did a search and found the question had been asked on Reddit. Here is the advice..

”1080 to 3060 is a side grade at best. A 3060 Ti would be a decent upgrade, a 3070 would be great.

If I was in your shoes with a 500 USD budget, I’d have the following options -

A) Buy new, which gets you a 3060/3060 Ti, both of which are 1.5 years old at this point.

B) Buy used now, miner cards might net you something decent. Maybe a 3070?

C) Buy the next Gen new - this could be a wait, Nvidia releases their budget cards a lot later than their high end ones.

D) Buy current gen when next Gen drops - this is probably your best bet. When the 3070 was announced, 2080 Ti cards were going for half their original value. Maybe you can try for something around then, like a 3080?”

I compared a 1080 and 3060 on this site and there’s not much difference.

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-3060-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1080/4105vs3603

The 3070 would give you a decent boost. The Ti versions are quite a bit more powerful but cost more of course.

Wouldn't it be wiser to try to aim at the 4xxx generation, just to ensure you get the latest features in terms of frame generation and such ? Like a 4060ti with 16 GB of RAM maybe ?

For P3D, no: V5 does not support Frame Generation. A 4060Ti or 5060Ti may help, but only if you get the 16 GB one, and only because of the increased VRAM. What resolution are you using, @IanHarrison?

Edited September 3, 2025Sep 3 by Luis Hernandez

3 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

For P3D, no: V5 does not support Frame Generation. A 4060Ti or 5060Ti may help, but only if you get the 16 GB one, and only because of the increased VRAM. What resolution are you using, @IanHarrison?

1440p

What does Nvidia mean by {for not supported games}.

Hi Ian, I agree with above comments that moving to the 3060 card is a sideways step and you wont get much improvement even though there is a VRAM increase.

The next best thing is a RTX 3070 but that only comes with 8Gb. If you intend to only use P3D then this will be fine. I had this card installed and it worked fine in P3Dv5.3. I am also 1440p.  I only ever saw 2 problems with VRAM and that was the TFDI MD-11 which is known to be VRAM hungry because of the texture load and the only other instance I recall was when I had Orbx Brisbane airport v1 and city pack both loaded, in which VRAM became an issue. Otherwise RTX 3070 is a great card if you can find one on the cheap.

Failing that my next step up would be either the RTX 4060Ti 16Gb as mentioned above or consider the RTX 4070 Super OC 12Gb. The latter is a great card and runs P3D with no problems. This is my current GPU and its not too power hungry either.  Its also future-proof from the perspective that should you want to install other sims that take advantage of Frame Gen, you should be OK on the Nvidia side since FG is supported by both the RTX 4000 and 5000 series cards. The in-between option of those would be the original RTX 4070 (not the later Super variant, but I think they are pretty rare these days).

I am sure there are equivalent AMD cards available that also run well for P3D but I dont have any experience with simming with those cards.

What sort of improvements were you looking for? Is the VRAM limitation using P3D your main concern in being able to set your graphic sliders higher or you are trying to achieve other improvements?

 

I wish you good luck in your hunt in finding a GPU that will work nicely in your system. There are some good options out there for you.😉

 

 

Hi

I "run" a 5070 16gb on my V6.1  and I like it ... 

With some options from Nvidia