At what price point does a 1080 ti stop making sense?

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
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Just curious. I see people on this board saying they're getting used 1080 ti cards for $450, or even $400 which is a bargain I have never seen. But near as I can tell, the going rate is $550-600 on the second hand market. WIth the slightly slower 2070 being $500 new, at what price point does a used 1080 ti stop being a good alternative?
 

ElFenix

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Mar 20, 2000
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i got a 1080 on ebay for ~$285 after coupon, so i'd set expectations accordingly. probably helped me that the seller disclosed that it was used for mining.
2070 is a touch slower but has new features and uses less power, i doubt i'd pay more than $425 for a 1080ti. even at that point i'd be thinking hard about it. no brainer $50 less than that though.
 

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
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A 1080 for $285?? That's insane! By "after coupon" do you mean like a 15% off one item ebay coupon that comes once every blue moon?
 

DisarmedDespot

Senior member
Jun 2, 2016
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Low-priced 1080 Tis are around, but you need to get lucky to get one. I nabbed a refurb 1080 Ti for $300 from Zotac's website, but that was just dumb luck. Someone posted about it in the comments of an unrelated thread on the r/BuildAPCSales subreddit, and I was lucky enough to see it before it went out of stock. I'm still shocked I actually got it.

ElFenix's $425 for a used 1080 Ti baseline sounds good to me. Much more than that and I'd buy new for the warranty.
 

4K_shmoorK

Senior member
Jul 1, 2015
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1080 Ti are still worth the money. 2070 really is not that close.


Just curious. I see people on this board saying they're getting used 1080 ti cards for $450, or even $400 which is a bargain I have never seen. But near as I can tell, the going rate is $550-600 on the second hand market. WIth the slightly slower 2070 being $500 new, at what price point does a used 1080 ti stop being a good alternative?
Performance versus MSI GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X TRIO


Our performance results confirm that a factory overclocked GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is noticeably faster in gaming compared to the factory overclocked GeForce RTX 2070.

In all of our testing today the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X TRIO performed between 10-20% faster than the MSI RTX 2070 GAMING Z video card. This coincides with our previous testing in the original performance preview of between 10-20% performance improvement of the MSI RTX 2070 GAMING Z over the GTX 1080. We know that GeForce GTX 1080 Ti sits about 30% faster than the GeForce GTX 1080 reference spec to reference spec. This puts the new MSI GeForce RTX 2070 at about the middle-way between a factory overclocked GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Performance comparison will depend on the game, and factory overclocks.
 

Elfear

Diamond Member
May 30, 2004
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I think a used 1080Ti makes sense up to ~$450-475 depending on the specific card. The cheaper 2070's are $500 and range up to $600 for the faster aftermarket cards (like the Gaming Z mentioned in the review above). At $450 for a nice used aftermarket 1080Ti, you'd be 20-30% faster than the lower-tier 2070s and $50 cheaper. Or save $150 compared to the top-tier aftermarket 2070s and still have a card 10-20% faster.
 
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Elfear

Diamond Member
May 30, 2004
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But where are these $450 1080 ti cards?

Ouch. I didn't realize prices had gone up so much. I bought my card used when Turing launched for $430.

Just checked Ebay and the lowest priced used cards are ~$600. Even with a 10% off Ebay coupon (which may or may not show up again soon) that's $540. At price parity, the aftermarket 2070 makes more sense.
 

ElFenix

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Mar 20, 2000
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A 1080 for $285?? That's insane! By "after coupon" do you mean like a 15% off one item ebay coupon that comes once every blue moon?
seems like they pop up more often than that, but, yes. that coupon.
 

ub4ty

Senior member
Jun 21, 2017
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At launch it made no sense. 1070/1080 were more than sufficient. You simply wait until pricing and technology come to a sane level and then you buy. By the time a 1080ti performance capable card comes out at a reasonable price, you'll see everything in the market centered on it be more reasoned : monitors/cpus. You drop big cash on a flagship from one gen only to see the mid-tier of the next gen replace it. People have to be smart about how they do builds. Never buy the most high end hardware. Always go mid tier on a big upgrade. If a game developer writes a piece of crap mainstream game that doesn't perform well on a mid level card, I don't play it. I haven't even highlighted the insane amount of power the 1080ti consumes. At these die sizes/power, it's a clear signal that you're buying into something that isn't fully ready yet. Wait until 7nm.. Should have bought a pascal when it launched 2 years ago and have been enjoying a 1070 or so until the next major release.
 

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
15,749
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So hold on, if you were looking for a card for 4k, and it was down to a used 1080ti three fan ftw with no warranty for $530, or a new, less powerful 2070 with full warranty for $425 ($500 - 15% ebay code) tomorrow, which would make more sense?
 

alcoholbob

Diamond Member
May 24, 2005
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1080 Tis are no longer in production, that's why the prices are rising. $400 was a pretty common price around August-September in the used market, that's before any coupons or discounts.
 

alcoholbob

Diamond Member
May 24, 2005
6,271
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Well, the 2070 uses less power because it's slower, not because it's necessarily so much more efficient.


performance-per-watt_3840-2160.png


With a 5.2% difference in perf per watt, it's a pretty negligible difference.



relative-performance_3840-2160.png


Now the question is, are you overclocking or not? If you are, then the 1080 Ti is a much better value, simply because it's stock clocks are 8% lower, so the 12% difference in initial stock performance ends up ballooning to a 21% performance difference.

I would say if you have a gsync monitor, it probably won't make much of a difference, since you can tweak target fps to >40. But if you are focusing on 60fps vsync, then the 1080 Ti is a better value. Just make sure you get an EVGA and you will still have warranty coverage.
 

Ottonomous

Senior member
May 15, 2014
559
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Doing a slow rebuild and was presented with the same two issues, 2500K and 1080ti vs 2070, went for the former for 500USD, considerably good where I am situated

Only thing left is the mobo-proc-ram and I have my eye on Ryzen 3 or the 9600K
 

n0x1ous

Platinum Member
Sep 9, 2010
2,572
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Doing a slow rebuild and was presented with the same two issues, 2500K and 1080ti vs 2070, went for the former for 500USD, considerably good where I am situated

Only thing left is the mobo-proc-ram and I have my eye on Ryzen 3 or the 9600K
Ryzen 3 might be a bit of a bottleneck depending on your resolution
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
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I'm on the fence right now on buying a rtx 2070 as they are for the most part cheaper than a gtx 1080 and faster to boot.
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
5,510
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I'm dealing with the same issue. I was thinking of a 2080 but it was $700 after tax even after the ebay discount (normally $800). The used 1080 Tis don't seem to go below $500 anymore, and the better ones are closer to $600. The 2080 doesn't seem to be worth that much more, although it may pull away later on given how Nvidia focuses on their newest cards for driver optimizations. I got a 4K OLED TV and my old 980 doesn't cut it at that resolution, although it's still reasonably good at 1080p.
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,025
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I ended up snagging a new gtx 1080 from Newegg tonight for $440 as I couldn't find a 2070 for anywhere near that price and called it a day.